Andrew Watson

A comparison of Plotinus' philosophy of art and beauty with that of Plato

Plato's separation of art and beauty created a tension in his writing. His main
preoccupation was with beauty and his regard for art was marginal by comparison.
Plato's treatment of art had further divisions and conflicts not easy to reconcile. On
the one hand, his ideas about art were indivisibly linked to his key moral and
metaphysical concerns in the Republic, where it was concluded art could only eist
in a severely restricted form, and on the other, as in the Phaedrus, art could be so
inspirational it could connect the artist directly with !od in a form of divine mania.
"his essay eplores two key shifts away from Plato, which are often argued for in
Plotinus' philosophy# the high status that Plotinus attributed to art in the earthly
realm$ and how art accesses ultimate reality. "he factors that accounted for these
shifts will be highlighted and tested against the ideas of Plato. %rucial to this is
Plotinus' interpretation of mimesis.
&efore any attempt can be made to eamine Plotinus' central ideas on art and
beauty, it is first necessary to adumbrate his main metaphysical ideas.
At the core of the whole universe is the One, the origin of everything and to which
everything will one day return. However, the One is beyond knowledge and
description, and for it to connect with mortals it mediates through an intelligible
realm comprising 'ntellect and (oul. 'ntellect is in a state of eternal contemplation
of the One, holding perfectly together all intelligible thought, but its role is also
active because it creates the (oul. "he (oul contemplates 'ntellect and is the
intermediary link between the intelligible realm and that of humans$ it too fulfils a
creative role bringing forth all worldly things as well as the souls of individual
beings# it is thus eternal but operates in time and history.
Plotinus argues that humans are weakened and estranged from the One but they
can participate in 'ntellect and (oul and this stirs in them a yearning to return to
the One following a route that is the 'pathway of art'. &eauty emanates from the
One similar to the way that a star discharges light that loses energy as it travels
vast distances through different atmospheres before finally diffusing in its
weakened state on earthly matter.
)ike Plato and Aristotle, Plotinus inherited the Pythagorean definition of beauty
which comprises order, harmony, measure and proportion. Plotinus took issue with
this by asking how Pythagoras' theory could be applied to compound entities
without parts, such as colour or light, because unlike material ob*ects they cannot
be described in terms of symmetry$ yet they can be described as beautiful. "his
conclusion clearly parallels Plato, who in his Philebus argued at +,c-d that non-
composite things like colours 'import their own kind of pleasures' and 'are by their
very nature forever beautiful by themselves'. Plotinus etended his argument to
include spiritual .ualities such as virtue and truth. /irtue can be beautiful, but how
can it be symmetrical or depend on symmetry to account for its beauty0 Plotinus
concluded from this that beauty must essentially be different from symmetry
1Ennead ,.2.,3. Plotinus considers that in a beautiful face where symmetry is a
prominent feature, symmetry is only one manifestation of beauty, not its cause.
&eauty, therefore, is a .uality.
&redin4(antoro &rien5a conclude that for Plotinus, 'the primordial .uality and
fundamental metaphysical attribute of all reality is unity. &eauty also as a universal
characteristic of all reality consists in unity'.6,7 &eauty cannot, therefore, come
from matter, as matter, *ust like symmetry, has no metaphysical unity in and of
itself. 't is rather the '(oul' that 'makes beautiful the bodies which are spoken of as
beautiful$ for since it is a divine thing and a kind of part of beauty, it makes
everything it grasps and masters as beautiful' 1Ennead '.2.2.3. &eauty thus gives a
spiritual charge to matter, imbuing it with its ideal form.
Plotinus thus appears to be close to Plato in the sense that the soul inside humans
desires to be united with the !ood or the One, a state in which &eauty is
apprehended. Plotinus at times uses language that is directly influenced by
passages from Plato, like the following one which is indebted to the Symposium
189:b3. Plotinus talks about the state of pure apprehension of beauty as like being
drunk with wine, 'filled with the nectar, all their soul penetrated with this beauty'
1Ennead +.;.,93. 'n the Phaedrus 8+,a-8+2e, Plato also considered the reaction of
the soul in the presence of beauty, viewing it like a recollection of &eauty itself
which had once been seen by the soul in a previous eistence. Participating in the
form of beauty stirs a remembrance of a former happy state when the absolute
form was once apprehended. &ut, as O'<eara asserts, 'Plotinus sees soul... as
recalling, not *ust one =orm 6ie. of beauty7, but the whole world of =orms'687, or in
other words that which perfectly holds all the forms# the One, or in Plato's terms,
the !ood. "he eperience of beauty in the earthly realm, then, rather than be a
potential distraction or a danger as Plato argued, becomes for Plotinus a distraction
of a noble and good sort, because it carries us immediately away from ugliness and
other base .ualities into the heart of perfection itself, where virtue and beauty co-
mingle.
