SOURCE: “Human Freedom in the Thought of Plotinus,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 292-314.

[In the following essay, Leroux attempts to clarify some of the more difficult aspects of Plotinus's ideas regarding freedom.]

Freedom belongs to the category of issues that affect the whole of Plotinus's metaphysics. Insofar as they are not merely beings ranged in a hierarchy but also moments in an infinite process by which the One expresses itself and infinitely offers itself as the Good, all aspects of this metaphysics, whether subjective or objective, are brought into play by freedom. Metaphysics must give an account of this process; it must express its dynamic and offer an explanation of its principal stages in narrative form. Consequently, what is at issue is nothing other than the freedom of each being to evolve or act, depending on its nature, within the context of the whole conceived systematically as depending upon and manifestating the One. “Freedom” has the same meaning at every level: that of a being to be what it is. This meaning pertains to the identity of the Good and Being: “It is obvious that the Good is in being, and in being it would clearly be for each individual in himself” (VI.5.1.23-5). One can legitimately ask, therefore, in what sense can we say that freedom is not identical with necessity? Indeed, in what sense is there even a place for freedom in a universal emanationism?

It might seem paradoxical to turn to the concept of necessity in order to characterize a dynamic metaphysics of process. To interpret Plotinus in a way faithful to his intuitions, however, it is useful to distinguish two types of necessity. On the one hand, there is a preeminent form of necessity that is essentially set out in a polar relationship with the hazards of contingency but for all that no less opposed to the constraints of a vulgar determinism. According to Plotinus's interpretation of this concept in IV.8, that being is necessary which could be no other than it is and which owes its existence only to itself. In the case of the One, therefore, this necessity must be understood as self-engenderment and self-causation (VI.8.14.41-2), and it is in this sense that freedom and necessity are both equally opposed to chance and contingency. This pre-eminent necessity—of that which exists of itself—differs from another, lesser necessity, the conception of which is inherited from the fatalist tradition, in which necessity (anankê) is interpreted as inevitability or fate (heimarmenê). The universe is represented as a causal chain and freedom is specifically excluded. Far from being the freedom of that which causes itself, this necessity appears as the consequence of an external determination and is the opposite of a power. Plotinus has always stressed the richness of an eminent concept of necessity, as opposed to the lower concept, which he nevertheless discusses in his treatises on Fate and Providence in the third Ennead.

The metaphysical process taken as a whole is distinguished by two symmetrical movements, for which Plotinus proposes a number of different images—the imagery of descent and ascent and that of radiation and concentration are only the best known of these. This might be the process by which the One makes possible the differentiation which then goes on to express itself as Life, or it might be the movement by which this Life, expressed in the diversity of souls, seeks infinitely to find its starting point and unite with it; in each case the problem of freedom is none other than the troubled and negative side of necessity. Only this necessity can constitute the true positivity within which Plotinus's monism can find its legitimacy. It contains freedom within itself, which in many ways links Plotinus's philosophy with the modern metaphysics of Spinoza or Bergson: for them as for Plotinus, freedom is accomplished through an unavoidable and irreducible necessity. Is this position paradoxical? This is the question to be addressed by this essay, with particular reference to human freedom.

We should begin by specifying that the concept itself, of freedom, only appears very indirectly in Plotinian metaphysics. An effort to reconstruct this concept can be based only on two sets of texts: “On Free Will” and the “Will of the One,” VI.8, and a scattered set of comments touching on the activity of the soul. The teaching of the former (VI.8) shows that human freedom constitutes only the weakest possible level of a superior, pre-eminent, and ineffable freedom characteristic of the One itself. Indeed, Plotinus allows himself to go so far as to ask about the freedom of the One itself. Even if a priori this might seem like a damning question, since it implies some form of subjectivizing, which is intolerable, he still formulates it in VI.8, if only to exclude the thesis of the contingency of the One. More than any other thesis, this exclusion of a contingent advent of the One, the refutation of any formulation that would imply some form of genesis, points to Plotinus's central intuition and the heart of his conception of freedom. Plotinus in effect adheres to necessity as the superior form of all existence and all essence, rather than to freedom conceived, for example, in Aristotle's moral philosophy, as the power to chose and to act, since this latter concept is immediately marked by hesitation and contingency and for this reason is irreconcilable with the Neoplatonic world-view. Within this necessity, the most important predicates standing against the hazards of weak, servile, and contingent action are those of power, sovereignty, and actuality. Thus, existence realizes itself only when it has attained the immutability conferred by virtue, within this virtue, it discovers at once its freedom and necessity.

Despite these strong metaphysical premises, a form of ethical liberty is predicated of the soul, though in an ambivalent and unsystematical way, as being conceivable in the context of human action. Here we must note, however, to what extent each text belonging to this set offers a different answer to the problem of freedom, inasmuch as this problem is neither central nor explicitly formulated. When one seeks to produce a reconstruction of these texts, the distinction between the conceptual concepts of descent (procession) and ascent (purification) allows one to separate two series of preoccupations: the first constitutes the metaphysics of the soul and of its movement and inclinations; the second concerns ethics properly speaking. In both cases—and this remark deserves a philological elaboration that cannot be offered here—it is necessary to insist on the inchoate and imprecise character of the philosophical lexicon of freedom. The distinctions between voluntary, deliberate, determined, free, and self-determined, which later on will become so important, are discussed neither in the description of moral action, which is principally inherited from Aristotle's ethics and the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias, nor in the explanation of the metaphysical procession. In particular, it is clear that for Plotinus, as for Greek philosophy in general, voluntariness in no way implies deliberate choice. We shall briefly examine this point below.

I.

