It is Being that is dear to us

Reading Plotinus, treatise I.6[1]: On Beauty. Part IV

I. §I.6.5. 

I.1. Non-sensible beauty

“We should next ask those who are indeed enamoured of the beauties not available to the senses: ‘What state are you in regarding the practices said to be beautiful and in regard to beautiful ways of being in the world and to self-controlled characters and, generally, to products of virtue or dispositions, I mean the beauty of souls?’”

(Plotinus, I.6.5. 1-5)

Concerning the non-sensible beauties, the experience of beauty is much more intense than with sensible beauties. Why? True Beauty resides in the Intelligible, and the closer we get to the Intelligible realm, to our true selves, the closer we get to true Beauty. It is a “frenzied and excited state”, Plotinus says, to feel yourself being extricated from body, to feel the presence of Intelligible Beauty.

Plotinus now asks how it is possible that one feels this way, for being detached from the body and all that is sensible, one cannot be moved by what usually ignites beauty: “shapes, colours or some magnitude.”(I.6.5. 10). Rather, one is moved by soul, which is without colour, shape, or magnitude. Plotinus here reflects the view laid out in Plato’s Phaedrus, where it is said that the intelligible world is “without color and without shape and without solidity, a being that really is what it is, the subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman.”(Plato, Phaedrus, 247c)

When one touches the Intelligible —through virtuous action, or through a contemplative effort in which one fully extricates oneself from body—, one feels moved by this non-sensible realm. A movement, not ignited by shape, colour or magnitude, but entirely “nourished by intelligence and pure knowledge.”(Plato, Phaedrus, 247d) It is a pure movement, in which the soul, now being in touch with its essential way of moving, starts moving in a manner according only to its essence. In other words, its moves along its natural motion, which is self-motion. Conversely, when we are moved by material things with a certain shape, colour, and magnitude, we are not moved by ourselves, following only our own motion. Rather, we are affected by a different motion —the motion of the thing moving us—, a motion which invites us to stray from our natural motion, and move with the thing in question. 

And recovering its original motion, the soul feels itself in a frenzied and excited state. But one also feels this way when one recognizes non-sensible beauty in someone else’s actions, be it to a lesser degree. You see the “awe-inspiring visage of courage or dignity and reserve circling around a calm and unaffected disposition with divine intellect shining on them all.”(I.6.5. 15)

How is it, that in both a complete resignation of body in contemplative intuition, and in virtue, the same beauty shines forth? We can understand that the form of Beauty becomes intelligible when we renounce sensible beauty and ascend to what is prior to matter. But how can this same Beauty shine forth in virtuous action? Isn’t it so that virtuous action always happens in the sensible world? In fact, Plotinus tries to say that in both cases —contemplation and action—, what makes them beautiful is the same thing. In both cases, we see Soul rising above the dominion of matter, rising above all that is sensible. Someone who is able to extricate himself from matter completely through contemplation, thereby, as soul, exerts his superiority over matter. And someone who shows great courage in battle for example, thereby, as soul, shows his superiority over the fear of (bodily) death. In both contemplation of the divine, and in virtuous action, man grasps the higher elements of reality, and in grasping these, he shows himself to be more than a mere piece of matter. He shows himself to be a soul, who has the power to shape matter in accordance with reason. In both contemplation and action, man shows himself to be a master, and not a slave. Plotinus will say that the soul, when action virtuously, or when ascending completely through contemplation, “becomes form, and an expressed principle.” (I.6.6. ) We have seen that the Forms, residing with Intellect, are the only things that can be said to have true creative power. The Forms influence matter, and matter is in-formed by the Forms. For example, the Form of Self-Control makes it so that our behaviour is directed towards the end of expressing self-control. Self-control, when fully embodied, has the almost divine power of exerting power over matter. And thus, when the soul acts in accordance with the Forms, it can be said to literally become form. Why? Because the soul is now no longer like a piece of matter, influenced in an infinite chain of causes and effects by other pieces of matter. Rather, the soul becomes a cause unto itself, a ‘form’ having the power to in-form matter, to create its own path, in accordance with Intellect’s thoughts —the Forms. Like Intellect shapes reality in accordance with its own thoughts(the Forms), so the soul living in accordance with the Forms is able to shape his own reality.

