PLOTINUS
– ON BEAUTY – Ennead I, vi
(Trans. A
H Armstrong)
‘Extracts’
only for Online Meetup Talk - Monday 15th June 2020 - 8.00 pm Greek Time)
(The full 7 page piece can be found
at:
Extract A – Trying to Define ‘Beauty’ In Its
Broadest and Metaphysical Sense
Ch 1
Beauty is mostly in sight, but it
is to be found too in things we hear, in combinations of words and also in
music, and in all music [not only in songs]; for tunes and rhythms are
certainly beautiful: and for those who are advancing upwards from sense perception
ways of life and actions and characters and intellectual activities are
beautiful, and there is the beauty of virtue. If there is any beauty prior to
these, this discussion will reveal it.
Very well then, what is it which
makes us imagine that bodies are beautiful and attracts our hearing to sounds
because of their beauty? And how are all the things which depend on soul
beautiful? Are they all made beautiful by one and the same beauty or is there
one beautifulness in bodies and a different one in other things? And what are
they, or what is it? Some things, bodies for instance, are not beautiful from
the nature of the objects themselves, but by participation, others are beauties
themselves, like the nature of virtue. The same bodies appear sometimes
beautiful, sometimes not beautiful, so that their being bodies is one thing,
their being beautiful another. What is this principle, then, which is present
in bodies? We ought to consider this first. What is it that attracts the gaze
of those who look at something, and turns and draws them to it and makes them
enjoy the sight? If we find this perhaps we can use it as a stepping-stone and
get a sight of the rest.
Nearly everyone says that it is good
proportion of the parts to each other and to the whole, with the addition of
good colour, which produces visible beauty, and that with the objects of sight
and generally with everything else, being beautiful is being well-proportioned
and measured. On this theory nothing single and simple but only a composite
thing will have any beauty. It will be the whole which is beautiful, and the
parts will not have the property of beauty by themselves, but will contribute
to the beauty of the whole. But if the whole is beautiful the parts must be
beautiful too; a beautiful whole can certainly not be composed of ugly parts;
all the parts must have beauty. For these people, too, beautiful colours, and
the light of the sun as well, since they are simple and do not derive their
beautifulness from good proportion, will be excluded from beauty. And how do
they think gold manages to be beautiful? And what makes lightning in the night
and stars beautiful to see? And in sounds in the same way the simple will be
banished, though often in a composition which is beautiful as a whole each
separate sound is beautiful.
Ch 2………
And when, though the same good
proportion is there all the time, the same face sometimes appears beautiful and
sometimes does not, surely we must say that being beautiful is something else
over and above good proportion, and good proportion is beautiful because of
something else? But if when these people pass on to ways of life and beautiful
expressions of thought they allege good proportion as the cause of beauty in
these too, what can be meant by good proportion in beautiful ways of life or
laws or studies or branches of knowledge? How can speculations be
well-proportioned in relation to each other? If it is because they agree, there
can be concord and agreement between bad ideas. The statement that
"righteousness is a fine sort of silliness" agrees with and is in
tune with the saying that "morality is stupidity"; the two fit
perfectly. Again, every sort of virtue is a beauty of the soul, a truer beauty
than those mentioned before; but how is virtue well proportioned? Not like
magnitudes or a number. We grant that the soul has several parts, but what is
the formula for the composition or mixture in the soul of parts or speculations
? And what [on this theory], will the beauty of the intellect alone by itself
be ?
So let us go back to the
beginning and state what the primary beauty in bodies really is. It is
something which we become aware of even at the first glance; the soul speaks of
it as if it understood it, recognises and welcomes it and as it were adapts
itself to it. But when it encounters the ugly it shrinks back and rejects it
and turns away from it and is out of tune and alienated from it. Our
explanation of this is that the soul, since it is by nature what it is and is
related to the higher kind of reality in the realm of being, when it sees
something akin to it or a trace of its kindred reality, is delighted and
thrilled and returns to itself and remembers itself and its own possessions.
What likeness, then, is there
between beautiful things here and There? If there is a likeness, let us agree
that they are alike. But how are both the things in that world and the things
in this beautiful? We maintain that the things in this world are beautiful by
participating in form; for every shapeless thing which is naturally capable of
receiving shape and form is ugly and outside the divine formative power as long
as it has no share in formative power and form. This is absolute ugliness. But
a thing is also ugly when it is not completely dominated by shape and formative
power, since its matter has not submitted to be completely shaped according to
the form.