The first series of ideas, then, involves the metaphysics of procession. At stake here is the voluntary nature of the descent of the soul (notably in Enneads II.9, IV.3, and IV.8). This issue belongs to the network of quaestiones vexatae of interpretation:¹ Does the soul descend voluntarily, that is, does it freely move toward the lower states of its realization, and in particular toward the body? Which soul or which type of soul is free to move in this way? Indeed, the World Soul and individual souls all represent the same type of being, to the extent that they all derive from the hypostatic soul:² they also differ substantially from it, due primarily to their different thoughts. As Plotinus teaches in several treatises (notably IV.3 and IV.9), the universe possesses a single soul; while we must conceive of individual liberty, this can only be if we separate this liberty from the global destiny of the living world. In regard to this, the eternal existence of the forms of individuals reinforces their specific destiny. It is very interesting to note that the scope of the Plotinian discussion of individuality is first of all ontological rather than ethical—that is, the discussion is animated by a desire to ensure, paradoxically by limiting it, the identity of the individual soul as a being which subsists, much more than it is motivated by the requirement of providing a foundation for ethics. At no point in this group of treatises does the problem of freedom take on a determining role, for the destiny of the individual appears to participate in a movement which differentiates it, that is, which draws a distinction between it and the very necessity which differentiates beings. Linked together as parts of the Intellect (IV.3.5.15-16), souls remain focused on it. But individual souls do not maintain this orientation, even though a part of each remains oriented toward the Intellect.

The very image of descent is itself inappropriate if intended to connote a spatial movement, since the standard meaning of this voluntary movement is self-abasement (VI.4.16). Inasmuch as it expresses an inclination of the individual soul, this is certainly voluntary (IV.7.13.4), though unintentional and nondeliberate (IV.3.13.17-18).³ This movement results from a guilty will to be itself (V.1.1.5), but insofar as it participates in the general dynamic of that flow which constitutes the very heart of metaphysics, the self-abasement is determined.⁴ It at once expresses and fulfils the inferior necessity of the procession of Being (II.9.3.11-14), a necessity which represents the chain of begettings and which must not be confounded with the absolute and preeminent necessity of the self-causation characteristic of the One. Despite the differences in emphasis between IV.8, which is chronologically anterior, and II.9, which belongs to the anti-Gnostic polemic, the teaching of Plotinus on this matter is consistent and coherent.⁵

This matter of the freedom to descend echoes difficulties already found in Plato. Plotinus does not miss his chance to bring out what he thinks is in many ways a paradox (IV.8.1.26). His interpretation of the Phaedrus and the Timaeus is stimulated not only by what seems to him to be a contradiction concerning freedom but also by the role of myth in the expression of the negativity and the process of differentiation. Is it possible, following the Phaedrus, to seek to ground the freedom of myth in metaphysics? By interpreting the doctrines of Plato on this subject, Plotinus comes to the following conclusion:

There is then no contradiction between the sowing to birth and the descent for the perfection of the All, and the judgment and the cave, and necessity and free-will (since necessity contains the free-will) and the being in the body as an evil; nor [is there anything inconsistent about] Empedocles' flight from God and wandering nor the sin upon which judgment comes, nor Heraclitus' rest on the flight, nor in general the willingness and also the unwillingness of the descent. For everything which goes to the worse does so unwillingly, but, since it goes by its own motion, when it experiences the worse it is said to be punished for what it did.

(IV.8.5.1-10)

This passage is important for two reasons: first because it reinforces the metaphysical compatibility of freedom and necessity, and secondly because it introduces a kind of responsibility which closely resembles fault and error. Within this fault, which comprises the movement specific to free will and submission to a sort of destiny, reside the primitive paradoxes of human freedom: first the basic liberty to proceed, which results from an original self-abasement, and then the empirical freedom of corporeal existence, which is the place and theatre of fault and failure, that is, of the victories of desire. By using the Kantian empirical vocabulary to characterize lived freedom, that is freedom in existence, we accent the specific nature of preempirical freedom, which is the freedom of the descending soul. As long as it is freed from the contingencies of composite life, this latter freedom is purer and more genuine.

Thus, Plotinus is very conscious of the tragedy of individuation. He sees the contradiction between two inescapable demands: the necessity of wishing for inferior existence and the impossibility of remaining in the realm of the intelligible. He maintains, however, that in general the descent belongs to the metaphysical order of procession (II.9.8; IV.3.13.18) and thus takes on a necessary appearance. Thus, it is not exclusively a failing, as in the Gnostic dramaturgy inherited from the Platonic myth, since the illumination it brings with it in its inclination toward inferiority is an expression of kindness (I.1.12.21-8) and a response to the needs of other beings (IV.8.5.10-15). At this point, then, ontology makes up for the obscurities—and in a sense for the absurdities—of the mythical drama of the fall. Moreover, the body plays an essential role in the process, which affects the soul: bodies are responsible for receiving form and thus for receiving the soul, according to the principle that each being receives form according to its capacity (VI.4.3.10). Soul, body, and matter in interaction with one another are thus coextensively responsible for that which is to become evil.⁶ It is not exclusively matter or the material world that introduces evil into the metaphysical structure, but, correlatively, the fact that the incorporation of the soul into the composite submits it to the wrenching pull of desire and opens up the possibility of failure and defeat. This issue, which is essential for understanding the destiny of liberty, is dealt with in Chapter 7 of the present volume and forms a necessary background to the problem of that specifically human freedom which touches the human soul in the composite. Each soul gives form to a different body; the body of the world soul is purer and more durable than the bodies of individual living beings.

