As an ardent follower of the Platonic tradition, Plotinus gives a central place in his philosophical scheme to beauty, which he presents as a quality of the intelligible world that is only shared with things in the world below through their participation in intelligible reality. In his early treatises I.6[1] and I.3[20], he seems to consider beauty to be an unambiguous aid in the ascent of the soul to the Good, since the natural position of beauty in the intelligible attracts souls and helps to lead them away from the distractions of the material towards their proper place in the intelligible. Two later treatises, however, include passages that reveal the situation to be much more complicated, including an apparent contradiction: while VI.7[38] states that the beauty of intellect, in and of itself, is unattractive until it is enlightened by the Good, V.5[32] suggests that intellectual beauty, separated from the Good, can be attractive enough to be a distraction. These seemingly contradictory passages can be reconciled by considering the later treatises as referring not to actual characteristics of beauty but rather to flawed human perspectives; if beauty is taken out of its proper context, viz. its relationship to the Good, it can appear either completely uninteresting or far too interesting in the wrong way.
In his earliest extant treatise, On Beauty (I.6 [1]), Plotinus presents beauty as something that is naturally attractive and appealing to the soul, since it arouses and excites any soul that experiences it. He directly rejects the Stoic notion that beauty is nothing but good proportion, a view which he counters in part by pointing out that immaterial objects like knowledge or laws can be beautiful but have no apparent proportion (or at least none that is unique to them and distinct from ugly objects of a similar kind).1 Instead, beginning his explanation by considering the experience of beauty in physical things, which is where the embodied soul first consciously encounters it, he notes that beauty appears to be something that the soul naturally recognizes and to which it feels a strong attraction as soon as it sees it, which brings him to the conclusion that there is a natural affinity between beauty and the soul. This affinity arises from the relation of the nature of the soul to the intelligible; being “related to the higher kind of reality in the realm of being” (i.e. the world of the forms, or intelligible reality, of which the physical world is a mere refection), the soul welcomes the experience of beauty because it recalls its origin in the intelligible.2 This would require that beauty be related in some necessary way to the world of the forms, meaning that there must be some quality of the intelligible even in perceptible beauty and therefore a natural relation and likeness between perceptible and intelligible beauty. In order for this to be the case, beauty in the perceptible world must be a participation in form; its attraction of the soul is thereby explained, since it causes the soul that experiences it to recall the higher and more real existence of the intelligible.
This concept of participation in form is a development of the Platonic idea that the soul is attracted to beautiful objects by remembering the form of beauty, but Plotinus draws even further conclusions from this attraction to form than Plato does; he posits that since it is a connection with intelligible reality that causes beauty in beautiful objects, beauty must necessarily be a relation with any part of intelligible reality. It is therefore not merely by embodying the form of beauty that an object is beautiful but by embodying any form at all.3 This participation in form means that a physical object can only become beautiful when its form shapes its matter as perfectly as it is able, since matter alone is formless and ugly, and ugliness consists of complete lack of form. The action of form on matter is primarily one of unification, since form is itself unified, and perfection is a kind of unity. Form shapes matter by attempting to bring something naturally multiplicitous, as material components are, as close to a unified whole as it can; since physical objects are made up of different parts, the form tries to make all of these parts relate to one another in a coherent way. Beauty, therefore, exists only in objects that have been appropriately unified by form.4
