[Plotinus Ennead 6.7.12, trans. Armstrong, 127.—Trans.]
valid for a world that is once and for all eternal and harmonious. Hence, for Plotinus, this is not the contemplation of History. But for a Christian, art does not suffice. The world unfolds according to a divine production; and to be restored is to be incorporated into the movement of this tragedy. The climax of the Incarnation has no meaning for Plotinus. This is an opposition that goes still further. For the Christian who separates Reason and Beauty, the Truth of Beauty, Reason is reduced to its role of logical legislator. And thus conflicts between Faith and Reason become possible. For a Greek, these conflicts are less acute, because Beauty, which is both order and sensitivity, economy and the object of passion, remains a ground of agreement. “If someone who sees beauty excellently represented in a face is carried to that higher world, will anyone be so sluggish in mind and so immovable that, when he sees all the beauties in the world of sense, all its good proportion and the mighty excellence of its order, and the splendour of form which is manifested in the stars, for all their remoteness, he will not thereupon think, seized with reverence, ‘What wonders, and from what source?’ If he did not, he would neither have understood this world here nor seen the higher world.”10 We have already noted this passage. It is directed against the Gnostic Christians.
A. The Rational Explanation according to Procession
a) If the world is beautiful, it is because something lives in it. But it is also because something orders it. This spirit that animates the world is the World Soul. The superior principle that limits this life within determined structures is called Intelligence. But the unity of an order is always superior to that order. Thus there exists a third principle superior to Intelligence, which is the One. Let us argue this in an inverse direction.
There is no being that is not one.11 Now there is no unity without form and without logos, logos rightly being the principle of unity. That is to say, once more, that there is no being without soul, since logos is the necessary action of the soul.
- Ennead II, 9, 16: “Il en est qui voyant l’image de la beauté sur un visage sont transportés dans l’intelligible; d’autres ont une pensée trop paresseuse et rien ne les émeut; ils ont beau regarder toutes les beautés du monde sensible, ses proportions, sa régula rité, et le spectacle qu’offrent les Astres malgré leur éloignement, ils ne songeront pas, saisis d’un respect religieux, à dire: ‘Que c’est beau, et de quelle beauté doit venir leur beauté.’ C’est qu’ils n’ont compris ni les choses sensibles ni les êtres intelligibles.”
[Plotinus Enneads 2.9.16, trans. Armstrong, 291.—Trans.] - VI, 9, 1.
In the first meaning we have discovered three levels in the explanation of the world; in the second, three stages of deepening the Self. These two processes coincide.12 Metaphysical reality is spiritual life considered in itself. The first is the object of knowledge; the second, of inner asceticism. And where objects coincide, so too do methods. To know is to return somewhat to the “more inward than my most inward part.”13Knowledge is not an experience, but an effort and a desire, in a word, a creative evolution. Here again we see the divine character of metaphysical principles. The One, Intelligence, and the World Soul express the same divinity, the first in its fullness, the other two as a reflection. The procession of the three hypostases shows how this unity and this multiplicity are reconciled. This hypostatic progression, which underlies the rational explanation of the world, naturally finds its equal in conversion, which is the very movement of the soul in search of its origins.14
Let us indicate only the movement of this procession, setting aside for the moment a detailed examination of each of its moments.
“All things which exist, as long as they remain in being, necessarily produce from their own substances, in dependence on their present powers . . . [thus] fire produces the heat which comes from it; snow does not only keep its cold inside itself.”15
God himself, insofar as he is perfect substance and timeless, superabounds. He creates Intelligence, and from Intelligence will arise the World Soul.
It is in this way that Intelligence and Soul both are and are not the One.
They are the One in their origin and not in their outcome, in which they
- Cf. above all this passage: for the religious role of the hypostases, Ennead V, 1, “On the Three Primary Hypostases.” Cf. on their explicative value, Ennead V, 3, “On the Knowing Hypostases.”
