Neoplatonic Virtue: Grades of Virtue and Purificatory Virtue

In this session, we explore Porphyry’s account of the four classes of virtue and their connection to different types of souls — human, daimonic, divine, and paradigmatic. We discuss how higher virtues contain the lower ones, why a contemplative sage might still possess political moderation, and how different levels of virtue correspond to different ontological statuses. What does it mean to become a daimon or a god? Could a human being practice the paradigmatic virtues of Nous itself?

Topics include:

The hierarchy of virtues in Porphyry and how they are nested

The distinction between human, daimonic, divine, and paradigmatic beings

Why political virtue is not obsolete even for the sage

The ontological problem of “the father of the gods”

Ascetic purification and the path toward becoming godlike

Reflections on fear, pain, sexual desire, and anger in the soul’s purgation

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Chapter 1: The Hierarchy of Virtues

Antonio: Okay. So we got to page 185. And so we read the last thing we read was this thing about the four classes of virtues, I think. So then “it has become clear that there are four classes of virtue. Those are the intellect, which act as paradigms and are internally connected with its essence. Those are the soul that has already turned its gaze toward intellect and is filled with it. Those are the human soul that’s purifying itself and that has been purifying from the body and its non-rational passions. And those are the human soul that is imposing order on the human being by assigning measures to the non-rational element and bringing about moderation of the passions.” So, yeah, we finished last time by seeing how, in what sense, you know, the virtues of intellect were really paradigms for the other kinds of virtue, that actually the contemplative virtues, it’s not that they’re copies of the ones in intellect, they’re actually the soul assimilating itself to those. So, okay, so now we can start from “whoever possesses the superior virtues.” Okay.

Yitzchok: So now we have to discuss about, I’m not sure. “Whoever possesses the superior virtues, you may note, also necessarily possesses the lower ones.” Is this also true for the fourth one? That’s the paradigmatic or like nobody possesses them or…

Antonio: Just read the end of the paragraph.

Yitzchok: “But the converse is not the case. On the other hand, he who possesses the superior virtues will not by reason of the fact that he possesses also the lower ones, conduct himself primarily in accordance with the lower ones, but will only do so in response to the circumstances that confront him in the realm of generation. For the objective that they are aiming at are different, as has been said, and generically distinct.”

Chapter 2: The Relationship Between Higher and Lower Virtues

Antonio: Okay. So the question you raised about the ones of intellect is good, because it really, it’s not clear, rather, it seems that no one actually has them. Right, it’s not something that human beings have at any rate, it’s proper to intellect itself. So, since he says that you only use the lower ones with regard to the circumstances of generation, then it would seem that it’s not the case for that one. And it only has the lower ones at all, only in the sense that an original possesses its copies.

And you remember that this is something where it wasn’t really clear what Plotinus’s position was at the end of “On Virtue.” But here, Porphyry clearly answers that the one who has the higher ones also has the lower ones. But then he has this qualification: it doesn’t conduct himself primarily in accordance with the lower ones. So what each person primarily seeks is different. The goal, or what it says here, the objectives in Greek, skopos, is different. So people at different stages of their moral evolution have different aims. And it can happen that something occurs to him in his embodied life that then requires him to act with regard to one of the lower ones.

So I guess your body can actually feel thirsty even if you are like Plotinus, and then you have to exercise some… you have to drink and you have to drink in a moderate way. So that’s the sense I get that the, even if you have the lower virtues, so you do have a disposition to when you act according to the passions, you act in such and such a way. I mean, you act in a virtuous way. But that’s… You know, the focus of your activity is not in generation, is not in the apparent world, but it’s say in contemplating things.

And that was the case. I remember that we puzzled about this when we read one too. And we thought, for instance, about, like, does the person who’s, you know, like a hermit, and he’s entirely dedicated to knowing the forms, does he really need still to know how to, you know, be polite at dinner? And won’t he have forgotten this entirely. And I guess from what we’ve been saying the past few classes, we can see how he might still have that because, I mean, he might be gauche, he might not act according to the social norms, but he won’t drink to excess because, as we saw, the drinking to excess, lacking even political moderation implies that you are no longer in control, but your body is in control. And if you have already, for instance, the purificatory moderation, you don’t even listen to the body, then a fortiori, the body will also never take control. And so in that sense, he, the higher virtue implies the lower one as well.

And so I think Porphyry has clearly answered this question about whether the higher person also has the lower virtue. We also talked to the, I think we also addressed this previously when we were asking about like isn’t the hermit who refuses to join the army when there’s a conscription, isn’t he being a coward? And then, you know, there’s one, and then we talked about how, you know, there’s one question here about what is the proper political virtue here, right? Is it participating in the war or not? And then there’s a different question, which is like, what is actually motivating this person? It can be that he is motivated by cowardice, in which case, he does not have purificatory or contemplative virtue. But it can also not be motivated by cowardice, especially if you think about the case where the proper political thing to do is not to participate in the war. And so it would have to be on a case-by-case basis.

Chapter 3: The Objectives of Different Classes of Virtues

Antonio: Okay, but so we can continue.