Insofar as the question of the voluntariness of incarnation first arises in the context of the soul, and insofar as Plotinus does not seem preoccupied with the question of whether the Intellect is free to proceed, one might think that his treatment of these questions excluded subjectivizing Intellect, even if this Intellect finds itself involved in a complex relationship of return (epistrophê) and reconstitution of its identity in relation to the One, a relationship which lets us presuppose a sort of being of which freedom can be predicated. Intellect is not to be equated in Plotinus's metaphysics to Mind as subject. Not only does Intellect lack the lower desires (IV.7.13.3) but, we must stress, all desire is eternally satisfied in Intellect through the contemplation of the One. Although we must still keep freedom in mind in this context, it can only take the form of a quasi-subject, for when Plotinus spoke of the will of the Intellect to possess everything, he meant it metaphorically (III.8.8.34). This position is generalized in VI.8, where Plotinus insists upon the impossibility of predicating freedom of superior beings for which action is nonexistent (VI.8.4). The cardinal principle here is necessity, which is identified with nature and ultimately with the preeminent freedom characteristic of the One. Thus, the paradox of a freedom whose essence is fulfilled in necessity does not begin to unravel until it reaches the point where Plotinus agrees to ask about the freedom to descend; from here on he agrees to presuppose that this descent might be at once necessary and voluntary. By accepting this possibility, he makes possible a freedom which is later set within the soul and made its focus. The soul cannot stop itself from descending; it is here, in this natural momentum, that it achieves its existence. But this achievement is not complete without the reascension that liberates the soul from desire. The freedom exercised by the soul will then constitute a surpassing of this merely natural, voluntary momentum.

II

It is not easy to understand how the existence of the soul in the composite permits the conception of a sort of freedom which, for the first time in the metaphysical process, does not cancel itself out by becoming identified with necessity. This is nevertheless the position of Plotinus in a second series of texts dealing with his ethics of liberty. Human existence is the site of authentic freedom: a freedom the exercise of which leads back to the transcendental necessity of the Good. This active freedom is identified with the movement toward purification and implies a certain responsibility, for example, in disciplining the passions. So one cannot think in the same way about voluntary descent, which is the necessary form of this tendency, and the liberty of re-ascension. These are, in a manner of speaking, two different freedoms. While remaining voluntary, the descent is also necessary; its characteristic freedom is preempirical, thus conceptually absorbed by the reality of necessity. Ascension, on the other hand, expresses the freedom of risk taking, the sense of choosing or of making an effort, and is proportionately closer to a modern conception of freedom.⁷ Indeed, this liberty escapes from the determinism of the system since the soul must struggle to rediscover its purity, meaning that not all souls will liberate themselves. From here on it is a matter of understanding just how the freedom of liberation is an authentic form of freedom according to Plotinus.

Underlying this proposition is a complex philosophical anthropology. The theory of the individual soul, inherited from Plato, maintains that only the superior part of the soul is immutable—this is the rational and divine part, the sovereign part of Timaeus 69d. This part of the soul is moreover impassive, as in Aristotle's philosophy (De anima 408b2). When the time comes to examine Plotinus's thinking about freedom, this thesis becomes fundamental. In several treatises it seems clear enough that Plotinus wishes to foster an impassive subject able to confront the contingent passions and be shown to be the bearer of freedom.⁸ Freedom is in fact a predicate belonging to the human soul, insofar as it maintains its spiritual origin within itself and fulfills its destiny in the ascent and union with the One. Against Plato, Plotinus maintains the continuity of a nondescended part of the soul (IV.8.8). According to the premises of this anthropology, then, freedom is characteristic only of the higher soul.⁹ The separation of soul and body fulfills this identification by making it possible to isolate the form of the soul. Through the asceticism of philosophy, this separation is then completed and led back to its original destiny, liberation.

One of the first chapters of Ennead I.1. unquestionably establishes this anthropology: only that which is composite experiences sensibles and passions; this composite alone has desires (I.1.6.4-7); and rational life—the practice of thought—is the prerogative of the soul alone, isolated in its noetic essence. The problem of freedom finds a fundamental resolution at this point, in two ways: first as a tendency toward the Good (I.1.5.27), and second as resistance to and control of the passions. The tendency toward the Good is not an ordinary affection (pathêma), but rather an inclination proper to the unquestionably soul. It implies a driving force within the soul: its sovereignty or lordship which is created from reflection and intelligence:

From these forms, from which the soul alone receives its lordship over the living being, come reasonings, and opinions and acts of intuitive intelligence; and this precisely is where “we” are. That which comes before this is “ours,” but “we” in our presidency (hêgemonia) over the living being, are what extends from this point upwards.¹⁰

(hêgemonia, I.1.7.14-19)

Now, this sovereignty is the power of reason. By opening up the soul's thought, understood as illumination (I.1.8.15), to the subjective thought of the self as such, Plotinus made it possible to reflect upon liberty: in its solitary sovereignty, the immobile and impassive soul is “free from all responsibility for the evils that man does and suffers; these concern the living being, the joint entity” (I.1.9.1-3). As for evil, it resides in the momentary power of the bad part of that manifold being which is Man—the victory of desire, of anger, and of the imagination. We can therefore ask how for Plotinus the free self, the sovereign soul, can bring to life this selfhood that can only exist in the composite world? It is a highly problematic relationship that is likely to exist between the sovereign soul, insofar as it is identified with the hegemonic principle of reason and insofar as it is an impassive self, and the empirical self which acts in the composite world. When he writes that “we are many” (polla gar hêmeis [I.1.9.7]), Plotinus might have wanted to insist upon the need to unify the plural nature of subjective experience. At the same time, he identifies the true self and points out its essential otherness. Nonetheless, his thought remains imprecise regarding the possibility of reconciling the two topical conceptions of self which appear to affect his moral psychology: impassive reason and empirical subjectivity which is expressed in the self.

