Anton - Plotinu's Conception of the Functions of the Artist

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Plotinus' Conception of the Functions of the Artist

Author(s): John P. AntonReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Autumn, 1967), pp. 91-101Published by: Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/429247 .

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JOHN P. ANTON

Plot inus ' Conception o f t h e Func t i on so f t h e A r t i s t *

iavra 077 Tatp6y?LEfa, ErT TE(XVP77EwTEpvriKa Et, oYola rts v'roei, KaL)yEcTratrijs nrotaEffwsravraxoi ?oopta.Enneads,V. 8, 5.

IIT HAS BECOME an acceptable doctrinetoday among scholars and historians ofideas to see Plotinus as one of the genuinerepresentatives of the rational ideal ofHellenic thought in the Hellenistic ageand one whose philosophy sealed the endof that period in the development ofWestern philosophizing. For both of thesereasons Plotinus' reflections on art have aspecial appeal to those who wish to knowwhat final form the classical views on artand aesthetic problems received towardthe end of classical antiquity. Again, in-creasing recognition of the fact that someJOHN P. ANTON is professor of philosophy at theState University of New York, Buffalo. He is theauthor of Aristotle's Theory of Contrariety(London and New York, 1957) and has publishedarticles and reviews in journals here and abroad.His article "Plotinus' Refutation of Beauty asSymmetry" appeared in the Winter 1964 issue ofthis journal.* This paper was read at the 1965 annual meet-ing of the American Society for Aesthetics in Wash-ington, D.C. I am indebted to Professor DouglasMorgan for reading an earlier version and drawingmy attention to certain central issues that at thetime needed further elaboration.

of his basic ideas eventually found theirway in the philosophical theology of St.Augustine and strengthened the humanis-tic side of the Christian attitude towardthe arts, to say nothing of his influenceon post-medieval theories of poetry, hasdone much to alert us to Plotinus' im-portance as a seminal thinker. One shouldhasten at this point to add that Plotinus'view of the functions of the artist is sur-prisingly more pertinent to certain trendsand problems characteristic of the con-ception of the artistic self in moderntimes than the run-of-the-mill intellectualhistories would allow us to suspect.The purpose of this paper is to explorePlotinus' understanding of the functionsof the artist and to delineate the broadermetaphysical framework that render themintelligible. Three basic issues are pri-marily relevant: (a) the source of beauty,(b) the theory of artistic creation, and(c) the artist's answer to the quest forbeing.To explore our theme it is not necessaryto extend this inquiry over the entiredenotation of Plotinus' notion of art.1 Nor


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92is an excursion into such themes as thehierarchy of the arts and the variousgrades of beauty vitally relevant. Further-more, the classification of the arts to whichPlotinus subscribes is comparably second-ary to our purpose.2 Suffice to say, Plotinusrecognizes the irreducible nature of thearts and the distinctive character of ar-tistic activity.IITHE SOURCEOF BEAUTY. Plotinus taughtthat Beauty is a divine essence and one ofthe many manifestations of the absolute.This sweeping claim circumscribes themetaphysical framework within which theartist's functions can be best understoodand fulfilled. It is clear that Plotinus in-tends beyond the shadow of a doubt tosay that cosmic and ontic categories of thedivine realm apply to man and his ac-tivities to the letter. Plotinus is discussingthe relationship between man and thecosmos at large in terms of isomorphicanalogues. Man's body is to his intellectas matter is to the Nous, the IntellectualPrinciple. It is evident that the suprememodel on which man is expected to fashionhis life is not derived from the social,the political, the religious, or any othertype of experiences available to him. Noth-ing less than the universe itself at its bestcan serve to provide the requisite paradigmfor man's ideal fulfillment. It is the One,the source and fountain of ultimate valueswhich alone qualifies as the supreme goodfor men. Within this context, then,Plotinus has no problem in asserting thatthe ultimate criterion of beauty is theIntellectual Principle; in fact this principleis the very locus of the ideal archetypeof beauty. In other words, Beauty ispresent as a distinct idea within Nous andimparts itself to Nous as a whole.3 Asan emanation, Beauty comes to be accordingto the unity of the Intellectual Principle.According to Plotinus' ethics of self-realization, the souls of men are destinedto fall short of the appropriate humangoal unless they learn to rise above all

JOHN P. ANTONdemands and values derived from whatlies below the level of human existenceand issues from the lesser quality of thesort of existence which is comprised bythe sensible world. The soul attains itsgenuine self-identity, its state of authenticexistence, only after it has come to ex-hibit an unshakable determination and aconstancy in deliberate choosing and act-ing in ways exclusively appropriate toman's own higher nature. That man isa mixture of levels of being makes it pos-sible for these levels to interact in avariety of patterns. The outcomes areneither known in advance, however, norare inevitably beneficial to the highergrades of being in man. Inversions andperversions, when affecting the naturalontic relationship of the functioning ofman's faculties, lead to a host of evils.Among their worst ones is the fatal sus-pension of the process of self-realizationfollowed by an attendant atrophy in virtue,which in turn causes permanent damageto a person's ability to envisage and at-tain the soul's native end.Given this cosmic and human scheme ofthings, the beauty of sensible bodies (in-cluding man's body) is assigned a specialplace and performs a function of its own.Thus sensible beauty is not rejected. Butthis beauty has its own way of kindling thedivine love of the intelligible world andstirring the soul to renewed enthusiasm forthe original fatherland. The active lifehas a significance of its own, even if itsquality ranks below that reserved for thecontemplative life of theoria. Like so manyother Greek philosophers before him,Plotinus argues that the active life lacksthe self-sufficiency characteristic of thetheoretical. The belief is based primarilyon the conviction that, in its effort tosecure both the discovery of ends and theprovision of means, without appealing toanother principle or faculty, only thetheoretical side of man possesses the abilityto scan its own depths. It is the theoreticalman who singularly attains the vision ofthe divine in its utmost purity. Plotinusis also of the conviction that since the


