Those Who Cannot Contemplate, Do

Don't Just Do Something, Stand There! (Ennead 3.8.4)

(Thanks to Twitter users @thcphilosopher for the topic/passage, and @drudgerydivine for the subtitle)

“You Should Not Ask But Understand and Fall Silent Yourself”

Why does Nature produce? Why indeed do the intelligible patterns come to be present everywhere and in everything in the material world? Plotinus asks a personified Nature this very question. She replies (and it is certainly worth quoting in full):

You should not ask but understand and fall silent yourself, as I am silent and not accustomed to speak. Understand what, then? That what comes to be is my vision, in my silence, an object of contemplation that comes to be by nature, and that since I come to be from this sort of contemplation, it is necessary for me to have a contemplation-loving nature. And my contemplating produces an object of contemplation, just as geometricians draw lines as the contemplate. But without my drawing, while I contemplate, the lines of bodies come to exist as though falling out of me. And my experience is the same as that of my mother and those who begat me. For they, too, are a result of contemplation and my birth came about without them doing anything, but since they are greater expressed principles [logoi] and contemplate themselves, I have come to be. (3.8.4.1-14)

First off, it is extremely funny for any author, especially a stern and wise man like Plotinus, to personify anything to ask it a question, and to have the personified entity respond with something akin to “shut up”.

Despite the appearance of humor (and maybe this is only funny to me, though Plotinus does begin the treatise with saying he is going to “play” for a bit), the answer, even that first provisional answer of “fall silent yourself”, is highly informative. It is not an idle response meant to discourage the seeker. Or rather, if it does, this is an intended corrective to a soul monstrously fixated on discourse, dragging everything higher down to its own level. Dragging it through the mud. Turning even the principles into words, into “concepts”, syllogizing everything.

But Nature produces in silence, not in speech. And not by action either, but by and in contemplation. In contemplating, Nature gives birth to the sensible cosmos. In doing nothing, Nature makes this world flourish.

But how? How does Nature produce? And what does this have to do with contemplation? To elucidate some of the stranger parts of Nature’s answer above, it is necessary to take a detour through the notions of contemplation and power.

“My Birth Came About Without Them Doing Anything”

How could contemplation ever produce anything? Our everyday examples of production, say using woodcarving to produce beautifully scuplted statuettes and other works of art, involve a craftsman conceiving of a plan and then executing it with skill upon the raw material. To put it in extremely rigid terms that may make actual artisans and artists fume, it goes a little something like this: In the mind of the craftsman, the various forms and modes of en-forming float about and mingle with one another until at some point a more concrete plan is made and decided upon. In executing this plan, the craftsman turns from the mental contents (forms and so on) outward, toward the object of his work. The external object is then brought into line with the pre-conceived vision, and the degree of the likeness is determined largely by the skill of the craftsman, but also by the quality of the material and sometimes even the forces of chance. Sometimes, the artist might be quite surprised at the resulting work of art.

We do, we turn outward and set to making our inner conception into outward reality. And we do this because we cannot think. Thinking, contemplating, dwelling in silence, do not suffice for us. The object of our activity, that for the sake of which we strive, is not within us. The artwork in the imagination is not self-sufficient, but demands that it be made real (or at least more real) by being actualized in matter.

The activity of the principles, however, does not follow this restriction. Intellect, for instance, does not set about attempting to actualize Soul, and nor for that matter does Intellect set out on a quest to think the intelligibles. Rather, Intellect has always and already possessed the intelligibles altogether in their entirety, and for all eternity. Nothing remains unactualized in Intellect. How much more so must this be the case when it comes to the One?

Nature came to be without her prior principles “doing” anything whatsoever. They did not think that they should set about to create something like Nature, and they did not make a plan that they then executed. They contemplated, and Nature came to be.

They contemplated for the simple reason that Intellect is the primary locus of thinking and being. Anything that comes from Intellect is going to share something like the nature of Intellect but on a deficient level, with greater internal disunity, greater multiplicity. Intellect, in contemplating the intelligibles, gives birth to Soul. And Nature is something just subsequent to the level of soul. The soul of the universe contemplates, too, but on a weakened level in comparison to Intellect. And thus Nature is a further weakening of this same chain of contemplation. Action proper, then, only emerges when contemplation has become weak enough that it can no longer really remain within itself. Thus it sets out and seeks something outside of itself.

Nature produces not by planning ahead of time, not by thinking to herself, “What shall I make now?” Nature is not direct downward towards her products. This will be the key lesson of Plotinus’ contemplation-centric metaphysics.