Yitzchok: Right, now he’s going to talk about the objectives of each of the virtues. He said that the problem is that it’s a, they have different, he will not have them actively in the sense of because of the aims being different mainly. Like the aim of political virtues just to have a good polis. And since that’s not his aim, you will only have that if like, if it’s needed or something like that.

So that “the objective of civic virtues is to impose measure on the passions and direction of activities that conform to nature. That of purificatory virtues is to separate completely from the passion that which has just taken on measure.” That’s the purificatory. Then “at the next level, the intellective is to direct one’s activity towards intellect without any longer giving thought to separating oneself from the passions.” That’s a new word. “While as for that of those virtues whose role is no longer to direct their activity towards intellect but that they have actually come into confluence with its essence, is no longer possible to describe their activity.”

Antonio: Yeah, so stop there. Yeah, here he has added something. “It is no longer possible…” It’s just that there’s a need for the sentence is incomplete. And they just, you know, this is the kind of thing that…

Yitzchok: …if it’s like not possible to describe their activity, that’s…

Antonio: So, for instance, the Italian translation that I have here with my Greek text, they say that it’s the objective, they compete with like, the objective is to encounter its own essence. Let me just find this. Right, yeah. So, let me see what they say. Right. So they just find a way to translate it without using, without adding any new words. They say that they tend to like, whose role is no longer to direct directory towards intellect, but rather to come into confluence with its essence. They don’t seem bothered by this. There’s this lack of a main clause. But anyway, so, yeah, and actually I don’t think… Yeah, it’s not really clear that they should say so that, know, the English translators here say that Porphyry should say something like, possible to describe their activity. So it’s not really true, right? I mean, we’re not at the level of the one yet. So definitely, know, Porphyry should say that.

But let’s step back. So yeah, so here he is building, he’s presenting the objectives of each of them. And he’s here, he’s, you know, clearly, I guess, in order to show that the higher includes the lower, he’s really relating each one to the last one and saying that it’s somehow overcoming it. So the civic virtues, the imposed measure. And so that means that it’s still in the soul-body composite. It’s the soul that’s the determining agent.

Then the purificatory ones is to separate completely from the passion that was just a conmeasure so that it’s no longer even the sole body composite that acts but just the soul and that of the next level is to direct oneself towards intellect without any longer giving thought separating oneself from the passions so the point is no longer to act on one’s own but to act together or under or you know participating in what intellect does and then the top one, which would be intellects, would just be to be itself. And so that’s the way that each of them will have a different objective and also include the others.

So, and here we see, you know, the way that, for instance, the purificatory and the intellectual ones and the paradigmatic ones are similar because the purificatory is the soul acting on its own and the intellectual one is the intellect acting on its own. And then also the civic and the contemplative are somehow similar because the civic is the soul body composite acting in conformity with the soul and the contemplative is the soul acting in conformity with intellect.

Okay, now you can read the end of the paragraph which is more complicated.

Yitzchok: “For this reason then, he who acts in accordance with the practical virtues is agreed to be a good human being. He who acts in accordance with the purificatory ones is a daimonic human being or even a good daimon. One who acts only according to those that are directed towards intellect is a god. And one who practices the paradigmatic virtues is a father of gods.”

Chapter 4: From Human to Divine – The Stages of Virtue

Antonio: So this is certainly something that Plotinus did not say so clearly. We saw, for instance, but we did see, for instance, him in 3-4 asking, who will become a daemon and who will become a god? And Porphyry here giving us some answers. So the one who has political virtue is called Spoudaios, right? It’s also what Aristotle uses for the man who has virtues, right? The mature developed human being. And then the one who has the purificatory virtues is called a daimonic human being or a good daimon. And it can be, you know, connected here with the idea… Well, with the idea that daimons are responsible for purity and purification. And also with the idea that this person will be born as a daimon in the next life. One who acts only according to those that are directed towards intellect as a god. And now there’s something here curious, right? Because it was, it would seem that Plotinus in the life of Plotinus written by Porphyry. He lived always according to intellect and he was said to be identical, with, to have identified himself with his daimon and his daimon was a god. So that would make him a daimonic human being according to this and not a divine one. I… yeah.

Although it’s unclear. It seems clear that he should be someone who’s also always directed towards intellect. There’s something split here. There’s also a question here like what is the distinction here between daimon and intellect? In the life of Plotinus, daimon and intellect seem to be the same thing. And here they have to be different. One thing that, you know, one way to think about this passage is that Porphyry sees the need to correspond the different levels of virtue to different levels in the ontological hierarchy. Problem, the Plotinian ontological hierarchy doesn’t have the needed fine-grade distinctions that would be required to do a one-to-one thing. So he has to draw up, for instance, this distinction between the daimon and the god, which is unclear what it would be on the ontological level. If you’re just using soul, nous, unity, what is that?

And also, then he says, one who practices the paradigmatic virtues, right? So now this is weird, right? Because during the way the sentence is phrased, it would seem that it’s all about like different human beings. And so this sentence seems to imply that a human being could act according to the paradigmatic virtues. But anyway, so that’s like a puzzle. And then he says that it’s a father of the gods. So why would that be? Again, it’s puzzling.