Plato said that in touching the intelligible, the mind is “nourished by intelligence and pure knowledge.” We can understand this easily when it comes to contemplation. For in contemplation, removing thought from thinking about any particular thinking and attaining self-thinking thought, we attain the manner of thinking of Intellect —thought thinking itself. There is here a union between thought and what it thinks, hence, “pure knowledge.” Knowledge, not of some particular thing, but of knowledge itself. A knowing which knows itself —thought which thinks itself. 

How is this “pure knowledge” present in virtuous action? In virtuous action, one does what one knows to be right or true. And hence, there is no longer a difference between truth and one’s actions. Between truth and action, there arises union. Here, Intellect no longer thinks one thing, while we do something else. Rather, we live in accordance with Intellect. And as such, it can be said that the gap between what Intellect thinks (the Forms), and between us as individual souls, has closed. In the Intelligible, there is no difference between Intellect’s essence, and its actual essence. It does what it is. With us, however, we are one thing —a Soul with a Divine lineage going back all the way to the One—, yet we do something else —we attach ourselves to matter, thus forgetting our lineage. But through virtue, living in accordance with the Forms, we can make this place a little bit more like the life of Intellect. Through virtue, we can create a life in which there is no great difference between who we are by essence, and how we live our existence. This is the ethical goal of Plotinus. The Forms or Ideas; of Beauty, Self-Control, Courage, Wisdom, etc., when truly expressed by the individual soul, bring the individual soul into harmony with Intellect’s Forms. 

Hence, virtue is the way in which we allow the unity and self-thinking nature of Intellect to shine forth in the sensible world. And touching Intellect, where Beauty resides, the soul “is delighted at last to be seeing what is real and watching what is true, feeding on all this and feeling wonderful.” (Plato, Phaedrus, 247d)

Lest we deceive ourselves, and think we have already answered the questions pertaining to beauty, Plotinus now asks again: “We then love and are attracted to these qualities, but what do we mean when we say that they are beautiful?”(I.6.5. 16) We have already answered this, have we not? It is because in virtuous action, Intellect shines through, and this is Beautiful. Plotinus now says something important, he says that these virtuous qualities for example, are “real Beings.” We should remind ourselves that in Plotinus, Being is equated with Intellect. Intellect = Being, and everything we see down here, is only Being by participation in Intellect. But what does it mean for a Being to be called a ‘real Being’? Plotinus answers: “it means that they are beautiful Beings.”(I.6.5. 20). What makes Being real Being is its beauty. This is what Plotinus seems to be saying. It is here, for the first time clearly, that we see an expression of Plotinus’ characteristic equation of Being and Beauty. The more Being there is in something, the more Beautiful it is. And the more Beautiful something is, the more Being it has. Being = Beauty.

Michel de Montaigne writes: “it is Being that is dear to us.”(Essays, 139) This is the paradox of Platonism; Being is dear to us, because it is most beautiful. And the beautiful is dear to us, because it has the most Being. 

So, Beauty and Being are sort of the same thing. This equation is one of the reasons I wanted to read this treatise by Plotinus in the first place. For is this not interesting? Who, today, can say such a thing? Who dares say, that the more beautiful something is, the more Being there is in it? And we have here not even touched yet on the fact that, for Plotinus, Being is what is good and to be desired. And what lacks Being, and thus Beauty, is pretty much the same as evil. Although there are degrees of course. To say that Beauty is the same as Being, and that Being is the same as Beauty, this is also to say that something ugly has less being than something beautiful. There is literally less existence present in something ugly, than in something beautiful. And when something is really ugly, this is akin to it being evil, which Plotinus equates to non-being. In his treatise on evil (I.8.), to give an idea of what it would be like to look at evil, Plotinus even gives the example of looking at an ugly face. (I.8.9. 10) Beauty, and ugliness, these things are not without consequence. It is almost as if by some Divine plan, we have been gifted with the intuitive love of beauty, to guide us towards Being. And we have been gifted with the intuitive recoil of ugliness, to once again, bring us closer to Being. 