Because of its formless nature, matter can sometimes obscure the form that tries to shape it; some material things, therefore, are able to embody their forms with more accuracy than others. This explains why some material objects are more beautiful than others.5 In contrast, the beauty of immaterial objects, since they are not perceived through the senses but rather can be grasped more directly, is particularly apparent and attractive because its expression is unimpeded by matter, although, like physical beauty, intelligible beauty must nevertheless be experienced to be understood.6 Beautiful intelligible objects are therefore even more exciting to the soul than physical ones, since their beauty is more evident, not having to contend with matter, as well as having a truer existence. In the presence of any kind of beauty, however, whether material or immaterial, the soul experiences “wonder and a shock of delight and longing and passion and a happy excitement,” although some souls are more moved by certain kinds of beauty than others.7
Since beauty is a quality of form, not of matter, it follows that the truest beauty is in the intelligible world, and that for the soul to be beautiful, it must purify itself from physical affections; hence any soul, “when it is raised to the level of intellect, increases in beauty,” because the intelligible world is more proper to it than the physical.8 In this purification and beautification the soul becomes more divine, since beauty comes from the divine and can be metaphorically attributed to—although not predicated actually of—the Good, whom Plotinus here directly calls “God.” The Good is completely unified and simple (which gives rise to his other title common in Plotinus, “the One”) and hence has no distinct attributes; this necessarily implies that beauty, goodness, and anything else attributed to him all represent the same quality insofar as they apply to him, since all such qualities are merely a human way of talking about him. Plotinus merely alludes here to the conception of divine unity and ineffability, an idea which he discusses more fully elsewhere (most notably in his treatise VI.9), but he certainly has it in mind when he states that “for God the qualities of goodness and beauty are the same, or the realities, the good and beauty.”9 Hence, from a human perspective, the Good possesses absolute beauty, and beauty subsists in him, whence intellect, which is an emanation of the Good, receives its beauty; in a similar manner, intellect beautifies the soul, which in turn beautifies bodies.10 Because of the origin and subsistence of beauty in the Good, the ascent of the soul to the Good involves the eventual vision of absolute beauty. This vision is, however, impossible to be described in words, although Plotinus does attempt to discuss the way to approach this contemplation of the Good, which can only be achieved by setting aside the distractions of physical beauty and purifying one’s own soul to achieve a kind of inner vision. In concluding the treatise, Plotinus affirms that the true place of beauty is in the intelligible, since the Good “holds beauty as a screen before it” but is, technically speaking, beyond beauty, since it is beyond being.11
This excitement by beauty is a natural aid in the ascent to the Good, as Plotinus explains at the beginning of his treatise On Dialectic (I.3[20]). He commences the treatise, which is meant primarily to demonstrate the principles of the art which is necessary for the ascent to the Good, by discussing the processes of ascent for the three characters most suited for it, viz. the musician, the lover, and the philosopher. Plotinus appropriates this threefold distinction from the Phaedrus, although he innovates by distinguishing the three more sharply than Plato does. Of these three, the musician and the lover naturally feel a strong attraction to physical beauty (aural in the one case and visual in the other) but have not yet become conscious of the intelligible nature of beauty. The musician is “easily moved and excited by beauty, but not quite capable of being moved by absolute beauty,” while the lover “cannot grasp [beauty] in its separateness, but he is overwhelmingly amazed and excited by 59 visible beauties.”12 They can therefore most easily begin their ascent by making abstractions from their experience and admiration of physical beauty. Through separating and examining what it is in beautiful objects that actually attracts them, they can arrive at a conception of beauty qua beauty and its natural unity and existence in the intelligible world, whence they can proceed through the intelligible world to contemplation of the Good.