If we think that the daimon is, you know, that our daimon is identical with our higher self, which is like normally, of course, there’s this Plotinian theory of the flexible daimon, but if we’re acting rationally then our daimon is our nous, right? The part of us that is constantly contemplating, then that’s a nous. And then the person who, but then intellect of course is nous as well. And that’s the person who’s acting according to the contemplative virtues, assimilating themselves to nous. And now the person who just does what nous does is then also going to be nous. This is the problem that there is not enough ontological levels here for these distinctions. He says that it’s a father of the gods. So, I mean, if those who act according to contemplative virtues are gods and they become gods precisely by assimilating themselves to Nous, then sure, Nous is a father of the gods, right? And you can think of it that way.

But now, father of the gods is an expression with some history, right? So the Chaldeans wrote the Chaldean oracles. They have this deity called the Father, right? He is, you could imply he’s the father of the gods. Some people think that Porphyry is influenced by that use and is interpreting that father as the as intellect that is the source of the other gods. Another possibility is of course Zeus. Zeus is called typically father of the gods and although, Plotinus seems usually to treat Zeus as more on the level of soul than on the level of nous. And so there’s a puzzle here about this expression, father of the gods.

Chapter 5: The Father of Gods and Interpretive Challenges

Antonio: Also, if we are… and how is this person, whoever they are, a father? They are a father simply by being an object of contemplation. But contemplation here isn’t just looking at something, right? Nous isn’t aisthesis, Nous isn’t perception. Nous, if in perception the object is external, and then through our activity we enter into relationship with the object and then we grab hold of it, right? And so perception is always relative. Nous, we have the object within us and it produces its knowledge as a flash of insight or something. The, right, nous has always turned towards itself or expressed a different way. What it knows is always part of itself, or even the whole of itself.

So if we’re interpreting this as the way of, like if we’re interpreting this thing that Porphyry might be pointing to the possibility that a human being could be this, I think one way of thinking about this is actually that a father of the gods is someone like Plato. Because it’s not just that Plato was a perfect philosopher and he knew the true structure of reality, yada, yada, yada. No, by studying his texts and by reconstructing what those texts mean, by treating them as scriptures – there’s no word that’s out of place here and anyway every word here has meaning, every choice in the text has meaning and it’s not just that they have any meaning, they have meaning of true reality. So through this practice of interpreting these texts and reconstructing the implied theology in yourself, you also, you become a god. You direct yourself entirely towards intellect.

So that might be a way of thinking about what this father of the gods would mean and what it would mean for it to be paradigmatic virtue. It’s not just that these people are, you know, human models. And so, you know, they’re good human beings that you imitate, but rather they somehow, you know, they are people who by studying them, you… Right, how do I put this? That it’s not just about imitation. It’s not just about imitation because it’s not about assimilating yourself to certain external features of that person. And or not even to assimilating yourself to like some features and not others, but rather that they become an occasion for your self-transformation by paying attention to everything about them. That’s a bit much.

There’s a final version of Father of the Gods that can also be applied, which is so then the Demiurge, the Demiurge is called, like in the Timaeus, the Demiurge is called Father and Maker of the Universe. And the Father and Maker of the Universe is then said to create other gods, right? The junior gods, and he calls and he explicitly calls them gods of gods. And right before the creation of time, the world is called like a statue of the eternal gods. And Proclus will assimilate this to the activities of Chaldean theurgists, that they give life to statues by making the divine present in them. And we have like anecdotes in Eunapius about statues coming to life through theurgic rituals and moving and so on. Proclus thinks that the Timaeus is talking about that. Like the Demiurge is like this great theurgist who is making the statue, the world, alive by bringing the gods into it. And there could be that there’s something similar being thought here about… Again, you know, the idea is that this would be Nous, and Nous creates the world, and the world is, you know, full of gods, and Nous is father to all the gods in the world. That might also be what’s behind this expression, father of the gods. As the translator is saying there, the precise significance of this is not clear, but certainly sounds Chaldean.

Yitzchok: He’s not a good human being anymore. I mean, he’s definitely talking about a person whose virtue is not human anymore.

Antonio: Yeah, yeah. And also what inspires my interpretation of this is, someone who’s become someone who can write or be scripture in some sense, is that later, so, daimonios gets applied to Aristotle. And so he’s often said the daimonius Aristotle. That would imply, okay, so according to this, he’s someone who has purificatory virtue. And in fact, Aristotle is used to basically attack stoics and attack vulgar Platonists that interpret Plato in a materialistic manner. And so he is separating people from bodies. Then people like… And then Theos is used for Plotinus and for Iamblichus and for Plato. But of course Plato has a different role than Iamblichus and Plotinus. So you might think someone whose function is mainly negative like Aristotle will be Daimonius. Someone who has a positive doctrine that you should somehow learn is Theos. And someone who’s, you know, who the text is, it’s not the interest isn’t in the doctrine, but rather, or not even just the doctrine, but even the details of the text, that would be someone who has paradigmatic virtue. But anyway, that it might, that might be reading too much here into…

Yitzchok: In general, Aristotle’s virtues are very explicitly trying to be human virtues. He’s not interested in like always saying if there’s some divine virtue and that’s for God or not for like my ethics. There’s like a thing where he says that if something is like there’s a famous thing where he says that like if a truly perfect person would be a God but there’s no such people or like a truly perfectly bad person would be a beast, something like that.