Seen from our contemporary eye, Plotinus shows himself quite politically incorrect here. An ugly face is evil. Who can say such a thing today? Both in common dogma, and in philosophy, there is the very popular idea that there is no hierarchy when it comes to Beauty —“all bodies are beautiful” and all this. We can hardly imagine, that we would determine someone’s worth, or literally the degree of existence present in them, on the basis of how ugly or beautiful their face is.  

From a Platonist perspective, it is however true that everyone is beautiful. Seen from Intellect, all things are beautiful, for all things come forth from Being. The whole of nature sings the praise of the One, as Plotinus claims in the magnificent treatise 3.8. But still, different things express Beauty to different degrees. All is united in Beauty, but it is precisely this same ground of oneness in Beauty, that makes for the fact that we all participate in Beauty to differing degrees. Plotinus’ view is much more mature than ours. Yes, in our deepest essence we are all equal and beautiful in Being. But don’t be ridiculous, some people are more ugly than others. And beauty is more valuable than ugliness. We are often much more childish in this regard; either forcing the absolute unity of the intelligible realm onto a realm (matter) in which it is not applicable. Or we see only the diversity of matter, and a unifying Beauty, which we can all recognize, ceases to exist.

In philosophical circles, there is much praise today for what one calls a ‘univocal ontology’, in which Being is said in the same sense of all Beings. Through the conceptual genius of the Scholastics, and the radicals of post-structuralist thought, this thesis comes to us: that there is as much Being in everything, and that consequently, there is as much beauty in everything. When it came to the question of Being, many medieval philosophers were confronted with a problem; if God is most high, then is God’s being the same as ours? In other words, when I say ‘I am’, and I say ‘God is’. Is this being implied in ‘am’ and ‘is’ said in the same sense? And consequently, you had two opposing thesis. Some said that Being is equivocal, meaning that it is said in different senses according to the thing in question. In other words, God ‘is’ in a different sense than us. God’s Being is not the same as our Being, it is rather much more full and valuable. The other thesis said that Being is univocal, which means that Being is said in the same sense of God, us, and everything else.

Today, at least among those who still engage in metaphysics, there is little doubt that Being is univocal. For who still believes in levels or degrees of reality? You hear this all the time, we are all the same. There is no difference between a saint and a drug-addict, no difference between Socrates and a common high-school teacher. We are all the same. We all are, this is evident. But are we all in the same sense? Is this so evident? Yet we think it, and we say it. Both in common opinion, and in philosophy, Being is said to be univocal, even if we no longer believe in such grand terms as ‘Being’. But these concepts are not innocent, and the manners of thinking to which they refer, they still live in us.

Is this a case of philosophical innovation influencing common opinion, or of philosophical innovation being influenced by common opinion? Or is this a false question, and are both merely the outgrowth of a general manner of thinking, which finds expression both in our common opinions, and in our theoretical philosophies? In any case, this is not our question. It is merely important to note, that what is perhaps so evident for us —that all beings have as much Being, and that all beings have as much Beauty —is false for Plotinus. We are not all the same. For Plotinus, there is more Being present in someone who shows courage in war, than in someone who cowers away. Both of these people are, but they are not in the same sense. In one of them, Being is expressed to a far greater degree.