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Plotinus' Conception of the Functions of the Artisttheoretical pursuit discloses and warrantsthe supreme purpose of life, the functionsof the soul lend themselves to a hierarchi-cal stratification according to a patternhomologous to that of the cosmos. Thehuman microcosm is obviously fashionedafter the cosmic macrocosm. It is onlywhen the ideal cosmic order serves as theconscious end of conduct and the ulti-mate value of human aspiration that self-realization is genuinely under way.Plotinus proposes the following hierar-chy of faculties, in rising axiological order:sensation and imagination,4 reasoning5 andNous.6 When the soul reaches the heightsto which only Nous has access and en-visages the permanence and unity of theintelligible world, it blissfully comes torest in its native realm and readily fusesitself with it. But this even so is not theultimate resting place. A still higher stepis needed before man's power of fulfill-ment accedes to the supreme heights ofreality, the source of all, the One. Oncethe One as the terminus of man's self-realization is attained, the soul is said tolose itself in a mystical unity with it andthus is able in ecstasy to abandon allaspects of determinateness and all thedistinctiveness of separate existence. Thesoul is now beyond the realm of Nous. Ithas come to the source of all science andall reason. In effecting this final leap manleaves even the purest of logical distinc-tions behind. When the moment ofecstasy occurs, one is suddenly united withthe One.With the exception of the ideal unitywith the One, all other human attainmentshave their archetypes in the IntellecutalPrinciple, which, by embracing both theone and the many, provides Plotinus therequisite framework to make the pluralityof human ideals philosophically significantand ontologically defensible. This side ofPlotinus is grounded on his pluralisticPlatonism. But his own brand of pluralismenables him to counter-balance the irre-sistible tendency to force every particularidea and event into a place within hisdiverse hierarchical structures of exist-ence. What this pluralism entails is that

the ideal of beauty is not in principlededucible-for instance, from moral con-siderations and practical values. ButPlotinus' meaning is clear: the genuineapprehension and grasp of beauty requireas a concurrent factor the presence of amoral unity of character. A more appro-priate formulation would be that theaesthetic, the ethical, and the intellectualactivities have their essential independenceand that each yet needs the cooperationof the others for its own completion. Themodel for this view is in Plato, whoeloquently presented and argued for it inthe Protagoras and the Gorgias.One of Plotinus' firmest convictions isthat the Intellectual Principle is at onceTrue and Good and Beautiful. It is boththe locus of ideals and a distinctive whole,and in such a way that while each of thecontained ideal essences is predicable ofit, no substantial change is being causedin it. These interrelations being given,Plotinus is able to undertake a variety ofanalyses of the Intellectual Principle froma number of different perspectives, de-pending on what the context of his dia-lectic demands. In a revealing passage, forinstance, he states:

Beauty without Being could not be, nor Beingvoided of Beauty: abandoned of Beauty, Beingloses something of its essence. Being is desirablebecause it is identical with Beauty; and Beautyis loved because it is Being. How then can wedebate which is the cause of the other, wherethe nature is one. The very figment of Beingneeds some imposed image of Beauty to make itpossible, and even to ensure its existence; it existsto the degree in which it has taken some sharein the beauty of Idea; and the more deeply ithas drawn on this, the less imperfect it is,precisely because the nature which is essentiallythe beautiful has entered into it the moreintimately.7Mutatis mutandis, the same pattern ofrelationships obtains in the case of Truthand Being, Goodness and Being, and soon, with the other Ideas. When the propersubstitutions are made, acceptable Plotin-ian doctrine allows a reconstruction ofpart of the passage to read: "Being is de-

sirable because it is identical with Truth;and Truth is loved because it is Being." 8

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94IIITHE THEORY OF ARTISTIC CREATION.Within the context of the Plotiniantheory of artistic creativity, the more suc-cessful the artist as creator is, the closerhe comes to the source of Beauty, and inthe same measure the more he diminishesthe initial distance separating him fromperfect Being. Fundamental to this issueis the theory that, despite any evidenceto the contrary, the arts owe their utmostseriousness to the fact that they are atonce imitative and emanative:

