understanding Plotinus’s texts has been via the conceptuality of non-discursivity. See, for example, Sara Rappe. Reading Neoplatonism.
32. For example, Aristotle, various Stoic philosophers, and Gnostic thinkers. In identifying this generic group of thinkers as those with whom Plotinus disagrees, I do not mean to imply that Plotinus rejects monolithically what he takes, for example, Aristotle to hold with respect to any given doctrine. Even Plato must be critically engaged and correctly interpreted: see Ennead VI.7 in reference to the making of the material universe by the demiurge of the Timaeus. See Plato, Plato: Complete Works, 1224–91.
33. It is, for instance, a commonplace in Plotinus scholarship to trace the notion of the form of the Good beyond being [epekeina tes ousias] back to book VI of Plato’s Republic (Book VI, 509). See Plato. Plato: Complete Works, 1130. Two further points. On the one hand, what I want to avoid are the kinds of genetic questions that can be construed as arbitrary: such as, why did Plotinus adopt Plato’s notion of the Good beyond being? On the other hand, I want to avoid posing questions which, while extremely important, are more suited to a study devoted strictly to Plotinus: such as, in what way(s) is Plotinus’s conception of the One indebted to his interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides?
34. For a fascinating passage germane to Plotinus’s understanding not only of the terms of explanation but also of something like self-identity, see Ennead VI.8.21: 297, where, speaking of the One, he says, it “is only itself and really itself, while every other thing is itself and something else.”
35. See Ennead VI.7.2–3: 89–97 and VI.7.5–7: 101–9. Of course, a sensible, concrete particular would also be defined by other characteristics (qualities, for example, which would also be explained by appeal to some relation to a Form) and by its being individuated: “individuality and specific difference and some added attribute” (V.5.13: 195–97).
36. I.2.2: 131–33.
37. Prior in the order of explanation.
38. Two points. First, by “infinite regress,” I refer to what has been called the “Third Man” argument in the Parmenides. See Plato, Plato: Complete Works, 359–97. And second, although Plotinus does not explicitly say so, perhaps the non-reciprocity of L2 or P relations may be explained, on a more primitive level, by the non-reciprocity of dependence relations.
39. I.2.1: 131.
40. I.2.2: 131.
41. I.2.2: 131.
42. I.2.1: 13: “But if that in which the soul participates was the same as the source from which it comes, it would be right to speak in this way; but in fact the two are distinct. The perceptible house is not the same thing as the intelligible house, though it is made in its likeness; the perceptible house participates in arrangement and order, but There, in its formative principle, there is no arrangement or order or proportion. So then, if we participate in order and arrangement and harmony which come from There, and these constitute virtue here, and if the principles There have no need of harmony or order or arrangement, they will have no need of virtue either, and we shall all the same be make like them by the presence of virtue. This is enough to show that it is not necessary for virtue to exist There because we are made like the principles There by virtue.”
43. I.2.2: 131. I have cited this passage from Armstrong’s translation exactly, in which he capitalizes the term “There.”
44. On this point, see Costa, Cambridge Companion, 372.
45. See Costa, Cambridge Companion, 360.
46. See Costa, Cambridge Companion, 360.
47. VI.5.8: 345.
48. Though we understand why Plotinus believes they must be distinct.
49. Alternatively, Fx is distinct from, unlike, and independent of fx as it inheres in A.
50. To be sure, Plotinus is unclear on the precise nature of a relation itself.
51. On the one hand, although I speak loosely of “causal efficaciousness,” the Form is not, strictly speaking, an Aristotelian, efficient cause of its instantiation. On the other hand, for Plotinus, a Form seems to be more than what Aristotle defined as a formal cause. With respect to the idea that the presence of the Form is a function of, or expression of its power (dunamis/dynamis), see Ennead VI. 5.12: 357: “How then is it present? . . . [L]et him call to mind its power, that there is not a certain quantity of it, but if he divides it endlessly in his discursive thought he always has the same power, endless in depth.”
52. Broadly speaking, I follow Christina D’Ancona Costa’s analysis concerning the “causality” of the One: namely, that Plotinus’s understanding of the “causality” of the One follows, in part, from his view of participation relations between a given Form and the particulars that participate in it. See Costa, Cambridge Companion, 356–85.
53. VI.9.42: 309.
54. II.9.1: 225.
55. See (1) above: the first formulation of dependence in terms of participation. On a different point, Plotinus also seems to think that even the intelligible realm is, in its own way, constituted materially. See, for example, Ennead II.4.2: 109. Given the limitations of this project, however, I cannot deal with the details of Plotinus’s doctrine of matter.
56. II.9.1: 225. Bracketed gloss mine.
57. See Ennead V.3, V.4, and V.5.
58. On the relation between, for example, the One and Nous, see V.3.12: 117: “For what [Nous] comes from him [the One] has not been cut off from him, nor is it the same as him, nor is it the sort of thing not to be substance, or to be blind, but it sees and knows itself and is the primary knower” (italics and bracketed gloss mine). On this topic, see also John Bussanich’s now classic study, The One and Its Relation to Intellect in Plotinus.
59. See Ennead V.1 and V.2.
60. To be sure, as I discussed above, the sensible world includes