While these two treatises appear to present beauty as naturally and necessarily attractive, a later treatise entitled How the Multitude of Forms Came into Being, and On the Good (VI.7[38]) includes a passage which states that beauty is not attractive in and of itself but only becomes appealing when it receives from the Good a certain kind of light (a quality to which Plotinus also refers in this passage by different metaphors, viz. grace, color, warmth, and life).13 The treatise itself is a lengthy and profound discourse on the nature of the Good and intellect that involves an explanation of the forms and their place in the intelligible world, during which Plotinus emphasises how much more real the intelligible is than the material. In this context, Plotinus presents both intellect and the intelligible as being naturally beautiful but requiring something further from the Good in order to be attractive. Without this enlightening, any beautiful object “is what it is by itself” and is unattractive and uninteresting to the soul.14 When, however, it receives illumination from the Good, it immediately excites and arouses the soul that observes it, which “is moved and dances wildly and is all stung with longing and becomes love”―a passionate state which resembles the excitement described in I.6.15
This inactivity of isolated beauty would seem more plausible with regard to physical things, which could be seen to be obscured by matter, but in the context of the treatise it clearly applies to intellect itself. Even intellect, then, which has profound natural beauty and has the added benefit of being immaterial and hence more evidently beautiful, must be illumined by the Good to be attractive to the soul. In a striking repurposing of language from the Phaedrus, Plotinus states that the soul “falls fat on its back” at the sight of unillumined beauty; whereas in the Phaedrus the soul falls backwards in reverence and fear at the sight and recollection of the form of beauty, which recalls intelligible reality, in the Ennead the soul lies down because of boredom and apathy when confronted with something that is beautiful but unillumined.16 The ascent to the Good can therefore only begin when the soul sees beauty that has been enlightened; as soon as any soul does experience illumined beauty, however, it “gains strength and wakes and is truly winged” and thereby naturally ascends.17 Its ascent continues “as long as there is anything higher than that which is present to it,” which causes it to arrive finally at the Good as the summit beyond which it is impossible to ascend, since nothing can be higher.18 If a soul were to remain in contemplation of intellect, it would be continually discontented, since even intellect, beautiful as it is, is not sufficient to fulfill the soul, hence the soul must necessarily arise beyond intellect in order to be satisfied. To summarise and conclude the passage—and incidentally reaffirm his position that proportion is not enough to make something beautiful—Plotinus makes an analogy, stating that beauty is to the Good as proportion is to beauty (i.e., just as something well-proportioned is not itself beautiful but requires some further sort of grace, so also something beautiful is not attractive without a further enlightenment).19
The opposite perspective appears in the treatise That the Intelligibles are not Outside the Intellect, and On the Good (V.5[32]), in which Plotinus seems to state that intelligible beauty itself has the power to excite the soul, and, far from being indubitably an aid in the ascent to the Good, it can easily be a distraction and hindrance. The primary purpose of the treatise, which was originally part of a longer treatise that was later divided and separated by Porphyry, is both to demonstrate that the forms are one with intellect, a conclusion which emphasizes the unity of the intelligible world, and to show that the Good exists and transcends intellect, since it is beyond form and substance. The diversion into intelligible beauty and its distracting power seems to be related to and to build on the earlier discussion of intelligible beauty in the part of the original treatise that is directly prior to V.5 (numbered by Porphyry as V.8 [31]). Since it occurs in the context of discussing the Good, the passage involves a comparison of the Good to the beauty of intellect, which, earlier in the treatise, has been established to have a position in the intelligible world that is second only to the Good.20
The chapter begins by distinguishing the way in which the soul perceives intelligible objects from that in which it perceives physical ones, a distinction which leads to a presentation of the difference between the soul’s experiences of beauty and of the Good. As distinct from the Good, which all men desire whether they know it or not, beauty must be experienced to be desired.21 Once it is experienced, however, it causes passionate and painful longing, since those who have seen it necessarily desire it.22 The priority, unconsciousness, and innate nature of the desire for the Good emphasize the priority and superiority of the Good itself. Furthermore, the Good is satisfying in and of itself and causes those who arrive at it to have nothing more to desire, since it is the fulfillment of everything. Beauty, on the other hand, although temporarily pleasing, is unable to satisfy the soul completely and permanently. On account of this, some are tempted to reject the actual goodness of beauty and its proper place in the intelligible, considering that beauty is dependent on the Good, just as the soul is, and therefore cannot be superior to the soul.23 Contrariwise, because of the temporary attraction of beauty, sometimes the soul can be unconsciously distracted and drawn away from the Good by the newer and more alluring charm of beauty; forgetting to continue its ascent, the soul remains contemplating beauty since—unlike the “gentle and kindly and gracious” presence of the Good—beauty causes “wonder and shock and pleasure mingled with pain,” which is superficially more stimulating.24 Like the idea of inert beauty, this distracting charm would also seem to make more sense with regard to physical beauty, which clearly includes elements that are inconsistent with the intelligible world (most particularly matter) and could cause the soul to deviate, but in the context it is obviously intended to apply to intellect, which makes it seem even more unusual and harder to reconcile with the earlier passages.
