The Unity of the World in Plotinian Philosophy :: Philosophy Philosophical Essays

The Unity of the World in Plotinian Philosophy ABSTRACT Do classical, contemplative philosophies aim anything to teach which is relevant to life here and now? In the case of Plotinus, yes. While Platonic metaphysics is most often summarized as dualistic, where one sensible domain of a function stands apart from and in tension with an intelligible (or mystical) world, in the case of Plotinus this interpretation is incorrect. He does distinguish between sensibles and sense-experience, on one hand, and intelligibles and intelligible experience, on the early(a) but the two belong together intimately both are located in the same space, and the sensible is related to the intelligible as a shadow to its object or a reflection to what it reflects. Plotinus world is one. Given this picture, one rightly wonders at the status of the Plotinian exhortation for the soul to flee entirely to the Alone. Does not the journey of the soul to its source require a passing beyond of this world to some other? No, Plotinus exhortation should be understood as a reorientation, a reordering within the world here and now, not a rejection of one reality in favor of some other. This can be likened to Aesops fable, The Dog and the Bone, where the dog had the choice between one real and one illusory bone, not two separate bones. Similarly, Plotinus world, though it can be perceived dualistically, is ontologically one hence his metaphysics, far from otherworldly, offers a means of understanding life as it is to be lived here and now. My paper takes as the starting propose for its argument the traditional interpretation (and classic criticism) of Platonic metaphysics as a two worlds view of reality one world, that which includes this room of people, i.e., the here and now which is characterized by change, disorder, conflict, coming to be and passing out of being, corruption, etc. and another world, located who knows where, but certainly not identical to what we see around us at present, the realm of changelessness and order, ontological perdurance, harmony, unity Platos plain of Truth, the residence of the forms. In light of these two worlds, the Platonic philosophers wisdom, whatever it may be, must be a wisdom not of this world. Indeed, did not Platos Socrates himself say that his life the philosophical life was the art of practising death? Should that Socrates or anyone who professes to be a Platonic philosopher institute up at, let us say, the World Congress of