Antonio: Right, but he also says that we should not pay attention to those people who say that you’re mortal and you should only think mortal thoughts. Rather, we should strive to be as immortal as possible. So he does think that, you know, so and that there he is raising, you know, dedicating yourself to nous. So it does make sense to say that his virtues may be a little above the political. Although, yeah, it is true that he in general, for instance, he doesn’t advocate separating yourself from the passions. He advocates you having the right passions and right measure and things like that.

Digression: On Humans, Gods, and Divinity in Ancient and Christian Thought

Yitzchok: It says, I don’t remember, this is the beginning of book seven. Okay, I’m gonna have to see. Maybe it’s trying to interpret divine people as like metaphor for like super humanly good or something.

Antonio: Yeah, there are, like this thing about people becoming gods is actually something. Yeah, there’s so… yeah, is there’s like a debate about this in antiquity, right? So of course there’s the tragic view of don’t, you know, if you become too close to the divine, then you’ll get punished. Then there’s Plato who talks about becoming like the gods, Like in the Theaitetos passage. And of course the whole theory of the immortal soul makes us a lot like gods. Of course, he maintains some distinctions like in the Phaedrus, like, we only sometimes look at the forms and the gods, you know, they look at the forms with their whole being, like, we just stick our heads out, they go up, they park their chariots outside. So there is also some temptation or some attempt to distinguish the two. Aristotle has these confusing things. The Stoics went so far as to say that the… The wise man can command Zeus to do things. This is their theory. This is because, I mean, Zeus will do those things anyway, because they really share the same mind as Zeus, and there’s no longer any distinction between them. And so they could even command Zeus, right? And Plotinus, like, Plutarch are shocked by this. You have to have some distinction between us and the gods. And now here we see possibilities of becoming a god in Plotinus and now also in Porphyry. There are many different views about this and about what we can achieve as human beings, what can we achieve in this life and the next.

Yitzchok: Yeah. There’s also like some, I don’t remember who, like some monotheists are like, the pagans are always going around people calling everything they like divine. And like, that’s crazy to be divine is a little more than whatever they… But there’s also, I mean, there is like state, like, titles like Ish Elohim or the man of God or divine man, depending on how you read it, which are said of human beings, so.

Antonio: Right, like the Christians for instance, will on the one hand, yeah, think, they think anything is a God, but they also say, yeah, God became man so man can become God. And the Platonists will say, they venerate these toenails of these saints and they don’t venerate the sun? Like, what are these people doing? They’re like crazy.

Yitzchok: Is that because of like nature? I don’t know. Okay. Nature’s become less divine, like humans seem… I don’t know. It’s weird. This association of the pagan thing with like worshipping all kind of trees and stuff and for some reason worshipping people is better I’m not sure…

Antonio: Yeah, I mean, it has something to do with devaluing nature and things like that. But the question about that is that you should… The question is whether nature has true symbols of the divine that you can use to become more divine and more like the divine things. And so the Platonists would say yes, and pagans in general would say yes, and Christians would say no. And the reason for that… but it’s not because the Christians don’t think that nature is divine and the pagans do think it is.

Yitzchok: That’s because nature is broken or something?

Antonio: Yeah, and there’s a bit, there’s a better nature coming. Right? There’s the second world that’s coming. And this nature is broken and the gods and the gods that rule it are actually daimones, demons, right? You can properly say demons now. Ideas like this.

Yitzchok: Because people like the baal shem tov will definitely say things like, yeah, a tree is at least God’s toenail or something. But then they get stuck with like their problems. They sometimes get into opposite things like, okay, so if a tree is divine, then why isn’t the priest of the wrong religion divine or something like that? And this is the question that he explicitly asks and doesn’t like kind of answer.

Antonio: Yeah, there’s, how do I say, yeah, there’s stuff about like, and actually, like, the Christians think that death is part of the natural world as we know it, but it’s not part of how the world as God wants it to be. And insofar as all these natural cycles are connected with death, like dying and being born again, they see that as proof that it’s either, you know, it’s affected by sin or it’s just the provisional world, the true world is the world to come.

Yitzchok: And then trees won’t die either, is that the thought?

Antonio: There are views that the trees won’t die, there are views that there won’t be trees.

Yitzchok: Okay. Right, because you know there’s a tree of life – there’s supposed to be a tree of life there. Yeah, okay, that’s why. Like on the other hand, there’s like, maybe this is the other… I’m just like, because trees are like too universal. Like, nowadays, all the like, romantic, like the… what’s his name, the guy from Concord. They were all about like nature mysticism.

Antonio: Yeah.