These two passages, then, seem to contradict one another as well as contradicting I.6 and I.3. Beauty, specifically the beauty of intellect, is described on the one hand as inactive by itself and on the other hand as dangerously attractive, neither condition assisting the ascent of the soul to the Good. An effective way to reconcile the two accounts is to consider them not to be describing the essential nature of beauty but rather to be presenting the perspectives and consequences of various incorrect human opinions, particularly those that are the result of separating beauty from the Good.25
The beauty of intellect is naturally a refection of the Good and belongs within the world of the forms; as such, it has the power to lead the soul to contemplation of the Good. When the human soul considers it apart from the Good, however, it can appear either completely unattractive or dangerously distracting. If the soul ignores the proper context of intelligible beauty (i.e., its relation and connection to the Good) and considers it abstractly, it will be receiving a false impression of what that beauty actually is and perceiving it thoroughly incorrectly. This flawed perception may, on the one hand, lead the soul to dismiss intelligible beauty as dull and uninteresting, since what makes any sort of beauty attractive and appealing is its relation to the Good and the forms. It may instead, however, have the opposite effect and cause the soul to focus on the wrong elements of the nature of beauty and find beauty to be attractive on its own account; rather than understanding and pursuing what it is that truly makes beauty attractive, which is its connection to the Good, the soul can be distracted by particular qualities and non-essential elements of intelligible beauty that appear to possess an attraction of their own, although in reality their attraction derives from a higher source. Either of these states (i.e., indifference or distraction) can lead to the soul’s dissatisfaction with beauty and eventual rejection of its goodness, since without the Good beauty cannot be fulflling.26 In both cases beauty without the Good seems to be the troubling element, and in the earlier treatises it is beauty as related to the Good that attracts and draws the soul and assists the ascent. Hence the passages are not in fact contradictory if considered in light of each other.
Another element which the passages seem to share, and which suggests the actual consonance of all of them, is the idea of the exciting and startling nature of beauty as a consequence of its existence in the intelligible. This conception is taken directly from Plato, in whose work it occurs multiple times, most prominently in the Phaedrus; the phrase which Plotinus startlingly repurposes in V.5, that of the soul falling prostrate, is in its original context an example of the amazement and astonishment of the soul when presented with beauty. Following Plato, each of the Plotinian passages refers at least once to the effects of beauty on the soul with words such as “wonder” and “shock”; VI.7. even uses the rather surprising image of Bacchic dancing, which emphasises the passionate thrill and ecstasy caused by the experience of beauty.27 The two earlier treatises portray this as a natural result of the intelligible nature of beauty, since the soul has an innate desire and longing for the intelligible world to which it belongs by right and is therefore moved deeply and amazed when it sees anything that reminds it of the intelligible. VI.7 develops this idea, making it clear that it is strictly the influence and refection of the Good that can alone make beauty attractive and exciting to the soul. V.5 might superficially appear to contradict this perspective, since its depiction of the wonder caused by beauty occurs in the context of the contrasting natures of beauty and the Good and the seemingly devious and dangerous charms of beauty. The passage, however, still regards beauty as a natural component of the intelligible realm and an emanation of the Good, despite its disturbing characteristics when considered as something separate from the Good. In all four passages, then, the attraction of beauty arises from its intelligible nature.
When taken together, the four passages complement one another to provide a clear picture of beauty as an emanation of the Good and a potential aid in the ascent that culminates in the contemplation of the Good (i.e., the vision of absolute beauty). Any apparent and superficial contradictions between the ideas presented in each treatise vanish when the passages from the two later treatises are understood as descriptions of subjective states of souls who mistakenly separate beauty from the Good, as opposed to objective accounts of the nature of intelligible beauty. Likewise, the effects of beauty on the soul are described in a similar way in all of the passages, and the reason for these effects is in all cases revealed to be the intelligible nature of beauty; these similarities help to combine the ideas described in each treatise and thereby produce a unified image of intelligible beauty. Throughout the four passages, and especially when they are compared and combined, intelligible beauty appears as something that attracts the soul but not primarily on its own account; being an emanation of the Good, in the very process of drawing the soul towards itself, it points beyond itself to the Good and thus leads the soul to surpass and transcend the intelligible.
