# The Use of the Plotinian Soul Today September 25, 2024 Anna Corrias, Professor of the History of Philosophy, Ralston College *A version of this essay was presented as a conference paper at the CSWR’s “Platonism as a Living Tradition”* [*conference*](/news/06/05/2024/platonism-living-tradition-reflections-2024-cswr-conference "Platonism as a Living Tradition: Reflections from the 2024 CSWR Conference ") *in May 2024, which gathered 15 scholars from the US and Europe who engage with Platonism not merely as an academic discipline but as a vibrant, living tradition that continues to shape philosophical and spiritual landscapes.* *“What Platonism needs to be a living tradition is to produce once again Platonic theology,” CSWR Director Charles Stang observed in his opening remarks. “Can we become Platonic theologians once again? I hope so. I think the world needs it.”* If one thinks of a Platonic philosopher, and especially of Plotinus, what comes to mind, I imagine, is a spiritual guide, a sort of Virgil leading pilgrims beyond pseudo-realities and right up to the threshold of the ultimate Truths. While this is certainly correct about Platonists, I would like to take a different perspective. I would like to explore the possibility that, besides pointing us to the luminous regions that shine beyond the cave, Platonism can also help us to understand how to inhabit the deep marshlands of embodied life. In exploring this territory, I will take Plotinus as my guide—an unexpected choice, perhaps, for Plotinus is certainly not known for haunting the marshlands. In fact, Plotinus is the philosopher, Porphyry tells us, who did not even want his portrait to be made so great was his contempt for the physical form. Yet, the *Enneads* delve deeply into the dramas and conflicts of embodied existence. Plotinus’s philosophical inquiries are very much rooted in the lived experience of inhabiting matter––of being the subjects of apparently opposite activities such as digestion and intellection––and in the fact that every day we witness bodies age, die, and decay, and yet we cannot help but feel immortal. For Plotinus these conflicts, I believe, are only apparently dichotomous. For at the very core of his metaphysics and philosophical anthropology lies the idea of a dynamic continuity between different levels of life and being. Plotinus described the relationship between the soul and the body in terms of the “togetherness of the two” (τὸ συναμφότερον). In such a relationship, the soul uses its lowest power, i.e., the vegetative power—which we have in common with plants and which is responsible for growth, nutrition, and reproduction—to keep the body alive and functioning. The vegetative power is a fully-fledged psychological power; it is immaterial, though unconscious. It is a form of non-cognitive knowledge, a sort of “knowing without thinking,” which takes care of the body through a natural ingenuity devoid of any form of conscious deliberation. Through it, the soul “takes care of what is soulless,” to quote Plato’s *Phaedrus* 246b, by carrying out the hidden and silent processes that are apparently mechanical and that pass completely unnoticed to consciousness, such as instinctual adaptation, hair growth cycles, the menstrual cycle, blood cell formation, etc. For Plotinus, these activities are in all respects acts of the soul, not of the body. More precisely, they are acts of the “natural intelligence” of the vegetative power of the soul. In fact, as we learn in *Enneads* III.8, vegetative life is a form of contemplation, albeit rudimentary, blurred, and silent. Plotinus imagines that Nature herself, if asked by an imaginary onlooker, would reply that one should not to ask, but should understand in silence, since she, Nature, is not in the habit of speaking and only contemplates in silence. What she contemplates comes naturally and effortlessly into being.[1](#references) For Plotinus, every element of Nature, the flowers blooming in spring, the tiny worm digging a tunnel in someone’s garden, our stomach digesting breakfast, are contemplative activities whose explanatory principle is the soul, not the body. Yet, they exist in the “togetherness” of soul and body—whether the body is our individual body or the body of the universe. In this view, psychological life cannot be reduced to thinking, or feeling, or any other act of consciousness, for it involves unconscious activities that take place deep inside the body, in the liminal space where immateriality and materiality become mysteriously connected. Perhaps because of our disdain for mysteries, we have now lost the idea of this space. As a result, we are left with an unbridgeable gap in our understanding of human nature. This is evident in many debates about the relationship between mind and body. For example, the ongoing debate on gender identity is often characterized by a sharp division between those who argue that one’s gender can be reduced to material forms (i.e., one’s reproductive organs) and those who contend that it is defined by one’s mind. For the former, gender seems as tangible, three-dimensional, and unequivocal as matter, for the latter it seems as immaterial and ideational as thought. The language used in common parlance seems to support this narrative, as evidenced by the prevalence of expressions such as “body-mind mismatch” and slogans such as “gender originates between the ears, not between the legs.” These debates would benefit from a “Plotinian turn”; we should approach human nature by delving into the non-deliberative, non-ideational, and unconscious form of subjectivity that is intimately connected to the body, forming the psycho-physiological make-up of an individual. This subjectivity is not a free-floating rational truth, nor is it reducible to anatomical structures. I do not know exactly what this subjectivity is, nor do I seek to define it. But I do believe that the soul, as described by Plotinus, offers a description of human nature as a dynamic continuity that escapes division and separation. Within this framework, answers to the question of human nature are better found in the space where the immaterial and the material work together. Plotinus identified this space with the “togetherness” of the vegetative power of the soul and the body. As a Platonist, I want to hold open the idea of this space, even if I do not know how to name or identify it. For to admit its existence is to accept the possibility of the continuity of life rather than its discontinuity or brokenness. Embracing the possibility of continuity would allow a different approach not only to the question of gender but also to some complex health conditions that resist dichotomous interpretations. One example is the well-known medical mystery of autoimmune diseases, in which the immune system attacks the body instead of protecting it. Understood in Platonic terms, these diseases seem a sort of reversal of the image of the soul as the compassionate mother taking care of what is soulless. After all, the immune system is an embodied form of knowledge; a knowledge that is non-discursive, non-ideational, and unconscious. It has a clear sense of identity and otherness and is extremely precise in executing its primary function of recognition. It is no surprise that these disorders are often misunderstood and misdiagnosed. Although recent studies have shown that they often result from experiences of adversity and suffering, most therapies focus narrowly on the body, and the few effective treatments often treat the symptoms rather than the root cause, which remains unknown. I believe that this unknowability is due to the fact that immune responses are a form of knowledge that operates outside of the mind, deep within the folds of matter. The very notion of this embodied, unconscious knowledge escapes us today. Again, I am not suggesting that doctors abandon the range of medical concepts currently in use and return to the elusive notion of the vegetative power of the soul, for this would be of no use in medical theory or practice. My point is that the idea of this power, and of the soul in general, allows us to suspend, perhaps even for a moment, the polarized view of the mind and the body. It allows us to consider, perhaps even to merely imagine, a dimension that is neither purely mental nor purely corporeal but is the Plotinian “togetherness of the two.” I believe that it is exceptionally urgent that we pause to consider the idea and meaning of a subjectivity that is unconsciously intentional, immaterial, and yet closer to the body than to the mind, all the while avoiding its objective and definitive determination. We should be open to the possibility of this ontological space and refrain from forming any proposition of certainty about it. To undertake this interpretative exercise is not an easy task, for we must be prepared to embrace the mysterious, the unknown, and, like Plotinus’s Nature, the silent. We must be prepared to include them in our perception of our identity, without rushing to see this perception transformed into understanding. ## References 1. Plotinus, *Enneads*, III.8.4, 1-11.