In setting out his anthropology, Plotinus insists on the aspects of separation and struggle which result from the division of the various parts of the soul, aspects which are reinforced by life in the composite.¹¹ The sovereign soul is thus not only that being in which one accomplishes in a provisional or momentary way an identification with Intellect (V.3.3.34). It is also power over the inferior—power of perspective and of resistance. This links it to that which it resists. That which remains impassive, not having descended, nonetheless remains active insofar as reason plays a role in the life of the composite, that is, of the joint entity. The nature of subjectivity is thus complex (as can be seen in another essay in this volume) precisely due to the overdetermination of its context of moral liberation. The self is only what it is by freely turning toward that which it is not, that is, the Intellect. From this point of view, the thesis that the sovereign soul is faultless immediately confers upon the Plotinian conception of freedom the same intellectualistic character which determines the whole of Greek philosophy's moral psychology. Owing to its intellectual essence and impassivity, the soul is unable to exercise freedom contrary to the Good—it is a freedom which is devoted exclusively to this Good. Error and evil, in consequence, are not free in the strong sense of the word: they are not chosen by the sovereign soul and do not participate in the profound dynamic of metaphysics, of which they constitute the unfathomable material abyss. Rather, they represent the power of the inferior element and therefore result from irrational illusions. The bad soul is full of bad desires (I.6.5.26), but the soul in such a state is not free. It is merely weak and blind (I.8.14). In this Plotinus remains profoundly faithful to Platonic intellectualism (III.2.10; I.8.5.26). “No one does evil voluntarily” is the statement that characterizes this tradition.

Human life is composite life; it is the theatre of passion and desire. No doubt, the problem of the origin of desire is less crucial than that of its diversity and power; the Plotinian psychology is extraordinarily rich as concerns the analysis of desire and of inclination. The vocabulary in this area is complex (hormê, orexis, epithumia, ephêsis, e.g., IV.7.13.1-6) and directly intersects with what we might call the lexicon of freedom, mostly inherited from Aristotle and the Stoics (ekousion, eph'hêmin, boulêsis, autexousion): the boundary is often indistinct between simple inclination and a voluntary surge of fully willing spontaneity. But as we noticed above, this vocabulary does not clearly develop into a neat conceptual vocabulary of willingness and freedom as an autonomous power distinct from an inclination.¹² Desire is constitutive of the voluntary. Moreover, the inclination to act is adventitious for the soul (IV.7.13.4). Like desire, this tendency finds its origin in the living body (IV.4.20-1),¹³ which is itself a product of nature. The cycles of development of desire are subject to the surveillance of nature and the soul can resist this desire as it can resist anything corporeal. In this fascinating analysis, the tensions are fundamental: in the separated state, the sovereign soul is an unassailable power; in the composite, the rational part retains a certain power, a certain strength. Only the superior part determines whether the desire will be satisfied (II.2.28). The link between desire and memory is itself problematic (IV.3.26.35), insofar as it affects the work of reason. If one can control one's desires, can one become the master of one's own memory? This question gives some idea of the subtlety of the considerations in moral psychology within which the problem of freedom is addressed. We must abandon the attempt to find a doctrine of freedom in Plotinus's thought that is expressed in the conventional lexicon of free will, yet, on the other hand, we can find that doctrine in his rich and consistent reflection on the power and sovereignty of the soul.

The essential nature of this control is problematized as an effect of the will (IV.4.12.44): “But in work of which someone is master, and sole master, what does he need except himself and his own will?” In his critique of the Aristotelian notion of the soul as entelechy, Plotinus wants primarily to maintain the possibility of an opposition between reason and desire (IV.7.9). The topical and dynamic model of the soul elaborated by Plato, mainly in book four of the Republic, seems essential to Plotinus.¹⁴ The possibility of contrary actions is evoked twice in this discussion in order to specify the spirituality of the soul, and in the list of functions underlying this possibility the will very clearly intervenes (IV.7.8.5-13). Insofar as this opposition is the basis for a moral psychology where the sovereignty of reason might express itself in a victorious effort against the inferior powers, one might then conceive of it as constituting the foundation of Plotinus's thought regarding empirical freedom.

Plotinus recognizes that in this sense our identity is also vested in our empirical corporeal existence—it would be incorrect to say that we ourselves did not exist in the concrete composite, even though it is true that we are preeminently only our impassive, sovereign soul (I.1.10.5). We are dual beings, and this duality brings with it a double liberty: the sovereign freedom of the perfect soul and the empirical freedom of a self existing in action.

We should repeat that for Plotinus as for the whole Platonic tradition, reconciling these two identities is far from being the least of his difficulties. For while it is true that freedom fulfills the transcendental essence of the soul, notably through the practice of philosophical purification (and this follows the whole protreptic tradition deriving from the Alcibiades), the question remains: How can freedom be exercised in empirical life? This question has two facets: first, how can we become liberated from the constraints of a life of multiplicity? This first facet has to do with the origin of philosophy and of the desire for union conceived as an expression of nostalgia for our origins. The world of the body can destroy this desire; if the risk is genuine then so must the freedom be. But in the question of individual liberation we cannot avoid more basic questions: How can one believe oneself to be free in this very life, and in moral decisions, when one is as distanced—not to say cut off—as we are from the very inspiration of this sovereign freedom? Must one already be free to free oneself? This second facet touches on the very possibility of ethics and politics. For if every freedom is purification and separation from existence, then what does it mean to live freely? Plotinus's reaction at this point is uneasy: he accepts double existence while maintaining the privilege of the other man—the one who is free because he has been liberated and purified (I.1.10.7). In our examination of Plotinus's theory of freedom, for which we have furnished the metaphysical context, we shall now discuss these two sides to his thought: freedom as the power of liberation, and the freedom in life. This distinction will become a useful instrument for going beyond what might seem to be a certain contempt on Plotinus's part for empirical freedom, and a preference for the spiritual ideal of liberation.

III

In this distinction we find profoundly articulated the second important moment of freedom, which is also the most evanescent in Plotinus's thought: the moment of ascension. Inasmuch as his interest in ethics and human action in general is entirely subjugated to an ideal of contemplation inherited from Plato, metaphysical liberation constitutes for Plotinus the highest requirement, whereas the freedom to act is merely its expression and consequence. The difficulties of interpretation encountered in this double framework and glimpsed by the first exegetes of these issues in Plotinus's work, notably Father Paul Henry,¹⁵ should therefore not surprise us. Father Henry often settled for verbal solutions to these difficulties, perhaps because he was unduly concerned with finding a complete doctrine of freedom in Plotinus's work, a doctrine which might have provided a refutation of pantheism. It would be more useful, however, to adopt a perspective which takes account of the constraints of a deterministic and profoundly monistic metaphysics which is addressing questions of which the tradition had not yet made possible an independent treatment.

