Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3 / In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods

by Plotinus

THE GOOD IS FREE, BUT NOT MERELY BY CHANCE.

Here some rash person,[186] drawing his arguments from some other school of thought, may object that, "If the Good be indeed good, this occurs only by chance. A man is not master of what he is (that is, of his own nature), because his own nature does not depend on himself (that is, is not due to self-determination). Consequently, he enjoys neither freedom nor independence, as he acts or withholds action as he is forced by necessity." Such an assertion is gratuitous, and even self-contradictory. It destroys all conception of will, liberty and independence, reducing these terms to being labels, and illusions. He who advances such an opinion is forced to maintain not only that it is not within the power of anybody to do or not to do some thing, but also that the word "liberty" arouses no conception in his mind, and is meaningless. If however he insist that he does understand it, he will soon be forced to acknowledge that the conception of liberty bears a conformity with the reality which he at first denied. The conception of a thing exerts no interference on its substance ("being"); it can do nothing by itself, nor can it lead to hypostatic existence. It is limited to pointing out to us which being obeys others, which being possesses free will, which being depends on no other, but is master of its own action, a privilege characteristic of eternal beings so far as they are eternal, or to beings which attain the Good without obstacle (like the Soul), or possess it (like Intelligence). It is therefore absurd to say that the Good, which is above them, seeks other higher good beyond itself.

BEING AND ACTUALIZATION CONSTITUTE ONE SELF-EXISTENT PRINCIPLE.

Nor is it any more accurate to insist that the Good exists by chance. Chance occurs only in the lower and multiple things. We on the contrary insist that the First does not exist by chance, and that one cannot say that He is not master of His birth, since He was not born.[187] It is not any less absurd to assert that He is not free because He acts according to His nature; for such an assertion would seem to imply that freedom consists in actions contrary to one's nature. Last, His solitariness (or, unity) does not deprive Him of liberty, because this unity does not result from His being hindered by anybody else (from having anything else), but from His being what He is, from His satisfying (or, pleasing) Himself, as He could not be any better; otherwise, it would be implied that one would lose one's liberty on attaining the Good. If such an assertion be absurd, is it not the summit of absurdity to refuse to predicate autocratic liberty of the Good because of His being good, because He remains within Himself and because since all beings aspire towards Him, He Himself aspires to nothing else than Himself, and has no need of anything? As His higher hypostatic existence is simultaneously His higher actualization—for in Him these two aspects fuse into one, since they do so even in Intelligence—His essence is no more conformed to His actualization, than His actualization to His essence. He cannot be said to actualize according to His nature, nor that His actualization and His higher life are traced up into His higher being (so to speak). But as His higher being and His higher (actualization) are intimately united, and coexist since all eternity, the result is that these two entities constitute a single Principle, which depends on itself, and nothing else.

PHYSICAL QUALITIES USED OF THE SUPREME ONLY BY ANALOGY.

8. We conceive of the self-rule as no accident of the Good; but, from the self-rule proper to (all) beings, we rise, by abstraction of the contraries, to Him who Himself is liberty and independence, thus applying to this Principle the lower attributes that we borrow from inferior beings (that is, the Soul and Intelligence), because of our impotence to speak properly of Him. Such indeed are the terms that we could use in referring to Him, though it would be absolutely impossible to find the proper expression, not only to predicate anything of Him, but even to say anything whatever about Him. For the most beautiful and venerable things do no more than imitate Him, who is their principle. Nevertheless, from another standpoint, He is not their principle, since this their imitation must be denied, and we must withdraw, as too inferior, even the terms "liberty" and "self-rule," for these terms seem to imply a tendency towards something else, an obstacle, even if only to avoid it; the coexistence of other beings, even if only to imitate Him uninterruptedly. Now no tendency should be attributed to the Good. He is what He is before all other things, since we do not even say of Him, "He is," so as not to establish any connection between Him and "beings." Neither can we say of Him, "according to His nature"; for this expression indicates some later relation. It is indeed applied to intelligible entities, but only so far as they proceed from some other principle; that is why it is applied to "being," because it is born of the (Good). But if we refer "nature" to temporal things, it could not be predicated of "being"; for to say that "being" does not exist by itself would be to affect its existence; to say that it derives its existence from something else is equivalent to asserting that it does not exist by itself. Nor should we say of the Good that "His nature is accidental," nor speak of contingency in connection with (the Divinity); for He is contingent neither for Himself nor for other beings; contingency is found only in the multiple beings which, already being one thing, have accidentally become some other. How indeed could the First exist accidentally? for He did not reach His present condition fortuitously enough to enable us even to ask, "How did He become what He is?" No chance led Him (to become His present self), nor led Him to hypostatic existence; for chance and luck did not exist anteriorly to Him, since even they proceed from a cause, and exist only in things that grow[188] (or, "become").

"CONTINGENCE" MIGHT BE APPLIED TO THE SUPREME, IF THE WORD BE RE-DEFINED.

9. If however anybody applied the term "contingency" to the Divinity, we should not dispute about the word, but go back of it to its underlying meaning. Do you, by it, mean that the First is a principle of particular nature and power; and that if He had had a different nature, He would still, as principle, have conformed to the nature He would have had? Also, that if He had been less perfect, He would still have actualized in conformity with His being? We should answer such an assertion thus: it was impossible for the higher Principle of all things to be contingent; or to be less perfect accidentally, or good in some other manner, as some higher thing that was less complete. As the principle of all things must be better than they, He must be determinate; and by this is here meant that He exists in an unique manner. This, however, not by necessity; for necessity did not exist before Him. Necessity exists only in the beings that follow the first Principle, though the latter impose no constraint upon them. It is by Himself that the First exists uniquely. He could not be anything but what He is; He is what He ought to have been; and not by accident. He is that; He had to be what He was. So "He who is what He ought to have been" is the principle of the things that ought to exist. Not by accident, nor contingently, therefore, is He what He is; He is what He had to be; though here the term "had to be" is improper. (If we be permitted to explain what we mean by an illustration, we may say that) the other beings have to await the appearance of their king—which means, that He shall posit Himself as what He really is, the true King, the true Principle, the true Good. Of Him it must not even be said that He actualizes in conformity with the Good, for then He would seem subordinate to some other principle; we must say only that He is what He is. He is not conformed to the Good, because He is the Good itself.

NOT EVEN ESSENCE IS CONTINGENT, LET ALONE SUPER-ESSENCE.

Besides, there is nothing contingent, even in (that which is beneath the First), namely, Essence-in-itself; for if any contingency inhered in it, it itself would be contingent. But Essence cannot be contingent, for not fortuitously is it what it is; nor does it derive what it is from anything else, because the very nature of Essence is to be Essence. This being the case, how could "He who is above Essence" be considered as being what He is fortuitously? For He begat Essence, and Essence is not what it is fortuitously, since it exists in the same manner as "Being," which is what is "Being" and Intelligence—otherwise, one might even say that Intelligence was contingent, as if it could have been anything but what is its nature. Thus He who does not issue from Himself, and does not incline towards anything whatever, is what He is in the most special sense.