't is clear that Plotinus was fully committed to elevating the status of art. Art's
mimetic .ualities cannot therefore be understood in a restrictive Platonic sense
advocated in the Republic, whereby art merely imitates ultimate reality in an
inferior way. 'n Plotinian terms, because art manifests beauty in the physical world,
this emphasises its autonomy. Plotinus states that the 'arts do not simply imitate
what they see, but they run back up to the forming principles from which nature
derives$ then also... they do a great deal by themselves, and, since they possess
beauty, they make up what is defective in things'.1Ennead +.;.,3. Plotinus' interest
in looking at and analysing the 'teleological dynamism of human eperience' draws
him closer to Aristotle's ideas of art mimesising nature6:7. "his influence is also
clear in the following passage, which for some has been viewed as a summation of
Plotinus' ideas about art.
)et us suppose a couple of great lumps of stone lying side by side, one shapeless
and untouched by art, the other which has been already mastered by art and
turned into a statue of a god or of a man... and if of a man not *ust of any man but
of one whom art has made up out of every sort of human beauty. "he stone which
has been brought to beauty of form by art will appear beautiful not because it is a
stone... but as a result of the form which art has put into it. >ow the material did
not have this form, but it was in the man who had it in his mind even before it
came into the stone$ but it was in the craftsman, not in so far as he had hands and
eyes, but because he had some share of art. (o this beauty was in the art 1?nneads
+.;.,3.
"his seems to point to the same conclusion that Plato reached in the Phaedrus, at
least by implication, that when an artist is drunk with divine nectar his philosophical
systems are over-ridden and are replaced by a pure communication between him
and !od. Plotinus implies here that this communion is achieved through the artist's
intimate connection with nature. 'n going back to the @eason-Principles or the
forming principles of nature, Plotinus believed that the 'pathway of art' allows one
to travel on a metaphysical *ourney. "he created piece of work becomes one point
on a series of interconnected pathways that, to use the words of ?co, have a
spiritual 'luminous current' running through them.6A7 't is thus the purity of art's
relationship with the One that accounts for Plotinus' high regard of art.
Plato of course argued in Republic that only the philosopher could attain true
knowledge and see true beauty, an apparent contradiction of the arguments
established in the Phaedrus. Plotinus is sure that contemplation of art is the
pathway to !od, in the process of which one automatically assimilates oneself to
beauty or !od. "o describe this, Plotinus, as Plato does in the Symposium or the
Phaedrus, reverts to metaphorical language.
One must come to the sight with a seeing power made akin and like to what is
seen. >o eye ever saw the sun without becoming sun-like, nor can a soul see
beauty without becoming beautiful. Bou must become first all godlike and all
beautiful if you in tend to see !od and beauty 1Ennead ,.2.C3.
&redin4(antora-&rien5a feel that this passage reflects the 'overall structure and
spirit of Plotinus' philosophy' because it is focused on the 'concept of effusive
participation and therefore of universal sympathy and attunement among all the
orders of being'. "hey argue that empathy is a 'kind of cognition' that does not
occur through discursive reasoning or empirical observation and analysis, 'but a
direct, immediate and intuitive apprehension of reality and truth by means of
images'.6+7
%avarnos demonstrated through his study of the original !reek tet that reason, as
used by Plato, contained two meanings# one in the discursive sense$ and the other
in a contemplative, intuitive sense, the development of which was the more
important of the two, being the only way to finally understand &eauty itself.627 'f
we interpret Plato in this way it is always the intuitive faculty that seems to create
genuine insights about ultimate reality$ philosophy is also vital but only to harness
and give structure and clarity to the streaming revelations that had been intuited.
Plotinus is therefore developing to a higher pitch, a strand of thought already at
work in Plato.
"he etent of the influence of Plato's ideas about art on Plotinus ultimately seems
to depend on whether we are comparing Plato as advocate of mania or Plato the
proponent of restrictive mimesis. 'f it is the former, Plotinus' arguments do not
seem .uite as original as they would be if compared with the latter.
)et us accept Plotinus' views that beauty activates matter in a form of a
supernatural current and that we intuitively understand truth and reality through
contemplating images. &ut what sort of images0 How can we be sure that the
viewer is receiving or intuiting a supernatural beauty of the true sort, of a type
which connects to the One0 Plotinus does not seem to account for these difficulties,
which is strange given that he elsewhere acknowledges that evil can be disguised
as beauty. ' may, for eample, be looking at what ' think is a beautiful image but
one which belies a darker spiritual force. 't is here that there appears to be a clear
divergence between Plato and Plotinus. 't is their views about art in the earthly
realm that separates them.