The principal problem is more or less as follows: freedom exists only on the higher plane of the soul, the plane where the soul can become identified with Intellect, participate in the superior hypostases, and tend toward the good. As in the thought of Kant, then, there is a priori only a transcendental freedom of the good which excludes any freedom to do evil. The consequence of this position would seem to be that no inferior freedom, immanent in human beings, bound to corporeal life, and affected by the passions, can exist: “Thus free-will is at all levels only to be found in the sense of identity with the appropriate level of intelligible being, and arises from the ultimate connection of all things with the One.”¹⁶ This formula is right: no empirical freedom can be any more than a reflection of transcendental freedom. Therefore, freedom is always liberation from manifold existence and a return to the One. This implies, as Jean Trouillard has pointed out, that an element of the divine freedom is present in each soul to the extent that all liberation presupposes the power to make oneself free. This power is divine; it is coextensive with the divine origin of the soul and with its immortal and beatific destiny. The appeal to a predicate of divinity is of course not only a metaphor: it fully expresses the essence of the soul and refers to the imposing analogy of freedom which structures VI.8. Human freedom can be imagined only through its original and essential participation in the freedom of the One through the mediation, at once ontological and spiritual, of Intellect. One can speak of an essential freedom, therefore, by which the soul is free as long as it refers back to its source, and of a spiritual freedom by which the soul is free in each spiritual act which liberates it in this life.¹⁷

We have seen the central importance of the unfallen part of the soul (IV.8.8) to Plotinus's metaphysical anthropology. Should the divine element we have just discussed be identified with this part? Free of fault and error (as I.1 insists),¹⁸ this part of the soul represents our profound identity, our true self.¹⁹ Examined from the perspective of freedom, this is a matter of consciousness and self-awareness. Plotinus occasionally risks using an expression which implies that the subject as will precedes thought (V.6.1.2), but the identity of the self and of the sovereign element remains the most constant element. Although it is true that the soul must want to forget what is inferior (IV.3.32.10), this willing never takes on a status which could modify the intellectualistic thesis by forming an empirical, autonomous subject. So what is the unfallen element? Only the preexisting form of Man can explain our identity and the burdens of our freedom: we have to discover this superior identity (VI.5.7.1-2) which will deliver us from the manifold nature of our positions in life. The limits of personal identity, which are discussed elsewhere in this volume, must always be called to mind when the time comes to ask, “Who is the subject of freedom?”

Furthermore, if Plotinus affirms that we are not the source of our own evils (I.8.5.26-34), this is not in order to dissolve all forms of identity—our identity is rather affirmed in the search for the Good. But, paradoxically, the further our identity goes along the road toward the Good, the more it is distanced from itself by becoming grounded in the intelligible universal. This idea is very nicely expressed in the commentary by Dean Inge, who is close on this matter to P. O. Kristeller. Inge holds that contrary to what goes on in modern thought, Plotinus's soul is not a fixed center of experience but rather consists in an entity which travels within and across experience—a wanderer.²⁰ Impassive, the soul remains completely spiritualized. Fallen, it accepts the risk of experience and the tensions of desire.

Therefore, when this soul finds itself in the state of corporeal existence, its freedom is that of its virtue—its merit (IV.7.7). Voluntary actions are only free to the extent that they suppose a choice of motives which do not belong to the body; they then constitute authentically free inclinations. The soul can in effect beget contrary actions (IV.7.4 and III.1.9) and make decisions: to will is a work that properly belongs to the soul; the act of a gaze that is fixed upon the pure and impassive Reason. Plotinus's thought on this question is entirely in the form of various sparse notations, but when we take the trouble to assemble them, we find that they are absolutely coherent.²¹ The intellectual character of the will appears most especially in the analysis offered in the first chapters of VI.8, which can be considered as a synthesis of his thought on the subject. While taking up Aristotle's position concerning the voluntary and the involuntary, Plotinus suddenly turns from this discussion to show how the will is fulfilled only in the act of participation in the Intellect. Concrete deliberation (prohairesis), so important in the analysis of the Nicomachean Ethics (books III and VI), is for Plotinus only a stage, for this moment, itself inspired by the vision on the Intellect, is part of the process by which the soul orients itself toward the Good. The concepts of voluntariness, of self-determination, and of that which depends on us are not really differentiated when we take into account this unique teleology of Intellect.²² When we reflect on its rich elaboration in the first chapters of VI.8, we see that it is fully inspired by Platonic ethics.²³

To this moral psychology of freedom, III.4 adds an interesting mythological note since Plotinus introduces the influence of an active demon, a guardian spirit (III.4.3.14) whose role is taken from Plato's texts, most notably book ten of the Republic. Plotinus accords a great deal of importance to the choice of the demon, which he identifies with a choice of life, that is, with the will or the disposition of the soul in its entirety, such that empirical life, with its hazards and its retinue of difficulties—described in VI.8—do not completely touch the will. This very subtle exegesis of Plato's demonology appears to be concerned mainly with one thing: maintaining a place in life for freedom and not wiping it out with a determinism that would transform our existence into nothing more than a series of consequences from prior lives. Our life is thus not directed by a demon: “Does the guardian spirit, then, always and in every way accomplish its task successfully? Not altogether since the soul is of such a disposition that it is of a particular kind in particular circumstances and so has a life and a purpose (prohairesin) according to its kind and circumstances” (III.4.6.8-10). This is also not a vain existence, since it is the site of true liberty: the risk of annihilation is constant and the threat of enslavement is real, even if, as this intellectualism paradoxically asserts, an orientation toward evil cannot be called “free.” Plotinus is clear: as long as there are involuntary impulse,s the soul is not truly the god it is in essence (I.2.6.3). There is thus no empirical will to self-abasement (IV.4.44.32).