I.2. ONE-MANY 

In philosophy, as far back as we know, there has always been the problem of the one and the many, of difference and unity. Is unity first, and does difference emerge from it? Or is it the other way around? And how do these two things relate to each-other? Is all one, as Parmenides claimed? Or is all difference and strife, as Heraclitus supposedly claimed? In many senses, this is the problem of philosophy: is Being one, or is Being many. And many philosophers have tried to solve this problem. The genius of Platonism, is that it keeps this problem alive as problem. The problem gives expression to the observation of a fact; that there is difference, and that there is unity. For example, simply, I observe that we are all different, and I observe that some faces appear to me as ugly, and that others appear to me as beautiful. I observe difference. Yet, I also observe that we are all somewhat the same, we are all human. And I also observe that however ugly or beautiful these bodies I see, in all of them, although sometimes I have to look real hard, there shines forth the same beautiful splendour of Being. However its quality of existence might be, all is alive. And in our best moments, we sing praise for all that exists. I see difference, and I see unity. What to do with this? What is the right judgement concerning being, that it is many, or that is is one? That difference is what characterizes being, or that unity is what characterizes being? The philosopher, hungry for an answer, will try to solve the problem. And hence, some will say that all is difference. And others will say that all is one. Hence you have philosophers who incessantly say that all is ‘flux’, ‘movement’, ‘difference’. You can think of philosophers like Nietzsche, Bergson, or Deleuze. This last philosopher feels that the philosophical tradition(which he equates with Platonism) has always said that the One is more important than the many, that identity is more important than difference, and he wants very much to reverse this, and creates a metaphysics based entirely on Difference. All is difference he says, and unity is only a false idol, an illusion, believed in by conservative philosophers. A commendable achievement, but Deleuze does not see clearly, that the genius of Platonism is precisely the way in which it doesn’t necessarily try to solve the problem of the one-many, but tries to keep it alive as problem. What do I mean? Well, for Plotinus for example, there is no question of making a definite choice, of giving a definite answer. Platonism is merely a clear observation of the problem, and tracing the implications of this problem to the very end. What is this problem? That we see both difference, and unity. Both exist. And Platonism tries to explain how it is that both unity and difference co-exist, hence the doctrine of a dual-reality —the material realm of becoming, and the Intelligible realm. Of course you no longer believe in these things, ‘Intellect’ and all. But consider the genius of it from this practical perspective. We observe, that there is both unity and that there is difference. Some people act with lots of courage, some with a little courage, and others barely show any courage at all. All these people act differently. Yet, we say that in all cases there is courage, present in different degrees. Again, there is difference, but there is also unity. This is a basic fact of observation. Basic phenomenology. And a philosophy trying to describe reality, should account for both the difference that we observe, and also the unity. It cannot say that there is only the one or the other.

In contrast to the philosophers of difference, there are of course the philosophers of unity —think of Hegel or Fichte, whose systems entirely consume every last piece of difference, in one overarching system of an Absolute Subject. It seems that philosophers, they live with this choice; I either spend my life praising difference and destroying unity, or I spend my life praising unity and destroying difference. But reality does not work like this, it is messy. There is difference, and there is unity. We are different, yet we are still the same. You are uglier than me, yet in our deepest essence, we are all pure Beauty. And both of these facts matter. It is not because we are all human, that we should act like there are no differences. And it is not because there are so much differences, that we should act like there is not some unity. This is the genius of platonism, this co-existence of both of these facts, and the taking seriously of this fact for an ethics. I think here specifically of Plotinus. In him, you find this beautiful pursuit of contemplation, to achieve identification with the Intelligible, to achieve complete union with reality. And always to stress that in our deepest essence, we are unaffected by the horrors of becoming, if only we could see… Yet still, Plotinus never speaks nonsense about us all being the same, able to get along because on some different level of reality we are all one. Our attachment to matter makes us different, and these differences can be of such a degree, that the only sensible thing to do is to keep away from each-other, or to solve our differences through strife. Both the Homeric and the Socratic, it is both present as a beautiful synthesis in Plotinus. Nietzsche sought to return to the pre-Socratic, the pre-Platonic, thinking that Plato’s doctrine of the oneness of the Intelligible would deceive us into no longer seeing the very real differences between people. He saw very clearly, that the Platonic doctrine, could very easily be used to fold it onto reality in its entirety. It could be used to erase individuality, to make us all the same, force us into the same mould of mediocrity. But there has to be difference and strife, Nietzsche thought. We have to be able to differentiate ourselves. We have to be able to become greater, not merely to enforce our greatness on others like tyrants, but also to become greater than what we were before. For there to be growth, there has to be difference in Being.