Yitzchok: And like as an alternative to a church, like a church is trees built into buildings, which is bad. We should just worship the trees themselves.

Antonio: Right. Milton makes like the, as Adam and Eve worshipping the tree. I don’t know if this is after or just before the fall, but yeah. So in Paradise Lost, so he makes the tree worship the original worship, like the original idolatry. I think that, I guess it’s just after the fall.

Chapter 6: On Purificatory Virtues and Practical Advice

Antonio: Okay, let’s continue. Now he’s done his general view of the virtues. Now he’s going to focus a bit on the purificatory virtues, because he thinks it’s, you know, we can have them in this life and there are, you know, they need some clarification.

Yitzchok: “Okay, we should therefore direct our attention most of all to the purificatory virtues, basing ourselves on the reflection that the attainment of these is possible in this life, and that it is through these that an ascent may be made to the more august levels. We must therefore consider up to what point and in what degree it is possible to receive purification. For it involves, after all, the separation from the body and from the non-rational motion provoked from passions. You must state how this would come about and up to what point.” So he is saying okay, so there’s these I mean, it didn’t… There’s civic virtues, which I guess are just like taking for granted. Yeah. You should have learned them in grade school or something already. And now we should focus on the purificatory virtues because there are higher virtues, but those are not possible in this life.

Antonio: Well, he doesn’t say that they’re not possible. He says that at least these are certainly possible, I guess. So, because it seems like, I think the contemplative virtues he thinks that you should be possible in this life as well.

Yitzchok: It’s also like, they’re also really like the counterpart of the purification, which we said doesn’t really make sense without that…

Antonio: …without them. Or it can be like, maybe the idea is that the purification only ends with death, really. Right? And so you only really become a free, separate soul when you die. And so like, that’s the last great purificatory light. So that’s the idea. So like, you might be able to be a very contemplative person in this life, right? You might be able to be like Plotinus. But, became an even better philosopher after he died.

Yitzchok: So this is the most important, to focus on here. “For a start, it is as it were the foundation and underpinning of purification to recognize that one is a soul bound down in an alien entity of a quite distinct nature.” That’s the first step, I guess.

Antonio: Right. So the first step is to, you know, is like to go through the arguments of the Alcibiades, right? Recognize that you are a soul merely and that you’re connected to this body, which is something distinct from you. So the first step is self-knowledge.

Yitzchok: “In the second place, taking start from this conviction, one should gather oneself together from the body, even as it were in a local sense, like not being in the same place, not being all spread out in the body, but at any rate adopting an attitude of complete disaffection with respect to the body.”

Antonio: Right, what is this local sense? The so this gathering yourself is, it reminds me on the one hand of, so Plotinus has an account, I was like, okay, he has in two, in what is it, 4.7, which is actually the second treatise he wrote on the immortality of the soul. He has an argument, he has, well, most of the text is arguments for why the soul can’t be a body and it can’t be something that belongs to the body. And one of them is he’s arguing against the Aristotelian position, right, that it’s the Entelecheia, right, so like the formedness of the body. And one of the things that he says is during sleep, the soul pulls itself back from the rest of the body and is primarily in the heart in some sense, right? And I guess so we’re not aware of other things, right? And so we’re just aware of our dreams, if we’re aware of our dreams at this moment. And so there was some theory of pulling yourself back literally locally in some sense.

And that and Plotinus also uses the example of the seed, right? That like the whole soul has to be there in the seed and it’s also and then it grows into a whole human being or into a whole tree and then and this is to show that there’s nothing connected with extension in the soul. If it can be in the tiny thing and in the big thing, there’s no space it takes.

So the pulling itself back, even in a local sense, can be something like, you know, not paying so much attention to your extremities, to what your senses are telling you. That’s the way I might see it.

Yitzchok: It’s something like the, could be like a kind, like, I don’t know, like if this, it wouldn’t start dying, right? It’s not like your legs will stop working. It’s so, like an imaginative kind of thing. Like the opposite of a body scan meditation. Instead of focusing on the whole body, stop focusing on the whole body.

Antonio: Yeah, yeah, I think it’s something like that. Although, I’m not sure what this meditation… like the whole body meditation that, you know, focuses on all your sensations insofar as when you’re doing that, you’re not looking at the, you’re not paying attention anymore to the objects of your sensations. You’re just paying attention to your sensations. You’re in some sense pulling back already.

Yitzchok: Yeah, I’ve read like Sufi meditations that go like something like be entirely in your heart or something like that, where there’s some hidden…

Antonio: Right. Yeah, and it’s not that you die, it’s more like that you sleep, right? And because that’s like the actual medical analogy when people say this, pull yourself back to your heart. There’s an actual like medical theory they’re thinking of. And, okay, that’s but as he says, just as it were, it’s hoion.

Right. But at any rate, adopting an attitude of complete disaffection with respect to the body. And the disaffection here is apatheia. So again, you’re not taking your passions as indications of whether things are good or bad, right? So of course, you still feel pain if someone hits you and you still feel sweetness if you have honey, but you don’t take those as indications that this is good or this is bad.

