Conclusion

A major theme in this book has been the distinction between questions about freedom and questions about responsibility. For the Neoplatonists, to be free is to be wholly in control of oneself and wholly as one wishes to be. As everything wishes for the good, only something that is perfectly good is wholly as it wishes to be and hence only something that is perfectly good is wholly free. In ...

Rational Assent and Self-determination to the Better or the Worse

This chapter discusses three philosophers in the Damascian tradition: Damascius himself, Simplicius in his Commentary on Epictetus’s Handbook, and Ps-Simplicius in his Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima. These philosophers develop the idea that the rational soul engages in a kind of activity that is strictly self-reflexive, but that can be either right or wrong. This is an activity by which the soul makes itself either better or worse. Ps-Simplicius spells out the nature of this activity in his account of the operation of rational faculties. This account makes it possible to explain what is distinctive about the rational capacity for assent. Because it is exercised self-reflexively, this capacity can be reason-responsive: one can assent (and revise one’s assent) on the basis of reasons. The chapter argues that the fact that human beings are capable of this kind of reason-responsiveness helps to explain why they are responsible for their actions.

Proclus on Self-movement and the logoi Within

Proclus argues that we human beings are both dependent and responsible. We are moved by the gods but also self-moved. We are responsible because of the way in which our souls are self-moving. Section 1 explains how Proclus reconciles human responsibility with the operation of providence. He claims that our actions are atemporally determined but nevertheless contingent. The later sections explain Proclus’s view that our responsibility is grounded in our capacity to improve ourselves. Proclus illustrates this by explaining how Socrates, in Plato’s dialogues, helps his interlocutors to improve themselves. We can improve ourselves by making use of the logoi within our souls. Because even our bad desires are influenced by these logoi within us, when we act badly we retain a kind of access to the correct standards. By reflecting on our own bad desires we can come to grasp the correct standards stored within us.

Responsibility and the Myth of Er

This chapter discusses certain puzzles arising from Plato’s myth of Er. How can the doctrine of the transmigration of souls be reconciled with human responsibility? How can the human soul control (and be responsible for) its activities during life if these activities are entirely determined by its pre-life choice? Plotinus argues that the soul made its pre-life choice by the way it lived its previous life. This choice influences, without fully determining, how the soul will lead its next life. Porphyry argues that the soul makes two choices, and that its choice of the way it will live a particular life is made during that very life. Proclus argues that no pre-life choice is such as to prevent the soul from living virtuously during the life it has chosen, and that rational souls are to blame when they choose badly, because they contain within themselves ‘unerring standards’ for choosing correctly.

Freedom, Dependence, and Being a Part

Certain ways of being a part of a larger whole threaten to undermine individual agency, and hence freedom. This chapter considers three such part whole relations, as discussed by Plotinus. Section 1 discusses Plotinus’s reasons for denying that individual human souls are parts of the world soul. Section 2 asks how an individual soul’s (or intellect’s) freedom can be compatible with its being part of a hypostasis (Soul or Intellect). Section 3 discusses Plotinus’s view that an individual human soul is part of providence, but that what an individual does is not thereby also done by providence.

Self-making and Nonbodiliness

This chapter explains (i) the possibility of strict self-causing, (ii) the claim that what makes itself (or moves itself) must be nonbodily, (iii) the connection between self-causing and self-intellection. For the Neoplatonists, something that makes itself must do so by unifying itself. But how could anything explain its own unity? A self-unifier would need both to be a source of unity (for itself) and also to be such as to stand in need of being unified (by itself). But it might seem that these two properties are incompatible. In response, Proclus argues that an entity that unifies itself must make itself at once both unified and complex. The parts it unifies into a whole cannot be parts that would exist independently of its self-unifying activity. The chapter explains Proclus’s argument that a self-unifier cannot have bodily parts, and Plotinus’s argument that self-intellection is a kind of self-unifying activity.

Freedom and the One

This chapter discusses Plotinus’s claim that the One (or Good) is truly free. Plotinus is here responding to what he calls the ‘rash statement’: the view that, since the One is uncaused, it is merely arbitrarily the way it is, and so cannot be free. This statement raises a puzzle for the possibility of divine freedom. In response, Plotinus claims that the One is ineffable: nothing can be truly predicated of the One, so we should not attempt to speak of it at all. He then goes on to introduce a kind of improper speaking about the One (according to which it is self-causing). Finally, he corrects this improper speaking, and claims that the One is truly free. This chapter discusses the role of improper speaking in Plotinus’s account, and asks why he makes these positive claims about the One.

Obstacles to Freedom? Obstacles to Responsibility?

This chapter raises three puzzles for the Neoplatonists. The first concerns ignorance and knowledge. How can we be responsible for our vicious activity if all such activity is involuntary and stems from ignorance? Conversely, how can knowledgeable contemplation be free, given that contemplation depends on the thing contemplated? The second puzzle concerns desire. If our passions drag us about and prevent us from being free, why doesn’t a rational desire for the good also count as dragging us about, and enslaving us to the good? If our passions enslave us, then how can we be responsible for what we do when we act on such passions? The third puzzle concerns fate. Why is freedom compatible with subjection to causation from above, but not compatible with subjection to fate? And how can we be responsible for what we do when we are enslaved to fate?

Under the One but in Control of Oneself

For the Neoplatonists, free entities under the One are, in a certain sense, self-causing: they derive their goodness, unity, and being both from the One and from themselves. This chapter explores how Plotinus, Iamblichus, and Proclus develop this idea, in relation to intellects and to souls. These philosophers differ in their views on the nature of the soul, and because of this, they differ in their accounts of what it is for a soul to be free. But they all hold that free entities (under the One) are self-constituting: such entities engage in a distinctive kind of self-making activity, in which the maker is precisely the same as what is made. Because of this, a free entity is able to be wholly in control of what it is.

Freedom and Responsibility: Two Discourses Combined

This chapter discusses how questions about freedom and questions about responsibility came together in the works of certain later philosophers. Section 1 looks at Epictetus’s view that human beings are ‘by nature free’ and discusses his claim that what ‘depends on us’ is just the use we make of our impressions. Section 2 explains why Alexander described as ‘free’ the kind of activity for which we are responsible. Section 3 explains Plotinus’s view that intellectual contemplation is the activity that is primarily free and that primarily depends on us. This section also discusses how, in these arguments, Plotinus is responding to earlier philosophers and is taking up and developing some of their ideas.