Plotinus' Ennead I.3: On Dialectic
translated from Ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick
What skill or method or practice brings us back to where it is necessary to journey? Where it is necessary to go, that it is to the Good and the First Principle, let it be assumed as having been granted and having been shown through many things—and indeed even through which things that is shown there was a certain bringing up. But who is it necessary for the one being brought back up to be? Is it not then the one, he says, having seen all or most things who in the first birth takes birth as a man who will be a philosopher or some musician or lover? Truly, the philosopher (ascends) by nature—the musician and the lover have to be brought up. What, then, is the way? Is it one and the same for all these, or is there a certain one for each one? The journey, then, is twofold for all—either going up or having come to be above. For the first is from the things below, but the second indeed is for those who are already in the noetic realm and, so to speak, have put their foot in there, for whom there is the necessity to travel until they would come to the furthest point of the place, which then is actually the end of the journey, when someone would be at the noetical topmost endpoint. But let the second wait—before that it is necessary to try to talk about the bringing up.
First, then, it is necessary for us to distinguish those men beginning from the musician, saying who he is by nature. It is necessary then to reckon him as easily moved and being excited towards beauty, but not very able to be moved by beauty-in-itself, but ready to be moved by its chance reflections, as it were. As the timid are towards noises, thus also that one is towards sounds and ready for the beauty in them, but always fleeing the out of tune and the not one in songs and harmonies and pursuing the rhythmical and graceful. So after those sense-perceptible sounds and harmonies and figures, he needs to be thus brought to separate the material stuff from that from which come the proportions and formulas and needs to be brought to the beauty in those and taught that those were concerning which he had been excited, the noetical harmony and the beauty in that and universal beauty, not any certain beauty only, and the understandings of philosophy need to be put into him, from which he needs to be brought to confidence in what things he doesn't know he has. But what understandings these are will be dealt with later.
But the lover, into whom the musician may also be transformed and being transformed either remain or go beyond, has a good memory somehow of beauty—but he is unable to get knowledge of it being separate, but being struck by the beauties in the sense of sight has been excited about these. He needs to be taught not to have been excited having fallen down around one body, but needs to be brought to all bodies showing by the understanding the beauty that is the same in all of them and that is other than the bodies and that needs to be said to be from elsewhere and that it is more in other things, showing, for instance, beautiful practices and beautiful customs—for this is already becoming accustomed to the lovely in things without body—and that beauty is also in arts and in knowledges and in virtues. Then, next, these need to be made into one and he needs to be taught how they come to be. But from the virtues already one can go up to Nous, the Divine mind-thought, to Being—and from there one needs to traverse the journey above.
The philosopher, however, is this one who is ready by nature and winged, so to speak, and not in need of separation, as are those others, having been moved to the above, but being at a loss is only in need of being shown. He needs to be shown, therefore, and released, himself wanting to be by nature and long since having been released. He needs to be given mathematical-type lessons for habituation in apprehension of and confidence in the bodiless—for he will accept this easily being a lover of learning—and, being virtuous by nature, he needs to be brought to the completion of virtues and, after the mathematical-type lessons, given understandings of dialectic and made wholly a dialectical one.
But what is the dialectic, which it is necessary to give over to the previous ones also? It is the practiced condition being able to say with understanding about each thing what each thing is and why it is different from other things and what is common with the things in which it is and where each of these is and if it is what it is and how many real beings there are and, on the other hand, the not really beings, different from the real beings. It also reckons about good and about not good and how many things are under the category of the good and how many things are under the opposite and what is the eternal, clearly, and the not of such a sort—by knowledge about all things, not by opinion. Stopping the soul from wandering around the sense-perceptible, it settles it in the noetical realm and there has its business getting rid of the false and nourishing the soul in what is called the plain of truth, using the dividing of Plato for distinguishing the Forms and also for knowing what is, using it for the primary genera, and noetically plaiting the things coming from these, until it would go through all the noetical, and back again unloosing them—it would come to which point it has covered the principle—but then it rests, as as far as certainly the soul being There in quiet no longer busying itself about anything looks, becoming gathered into one. It gives the so-called logical business about premises and syllogisms, as it would the knowing how to write, to another skill—some things of which it thinks are necessary before the actual art, but judging these things as also all others and considering some things useful and others superfluous and of the method that wants them.
But from where does this knowledge have its principles? In fact, the Divine Mind-Thought gives clear principles, if a given soul is able to receive them. Then, next, it puts together the things in order and twines together and takes apart, until it has come to complete intelligence, nous. For this, he says, is the purest part of intelligence and wisdom. It is a necessity, therefore, that being the most valued practiced state of those in us, it is about Real Being and the most valued thing—wisdom being about Real Being and intelligence, nous, about that beyond Being. What then, isn't philosophy the most valued thing? Or, are philosophy and dialectic the same thing? In fact, it is the valued part of philosophy. For it is, then, necessary not to think this to be an instrument of the philosopher. For it is not bare theories and rules, but it is about actual things and has the Real Beings as its material, as it were—it comes to them by a journey, however, having actual things with its theorems. But the false and the sophistical it knows as something it happens to have come across as being made by another, as alien, judging the false by the truths in itself, knowing, whenever someone brings it forth, whatever is contrary to the measuring rod of the True. About propositions, therefore, it does not know—for these are (just) letters—but knowing the True, it knows what they call propositions, and it universally knows the movements of the soul, what it posits and what it denies, and if it denies what it posits or something else, and if things are different or the same. Apprehending by intuition whatever is presented, as also sense-perception does, it gives concern for exactness of language to another skill that is fond of that.
That then is the valued part—for philosophy also has other things—for it also observes about nature receiving help from dialectic, as also the other arts use arithmetic besides, though this receives more closely from the dialectic. It also looks concerning moral customs from There in the same way, but adding the practiced states and the practices, from which the practiced conditions come forth. The rational practiced states even already have the things from There as their own—for this is the case even though they are mostly with material stuff—and the other virtues have rationality in their own experiences and actions, but lower wisdom is a certain higher reflection and more to do with the universal and if things are reciprocally implied and if it is necessary to follow or not a certain course now or later or if another is wholly better. But the dialectic and the higher wisdom still more universally and immaterially bring forward all things for use by the lower wisdom. But are the lower virtues and wisdom below able to be without dialectic and higher wisdom? In fact, imperfectly and incompletely. But is it possible to be a wise and dialectical man without those lower virtues and wisdom? In fact, it could not be at all, but they would either be present before or increase together at the same time. And perhaps someone might have natural virtues from which the complete ones come as wisdom comes to be. Wisdom, therefore, comes after natural virtues—then next it would complete the moral characteristics. The natural virtues being in existence both they and wisdom already increase together and are completed—the one going before has completed the other. For altogether the natural virtue has an incomplete eye and moral character, and the principles from which we have them are the greatest thing for both.
Translation © 2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