Still the arts are not to be slighted on the groundthat they create by imitation of natural ob-jects. ... We must recognize that they give nobare reproduction of the thing seen but go backto the Ideas from which nature derives, andfurthermore, that much of their work is all theirown; they are molders of beauty and add wherenature is lacking.'Although Plotinus repeatedly statesthat he owes his principal teachings toPlato and depends on Plato precisely inthe way a disciple derives his theories andinspiration from his teacher, Plotinian

scholars recognize that Neoplatonism andPlatonism can and should be distinguishedfrom each other. Similarly, scholars havecome to admit that Plotinus' philosophyof art has a certain highmindedness thatmakes it difficult to show that in all itsdetails and explicit emphases it is indebtedto the writings of Plato. Whatever elsehe may have derived from the teachings ofPlato or Aristotle, the fact remains thatfor Plotinus art is in some fundamentalsense an emanative process. And even ifin its creative aspect art is undeniablyimitative, in accordance with the schemataof a devolutionary cosmology, this featureof it cannot be fully understood apartfrom the Plotinian ontology of emanation.This use of emanation to interpret thenature of art still is not so radically novelas it would seem upon first reading.Plotinus does not dispense with the imita-tive side of art altogether. In fact it wouldbe impossible for him to do so withoutfalling into a most serious inconsistency.Were art not imitative, the artist would

JOHN P. ANTONbe nothing less than an absolutely purecreator, a delineation which is inadmissiblebecause it makes the Plotinian cosmologyincurably self-contradictory. There can beonly one absolute source of creativity: theOne. Hence, only the One is absolutelyemanative and, consequently, non-imita-tive. Without the imitative aspect, art isautomatically raised to the level of pureemanative being, and this dearly entailseither that the One and art are identical,or that they are two distinct and coopera-tive sources of the universe. If the former,then Plotinus has incorrectly located theultimate source of art in Nous; if thelatter, then the theory of the One is self-contradictory. Thus it is essential toPlotinus' doctrine that the artistic actbe at once emanative and imitative. Evenif the critical reader has no sympathywith Plotinus' views on ontology, hewould misinterpret seriously if he chargedPlotinus in this portion of his theory ofart with logical flaws of which he isclearly not guilty.The property with which the artistendows his selected materials has its sourcenot in the medium but in the imaginationof the creator. On this point Plotinus isboth unequivocal and insistent. Still, whatthe artist truly reveals originates ulti-mately in the Intellectual Principle. Vitalto this thesis is the important distinctionPlotinus draws between natural beautyand artistic beauty. Both kinds of beautyhave their source in the archetypal Beautywhich resides in the first hypostasis, theIntellectual Principle. On the basis ofwhat is stated in Enneads V, Tractate 8,Chapters One and Two, the followingcentral doctrines result:

(i) Nature creates beautiful things un-consciously. The origin of the beautywhich is present in sensible things belongsto a higher hypostasis that precedes theWorld-Body and the World-Soul whichanimates it: Beauty in Nous.(ii) Man as artist creates beautifulthings. Artistic beauty is decidedly superiorto natural beauty, despite the fact that

the principle operating through the imagi-nation of the artist is ultimately the same


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Plotinus' Conceptionof the Functions of the Artistas that which is the cause of beauty insensible things.(iii) Whether the creative act occurs un-consciously through nature or consciouslythrough man, the creative power, like thesource from which it proceeds, neverenters with all its original fullness into thematerial it structures. The rule is that theoutcomes of art are always less than theircreative causes:

Art, then, creating in the image of its own natureand content, and working by the Idea or Rea-son-Principle of the beautiful object it is toproduce, must itself be beautiful in a far higherand purer degree since it is the seat and sourceof that beauty, indwelling in the art, which mustnaturally be more complete than any comelinessof the external.'0Since the cause is more than any of itseffects, it follows that no work of art canever succeed in embodying or equallingthe degree of beauty present in the proxi-mate cause, namely the artist. The prod-ucts of art evidently have less value andless being than do their human creators.For Plotinus man as creator is the principaland sole agent of artistic beauty. Even so,the effects of man's creative imaginationsuffer from the inescapable defect of theirbeing unable to embody all which theoriginal vision was intended to disclose. InPlotinus' own words: "... every primecause must be, within itself, more power-ful than its effect can be: the musicaldoes not derive from an unmusical sourcebut from music." 11(iv) Nature and its beautiful works cannever attain a degree of beauty higher

than, or even equal to, that which manas a result of his artistic creativity is trulyable to impart to things. Man extends theaesthetic aspects of nature and fulfills itspossibilities for beauty. Through his art,man elevates nature to a level of beautywhich nature could never achieve throughits own powers. Man as conscious creatoris superior to nature and the universe ofsensible things, in respect to both artisticactivity and artistic attainment. In manthe mode of creation and the quality ofbeauty testify to the presence of a superiorgrade of Being.