Yitzchok: Yeah, again, if you like to like this like, modern meditation language, would you say something like I forgot their last day were they had a word for it like it can hurt but it’s not pain or pain and not hurt or something like that I forgot… I forgot that’s not like philosophical like something like… I forgot the words.

The point being something like that if you have a sensation of pain, there’s a sensation, but there’s always another step, which is the judgment that this is bad, I should get away from this or something like that. That’s… Yeah, yeah, that’s necessarily like, like your body doesn’t force you to think that or something like that.

Antonio: Right, and like, again, the people who, philosophical school that was known for defending Apatheia were the Stoics. And they developed this vocabulary of impression and assent. So you don’t assent to your impressions. You don’t agree with them immediately.

Chapter 7: The Challenges of Separation from Bodily Concerns

Yitzchok: “For in fact, one who pursues a mode of activity constantly linked to sense perception, even if he does this without the addition of passion, that is without taking pleasure in it. Nevertheless, finds his attention dispersed about the body, because he’s in contact with it by reason of sensation.” I’m not sure what he’s trying to say, but “he subjects himself in addition to the pleasure and pains associated with sense perceptions. If he abandons himself to them and assents to participation in them.”

Antonio: Okay. So here, I think like he’s explaining a bit about what he just said, you know, we can understand the basic thing… He’s giving a reason. So he’s giving a reason for that one should gather oneself together from the body, even as it were in a local sense, but at any rate, adopting an attitude of complete disaffection. And so I guess this is the local sense that he’s explaining.

And he’s saying that there’s a problem, like even if you pursue a mode of activity constantly linked just to sense perception, what would that be? Right? Because he says, even if he does this without the addition of passion, that is without taking pleasure in it. So I guess it’s like if you’re just doing activities that depend on sense perception, like cooking or painting or, you know, collecting butterflies, you know, doing physics, studying the natural world, or also, you know, exercise and military activity, right? You can think of that, you know, there’s this stereotype of the soldier who’s, well, stoic, as they say nowadays, right? So, who doesn’t take any pleasure or pain in it.

Nevertheless, so even if you’re if you’re not taking what the body tells you as indication of what’s good or bad, we can clearly think of the soldier here, right? So he’ll do lots of stuff that’s very painful to him. And doesn’t take that as an indication that it’s bad. And he’ll refrain from things that are that feel nice, because he doesn’t think that that’s an indication that it’s good. But he’s nevertheless, he’s entirely doing bodily activities, you know, or like policemen, he’s like patrolling, he’s watching other people and things like that. Nevertheless, finds his attention dispersed about the body, right, because he’s in contact with it by reason of sensation.

But, and then he says, so even, so even if you are disaffected, if you do act without passion, an activity linked with the sense perception will connect you to the body and the purificatory wants to separate you from the body. So that’s why you have to separate yourself from these kinds of activities.

Yitzchok: So here’s is this saying like you can’t actually be a philosopher soldier like you might say well I’m doing this and not assenting to it but you still it won’t help?

Antonio: Yeah, I think he’s like, yeah, okay, you’re not assenting to it, but you could spend more time in studying or thinking. It’s like, you’re gonna be distracted by this, I think is the point. The point is like, so sure, of course, it’s better to be a passionless soldier and to, you know, at the end of the day, read some Plotinus, but there will always be limits to how pure you can be. Not entering also into the questions about purity connected with blood and dead things and carrying weapons and all that.

But, and then he says the translation here is curious, right? “But he subjects himself in addition to the pleasures and pains associated with sense perception,” if he abandons himself to them in assent to participation in them because we would think that he had denied that earlier. Well, I guess later…

Yitzchok: Maybe saying that would be the worst case.

Antonio: I think he’s saying that that would be the worst case. It’s also, there’s the question about that even if you’re not being passionate, it’s as it were an occasion for passion, right? So there’s always that possibility that you’ll become overcome by your passions here. Let me just… yeah, that’s how I would understand it.

Yitzchok: “It is this attitude above all then from which one must purify oneself. So the ascent really. And this should come about on condition that one confine oneself to taking on board those sensations of pleasure that are necessarily, that are necessary simply for the purpose of healing or the relief of discomfort in order that one’s activities may not be interfered with.”

Antonio: Right, so it’s a bit more than just being healthy. You also want to be able to be focused.

Yitzchok: Maybe like relating to it as if it’s like a medicine…

Antonio: Yeah, so it’s like that thing about, they say like the right amount to pay people is that they don’t have to pay, is that they don’t need to think about money. And here also like the right amount to eat is so you don’t have to think about food.

Yitzchok: Okay. That would be a lot of money though. Okay. He’s getting like, giving like practical sense of advice. “One should also strive to remove pains.” Again, because it would bother you, I guess, even if you don’t assent to them. That would be a distraction or something.

Antonio: Right, and that’s important to distinguish his point here from… Yeah, this distinguishes it from things like that you should seek pain, right? So there are very ascetic doctrines that think you should seek out pain because it will teach you not to like the body or something like that. Whereas here he’s saying, no, you don’t want pleasures, but you also don’t want pains, because again, it would be a distraction.

