Horatio Parker

It's not a different entity. It's the intelligible of the One. It is of the One, but a view of the One only, the portion that can be communicated and discussed. Theologically, the First Son of God.

Same thing: the Form of the Good, Idea of the Good, the Thought in the Mind of God, the Logos. In Plotinus, the Nous, the Second Hypostasis or the Intellectual-Principle.

I said long ago in this thread that Jesus is the theological(since mythic offends you) representation of the Form of the Good.

Colossians 1:15
The Demiurge and the Good are indeed the same. Again, the Demiurge is using the language of myth and the Good the language of philosophy.

It depends on what you mean by "created". There is no ex nihilo, because among other things there is a class of eternal things which exists outside of time. What is created is order. The reason and beauty which emanates from the One imparts those qualities to matter.

The Timaeus has been described as an analogy for thought, which to me is a good illustration of the value of myth. We all perceive and think, so we are in a sense continually creating the universe.

I think this is a rhetorical flourish. "as such"

If you can demonstrate Plotinus consistently referring to Nous as a God, I'll concede the point. But I'm not worried.

Elijah

I think it is often considered a different entity because of the Law of non contradiction. A thing can’t be knowable and unknowable at the same time so a division is made between the entity that is knowable from the entity that isn’t.

“The Good must, then, be the Good not by any Act, not even by virtue of its Intellection, but by its very rest within Itself. Existing beyond and above Being, it must be beyond and above the Intellectual-Principle and all Intellection.”

The secondary entity acts in imitation of the first entity.

“We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably
the same, in no way subject to decline, acting in imitation, as true
as its nature allows, of the Father.”

Ex nihilo was the answer I was looking for when I asked about the difference between Platonic and Christian philosophy. Plontis and Plato differ in that matter is thought to be preexistent to creation of order and Plontis thought that the order was without beginning… I think.

“The phrase "He was good" [used by Plato of the Demiurge] refers to
the Idea of the All; and its very indefiniteness signifies the utter
absense of relation to Time: so that even this Universe has had no
temporal beginning; and if we speak of something "before" it.”

I’m not sure why you don’t think the label “god” applies to the spiritual elements in discussion. What is your understanding of the word “god” that makes you think he isn’t talking about what would be understood as a god?

As long as there is any such involuntary action, the nature is twofold, God and Demi-God, or rather God in association with a nature of a lower power: when all the involuntary is suppressed, there
is God unmingled, a Divine Being of those that follow upon The First.

"to live among the gods" means to live
among the Intelligible-Existents, for these are the Immortals.

“Eternity, thus, is of the order of the supremely great; it
proves on investigation to be identical with God: it may fitly be
described as God made manifest, as God declaring what He is, as existence without jolt or change, and therefore as also the firmly
living.”

“The reason is given by Plato: the celestial order is from God, the
living things of earth from the gods sprung from God; and it is law
that the offspring of God endures.”



“For it is to the Gods, not to the Good, that our Likeness must
look: to model ourselves upon good men is to produce an image of an
image: we have to fix our gaze above the image and attain Likeness
to the Supreme Exemplar.”

“So we come to the scope of the purification: that understood,
the nature of Likeness becomes clear. Likeness to what Principle?
Identity with what God?”

“Therefore, first let each become godlike and each beautiful who
cares to see God and Beauty. So, mounting, the Soul will come first to
the Intellectual-Principle and survey all the beautiful Ideas in the
Supreme and will avow that this is Beauty, that the Ideas are
Beauty. For by their efficacy comes all Beauty else, but the offspring
and essence of the Intellectual-Being. What is beyond the
Intellectual-Principle we affirm to be the nature of Good radiating
Beauty before it.”

Horatio Parker

More Aristotle. Can you please require Plato to be consistent internally and not with any philosopher who happens to buttress your attempts at argument?

Anyway, the only way to know if the relation of the Form of the Good to the Good Itself violates any law of Aristotle or Plato's Rule of Opposites from which it originates is to know the Good Itself. Which we don't.