(v) Nature or the sensible universe cannever embody the fullness of beauty Plo-tinus believes the Intellectual Principlepossesses.12 Hence, whereas nature em-bodies a grade of beauty and a level ofBeing which man is entitled to appreciateand enjoy, man himself must refrain fromimitating them, for to do so would betantamount to compromising his own po-tentialities.Plotinus' meaning is plain enough. (a)Nature as a medium neither exhausts therange and quality of beauty nor is ableever to express the aesthetic richness ofthe Intellectual Principle. (b) Man is anintermediary between nature and Nous;this means that a higher grade of aestheticrevelation is expected to take placethrough the creative activity of man. (c)By way of emanation, man's artistic imagi-nation is the only avenue open to thehigher ontological levels of the cosmos forthe inflow of more beauty into the struc-ture of the sensible universe. Hence, manimitates successfully when he reveals some-thing of the ideal source of Beauty. (d) Inthe artistic act of emanation-imitation,something of the original and authenticquality of the artist's vision is irretrievablylost in the very act of material embodi-ment. This loss Plotinus attributes to theontological limitations manifesting them-selves as a certain incapacity in the me-dium to receive in toto the aesthetic visionof the creator:

The stone .. . brought under the artist's hand tothe beauty of form is beautiful not as stone-for so the crude block would be as pleasant-butin virtue of the Form or Idea introduced by theart. This form is not in the material; it is in thedesigner before it ever enters the stone; and theartificer holds it not by his equipment of eyesand hands but by participation in his act. Thebeauty, therefore, exists in a far higher statein the art; for it does not come over integrallyinto the work; that original beauty is not trans-ferred; what comes over is a derivative and aminor: and even that shows itself upon thestatue not integrally and with entire realizationof intention but only in so far as it has subduedthe resistance of the material."8This passage makes abundantly clearthat Plotinus does not want the readerto draw the inference that the artist

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96genuinely imparts the Idea of Beauty whenhe transfers the beauty residing in hisimagination to the chosen medium. Nordoes he mean to say that what the artistactually discloses is something like a copyof a copy, or that his work is therebytwice removed from ideal reality. Thesharp difference between Plotinus' viewsexpressed here and the theory of artPlato offers in the Republic is quite clearand requires no extensive commentary.The criterion for evaluating the functionof art in the Republic is admittedlypolitical, whereas in the Enneads theemphasis falls on the cosmic dimensionof the aesthetic vision. That Plato is ableto show the inferior epistemological char-acter of the artistic claim to truth shouldbe of no surprise to his readers. This typeof criticism would be out of place inPlotinus' lofty approach to Beauty andart. A re-affirmation of the position ex-pressed in the Republic would have simplydefeated Plotinus' conception of the sig-nificance of art. Plotinus derives his Pla-tonism not from the Republic but fromthe inspiring message of Diotima in theSymposium.Negatively, Plotinus' text allows us toconclude that (1) man cannot possiblythrough a medium embody all that theIdea of Beauty is, and (2) nature as therealm of artistic materials is incapable oftaking on the complete vision of evenman's grade of beauty. Yet if there isanything that is capable of approximatingthe absolute fulfillment reserved for the Ideaof Beauty, this cannot be some particular,however successful, work of art; what liesclosest to Beauty is man's profound imagina-tive vision enjoyed as a whole, at once in-tense and immediate, act of our humanNous. In the specific context of the processof artistic creation this means that for Ploti-nus the artist proceeds from the vision to hismedium with full awareness of what is ex-pected of him to do: to transfer his vision toit rather than wait for the medium to sug-gest to him artistic possibilities that mightbe lurking somewhere in some secret abodelonging to see the light of day. It is alsoevident that Plotinus does not deny thatthe medium possesses aesthetic qualities,

JOHN P. ANTONbut he firmly believes them to be of asui generis; they are of the sort that can-not constitute part of the genuine aestheticthemes the artistic man is rightfully ex-pected to articulate.Plotinus never makes the claim that theartist is an absolutely self-sufficient crea-tive man, as some of our contemporaryaestheticians have come to assert. ForPlotinus the artist works on his mediumand imparts his imaginative vision throughit. No matter what it is that he allowsthe medium to embody-or conversely,what the medium permits to be expressedthrough itself, as it were-the forms andshapes of art ultimately are not the ar-tist's own personal doing. Everythingaround us has form. These forms are notinvented; they owe their existence to theirarchetypal counterparts in the IntellectualPrinciple. While sensible things may ormay not fully possess form, the degree towhich they display formal structure de-termines the degree and quality of beautyin each case. Even when this natural qual-ity is at its best, it is still not good enough.This notion is at the basis of Plotinus'argument that art expresses and articulatesthe forms far better than sensible existentsdo. The artist evidently has the abilityto decipher the ideal aspects of aestheticperfections by virtue of the fact that hehas access to the realm of Nous, and hedoes so in a way nature cannot. Thus artis superior to the natural course of crea-tion. What the artist does, then, is tocomplete the tasks of nature by bringingto the world of plural materiality moreBeing and more Reality-even though italready possesses a certain degree of aes-thetic quality-perhaps, even better, moreIdeality. This completing that the artistdoes is evidently viewed by Plotinus as anact of elevation rather than one to beunderstood as a humanization of nature. Inits full significance, it is an achievementof the spirit, an ontological enhancementof materiality. By bringing the beauty ofsensible things closer to the beauty oftheir corresponding archetypal Forms, theartist transmutes their mode of aestheticexistence not by affecting the things di-rectly but by erecting comparable ana-