What is at stake in concrete freedom in this life is therefore that it must try to maintain an internal orientation toward Intellect. This implies the practice of virtue, which constitutes the premier motif of an ethic centered upon our resemblance to God, to take Plato's expression. Plotinus devotes an entire treatise (I.2) to a commentary on this ideal. A number of treatises in the first Ennead reveal the straightforwardly Platonic visage of this ethic: the aspiration (ephêsis) toward the Good; the ideal of autonomy (autarkeia) in the context of wisdom (I.4.4). The entire treatise on happiness (I.4) defines the goal of the wise man's life and in so doing show how the will is essentially an orientation or a tension leading inward—in this passage the will is defined as the freedom to breakaway from exteriority (I.4.4.15-17). This distinction, between interiority and exteriority, even if it is never spelled out, remains constitutive of an idea of liberty made dynamic by the Good.²⁴ The intrinsic impulse of freedom is a turning (epistrophê) inward and an inner self-identification with intelligible life (V.1.12.13-14). In so doing, the soul merely reproduces in life the universal aspiration of all beings toward the Good (VI.7.20)—its desire is its freedom; its freedom is its desire. Plotinus continually restates this ideal of wisdom, insisting along the way on the full identity of a free will and a wisdom turned toward attaining the resemblance to God, mediated by Intellect.

The more or less explicit mentions of the free nature of this orientation are very numerous: they go all the way from expressing the mere tendency toward the Good to stating the soul's desire to exist in the intelligible realm (for example, IV.3.32.22) to expressing its desire to unite with God (for example, VI.9.9.34). The soul is in other respects attached to Intellect, provided that it does not want to leave it (V.1.5.2). This apostasis is not only the fall of the soul but the possibility of a more definitive rupture. This spiritual will manifests an authentic freedom, inasmuch as it is different from the circular motion of the universal soul. Plotinus evokes the persistence of God's desire in a cosmological context (II.2.2). This desire connects us to Him and also flows from Him (II.9.15.7).²⁵ The manifestations of this desire in Plotinus's work are so constant and so strong that one cannot help but be impressed by the depth of this desire (for example, in VI.7.31).²⁶

Indeed, the reality of the spiritual life influences the development of moral psychology at this point—the experience of union, even in the simple exercise of thought, already annuls the will to diversify and liberates the soul (III.7.34.19). It is thus the progress of this union toward a superior liberation that fulfills the nature of free will. Plotinus expresses the principle of this will in an eternal seeking of the higher object, the thing that is elevated (I.4.7.6; V.3.16.24; VI.7.19). His treatise on Eros (III.5), by working out a commentary on the Symposium, seeks to give deep Platonic roots to this philosophy of desire.²⁷

Moreover, another desire, linked to action and to exteriority, can come to contradict this spiritual will: this desire is an obstacle to self-knowledge and can block the movement toward conversion. This evil orexis (V.3.6.39) is the effect of the inferior part of the soul; it cannot be confused with the thelêsis directed by Intellect (V.3.11.3), and even less so with the spiritual ephêsis toward the One and the Good. Its power, coming from exteriority itself, is real inasmuch as it can constitute a weight, a constraint, a threat to liberty. But it is never itself free, since it is not turned toward the Good.

It is in VI.8, to which we must now return, that the dialectic of this freedom is taken to its most perfect expression. The part of this treatise which concerns human freedom cuts across the first seven chapters, as we have seen earlier; here Plotinus seeks to formulate a concept that will be able to include the sense in which the One is itself free and self-caused, as he will discuss in the section that will follow. After having briefly considered Aristotle's moral psychology, and especially his concepts of voluntary and unvoluntary, Plotinus hastens to substitute the Platonic ethic of the Good. His reading of the Nicomachean Ethics (book III) is tainted by Stoic elements, which doubtless come from the discussions put to work in the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias: Plotinus is not merely interested in willingness as such, but in a concept of self-determination that will be able to guarantee that something will depend upon us (eph'hêmin, VI.8.2.33-7). Aristotle's definitions of willingness were based on the absence of constraint and the presence of knowledge (NE III.7.1135a23), but Plotinus cannot accept a purely formal definition of free will. For Plotinus, the voluntary (hekousion) does not depend on criteria which defined the free (eph'hêmin) according to Aristotle. It must be given a thoroughgoing Platonic definition, essentially founded on the conscience of the moral good. That action is voluntary which seeks the good. The beginning of Plotinus's discussion is sensitive to the fatalistic context of the period (VI.8.1.23-9), which creates a certain echo of the treatises on providence (III.2 and III.3).²⁸ But the fundamental preoccupation is the nature of the interior principle of self-determination, and Plotinus does not pause to discuss the Stoic conception.²⁹ Platonic reason is at the heart of his thought. How else can we define this self-determination, if not by means of a psychology of action which gives precedence to Intellect? The more an action conforms to the Good, the more it is self-dependent and the less it is enslaved by exteriority (4.33-5). Self-determination fulfills, in what seems to be a superior stage of freedom, the free determination of oneself (autexousion) which characterizes “one whose doings depend upon the activities of Intellect and who is free from bodily affections” (3.19-21). This liberation is concrete; it is fulfilled in action under specific circumstances (5.10-27), even though Plotinus holds that authentic freedom resides outside of action. In fact, it essentially belongs to reason and to virtue, both of which precede action. This fifth chapter of the treatise expresses more than any other the subordination of concrete freedom to a superior spiritual freedom, the one being, one might say, the pursuit of the other to the point where liberation, existence within Intellect, and union with the Good have all been achieved. Asceticism, disciplining the passions through action, is thus not the first moment of freedom, since the essence of virtue resides in an outflowing of action, that is in an immateriality which is identified with the life of the Intellect—in this sense one can say that virtue is a second intellect.