One sees the Unity of the Intelligible, and looking around oneself in reality, one sees only difference. One sees that we are all Beauty in the intelligible, yet one looks around, and one sees that some are more beautiful than others. And consequently, a resentment grows with reality —’it is not as it should be.’ There should be unity, but there is difference. And hence, we have all to become the same. Nietzsche hated this line of reasoning, seeing in it the end of all individual growth. Why seek to better oneself, if one is already fine just how one is. And hence he turned against any doctrine of One-ness altogether. Which is a very sad thing. But in Plotinus, you see the same diagnosis, that we cannot force reality into the mould of Intellect’s one-ness, but that we should keep alive this tension between difference and unity. It is not a case of the one or the other. It is a case of knowing where to postulate unity, and where to postulate difference. Yes, we are pure Beauty in our deepest essence. But here, living in a body, we have to act on our differences. In our essence, we are Beauty, but this does not give us permission to renounce becoming more beautiful. We are pure Beauty, and precisely because of this, we have to seek to express this Beauty in the world.

This dynamic of there being a problem, and then having the choice — either solving it by going one way or the other, or keeping the problem alive—, is a fruitful way to look at the history of philosophy. For example with the so-called ‘mind-body problem’, most often attributed to Descartes. We observe, that we have a body, and we observe also that we have a mind. Interesting, is it not? We are both these things —mind and body. A beautiful fact of the human experience. But then the philosophers come along, asking: how is this possible? How can these two things exist together? How do they relate to each other? And then you have again two camps. The one says: there is only body, and mind emerges from body! The materialists, or the vitalist-materialists or whatever. What they all say is that one of the two things, body, is more important than the other. And then you have the other camp: mind is all there is, the body is only observed within mind! Here you have the Idealists: Berkeley, Fichte, etc. They say that mind is more important than body. This is how it goes; there is a problem: how do x and y relate to each other? And then we seek a solution by either deeming x more important, or deeming y more important. But there is also a different option. Which one? The one that Descartes himself chose; body is not explained by mind, and mind is not explained by body. Both exist, and both are just as important, this is mind-body dualism. Descartes says, when I am in battle and I get wounded, the pain rushing through my body, the horror of it all, at this moment, my body is most important and clearly takes dominion over my mind. At this point I am intuitively a materialist. But some time later, I am sitting at home before my fireplace, with a lit candle, a notebook in front of me, and I give all my attention over entirely to thought, I become entirely unaware of my body and its impulses. At this point, I am an idealist. We are composites, complex beings, both body and mind. And this is no problem to solve, but a fact to observe. This is Descartes’ position. So for every problem in philosophy, you have these different attitudes towards it. And who says that the problem should always be solved, should it not be kept alive? Is ‘solving’ a problem, not merely accepting the reality that it points to? I observe mind, and I observe body. ‘oh no, problem! how do these two relate? which is more important?!’ But is there even a problem? Both exist, so live with it.

With the problem of the one-many, you can say that Platonism posits it as problem, works through it, lays bare its implications. And then every philosophy after platonism seeks to solve it, while the platonists did not care for solving it themselves. All is Beauty, yet beauty is expressed in different degrees in each case. Why the one or the other? Is this reluctance, to accept reality in all its fullness, and all its complexity, not one of the worst philosophical sins?

In the same way, Plotinus thinks about beauty. All Being is Beautiful, in our essence we are pure Being and pure Beauty, but as individual souls tied to matter, we all give expression to Being in different degrees.  