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Plotinus' Conception of the Functions of the Artistlogues with the aid of some medium. Theartistic act is one of upgrading naturalreality by way of reversing the downwardcourse of cosmic development from the Oneto matter. To put the issue differently, theartist is the world's exclusive means formeaningful aesthetic enrichment. Throughthe beauty that flows from the imaginationof the artist into the sensible universe,man has the privilege of helping theworld really to be.In addition to asserting the cosmicaspect of the artistic act, Plotinus alsodraws attention to an important theoreti-cal issue that concerns the nature ofemanation. The issue has to do with thethesis that the value which the artist im-parts to things cannot be explained bymeans of the products of art, let aloneby some abstract principles derivablethrough the observation of things naturallybeautiful. Like a true Platonist, Plotinusappeals to the metaphysical axiomwhereby the cause, the ontic beginning ofa thing, is also its causal explanation.Ultimately, the artistic value is in effectnot a property of things in the sensibleworld; actually it stems from the creator.Beauty does not reside in some antecedentfashion in sensible objects and media, tobe realized as a forthcoming perfection oras a deliberate drawing out of the aes-thetic possibilities. In the Plotinian view,the origin of artistic values precedes allartistic and naturally beautiful things.Hence aesthetic significance is neither de-rived from nor exhausted by the sensibleor even intelligible products of humancreativity. The implication for aesthetictheory is plain: all empirical generaliza-tions lack scope and efficacy when intro-duced as explanation and rules in aes-thetics.In Plotinus the theory which claimsthat art is basically an act originating insome fundamental sense in the aestheticresources of the creator, found its firstardent expounder. More specifically, whatis here is a philosophical view of art bothas emanation and as the expression of thebeauty of the cosmos. Accordingly, beautyis claimed to be present in man in ways

far more authentic and superior than inany other natural existent. But if and whenthe presuppositions of this metaphysicaltheory of art are abandoned in favor of amore tempered naturalistic anthropocen-trism, which is what actually has happenedin modern times-that is to say, when thePlotinian theory of art as emanation issevered from its supporting metaphysics andwhen the ontological commitment is gone-this theory is readily transformable intoa theory of art as subjective expression.IVART AS THE QUEST FOR BEING. There is asense in which Plotinus can be said tohave generated a paradox. On the onehand, he teaches that the artist, no matterhow successful, can never truly come tooccupy the lofty place reserved for thephilosopher;l4 on the other, he assertsthat beauty is unequivocally divine in itsorigin. The paradox pivots on the basicpresupposition that the supreme life forman is ultimately attainable only throughtheoretical contemplation. What thismeans in the broader context of hisontology of art is that, whereas the Intel-lectual Principle is fundamentally availa-ble to the rational powers, the Idea ofBeauty, even though it in principle de-mands the involvement of cognitive ap-prehension, does not constitute the su-preme subject matter of the theoreticallife. The Idea of Beauty neither encom-passes nor precedes the realm of Reason.The paradox stems from the tension be-tween two concurrent demands: (a) thatthe artist has access to the realm of divineessences, and (b) that ultimately the su-preme life for man is attainable onlythrough theoretical contemplation.It would be unfair to charge thatPlotinus compromises the demand forconsistency so that he can preserve theniceties of a hierarchical ontology andaxiology. True, he assigns important tasksto the artist, just as it is true that thesetasks never come to equal, let alone rankabove, the ideal end of the theoretical life.Somehow, art, even if divine in origin,

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98cannot be regarded as self-sufficient, nor isit offered as a suitable substitute for theactivity that secures the summum bonumfor man. At its worse, art is cheapenedwhen it becomes imitative of things sen-sible or of anything inferior to its primalintention; at its best, it is cooperative andcoordinate with the other activities of manin the quest for Being. In this light, then,the question is no longer whether art issupremely divine; for it is not. The ques-tion is rather what are the real tasks thatconfront the artist and what conditionsmust be present for him to succeed inwhat he undertakes. When man as artistis nature-oriented, he mediates betweensensible beauty and Ideal Beauty. To thedegree that he attends to things divinehe aims at effecting transformations in thesensible world. If he is felicitous in hisefforts, he ends by adding a new aestheticdimension to his natural environment.But, above all, his success lies in bringingforth within himself the sort of realizationthat elevates his very existence to loftierstrata of Being. Thus, art, among otherthings, is essentially bound to the questfor Being.Practically speaking, the artist is anagent acting in the interests of the ulti-mate values of the universe. He is ex-pected to salvage the aesthetic aspects ofthose things whose birthright belongs tothe realm of nature. This is the task ofthe artistic man only when he works withexternal materials, however. There is alsothe side of the artist which must eventuallycome to grips with the internal materials,human nature itself. These two sidesof the artistic enterprise are expected totake place concurrently if ethical failureis to be avoided. Assuredly, aesthetic ap-preciation depends for its proper func-tioning upon the cooperative develop-ment of all the other powers of man. Thereis a basic condition man must satisfy be-fore he is genuinely able to bring beautyto natural things, let alone appreciatewhat is already there: he must realizewhat beauty is within him. Plotinus in-sists that one cannot begin to see thebeauty of things until he has climbed