If then virtue is a kind of other intellect, a state which in a way intellectualises the soul, again, being in our power does not belong to the realm of action but in intellect at rest from actions. … We shall assert that virtue and intellect have the mastery and that we should refer being in our power and freedom to them. …

(VI.8.5.34-7 and 6.6-10)

The freedom to engage in praxis, the freedom to choose and to act, is thus destined to be displaced by a purely spiritual, free determination. This does not take away the authenticity of that freedom, since it accompanies the daily battle of empirical existence. But it cannot be conceived in and of itself. This part of VI.8, spiritually very profound, constitutes a complete reinterpretation of the moral psychology of antiquity. Here we find a remarkable achievement of classical intellectualism, inasmuch as Plotinus reinterprets the meaning of the mind as free will. Plotinus not only expresses a doctrine of the foundations of human freedom but actually shows how these foundations enlist an ascetic ethics which alone can guarantee liberation.

The affirmative conclusions of this set of texts concerning the fact of empirical liberty and its spiritual foundations are reinforced by a treatise from Plotinus's youth on destiny (III.1). This treatise offers a number of antifatalist arguments directed against the determinism of the atomists, the Stoics,³⁰ and the astrologers. Nourished mainly by a conception of the free subject, master of himself, the Plotinian arguments reject the concept of a vulgar necessity which would ruin the freedom of the activity of the soul. Already in this treatise then, Plotinus was linking freedom with the sovereignty of the soul:

When in its impulse, the soul has as director its own and untroubled reason, then this impulse alone is to be said to be in our own power and free; this is our own act, which does not come from somewhere else but from within, from our soul when it is pure, from a primary principle which directs and is in control, not suffering error from ignorance or defeat from the violence of the passions. …

(III.1.9.10-15)

Thus, rationality and sovereignty confer upon the soul the power to be the cause of its own action, which is the power in which liberty consists. This power is real: it is not annuled by the external determinations at work in the fatalistic theories. Certainly, liberty can vary according to the individual, as Plotinus will later say (IV.3.15), but it is destroyed neither by destiny nor by the laws regulating the cosmic order. The two later treatises of providence (III.2 and III.3) as well as the treatise on the influence of the heavenly bodies (II.3) take up this teaching again, modulating it to meet the needs of a providentialistic argument—the influence of providence is of course real, but not so real that it can cancel out freedom (III.2.9.1 and II.3.1.1).

This defense of freedom is enunciated in the context of an extremely complex theory of natural causation. Indeed, Plotinus distinguishes between near and distant causes which bring with them effects on the specific causality of the soul, which is truly an originating causality (III.1.8.8; III.2.10.12-19). Naturally, the motion of the heavens and the effects of universal sympathy count for much in the determination of the general framework of causation (see also IV.4.31). Nevertheless, the most constant thesis of these treatises, placed at the very heart of a majestic hymn to the beauty of nature and to the rationality that forms its necessity, is still the following: human beings possess an inalienable principle of freedom (III.3.4.6). Here more than anywhere else in his work resonates the force of the principle of that which depends on us (to eph'hêmin), the origin of the proper work of a human being. The accent placed on responsibility (III.2.7) is more significant for the interpretation of these treatises than whatever deterministic elements can be found there.³¹ Plotinus, for his part, takes up the distinction, which is central to his anthropology, between a higher, impassive self and a fragile, vulnerable self assailed by the disorder of its desires.³²

Plotinus also reiterates his intellectualism and he stresses the involuntariness of evil. But in his conception this does not exclude full responsibility for actions, whether good or bad: the wicked man remains responsible, he acts by himself, even though his action is not voluntary in the Platonic sense of this concept. This doctrine agrees with the whole of the moral psychology of the Enneads, and most notably with the first chapters of VI.8. Man is a free principle when he acts toward the Good: he then identifies with freedom, he is archê autexousios. He accomplishes the full nature of his liberty when he takes for guide pure and impassive reason (III.1.9.11).

In the Plotinian conception of human freedom, therefore, what strikes us most is the strength of the metaphysical premises. In a manner quite different from that of Aristotle, who appeared to be exclusively interested by the problems of choice and contingency, Plotinus conceives of liberty as the true property of virtuous life. By stressing this theme, he appropriates the great heritage of the Platonic tradition centered on the divine origin of the soul and the ideal of resemblance to God. His position regarding the freedom of the soul in the process of descent toward existence in the body is indeed the expression of his desire to preserve the metaphysical necessity of procession, but we must remember that he still is inclined to integrate in this framework a freedom to descend which resembles a form of consent. Compared to this passive liberty—the freedom to ascend—the freedom of return is the manifestation of a powerful conception of spiritual life. It is indeed in the act of ascent, an act which is identified with purification and will toward the Good, that freedom reaches its full dimension as essence of human nature. First and foremost, in its effort to triumph over the threats of bodily existence, virtue can here be conceived as free resistance. But this life would not be possible if it were not animated, from the inside, by an orientation toward impassive reason and contemplation. Human freedom in the thought of Plotinus is thus a true freedom; it is affirmed not only against all forms of vulgar determinism—and most notably against fatalism—but also against the sophisticated conceptions put forward by the Stoics. Human freedom accounts for the pure origin of the higher self, for the soul's vocation to return as bearer of this self in existence, for the moral sovereignty of the spiritual subject. The eminent model of human freedom is still the absolute freedom of the One: only the One can be seized in his act of extreme vigilance as absolutely free, as absolute cause of Himself. The greatness of Plotinus's vision is rooted in the spiritual experience of a philosopher who has always tried to fuse together the harmony of metaphysical hierarchy as expressed by necessity and the urgency of purification as the spiritual injunction to return.

Notes

1. The best summary of this, accompanied by a very elaborate critical discussion, is to be found in O'Brien 1993, notably 5-18.