“They Come to Exist as Though Falling Out of Me”

When a geometer contemplates the principles of geometry, he does not necessarily draw lines and figures. The geometer must contemplate and draw, think and do. But Nature need only think; there is no distinction between its thinking, its remaining turned inward towards itself (and thereby also towards its prior principles), and its production. In general, Plotinus expresses this in terms of emanation, of radiation, of a production simultaneous with repose. Speaking of the One, he writes:

A radiation of light comes from it, though it reposes, like the light from the sun, in a way encircling it, eternally coming from it while it reposes. (5.1.6.28-30)

Simply by remaining in itself, without distraction, without possibilities to set out to actualize, it shines. Its remaining is somehow the same as its going out, though we distinguish them and indeed they are also really distinguished. It isn’t simply conceptual difference that we bring to bear on emanation. The light from the sun and the sun itself are both just light, but one is in itself and the other streams out and spreads the radiance. It’s the same radiance, and not the same.

Another of Plotinus’ favorite examples is the heat in fire, distinguished as internal heat (remaining) and radiant heat (proceeding):

Fire produces the heat that comes from it, and snow does not hold its coldness inside itself. Perfumes especially witness to this, for so long as they exist, something flows from them around them, the existence of which a bystander enjoys. (5.1.6.34-37)

What these examples (sun, fire, and others such as perfumes wafting or snow chilling) show us is the fundamentally byproductive nature of paradigmatic causality, of real power. Each expressed principle is a byproduct of its priors, going down all the way until we get to the realm of matter, the final expression of the logoi, now weak enough to fail to contemplate itself (since only immaterial substances can revert, as Proclus teaches us clearly).

Two characteristics of byproductivity are important here: first, necessity; and second, inessentiality.

The byproduct is necessary, though not in the sense of “natural necessity”. The byproduct is not chosen as such by the producer. The producer contemplates something internal to itself (and in its prior); it does not go down into its effects as such. The byproduct is therefore necessary, and is not a contingent thing. It is not as if the producer at one moment makes the byproduct and at another fails somehow to do this.¹ The power does not fail. The producer does not waver or flicker. It is like the sun.

The byproduct is also inessential to the producer. The producer does not need what it produces. The producer does not depend on the produced, though the produced of course depends wholly on the producer for its being, and its being what it is. If you were to ask what precisely the producer is, even though it produces necessary effects, those effects would not enter into the answer, essence, or definition of the producer.

These two characteristics may appear contradictory or paradoxical. They are, and that is because the notion of identity becomes strange when you start talking about emanation. The principle and what it emanates are the same, and they are not the same. The effect, the byproduct, is identical and different, necessary and inessential. This is a crucial point, and it cannot be smoothed over by appeals to commonsensical logical notions and intuitions about identity. Make peace with this if you would be an emanationist.²

“It Is Necessary For Me to Have a Contemplation-Loving Nature”

What do we love? We love our origins. In all things, the origin and the end coincide. Not just any origin will do here, but the metaphysical origin, the principles from which something is manifested. All things desire to return to their cause. One way they do this is by reverting upon it. Another way, in the case of the soul, is by ascent.

For Nature to have a “contemplation-loving nature” is for it to strive for its betters, its priors. It strives, as do all lower principles, for the paradigmatic Intellect. Intellect is contemplation in the primary and full sense of the term.

If the Intellect contemplates eternally the paradigms of all possible intelligibility, then everything which “falls out” of it as a byproduct will be like it, though in a weakened degree. Nature strives to contemplate, though it does so a tad darkly. In the genesis of Nature, its original inchoate form turns back onto its parent and seeks to think it, just as the inchoate intellect turned about onto the One and attempted to think it. In the case of the inchoate intellect, what was produced was all intelligibility. In attempting to think the unthinkable (for the One is unthinkable), all thinkables were generated. Nature’s beauty and proportionality were in turn generated by an attempt on the part of inchoate nature to contemplate its prior, in the best way it could.

Each phase of the hierarchy is like contemplation, but each contemplation is of necessity weaker since it is more diffuse. There cannot be two absolutely simple principles, so if the One produces anything, it makes something lesser than itself. Each production follows the paradigm of that original production, making something as close to itself as possible, though it cannot generate itself but must make something, again, just a little bit more multiple. This minimum degree of differential multiplicity compounds at each level until it produces, ultimately, the maximum degree of multiplicity, and that is matter.

Nature is just prior to this, producing by its logoi the sensible things we see all around us. Leaving aside the role of the soul of the universe for now, Nature translates the intelligible purity of the Forms into individuated, discrete logoi which underlie sensibles and constitute the real substantiality of those sensible qualities we perceive.