- [“I’intimior intinio meo” (sic). Camus offers no reference for this text. It is from Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),
3.6.11. The Latin text should read: “intimor intimo meo.”—Trans.] - Ennead VI, 6 [sic]: “Tout être engendré désire et aime l’être qui l’a engendré.” [Plotinus Enneads 5.1.6: “Everything longs for its parent and loves it.” Ennead 5, trans. Armstrong, 33.—Trans.]
- Ennead V, 1, 6: “Tous les êtres d’ailleurs, tant qu’ils subsistent, produisent nécessairement autour d’eux, de leur propre essence, une réalité qui tend vers l’extérieur et dépend de leur pouvoir actuel . . . ainsi le feu fait naître de la chaleur et la neige ne garde pas en elle-même tout son froid.”
[Plotinus Enneads 5.1.6, ibid., 31.—Trans.]
are divided, the one into duality, the other into multiplicity. “The One is all things and not a single one of them: it is the principle of all things, not all things, [but all things have that other kind of transcendent existence; for in a way they do occur in the One;] or rather they are not there yet, but they will be.”16
We see here how the notion of procession is opposed to that of creation: the latter separating the heavens and the creator, the former unifying them in the same gentle movement of superabundance. But this divine emanation does not take form until Intelligence, descended from God, turns back toward him and receives his reflection, and until the Soul, in its turn, contemplates the intelligible sun and is illuminated by it. It is therefore through contemplation of the superior hypostasis that each principle is fully realized.17 Here God allows only his admirers to live. But this, scarcely noted, needs to be examined in detail.
b) The First Hypostasis. Let us confront in succession the ambiguity already indicated in the notion of the One. It is simultaneously a rational principle of explanation and a desire of the soul. Plato says that the Good is the greatest of the sciences: by science he means, not the vision of the Good, but the reasoned knowledge that we had of it before this vision.
What educates us about the Good are analogies, negations, and knowledge of beings descended from it and their graduated ascent. But what leads us to it are our purifications, our virtues, and our inner order.
Thus one becomes a contemplator of oneself and other things, and at the same time, the object of one’s contemplation; and having become essence, intelligence, and animal together, one no longer sees the good from outside.18
Notice that these two aspects are not coexistent but identical. What constitutes the first hypostasis is the principle of unity; it is the fact that we contemplate it.19 At the very moment when we look at a star, it
- EnneadV, 2, 1: “L’un est toutes les choses et il n’est aucune d’entre elles; principe de toutes choses car toutes font en quelque sorte retour à lui; ou, plutôt à son niveau, elles ne sont pas encore mais elles seront.”
[Plotinus Ennead 5.2.1, ibid., 59. The portion of the text in square brackets is not included in Camus’ quotation. I have added it in order to clarify the meaning of the passage.—Trans.] - Ennead V, 1, 6; V, 2; V, 3, 4.
- Ennead VI, 7, 35.
- III, 8, 10.
defines us and limits us to a certain extent. And to say that the One is the principle of all things is to say that contemplation is the sole reality.
If we now attempt to define this One, we come up against a good many difficulties.
1) In the first place, the One is nothing, not being distinct, being pureunity. But it is everything, as the principle of all things. Indeed, it is the Beautiful and the Good together.20 But these are not definitions. They are ways of speaking that do not bind the Good, because clearly, it is only a nothing, or, at most, a point of convergence.21 But at bottom the difficulty is not here. The real question is this: Why has the One, which contains all reality contracted within itself, created, and above all how is this unity made a multiplicity?
2) “The One, perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, and needsnothing, overflows, as it were, and its superabundance makes something other than itself. This, when it has come into being, turns back upon the One and is filled, and becomes Intellect by looking toward it. Its halt and turning toward the One constitutes being, its gaze upon the One, Intellect. Since it halts and turns toward the One that it may see, it becomes at once Intellect and being.”22 The One, therefore, produces Intellect and being as fire gives off heat or a flower its fragrance. And it is as an object of contemplation that the One gives Intelligence the forms in which it is clothed.23 But how can we accept that this One is