Yitzchok: “But if that is not possible, then one should bear them mildly, rendering their effect less by declining to assent to the suffering associated with them.”

Antonio: Right, again, don’t assent to them.

Yitzchok: Yeah, yeah, that would be a modern Buddhist like language to say there’s… pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice. That was the slogan.

Antonio: Okay.

Chapter 8: Handling Emotions and Desires in Purification

Yitzchok: “One should suppress anger as far as one can and not give rein to it. If you can, if one cannot achieve that, then at least one should not implicate one’s will with it. But the involuntary element should be related to another entity,” another entity, meaning the body. Okay. So the comment says, yeah. “And that involuntary element should be weak and small.”

Antonio: Right. Again, also remember that, you know, Thumos is anger, but it’s also, you know, things to do with honor and reward. So it has to do with your, you know, with your self-image. I’m being flattered. I’m being honored. I’m being offended. And so that also explains a bit about why the, don’t implicate your will, that will be small. Right. It’ll be weak and small in some sense. It’s something that’s as big as you give that space for.

Yitzchok: Being small meaning there’s like a separation from your own anger here or your own pains and so on. Like, yes, I’m angry, but that doesn’t mean I should do anything. Not sure exactly how it would work, but okay.

Antonio: Right. I think it’s also something, I think here is, if there’s anything like humility, it would enter here. Right. Because it would be, yeah. I don’t know. Let’s think about an occasion for like anger… Someone pushes past you in the subway and then you’re like, “Who am I?” It’s like, “No big deal.”

Yitzchok: Okay. But he thinks that it’s possible not to be like… it makes more sense to say for pain. Maybe not, but it would make more sense to say for pain, like, okay some days you might have pain. That’s not your choice. It would seem that anger would always be your choice in some sense. It’s a little weird to say like, if you can’t, well, if you can’t try again, I don’t know. Or maybe you can’t, I don’t know.

Antonio: Right, I do get the impression from the text that he thinks that pains are more difficult to remove than anger.

Yitzchok: There’s an involuntary element in anger or Thumos.

Antonio: Yeah, I think that probably has to do with your past and your upbringing. And there’s also, of course, there was medical theories about anger, right? Like anger is boiling blood.

Yitzchok: Okay. Yeah, like, nowadays we like make a distinction between like a mental disorder or something like that and a bad person, which nobody knows where exactly it stops, but something like that.

Antonio: And actually, this is a case that comes up in Proclus’ life – it’s said that he could be angry. I guess, yeah, I guess there’s a distinction between being irritable and giving into your anger.

Yitzchok: Okay, “as for fear, one should suppress it completely.”

Antonio: That’s interesting…

Yitzchok: Anger is better than fear. Like you might have some of it, but fear? None of it. Fear none of it. “For such a human being,” such meaning a purified or human being, “would feel fearful of nothing, although there’s an element of involuntary involved here too.”

Antonio: Right. Because they’ll be fearful of nothing because they’re convinced that they are an immortal soul.

Yitzchok: So, but like if you’re in the woods and a bear jumps at you would like, yeah, maybe you’ll flinch.

Antonio: You will flinch, of course, and you will try to avoid being killed because that pain and that process will keep you from continuing to contemplate. But if it’s clear that you have no chance against the bear, okay, time’s up. Going to start contemplating a different way.

Yitzchok: Okay. Interesting. Like I would, I don’t know if I’m right, but my thought would be to flip anger and fear and say like, it’s easier to not have any anger than to not have any fear. Because anger seems to be something that you do in some sense. Fear is like, wow, that thing is scary… Both are not realistic to not have what I’m saying like…

Antonio: Right, right, right.

Yitzchok: But maybe this has to… Anger is somehow also related to courage. Like in the… This is a very Homeric thing. You should have no fear but a lot of anger.

Antonio: Yeah. Whereas I think that might be like a good way to distinguish like the civic from the purificatory anger or courage. In the sense that the purificatory is like… in the civic courage, you have to have some fear, right? Because otherwise you’ll do like stupid things and you want to… The question is, you should fear dishonor more than dying. You should still fear dying. Whereas for the purificatory courage, you shouldn’t fear dying. Your philosophy is practicing to die.

Yitzchok: Okay, “desire for anything base must be eliminated altogether.” So also one of those delete… “Desire for food and drink, one will not have, insofar as in so far as concerns oneself in the strict sense” – oneself meaning okay once like what yourself is, which is the soul since you’ve studied this thing. Well, obviously the soul doesn’t need food and drink. That’s like a little… The question is like what the “you” is. “While in the case of desire for natural sexual intercourse, one should not even admit the involuntary element.”

Antonio: Like, what does that even mean?

Yitzchok: But then he again adds this caveat: “but if it arises, it should extend only to the level of fleeting images such as come about in dreams.” And, and like, they say, they think natural here means like heterosexual, as opposed to homosexual or bestial or something like that. Which is weird, right? Because then, okay, so he has no problem with desire for unnatural sexual intercourse? And so that would be puzzling.