There's something very basic here which you don't appear to understand: there is a difference between the totality or being of a thing and what we can say about it, IOW it's intelligibility. It doesn't follow that there are two separate entities. If we consider a block of wood, we can know things about it: mass, dimension, location and other things, but that information is not a separate entity from the block of wood itself.

Another point that your're missing is the universe isn't a finished product; no conclusion has been reached. There is no finished product to consider.
Sounds as if Plotinus is in agreement with the first hypotheses of the the Parmenides.

Language of convenience. The whole point is to demonstrate the unity of the universe. It's the One, not the Two.

In the Platonic tradition, there is a class of eternal things which do not change and exist outside of time.

I'm not surprised you're not sure: you don't understand. My objection is that the Form of the Good does not constitute a second entity, another One besides the One.

I have no objection to using "God" in a theological or mythical context, and to suggest I do indicates you either don't read my posts or don't understand them.

Plotinus was a mystic and his use of language sometimes reflects that. But to jump from tree to tree finding little God references without understanding the forest is futile.

Horatio Parker

It occurred to me that this issue might be addressed in Against the Gnostics, and sure enough:

Elijah

It sounds like you are back at pantheism again. It is not totally impossible that I have misunderstood a pantheist as a panentheist because there is history of me doing that with Spinoza but I don’t think that is the case with Plotinus. I don’t think that Nous is an adjective/adverb of the universe, and the totality universe should be understood as One. Or the One should be understood as the adjective/adverb that unifies what seems like dualities that can’t be understood but an actual thing itself.
I think it is instinctive to think of pantheism when you hear things like “the One” and “unity” is the fundamental principle. And this is a standard pantheist response to get around the duality of motion and rest:

“The Intellectual-Principle has no such progress in any region; its
movement is a stationary act, for it turns upon itself. And this is why the All, circling as it does, is at the same time at rest.”

We could think he is describing a monist universe that transcends duality with unity somehow but he also makes it clear that he isn’t talking about just the material universe but the spiritual elements actually exist and aren’t just adjectives of the One.

“If it is nothing, only the pneuma exists, the "certain state"
being no more than a word; this leads imperatively to the assertion
that Matter alone exists, Soul and God mere words, the lowest alone
is.
If on the contrary this "configuration" is really existent-
something distinct from the underlie or Matter, something residing
in Matter but itself immaterial as not constructed out of Matter, then
it must be a Reason-Principle, incorporeal, a separate Nature.”

That make it sound like he was your standard platonic idealist. “Wood” and “block” are eternal spiritual forms that create/form the temporal particular object we see. Block and wood aren’t just words with no existence. The One isn’t an adjective or label for the totality of everything, it is a an actual spiritual being at work within everything. While it is unknowable we can know a few things about it. The reason it is unknowable is that is found in each idea so it becomes undetectable but if it is found in each idea then all the ideas are unified by that principle. So we can know that not only is it good but that it has something to do with unity because it is found in everything.

I don’t know why you would assume that. The standard Christian belief is the world coming in line with the spiritual world. “As in Heaven so on earth.”
I don’t know about it being a language of convenience. You said you would concede your point if shown that he used the label “god” for the intellectual entity. What was the point you were going to concede if he referred to Nous as a god? And why was it an issue?
There is two kinds of eternal things. Things that have been begotten/created, meaning they have a beginning but they are constant and don’t change, meaning they aren’t subject to time. Then there are eternal things, as understood by Plotinus, that have always existed because there is no beginning to the universe or the eternal things.

What makes him what kind of mystic?
That is speaking of the Intellectual principle which before is the One. From above:

“We need not, then, go seeking any other Principles; this- the
One and the Good- is our First; next to it follows the Intellectual
Principle, the Primal Thinker; and upon this follows Soul. Such is the
order in nature. The Intellectual Realm allows no more than these
and no fewer.”

Before that Plotinus points out another difference between the two things in discussion.