JOHN P. ANTONappreciably high on the ladder of self-realization. But be that as it may andassuming that such aesthetic developmenthas occurred, it remains a fact that theartistic act is truly one of emanation.Beauty flows from the artist into the sen-sible world only when the artist as manhas already realized beauty within him-self. The frequent failures of man to riseto the demands of real artistic creationand aesthetic appreciation testify to thelack of prior aesthetic self-realization. Theartist who has failed to turn himself intoa thing of beauty is doomed to failure.Plotinus, though not without a certaintone of disappointment, remarks that theimparting of beauty is contingent uponthe soul's own state of beauty and thatit is a pity to see so many souls fall shortof this quality: "Is soul of itself, a thingof beauty? We find it is not since differ-ences are manifest, one soul wise andlovely, another foolish and ugly: soul-beauty is constituted by wisdom." 15Evidently, all is not well with the uni-verse; nor is it with the souls of men. Hedislikes the differences mentioned in thepreceding passage and urges his fellowmento cultivate their souls so that the spiritualblemishes may vanish. Plotinus, like theStoics before him, however, is reluctantto attribute these peculiar failures of manto the ultimate source of the cosmos.Ugliness, he declares, is not of Being. Thereal consolation comes with his insistenceupon the educability of human nature:it is neither necessary nor desirable formen to stay in a state of failure andignorance. Man has the power of self-re-demption. He can do something abouthimself just as it is within his power to riseabove the limitations he truly experienceswhen he sees himself primarily as a sen-sible thing. Within this context, thequest for Beauty is part of the broaderquest for Being, both essential to theprocess of self-realization. In his eagernessto assert this ethical ideal, Plotinus givesthe impression that he is so intent uponmaintaining the view that the source ofthe universe is worthy of man's highestintellectual and ethical pursuits that he isprepared to stretch logic to the breaking


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Plotinus' Conception of the Functions of the Artistpoint. No doubt he considers the chanceworth taking, for he never fails to exploitevery opportunity that presents itself toreiterate his love for mankind, hopefulalways that the listeners will decide tochoose nothing but the best as the objectsof their noble aspirations. The art of in-culcating this humanistic lesson he nodoubt learned from his acknowledgedmaster, Plato of Athens.If we admit that fundamentally Plo-tinus' philosophy is an ethical one cen-tered around the quest for Being, it isno longer difficult for us to understandwhy he assigned to a theory of beautyso basic a role within the system. Thereis hardly a tractate in the Enneads inwhich Plotinus does not discuss some basicaspect of his theory of cosmic kalologia.It looms largely both in the systematicaspects of his intellectual vision and inthe principal concepts of his ontology.Plotinus is not altogether immune to criti-cism here, however, for what the systemapparently gained by way of a constantemphasis upon the speculative side-onewhich admittedly makes aspiration tocosmic beauty one of Plotinus' most ap-pealing elements-the theory lost in logicalcogency and argument.16 Plotinus tendersan unmistakably heaven-bound philo-sophic vision. The vista he describes is arestful realm of essential unity reservedfor men when their humanity issues forthin excellence of mind and deed. Whateverits logical weaknesses, Plotinus' philosophyhas the special merit of assigning theartist a place in the universe that offers aninvitation if not an opportunity for theeventual removal of all those resenteddifferences between foolish men and wisemen; what awaits those who succeed is ablissful sense of identity with the sourceof Beauty itself. Because of his profoundfaith in man and the universe, Plotinuscould confidently exclude from his ethicssuch views that advocate a human con-dition of total estrangement. He believedman, whether artist or knower, to be con-tinuous with nature and ultimately withsublime Being, the One. This Plotinianfaith in ontological continuities turns outto be incompatible with views implying

or openly asserting man's permanentalienation from the sources of his being.Man may be a sinner and an incompletebeing, as unpredictably subject to decep-tion as he is incurably open to failure.Whatever his shortcomings, man, forPlotinus, is immune to such evils as totalestrangement from his self. As artist, manis never cut off from the Idea of Beauty;and as knower, he is never completely be-trayed by reason. The Plotinian view ofman never speaks of an irreparably in-capacitated humanity.It may well be that Plotinus has no realcure for our own brand of ailments, es-pecially those that come under the present-day, somewhat fashionable disease ofalienation. What is important however isthat Plotinus, like his Greek predecessors,offers an alternative to the very outlookgenerating the feelings of estrangement.This alternative, this Plotinian naturalisticmetaphysics of being, persuasive in toneand content, asserts with the fervor ofhonest commitment the continuity of onticrealities and man's firm place in a uni-verse sustained by the highest of values.This side of Plotinus, namely his contri-bution to a metaphysics of art and aphilosophical conception of the artist'sfunctions, has received considerable atten-tion in recent times.17 His thought hasfound sympathetic interpreters just as ithas provoked others to approach him withskepticism and in certain cases with openhostility. There are those who judge himin terms of an admittedly social philosophyof art;18 others prefer to think that Plo-tinus considers the arts mainly as creatorsof symbols.19 Illuminating and helpful asthese interpretations seem to be, con-siderably more work needs to be done onthe philosophy of this last of the Greeksbefore the secrets of his metaphysicalvision can be known in all its intricacy,especially those pertaining to the conception of beauty and man's pursuit of com-pletion in Being.Plotinus philosophizes in a multifocalmanner. For instance, he does not discussethics without weaving into the fabric ofhis discussion ontology and cosmology,dialectics and aesthetics. Also when he