Although there is something about of like natural, so reproductive sexual intercourse, that is, let’s say, bad or not pure for Platonists in the sense that you know, if you’re having children in order to continue your legacy or to continue your family’s legacy or something like that, you’re attached to bodies.

Yitzchok: And it makes more bodies.

Antonio: It makes more bodies, killing people… But maybe there’s something like… Yeah, but it could also be, you know, just… But it could also be that this is natural in the sense that it would be, you know, and because it’s related so to you being an animal that wants to, you know, that… the ruse of the species, you know, that… we want to have sex because actually the species wants to continue to exist. The idea of Schopenhauer.

And I guess again, the supposition is that if he says that one should not even admit the involuntary element is that the involuntary element isn’t really totally involuntary. Right? So if you find yourself having lots of sexual thoughts, then, okay, at that moment, it’s involuntary. But there’s something about how you’re living that makes this possible or it makes this happen a lot.

The who is it? It’s Iris Murdoch, I think, who has this in the sovereignty of the good. She talks about attention. And so she has this view that at the moment of action, we might have no choice. But, you know, how we react at the moment of action is dependent on how and what we’re paying attention to on all the other times. And so even involuntary things can still be in some sense up to us because they are, you know, there they’re consequences of things that we do choose at other moments. And this might be the theory behind here.

Yitzchok: Something like you shouldn’t take it seriously. Like as comes about in dreams in the sense, okay, you might have dreams or… he’s not saying you should have dreams. I think you would relate to it like you relate to a dream in the sense of this is not what I really think about or something like that.

Antonio: Right. And you shouldn’t give in to it. Like you should wake up from it. You should not keep continuing to think about it and things like that. It’s one thing to have one erotic impulse. It’s another to invest in it and to then start imagining the whole situation and what it would be like. I mean, it’s one thing to like someone. It’s another to start planning little coincidences where you’re going to run into them and things like that.

Yitzchok: Or is he just saying you should be ascetic – they should not have any sex? Which is like a choice you can’t have that choice regarding food and drink, or at least not to the same extent.

Antonio: I mean, I think he means you should not have children, you should not have sex. He was married though…

Yitzchok: So it’s not clear. Maybe should we be celibate? Anyways, I mean, but you should, why there isn’t like a very good reasoning for all these things. Because it seems like there’s like… like he tried to give a reasoning in the beginning.

Chapter 9: The Challenge of True Purification

Yitzchok: We’re gonna have to stop here. I guess, like there’s, there’s two theories of like asceticism or celibacy or all these kinds of things. Like one is like, well, the main thing is that you don’t identify your soul with it or you’re good with it. And then you should be, you can basically do whatever you want, which you don’t really want, but whatever or whatever feels good or whatever it is. Because it’s not… because your soul is separate, precisely because your soul is separate and it’s not you, but you might as well enjoy life. I mean life, whatever life is… Like there isn’t anything wrong with having good food or good sex or good anything as long as you’re separate from it. You know, in your separation.

But then he made the argument, well, even if you do that, then just doing it was like, no, you can’t. You can’t like have this like inner separation from what you’re doing because, because then you would come, get dissipated into it. You would, that was his language, right? You would like become ungathered. Then he goes, goes on to like make all these distinctions like, well, in this, he should do that way and this, he should do that way. And…

Antonio: And the argument also against just separating yourself is, it goes back to the argument for why you need also contemplative virtue, right? Because so you shouldn’t be paying attention to all these bodily things. You should be, you know, doing dialectics and studying the forms and trying to be and trying to understand what things are. And why? Because you’re not inherently good.

So separating yourself from these things and then like just saying, you know, it doesn’t affect who I am, but I enjoy all these, all these nice restaurants and all this nice sex. And he says, but you’re not like, you’re, you’re just an image of whatever you’re doing. So if you want to be good, you have to do and pay attention to the good things, the forms. And you can’t just, you know, just separate yourself from the bad things and think that you’ve become a good person. So that’s part of the, he hasn’t repeated that point here, but I think that’s also in the background of why he doesn’t, of why he’s saying, you should be properly ascetic in the sense of just eating and drinking as little as possible and not having sex and things like that.

Yitzchok: So then these distinctions become mostly of necessity. Like there’s an extent to which it’s possible to not eat and there’s a different extent to which it’s possible to not have anger and so on. The problem with necessity is that it’s not like only physical necessity, you need also whatever we would call emotional health or things like that and then becomes complicated.

Antonio: Right. And this all, all these limits also point to why he thinks that, why he prefaced this by saying, you can obtain this in this life. Because if it’s a, you know, if being completely purified is a requirement for really acting according to virtue, then of course, all these caveats of “as far as possible,” you know, have to be overcome by death.

But on the other hand, as I said, you really need to… it’s only because you’re aiming towards contemplative virtue beyond just separating yourself that you really have to be ascetic. You don’t have to just mentally separate yourself from things.

Okay, so next week?

Yitzchok: Okay, I hope… yeah, until now. Great.

Antonio: Okay. Have a good one.

Yitzchok: Bye, thank you.