Being is Beauty, and Beauty is Being. And in virtuous action, this Beauty shines forth. But now Plotinus says: “but the argument still needs to show why Beings have made the soul an object of love. What is it that shines on all the virtues like a light?”(I.6.5. 20)  The virtues, non-sensible expressions of beauty, are properties of souls. And Beauty is in Being. Now Plotinus asks, what constitutes this link between Being and the virtue of soul. How does Being shine on the virtuous soul?

To answer this question, Plotinus invites us to look at the opposite of Beauty and Being coming to reside in the soul. What is this opposite? An ugly soul, ridden with vice. 

I.3. A soul covered with scars 

“There’s nothing sound in his soul but that it’s been thoroughly whipped and covered with scars, the results of acts of perjury and of injustice, things that each of his actions has stamped upon his soul. Everything was warped as a result of deception and pretense, and nothing was straight, all because the soul had been nurtured without truth. And he saw that the soul was full of distortion and ugliness due to license and luxury, arrogance and incontinence in its actions..”

(Plato, Gorgias, 525a)

Plotinus invites us to consider a truly ugly soul, filled with all sorts of vices and excessive desires, its evil showing on its face, “deformed in every way, a lover of impure pleasures.”(I.6.5. 30) A beautiful soul was characterized by the degree to which the soul gave expression to Beauty, which resides in Intellect. The more someone becomes a living expression of Intellect, the more one comes to be called beautiful. And how does one become beautiful in this way? By living a life following reason, adorning oneself with the splendour of virtue. A life with one’s vision focused up above, not on what is sensible, but on what pertains to the Intelligible. For it is in the intelligible that the Ideas reside, ideas of Beauty, Justice, Wisdom, Self-Control, and many others, which act as ideals to guide our actions, and which guide us on a path lived in accordance with our own soul, and with the order of reality. 

“We should redirect the revolutions in our heads that were thrown off course at our birth, by coming to learn the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, and so bring into conformity with its objects our faculty of understanding, as it was in its original condition. And when this conformity is complete, we shall have achieved our goal: that most excellent life offered to humankind by the gods, both now and forevermore.”

(Plato, Timaeus, 90d)

Living in this way, adorned with virtue, the soul becomes beautiful. Plotinus now says that just as the soul becomes coloured by beauty in virtue, the soul can become stained by ugliness in vice. The soul becomes mixed with vice, with evil. Its actions will no longer be just, and its sense-perceptions cease being pure. In this way, the soul becomes ugly, when it is “living a murky life by an evil adulteration that includes much death in it, no longer seeing what a soul should see, no longer even being allowed to remain in itself due to its always being dragged to the exterior and downward into darkness.”(I.6.5. 35-40)

You should take seriously, that repeatedly acting on vices, the soul actually becomes ugly, the soul actually becomes vicious or evil. It is like an addiction, the first time one takes the drug, it is a free choice. But the more one takes it, the chemicals of the drug hi-jack one’s brain, and one becomes so emotionally attached to the high, that after a long enough time, there is no longer any sense in saying that you choose to do the drug. This is precisely the meaning of addiction, the substance has become so close to you, it has literally been added on to you. And you no longer choose freely, but the substance is now itself a part of your apparatus of choice. It is no longer you choosing the drug, the drug is now choosing itself. To be sure, in Plotinus’ system, the soul can never actually become ugly in its deepest essence. For as we now know, our deepest essence is nothing but Soul, and further, Intellect and the One. And in these hypostases, there is no place for ugliness and vice —they are pure Beauty and goodness. But as a descended and individual soul, attached to matter, having a body, we can truly become evil, and we can truly become ugly. Again, there is this distinction between levels of reality, and value attributed to them. Down here, we are not equal —some have become evil, some have become beautiful. But in Intellect, we are truly all beautiful. This is important to keep in mind, for otherwise Plotinus will seem to be filled with paradoxes. There is no contradiction in saying that the soul is at once beautiful by essence, and perhaps evil and ugly at the same time. 

There is a fragment from Heraclitus, which I have already shared, and which perfectly expresses the dynamic that Plotinus is trying to tell us about: 

“swine delight in mire more than clean water.”