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100proceeds with aesthetics he hardly beginshis exposition of a theme without obscuringit with large boulders of thought takenfrom the surrounding mountains of Beingand the Good, the Intellect and the One,the Soul and the splendor of naturalwonders. Plotinus' philosophical imagina-tion is always complex, organic, many-sided and, above all, at once anthropocen-tric, cosmocentric, and theocentric; in aword, polycentric. Whenever an inter-preter selects some special center as the ex-clusive feature of the system, misunder-standing inevitably sets in. Plotinus' verystyle reflects his faith in the dialecticalinvolvement of all human activities, muchin the way in which the Platonic virtuesintertwine in the Dialogues. It has itscounterpart in his aesthetic faith, for henever tires of reminding us how the artistmust never turn himself into a one-sidedperson. The artist who allows his art tobecome pure in the sense that it is aself-sufficient and insulated enterprise suc-ceeds primarily in persuading himself tofollow a dangerous course that can onlyterminate in irrationality.

Few will question either the richnessof his insights or his influence throughoutthe ages.20These are good enough reasonsfor wanting to understand the philosophi-cal tradition in aesthetic theory that re-mains indebted to Plotinus.

1 he fact that Plotinus includes under thenotion of art such things as skills, professions,various activities ranging from medicine and agri-culture to politics and rhetoric, does not in any wayaffect the thesis of this paper; nor would any ex-tensive treatment of the broader denotation of art,it seems to me, lead to conclusions different from theones presented in this paper.2 For theiclassification of the arts in Plotinus andantiquity in general, see W. Tatarkiewicz, "Classi-fication of Arts in Antiquity," Journal of the Historyof Ideas, XXIV (1963), 231-240.8 Plotinus devoted a separate treatise to thistopic: Enneads, V, 8. The ideal archetype of beauty,

X6yos v&)Xovs &pX%Ewros,s in the Intellectual Prin-ciple, vois, Enneads,V. 8, 3.4Sensation and imagination occupy a lower posi-tion in the scale of cognitive powers, becausetheir function is to provide the connecting link be-tween the soul and the entities that belong to the

JOHN P. ANTONsensible world. The criterion of worth is evidentlythe grade of being which the corresponding objectof cognition possesses. Ontological levels, since theyprecede acts of cognition, determine the axiologicalquality of cognitive events. Plotinus is no doubt anontological philosopher.6Reasoning or dianoia attends to objects ofhigher value. This is the faculty that enables thesoul to accede to levels of finer substantial realitiesand consequently to attain knowledge of its appro-priate entities. Thus, the proper subject matter ofreasoning, according to Plotinus, is the world ofintelligibles. In terms of ethical conduct this meansthat the method which enables the soul to completeits journey in the sensible world and eventuallyrise above it is the dialectical method. The properand natural habitat for man qua reasoning beingis the intelligible world of ideas and essences, viz.,the contents of the first hypostasis, the Platonicideas, ra Y'O77.'Nous is man's highest cognitive faculty; it isthe human counterpart of the realm of cosmic Nous.Thus, the Intellectual Principle, the first emanationof the One, regarded as above and more than thesum of its parts or set of intelligible essences, is theproper ideal entity to which human nous ought toaspire. By means of nous man knows himself. In thisrespect, nous and its object are identical. Man quanous is for Plotinus continuous with eternal Nousor the Intellectual Principle.7Enneads, V. 8, 9. The translations used in thispaper are from Plotinus, The Enneads, trans.Stephen MacKenna, 2d rev. ed. by B. S. Page. Fore-word by E. R. Dodds and introduction by P. Henry,S. J. (London, 1956).

8Irwin Edman's comment is most interestinghere: "Plotinus, save in very rare instances, neverdiscusses anything, the soul or happiness, virtue ormagic, God or matter, without unmistakable refer-ence to the totality of the universe. Each separateinquiry is a function of a whole analysis, as eachseparate life and thought and existence are in-cidental expressions of that pervasive unity aboutwhich alone it may be said that It is." "The Logicof Mysticism in Plotinus," Studies in the History ofIdeas (New York, 1925), II, 52.9Enneads, V. 8, 1.10Enneads.11Enneads.12 In a revealing passage Plotinus answers hisown question whether the universe, jd waav, cansimultaneously possess extension and beauty: "Yes,because it has not been allowed to slip away intothe limitless but is held fast by unity; and it hasbeauty in virtue of Beauty, not Magnitude; itneeded Beauty to parry that magnitude; in thedegree of its extension it was void of beauty andto that degree ugly. Thus extension serves as Matterto Beauty since what calls for its ordering is amultiplicity. The greater the expansion, the greaterthe disorder and ugliness." Enneads, VI. 6, 2." Enneads, V. 8, 2."Irwin Edman, for instance, does not suspectthe possibility of a paradox here. He interprets


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Plotinus' Conceptionof the Functions of the ArtistPlotinus, though not without a certain violence ofthe texts, as holding the position that all paths,three in number, which lead to the divine are ofequal promise and efficaciousness: "There are, ac-cording to Plotinus, three temperaments or typespeculiarly susceptible to divinity, peculiarly candi-dates for the complete recovery of the complete life.Plotinus, like Plato, saw a singular kinship betweenlove and art and philosophy. The chord that thrillsthe musician, the comeliness that captures the loverand the consistency that convinces the logician wereto his poetic mind three variants of the same eternalthing, the ordered loveliness, the lovely order ofReason" p. 69; italics mine.

