SCHOLE (Jun 2009)
Plotinus’ views on soul, suicide, and incarnation
Abstract
There is a question to be answered if one is to grasp the function of suicide in the Plotinian universe and its connection to the subject matters of soul, incarnation, murder and killing living beings. How far does the body exist as a degenerative trait? Could the purpose of embodying a soul purify it and to what extent does the particular use of it by an individual soul point towards its ability to uncover hidden potentiality or simply makes it an instrument of self-destruction and self-alienation? Our view of Plotinus’ philosophy and its significance depends upon how we chose to solve this puzzle. Although Plotinus ultimately changed his attitude on suicide in Ennead 1.4.46 as compared to Ennead 1.9.16, the concept appears under three basic guises in his philosophy. One is the more traditional notion that we have today, whether given a choice to remain or to leave the body, the soul should remain? Beyond that, Plotinus enriches our view of suicide with two further notions: One is the idea of soul’s incarnation as an involuntary suicide, committed in the rush to attain matter. Finally there is the notion of suicide in the form of murder or killing a living being or plant. Killing another living being would be like attempting suicide: killing a part of the one unified, single soul to which we also partake. The difference between Plotinus and later Neoplatonists, of which Damascius was one, is that the latter won’t allow for the absolute detachment of the soul from the body, while the body is still alive. It thus becomes impossible for the soul of the prospective wise man, to venture completely into the positive nothingness of the Ineffable, because the soul is always bound to the body, and that results in its inability to escort its own self, so as to say, into that which is total nothingness and alien to the soul.
