PLATONIC AND PLOTINIAN METAPHYSICS. D.J. Yount Plotinus the Platonist. A Comparative Account of Plato and Plotinus’ Metaphysics. Pp. xxxii + 262. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. Cased, £65. ISBN: 978-1-4725-7521-0
The Classical Review, 2016
The aim of the volume is to show how the Platonic and Plotinian metaphysics do not differ in thei... more The aim of the volume is to show how the Platonic and Plotinian metaphysics do not differ in their fundamental principles and, in addition, that Plotinus’ writings should be mainly considered as a good interpretation of Plato. This claim is inclined to assume a unitarian and systematic approach towards Plato’s dialogues, without subscribing the Tübingen position (according to Y. there is in fact ‘enough explicit evidence of Plato’s view of his first principles’ [p. xix] in the written doctrines), and also rejects what Y. calls the ‘standard view’ (p. xxiii), according to which Plotinus’ goal would be to reply to Stoics as well as Gnostics and, more generally, to every materialistic paradigm of his age. Granted that his ‘culture influenced his thought to some extent’ (p. xxiv), none the less Plotinus’ answers and proposals belong to a Platonic perspective. In order to argue this position, Y. makes use of a methodology based upon a sort of ‘compatibility principle’ (p. xxviii), which asserts that even if Plato and Plotinus did not have identical views, they nevertheless did not construct opposite models. Such a premise not only postulates that we cannot find any Plotinian statement that ‘is incompatible in principle’ (p. xxix) with Plato, but even affirms that the two philosophers had such a similar common set of claims that one ‘cannot find an essential difference between them’ (p. xxxi). The project develops six metaphysical issues (The One/Good as the source of all things, Beauty, Intellect, the All-Soul, the Hypostases and finally Matter) where this compatible view could be uncovered more clearly. The occurrences about the One in the Parmenides and the Good in the Republic seem to represent the heart of Y.’s thesis, which implies a strong interpretation of Plato’s assertion ‘beyond being’, since the Platonic Good – once considered as equivalent to the One of the First Hypothesis of the Parmenides – is conceived as having ‘a transcendence and otherness’ (p. 17) above all the other forms. Y. himself is well aware that ‘this is one of the most controversial sections of the book’ (p. 26), for it shows Plato and Plotinus sharing the same consideration of the metaphysical status of the highest principle (see pp. 26ff.), an interpretation on which few commentators would agree, relying on the notion that what we really find in Plato should not be confused with what Plotinus thought. The second chapter attempts to establish whether Plotinus and Plato agree about the relationship between the form of Beauty and the notion of symmetry. After quoting some passages where Plotinus refuses the possibility of this identification, Y. traces the lines of a compatible perspective in Plato and Plotinus, given that both of them maintain that symmetry is not the essence of Beauty, though ‘symmetry is involved in beauty’ (p. 51) and Beauty reveals symmetry in perceptible bodies. Other resemblances in the two philosophical models are (a) the similarities between Beauty and Good (see pp. 51ff.), though they are not identical, (b) the statement that ‘we already have the vision of Beauty before we incarnate on earth’ (p. 63) and (c) the transformative power of Beauty, ‘which changes its experiencer from thence onwards’ (p. 57). We can concur with these correspondences, even though it should be noted that there is no reference to Ennead 3.5, where Plotinus’ analysis is quite peculiar and somehow not Platonic, since the exegesis of Symposium and Phaedrus is applied to the ontological dependence of hypostases one on another. THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 86
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