Plato could not give art full autonomy in the earthly realm because he believed in
the primacy of <orality or Dnowledge. "his was, ' submit, because he knew that
art, as revealed in a pure spiritual stream to the poet, as a direct message from
!od 1an earth shattering eperience3, was not something that could be easily
absorbed or communicated, unless the recipient had cultivated the correct moral
atmosphere in his mind and soul. 'n other words, one must first know what
morality is like before one can truly recognise it in art# to attempt it the other way
round creates danger for the individual. "oo many people, immature in their
awareness of what is at stake morally, will sometimes be seduced by a deceptive
veil of beauty covering the art work under consideration$ and, once locked in by its
spell, will be perpetually blinded to true &eauty.
"here emerges another important problem when considering Plotinus' philosophy of
art, one that so haunted @obert Pirsig for a large part of his life, namely that if
&eauty4Euality4Fltimate =orm imbues matter, how can a rational or empirical
analysis of the matter account for the highest metaphysical entity the
One4&eauty4Euality0 'n other words how can a lower principle create the higher,
Fltimate Principle.
Pirsig argued that when the dissecting knife of reason is applied to Euality, it
caused a clean split into classic and romantic, the former representing the rational,
analytical mind, the latter, the intuitive. Pirsig felt that those in either camp knew of
Euality, 'the romantic left it alone and appreciated it for what it was and the classic
tried to turn it into a set of intellectual building blocks for other purposes'.6G7 Pirsig
went on to eamine whether Euality is ob*ective or sub*ective, concluding that it is
neither# it neither resides in the material world nor in the mind.6;7 "his gave rise to
his core statement that Euality was a 'third entity, independent of the two'. "he
Euality event is the cause of the sub*ects and ob*ects, which are then mistakenly
presumed to be the cause of Euality'.6C7
Plotinus' philosophy of art suggests that &eauty is .uality. His whole metaphysical
drama of aesthetics relies on our acknowledgement of the One, a non perceptual
spiritual entity pregnant with non perceptual beauty, or 'beauty above beauty', and
like Pirsig, believed it to be an active, create force, one that defies definition, but
which sets in motion all aesthetic eperiences, all eperiences. "his, as well as
Plotinus' argument for the intuitive apprehension of the One4&eauty, appears to
connect with Pirsig's ideas.
Pirsig faltered, however, when he .uestioned whether Euality was metaphysical or
mystic. 'n attempting to eplain his own philosophical definition of Euality he had
given it metaphysical status, but as he had refused to define it, Euality had to be
mystical, too. =or Pirsig it is in paradoical language that the greatest precision in
communicating the One is achieved.6,97 As %hesterton has said, 'the one created
thing that we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at
everything. )ike the sun at noonday, mysticism eplains everything else by its own
victorious invisibility'6,,7. "he 'victorious invisibility' of Fltimate reality4&eauty,
re.uires us to discover what Pirsig himself found in the Tao Te Ching of )ao "5u,
namely that Euality can be 'looked at but cannot be seen'6,87. What ultimately
links Plotinus with Plato is that by knowing that they cannot define Fltimate &eauty,
they must appeal to the 'eye of the mind' 1Symposium 8,,e3, or close our eyes and
'call instead upon another vision' which is to be 'waked within' us 1Ennead ,.2.C3.
Bibliography
Hugh &redin and )iberato (antoro-&rien5a, Philosophies of Art and Beauty
Introducing Aesthetics, ?dinburgh, 8999.
Fmberto ?co, ?d., On &eauty, )ondon, 899A.
(tephen <acDenna, Plotinus: The Enneads, )ondon, ,C+2.
Hominic I. O'<eara, Plotinus: an introduction to the Enneads, Oford, ,CC+.
@obert <. Pirsig, en and the Art of !otorcycle !aintenance: An In"uiry into
#alues, )ondon, ,CCC.
Footnotes
,. Hugh &redin and )iberato (antoro-&rien5a, Philosophies of Art and &eauty
'ntroducing Aesthetics, ?dinburgh, 8999, p.A;.
8. Hominic I. O'<eara, Plotinus# an introduction to the ?nneads, Oford, ,CC+,
p.C,.
:. &redin4(antoro-&rien5a, 8999, p.A2.
A. Fmberto ?co, ?d., On &eauty, )ondon, 899A, p.,98.
+. &redin4(antoro-&rien5a, 8999, pp.+9-+,.
2. %onstantine %avarnos, Plato's "heory of =ine Art, Athens, ,CG:, pp.,A-,2.
G. @obert < Pirsig, Jen and the Art of <otorcycle <aintenance An 'n.uiry into
/alues, )ondon, ,CCC, p.888.
;. Pirsig, ,CCC, p.8:G.
C. Pirsig, ,CCC, p.8:C.
,9. Pirsig, ,CCC, pp.8+8-8+A.
,,. !. D. %hesterton, Orthodoy, )ondon, ,CC2, p.:8.
,8. %ited in Pirsig, ,CCC, p.8+:.