Nature’s love is as good as it can be, and through its love it strives for contemplation. Thus do all things here come to be:

Indeed, for this reason, what is generated by it is also completely weak because a contemplation that is weak makes a weak object of contemplation. (3.8.4.29-31)

Everything is doing it’s best, according to its nature. Except maybe us.

“Production and Action Are a Weakened Form of Contemplation or a Consequence of Contemplation”

And now what of us? How does this contemplation peter out once it comes to the level of the sensible world?

Human beings, too, when they are weak in contemplation, produce action as a shadow of contemplation and reason. For their faculty of contemplation is not adequate for them due to weakness of soul, and being unable to grasp adequately the object of their vision and because of this not being filled [by it], yet still desirous of seeing it, they are carried towards action so that they can see [with their eyes] what they cannot see with their intellect. (3.8.4.31-37)

The aim of striving is to possess. When we want the good, we really aim to possess it. We are not satisfied with an image or effect of something, but want the thing itself. We want to bring the thing into us, to come into communion with it, to identify with it and become unified with it. The paradigm of all possession is the possession of the intelligibles by Intellect. As I tried to explain in a previous post, in thinking the intelligibles, Intellect thinks itself, and consequently all (primary) thinking and all (primary) knowledge is self-thinking and self-knowledge.

But a weak soul cannot rightly see what it seeks, it cannot wholly become the objects of its activities. Soul is principally motivated by extrinsic self-motion. It is driven ceaselessly towards the objects of its desire, which remain external to it so long as it does not ascend to the level of intellect and thus achieve true contemplation. Soul qua soul, then, is unable to achieve the degree of identity necessary for contemplation, since it contains, we might say, too much admixture and too much self-difference. It is too diffuse to really be a one-many, so Plotinus sometimes calls it a “one-and-many” (and here matter as such would be just “many”).

In this passage, we also see the primacy of vision. Contemplation (theoria) is a seeing. Where that seeing is dim, too dim to encompass the object of vision, some other and weaker means of “seeing” must be employed. Instead of intellectual vision, the human being tends towards seeing with the eyes. And this requires action, for “to see with one’s own eyes”, the object must be en-mattered:

Whenever they do succeed in producing something, they also want to see it for themselves and others to contemplate and perceive it, whenever their project is realized as far as it can be in action. (3.8.4.37-39)

So the artist creates the artwork in order to see it, though he “saw” it dimly with the mind prior to its being produced. If he could see it fully with his intellect, that would suffice him.

The artist is superior to the man of mere action because the artist’s actions are a consequence of his contemplation (though again, that contemplation is weak compared with Intellect). One who merely acts is contemplating extremely weakly indeed. Unthinking action is still a result of contemplation, but the coinciding of the act and the idea is left behind, and dissipates itself in the material instead of actualizing itself there. Some actions may fail to aim themselves at their proper end.

But the best contemplation possible is the real goal of all activity, for they are all modalities of seeing, and really all things desire to see, and to see clearly:

Indeed, everywhere we will find that production and action are a weakened form of contemplation or a consequence of contemplation; a weakness where a person has nothing in mind beyond what has been made, a consequence where he has something prior to this to contemplate which is superior to what has been produced. For why would anyone go after the image of what is genuine as their first choice, if he can contemplate what is genuine? (3.8.4.40-47)

To contemplate what is genuine is to possess it in a manner far more intimate and powerful than to pass over it with one’s eyes. It is always better to possess than to seek, and always better to seek in the more unified and unifying manner than to seek in the less. And what we call “action” is the least unified and least unifying, for it exists in the medium of sensible reality, and works on the en-mattered images of the logoi. Cast aside the images, and grasp the thing itself! This cannot be done by the senses, though it may be accomplished, in certain instances, through them.

Those who cannot contemplate, do. They do contemplate, for their undescended intellects contemplate eternally; this is necessary if action and perception are to have what little intelligibility we ascribe to them. But those who cannot contemplate also do, they act. Contemplation is the origin and the end, and action is the furthest ray that desires only to return, if only it could see itself clearly enough to realize this.

1. I do not actually think this is contradictory with regard to the theses of Thomism about God’s creation of the universe, but I may be wrong. Lloyd Gerson defends the compatibility in his book Plotinus. I think Eyjólfur Emilsson does as well in his own Plotinus, though I may be misremembering.

2. Eyjólfur Emilsson has a great overview of emanation in terms of the “double act doctrine” in his book Plotinus on Intellect. I can’t recommend it enough. It is in large part (along with Gerson, though even more than Gerson) the starting point for my own dissertation project on emanation.