2. On this question, see the numerous works of Blumenthal, especially Blumenthal 1971b, 55-63 and Blumenthal 1987, 557. Blumenthal insists on a balanced interpretation which takes account of the unitary and differential aspects of the problem. Rist 1970 claims that Plotinus held to this thesis of the forms of individuals. A presentation of more recent scholarship, placing an accent on the difficulties of interpretation, may be found in Corrigan and O'Cleirigh 1987, 581-4.

3. Following the 1962 edition of Harder and Theiler, this text should be read with the correction at line 17; see the commentary by O'Brien 1993, 14.

4. This is the way Festugière (1953, 65-9) puts the matter. Dodds (1965, 24-6) has put forward the hypothesis that the aspects connected with freedom might have given way to a more deterministic position as a result of Plotinus's break with the Gnostics. Nevertheless, this account is somewhat confused, especially concerning the chronology of the Enneads, as O'Brien's analysis has shown (1993). See also Blumenthal's critique in Blumenthal 1971b, 5. For a synthetic discussion of the philosophical issues, see Himmerich 1959, 66.

5. I agree on this point with the analysis of O'Brien 1993, 12f.

6. See the numerous discussions in the work of O'Brien 1993, 42-9 and O'Brien 1971, 114-46. The parallel passages of I.2.4 and V.1.1 are less precise on the voluntary nature of the descent. But the expression to autoexousion (V.1.1.5-6 and IV.8.5.26) is rare and indicates a freedom that is specific to the human soul - a self-determination of its movement.

7. Trouillard (1949) thought that the freedom of descent was marked by a great deal of confusion, whereas the spiritual freedom of ascension was the only true freedom in Plotinus's work. See his commentary on IV.8.5 (353-7).

8. Aside from I.1, see the discussion of the impassivity of incorporeal reality in III.6.5 and IV.6.9.

9. This is the conclusion reached by Rist 1967, 130-8 which is, albeit very brief, one of the best statements of this question.

10. This important passage has given rise to a rich body of commentaries on the idea of the self in Plotinus's work and to the problem of an internal humanism. See first of all O'Daly 1973 and Prini 1968, and the chapter by Himmerich 1959, “Ich,” op. cit., ch. 8. This theme of the true self goes back to the thought of Plato in the Alcibiades, of which tradition a remarkable study has been produced by Jean Pépin (1971). See also the text in the Republic 589a7 and the parallel passage in Plotinus, at V.1.10.10. Against Porphyry (Ad Marcellam, 8.15-17 and De abstinentia I.29.9), Plotinus does not want to identify this self with the Intellect. See his very subtle discussion at V.3.3.31, where his stance appears to be motivated by a concern for maintaining the life of the soul with its tensions and its own temporal nature.

11. The parts of the soul are powers, dunameis, which means that the soul is a composite whole. See VI.9.1.40.

12. These analyses were carried out by Zeeman 1946 who has corroborated the results attained by philosophical methods in the first commentators on these questions, for example, Gollwitzer 1900, 1902.

13. Following the commentary of Blumenthal 1971b, 38f.

14. In an important article, Igal 1979 has argued against Blumenthal in favor of the hypothesis of an evolution towards a more unitary, quasihylomorphic model of Plotinian anthropology. I think nonetheless that Platonic dualism remains fundamental and that this is explicitly shown in the remarks concerning liberation.

15. In a series of three articles, see Henry 1931.

16. Blumenthal 1987, 559, taking up the conclusions of Salmona 1967.

17. This distinction matches up with the distinction proposed by Kristeller 1929 in his brilliant study, between the objective point of view and the actual (subjective) point of view in Plotinus's philosophy. In his synthetic article, Blumenthal 1987, 548f. presents a similar distinction between metaphysics and ethics, while insisting on the importance of the work of Trouillard, who wanted to bring out (wrongly, thought Blumenthal) the prevalence of the ethical and spiritual perspective. According to Kristeller—and I should say that I believe that he has presented one of the most faithful interpretations of this double movement—these two perspectives were equally at work in the mind of Plotinus and are equally constitutive of his genius. The Kantian aspects of this interpretation, which on the one hand allow metaphysics and ethics to spill over into each other, also open it to the risk of a certain formalism. As for me, I should say that there is no doubt that Plotinus's metaphysics is not a metaphorical objectification of the spiritual life.

18. See the comments of Trouillard 1953, 19-29. It is this part which represents the deep ego, the self.

19. See Himmerich's discussion, 1959, 92-100.

20. See Inge 1929, vol. I, 203. The same idea occurs in Emile Bréhier's introduction to his edition in the Budé series of treatise IV.3, 27.

21. Zeeman 1946 has produced very useful lexicographical research on the topics of will and freedom in Plotinus.

22. Rist 1975 shows how Plotinus distances himself from the Aristotelian and Stoic positions by marginalizing the experience of decision and choice. This attitude is particularly clear in the discussion of the fall of the soul.

23. I have tried to show this in detail in my commentary of treatise VI.8; see Leroux 1990.

24. See Salmona 1967, ch. 2, “Interiorità e liberazione,” 30-70, which presents this thematic in a very inspired way. See also Trouillard 1957 and Fraisse 1989.

25. This theme has been studied in the important book by Arnou 1967.

26. See the commentary by Hadot 1988.

27. See the commentary by Hadot 1990.

28. The philosophical analysis of the arguments put up by Plotinus in these treatises has been well elaborated in Parma 1971 and Schubert 1968. I have not been able to read the study of Boot 1984.

29. For a comparison of these two conceptions see the essay by Graeser 1972, 112-25.

30. Graeser 1972, 48f. brings out several infidelities in Plotinus's presentation of the Stoic theses.

31. Here I agree with the excellent chapter by Rist, “Man's Free Will,” in Rist 1967, 130-8, which proposes a more balanced interpretation, taking account of the whole of his work, than that of Clark 1943, 16-31, which seems to me to unduly exaggerate the determinism in the analysis of action.

32. This theme comes up at I.1.10; II.9.2; and IV.4.18.