1 Enneads, V. 9, 2.18 On another occasion I have examined thelogical aspects of a certain phase of Plotinus'aesthetic theory. I endeavored to show how thesoundness of his arguments designed to refute rivalviews leaves much to be desired. See my "Plotinus'Refutation of Beauty as Symmetry," JAAC, XXIII(Winter, 1964), 233-237.17Milton Nahm discusses Plotinus' views in hisAesthetic Experiences and Its Presuppositions (NewYork, 1946), esp. pp. 37-49, also The Artist asCreator (Baltimore, 1956, pp. 92-111. P. 0. Kristellerin his The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (Columbia,1943) offers valuable insights. Also noteworthy arethe relevant discussions in the following: P. V.Pistorius, Plotinus and Neoplatonism (Cambridge,1952); J. Katz, Plotinus' Search for the Good (NewYork, 1950); P. Merlan, From Plato to Neoplatonism(The Hague, 1960); and E. Brehier, The Philosophyof Plotinus, tr. J. Thomas (Chicago, 1958).18 Cf. A. Hauser, The Social History of Art (NewYork, 1957), I, 113-120; also H. M. Kallen, Art andFreedom (New York, 1942), I, 75-80. The latter, forinstance, writes: "The Plotinian philosophy wasutterly a philosophy of escape and salvation, of self-liberation from the world. It turned its back upondoing and the control of doing and sought beatitudein aesthetic contemplation" (78). Cf. John Dewey,Art as Experience (New York, 1934), pp. 290-292.19See A. Hofstadter and R. Kuhns, eds., Philoso-phies of Art and Beauty (New York, 1964), pp. 139-141. The editors of this anthology state in theirprefatory note to the section on Plotinus that forhim "artists' products are therefore valuable chieflyas symbols. It is with Plotinus that the symbolicnature of art receives its first comprehensive formu-lation" (140). Again: "Art is a Symbol in a doublesense: of that lower reality which it perfects, andthat ultimate reality which it mirrors" (141). It isdifficult to challenge the Hofstadter-Kuhns inter-pretation of Plotinus' philosophy of art since theireditorial statement offers neither argument nortextual evidence in support of their view. However,it is interesting to note that the symbolist inter-

pretation they propound has been anticipated byBernard Bosanquet in his A History of Aesthetic,2d ed. (1904; London, 1949): "Therefore the wholemetaphysical assumption that art is limited byordinary perception, which assumption is one withthe imitative theory of fine art, is now [withPlotinus] broken through. It is henceforth under-stood that art is not imitative but symbolic" (114).Bosanquet gives the impression that there are onlytwo alternatives available to the philosophical treat-ment of art: to understand art as being eitherimitative or symbolic. Plotinus presumably rejectsthe first but embraces the latter. The shaky groundson which this disjunctive argument rests need notconcern us here, but suffice it to say that Bosanquetgives no indication that he suspected anythingspecious in his argument, any more than he ques-tioned the possibility that this sort of treatmentmight not have suited Plotinus' views on art at all.The thesis that for Plotinus art is symbolic is ques-tionable on at least two counts: (a) for Plotinusartistic creation is an authentic relevation, and (b)the outcome of the artistic activity embodies morereality than the initial material actually possessedprior to the act. What is overlooked by Bosanquetas well as by Hofstadter and Kuhns is that art, evenif symbolic, transcends all symbolic aspects it mayhave. Art comes to express that aspect of Being thatis beauty and does so in the degree in which theconditions of embodiment permit in each particularwork. Plotinus' writings allow the reader to reachthe conclusion that are, whatever else it is, is a cer-tain ontological immediacy as both act and embodi-ment of beauty. To deny this side of his aesthetics,which is in effect what the symbolist interpretationentails, is to make incomprehensible the relation-ship between aesthetics and ethics in the theory ofman Plotinus so passionately advocated.^Nothing is being claimed in this paper aboutPlotinus' popularity or any influence his viewsmight have exerted during his own time. It seemsrather doubtful that his theory of the functions ofthe artist won an audience beyond his immediatefollowers. Again, there is no ground for believingthat the artists of that period might have recognizedPlotinus as their intellectual spokesman. If the storyPorphyry reports in his biography of Plotinus aboutthe master's refusal to have his portrait painted istrue, then it adds further support to the prevalentview that the basic principles of Plotinus' philosophyof art have no direct relationship to any first-handacquaintance with the artistic realities of his owntimes. The philosophical concepts and ideas withwhich Plotinus works belong to that strand of theclassical tradition that has its roots in the writingsof Plato. Plotinus and his followers are correctlycalled Neoplatonists.

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