Ch 3
The form, then, approaches and
composes that which is to come into being from many parts into a single ordered
whole; it brings it into a completed unity and makes it one by agreement of its
parts; for since it is one itself, that which is shaped by it must also be one
as far as a thing can be which is composed of many parts. So beauty rests upon
the material thing when it has been brought into unity, and gives itself to
parts and wholes alike. When it comes upon something that is one and composed
of like parts it gives the same gift to the whole; as sometimes art gives
beauty to a whole house with its parts, and sometimes a nature gives beauty to
a single stone. So then the beautiful body comes into being by sharing in a
formative power which comes from the divine forms………..
Extract B – The Importance
of Virtue and Living Correctly
Ch 4
……………………. Then we must ask the lovers of that which is
outside sense "What do you feel about beautiful ways of life, as we call
them, and beautiful habits and well-ordered characters and in general about
virtuous activities and dispositions and the beauty of Souls? What do you feel
when you see your own inward beauty? How are you stirred to wild exultation,
and long to be with yourselves, gathering your selves together away from your
bodies?" For this is what true lovers feel. But what is it which makes
them feel like this? Not shape or colour or any size, but soul, without colour
itself and possessing a moral order without colour and possessing all the other
light of the virtues; you feel like this when you see, in yourself or in
someone else, greatness of soul, a righteous life, a pure morality, courage
with its noble look,' and dignity and modesty advancing in a fearless, calm and
unperturbed disposition, and the godlike light of intellect shining upon all
this. We love and delight in these qualities, but why do we call them
beautiful? They exist and appear to us and lie who sees them cannot possibly
say anything else except that they are what really exists. What does
"really exists" mean? That they exist as beauties. But the argument
still requires us to explain why real beings make the soul lovable. What is
this kind of glorifying light on all the virtues? Would you like to take the
opposites, the uglinesses in soul, and contrast them with the beauties? Perhaps
a consideration of what ugliness is and why it appears so will help us to find
what we are looking for.
Ch 5
Suppose, then, an ugly soul,
dissolute and unjust, full of all lusts, and all disturbance, sunk in fears by
its cowardice and jealousies by its pettiness, thinking mean and mortal
thoughts as far as it thinks at all, altogether distorted, loving impure
pleasures, living a life which consists of bodily sensations and finding
delight in its ugliness. Shall we not say that its ugliness came to it as a
"beauty" brought in from outside, injuring it and making it impure
and "mixed with a great deal of evil," with its life and perceptions
no longer pure, but by the admixture of evil living a dim life and diluted with
a great deal of death, no longer seeing what a soul ought to see, no longer
left in peace in itself because it keeps on being dragged out, and down, and to
the dark? Impure, I think, and dragged in every direction towards the objects
of sense, with a great deal of bodily stuff mixed into it, consorting much with
matter and receiving a form other than its own it has changed by a mixture
which makes it worse; just as if anyone gets into mud or filth he does not show
any more the beauty which he had: what is seen is what he wiped off on himself
from the mud and filth; his ugliness has come from an addition of alien matter,
and his business, if he is to be beautiful again, is to wash and clean himself
and so be again what he was before. So we shall be right in saying that the
soul becomes ugly by mixture and dilution and inclination towards the body and
matter.
This is the soul's ugliness, not
being pure and unmixed, like gold, but full of earthiness; if anyone takes the
earthy stuff away the gold is left, and is beautiful, when it is singled out
from other things and is alone by itself. In the same way the soul too, when it
is separated from the lusts which it has through the body with which it
consorted too much, and freed from its other affections, purged of what it gets
from being embodied, when it abides alone has put away all the ugliness which
came from the other nature….
Extract C – How to Make
Ourselves More Beautiful
Ch 7
So we must ascend again to the
good, which every soul desires. Any-one who has seen it knows what I mean when
I say that it is beautiful. It is desired as good, and the desire for it is
directed to good, and the attainment of it is for those who go up to the higher
world and are converted and strip off what we put on in our descent; (just as
for those who go up to the celebrations of sacred rites there are
purifications, and strippings off of the clothes they wore before, and going up
naked) until, passing in the ascent all that is alien to the God, one sees with
one's self alone That alone, simple, single and pure,' from which all depends
and to which all look and are and live and think : for it is cause of life and
mind and being. If anyone sees it, what passion will he feel, what longing in
his desire to be united with it, what a shock of delight!