(Heraclitus, LXXII (D.13 M. 36)) 

A human, by nature, naturally turns to what is beautiful, and naturally turns away from what is ugly. But engaging in vices, and following sense-pleasure to inordinate degrees, our natural desires can become corrupted, and we can come to desire ugliness over beauty. We might know it to be better to abstain from gorging ourselves on a certain food, we might know that this will makes us more beautiful. But having become addicted to the food, we keep gorging ourselves anyway. In this way, our reason becomes clouded, and our sight becomes obscured. Eventually, we might even love a disease-causing food more than our own health. In this way, natural desires become corrupted, and man can come to desire ugliness more than he desires beauty. In this way, we become like swine, delighting in filth more than in clean water. But Plotinus reminds us that “the ugliness that has actually been added to him has come from an alien source, and his job, if indeed he is again to be beautiful, is to wash it off and to be clean as he was before.” (I.6.5. 46) In our essence, we are Beauty, and all ugliness comes from what is foreign to us —matter. By nature, we naturally turn towards the beautiful, and only by alien influence, can we come to desire ugliness. By nature, no one deems a soup-can placed on a pedestal in a museum a beautiful piece of art. But our minds having become corrupted with all sorts of theories, we deem this soup-can more beautiful than the Riace Bronzes. We naturally desire an athletic and lean body, but our minds having become corrupted by the idea that ‘all bodies are beautiful’, we prefer a fat and malnourished hormonal mess. 

“We would be speaking correctly in saying that the soul indeed becomes ugly by a mixture or adulteration and by an inclination in the direction of the body and matter. And this is ugliness for a soul; not being pure or uncorrupted like gold, but filled up with the earthly.” (I.6.5. 50) 

We are beautiful, we become ugly. And having become ugly, we regain beauty by returning to who we are. In an earlier text, we mentioned that matter itself desires Being. Matter, being the lowest degree of reality, lacks Being like nothing else. And because this lack is so great in matter, the hunger for Being is the greatest in matter. An evil soul is a soul which is no longer master over his material attachments, but which has become a slave to these attachments —to possessions, to the desires of his material body, to ideas that drag him away from his essence, etc. But having become a slave, being dragged all over the place by matter, what do we do? How do we ‘clean’ ourselves? To give an answer, we must first realize what this attachment to matter is, precisely. Why does matter drag us down with it? This pull of matter, is nothing but matter’s scream for Being. And in attaching ourselves to matter, what do we do? We identify with this part of ourselves (the soul attached to a body) which lacks Being. We identify with matter, this reality lacking in Being, and needing Being from something else than itself. And thus, feeling ourselves lacking in Being, we seek it everywhere, except where it truly resides. We fail to realize, that Being is to be found in ourselves, and consequently we seek it elsewhere. Where do we seek it? Precisely, in matter. We fall into all sorts of addictions; we attach ourselves to substances, behaviours, people, ideologies, places. To everything we attach ourselves, to fill this lack that we feel. And we fail to realize, that there was never any lack to begin with. 

How do we create beauty, in ourselves, and in our creations? We clean ourselves from our attachments, so that Being can once again shine forth. We stop matter from influencing us, so that Beauty can in-Form us.

The Plotinian model for creating beauty is not the model of the painter, who creates a world on what was a blank canvas. It is not the model of the photographer, who records reality as it appears to the eye. It is rather the model of the sculptor, who cuts away at marble, taking away what hides beauty from our eyes. The sculptor does not so much create form, as that he finds form. He cuts away at matter, so that what remains is the pure Form of Beauty. With an Idea in his mind, he cuts away at matter, he cuts away the matter that is preventing him from seeing his Idea realized.

Sources: 

Plato. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Cambridge: Hackett, 1997.

Plotinus, The Enneads. Edited by Lloyd P. Gerson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Charles H. Kahn. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Michel de Montaigne. Essays. Translated by J.M. Cohen. London: Penguin, 1958.