“We have seen elsewhere that the Good, the Principle, is
simplex, and, correspondingly, primal- for the secondary can never
be simplex- that it contains nothing: that it is an integral Unity.”

The first principle is usually thought to have one thing it does. The secondary principle is thought to do a spectrum of things. As Paul said One Spirit but many gifts. There was often objection to dividing up the intellectual realm and it looks like Plotinus is expressing that point. Not that the intellectual principle is synonymous from the first principle.

Horatio Parker

You are not dealing with the totality/intelligibility distinction. Try reading my post again. You're not getting it.
Back to the point above. It has to do with the relationship of intelligibility to the One.

Nous is not a God. Nous is the part of God that we can understand in common, that we can communicate about. There is One God Only.

There are no created eternal things in the Platonic universe.

No. It's speaking of the relationship of the IP(Nous) and the One.

Elijah

I get it, I just don’t agree that the “One” should be understood as the totality of everything, but a specific thing, with a specific identity.
Yes, if we use “God” to mean the totality of everything then there is only one. If we use the term “God” for father of the universe, then there is also only one, but when we use “god” for spiritual constants in the universe that produce the phenomenon, there are two distinct spiritual elements (in the discussion so far). Both spiritual elements (gods) may occupy the same space/time and work together in unison but because the identity includes contradiction then we must be speaking of two distinct things/gods.
Neo-Platonic. There is six centuries between Plato and Plotinus and there are subtle differences between the two. It’s not like confusing a Platonic influenced work for Homeric but still a mistake to not recognize that ideas evolve with time.
I see it as not talking about the relationship between the knowable (Nous) and the unknowable (One) but trying to get around different identities for the “knower” and the “known” which he didn’t see as a contradiction requiring a two identities.

Horatio Parker

The One is the totality of the formal universe, not the totality of the material universe.

You are speaking of two gods, not Plotinus.

I'm not aware of a class of created eternal things in Plotinus. Can you supply references or are you extrapolating again.

Understanding how they are One is the point. That's the subtlety, the challenge. He's not trying to get around anything, he's attempting to define and clarify degrees of distance from the One.

The other thing he's doing is creating a conceptual path to enable vision of the One. Besides a conceptual system, it's also a tool to enable contemplation. It's just as important to be able to draw the mind into a state of being closer to the One.

To see them as separate is ok, but it's not Platonism.

Elijah

Formal universe? Do you mean something understood like the Pleroma? If the One/Good is supposed to be understood as the Pleroma, and Nous/Demiurge is the intelligible aspect of the Pleroma, then what is the label that is applied to the other part of the One?
What label do you think should be applied to the two things in discussion if not “god”? And what is particular about the definition that is attached to your label that makes it incompatible with what definition of the word “god”. Two words and two definitions please.
Plotinus didn’t believe in anything created because he believed the universe has been around forever. That is the difference that you seem to be missing between him and Plato. Plato was putting forward a more rational understanding of the universe and creation to combat the superstitious understanding put forward by the poets. Fast forward a handful of centuries and Plotinus comes up with the easiest solution to the age old discussion about where the universe came from, which was it didn’t come from anywhere, it has always been. That’s all that I see he did. Maybe he did what you are suggesting but I haven’t seen clear evidence of that yet and see what seems to be the contrary. What you are suggesting is that he said the sun and the actors behind the people chained in Plato’s cave should be understood as one and the same thing. If that was his goal then I think he would have made a better/clearer effort to explain how that was possible.
I couldn’t follow, sorry. “Degrees of distance” from the One? They aren’t separate because they both occupy all space but they are distinct, in that they have identities that make them being understood as singular illogical.

Horatio Parker

No. The universe of the forms.


Your statement:
Please provide textual support for created eternal things in Plotinus. Or Plato, for that matter.

Perception. To be, to perceive, in the material universe is to be further from the One. Or, since you brought up the Cave, to be in the Cave is to be further from the One than outside.