The man who has not seen it may
desire it as good, but he who has seen it glories in its beauty and is full of
wonder and delight, enduring a shock which causes no hurt, loving with true
passion and piercing longing; he laughs at all other loves and despises what he
thought beautiful before; it is like the experience of those who have met
appearances of gods or spirits and do not any more appreciate as they did the
beauty of other bodies. "What then are we to think, if anyone contemplates
the absolute beauty which exists pure by itself, uncontaminated by flesh or
body, not in earth or heaven, that it may keep its purity?" All these
other things are external additions and mixtures and not primary, but derived
from it……………….
(Extract C part 2 -
‘practically’)
Ch 8
….. But how shall we find the
way? What method can we devise? How can one see the "inconceivable beauty
" which stays within in the holy sanctuary and does not come out where the
profane may see it? Let him who can, follow and come within, and leave outside
the sight of his eyes and not turn back to the bodily splendours which he saw
before. When he sees the beauty in bodies he must not run after them; we must
know that they are images, traces, shadows, and hurry away to that which they
image. For if a man runs to the image and wants to seize it as if it was the
reality (like a beautiful reflection playing on the water, which some story
somewhere, I think, said riddlingly a man wanted to catch and sank down into
the stream and disappeared) then this man who clings to beautiful bodies and
will not let them go, will, like the man in the story, but in soul, not in
body, sink down into the dark depths where intellect has no delight, and stay
blind in Hades, consorting with shadows there and here.
This would be truer advice
"Let us fly to our dear country." What then is our way of escape, and
how are we to find it? We shall put out to sea, as Odysseus did, from the witch
Circe or Calypso as the poet says, I think with a hidden meaning, and was not
content to stay though he had delights of the eyes and lived among much beauty
of sense.' Our country from which we came is there, our Father is there. How
shall we travel to it, where is our way of escape? We cannot get there on foot;
for our feet only carry us everywhere in this world, from one country to
another. You must not get ready a carriage, either, or a boat. Let all these
things go, and do not look. Shut your eyes, and change to and wake another way
of seeing, which everyone has but few use.
And what does this inner sight
see? When it is just awakened it is not at all able to look at the brilliance
before it. So that the soul must be trained, first of all to look at beautiful
ways of life : then at beautiful works, not those which the arts produce, but
the works of men who have a name for goodness : then look at the souls of the
people who produce the beautiful works. How then can you see the sort of beauty
a good soul has?
Ch 9
Go back into yourself and look;
and if you do not yet see yourself beautiful, then, just as someone making a
statue which has to be beautiful cuts away here and polishes there and makes
one part smooth and clears another till he has given his statue a beautiful
face, so you too must cut away excess and straighten the crooked and clear the
dark and make it bright, and never stop "working on your statue" till
the divine glory of virtue shines out on you, till you see " self-mastery
enthroned upon its holy seat." If you have become this, and see it, and
are at home with yourself in purity, with nothing hindering you from becoming
in this way one, with no inward mixture of anything else, but wholly yourself,
nothing but true light, not measured by dimensions, or bounded by shape into
littleness, or expanded to size by unboundedness, but everywhere unmeasured,
because greater than all measure and superior to all quantity; when you see
that you have become this, then you have become sight; you can trust yourself
then; you have already ascended and need no one to show you; concentrate your
gaze and see. This alone is the eye that sees the great beauty.
But if anyone comes to the sight
bleary eyed with wickedness, and unpurified, or weak and by his cowardice unable
to look at what is very bright, he sees nothing, even if someone shows him what
is there and possible to see. For one must come to the sight with a seeing
power made akin and like to what is seen. No eye ever saw the sun without
becoming sun-like,' nor can a soul see beauty without becoming beautiful. You
must become first all godlike and all beautiful if you intend to see God and
beauty.
First the soul will come in its
ascent to intellect and there will know the Forms, all beautiful, and will
affirm that these, the Ideas, are beauty; for all things are beautiful by
these, by the products and essence of intellect. That which is beyond this we
call the nature of the Good, which holds beauty as a screen before it. So in a
loose and general way of speaking the Good is the primary beauty; but if one
distinguishes the intelligibles [from the Good] one will say that the place of
the Forms is the intelligible beauty, but the Good is That which is beyond, the
"spring and origin" of beauty; or one will place the Good and the
primal beauty on the same level: in any case, however, beauty is in the intelligible
world.
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