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Philosophy in the Age of Commentary: Plotinus and Aristotle on Time, Timelessness and the Soul

To what extent should Plotinus be considered a “Commentator”? Plotinus figures prominently in all three volumes of Sorabji's Sourcebook, The Philosophy of the Commentators, and Sorabji remarks that, although he is “not nowadays thought of as a commentator at all” (Sourcebook I, 4) Plotinus understands himself as an interpreter of Plato and the “ancients” since Parmenides. Nevertheless, Plotinus does not appear to be a commentator in the same regard as his Perapatetic predecessor, Alexander of Aphrodisias, who earned for himself the epithet “the commentator” (ὁ ἐξηγητής). Plotinus’ doctrine of the three hypostases constitutes in a specific sense a commentary on Plato’s and Aristotle’s view of the relationship of Intellect and the Highest principle, Intellect and Soul. Plotinus’ interpretation of that relationship plays an important role in later Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato’s idea of the Good and the so-called Unwritten Doctrine, the ἄγραφα δόγματα mentioned by Aristotle in his in Phys. 209b 13-15. To shed light on Plotinus’ position with regard to the classical Greek “religion of the Intellect” and its “two great influential themes”, the Arche and Divine Intellect, on the one hand, and the changes introduced in the approach to philosophical inquiry generally which follow upon Plotinus’ reinterpretation of those themes, I consider Plotinus Ennead III, 7 On Eternity and Time and its relationship to Aristotle’s treatment of the problem of time and timelessness. Plotinus bases his account primarily on his interpretation of Plato, and on Aristotle’s consideration insofar as it enables him to expound on Plato’s position. In essence, Plotinus agrees with Aristotle to the extent that Aristotle agrees with Plato on a definition of timelessness, and disagrees with Aristotle (and other successors and opponents of Plato, as well as commentators) when Aristotle sees time as number of movement, introducing instead his own definition of time as diastasis zoe (Augustine distensio animae) The problem of time and timelessness provides thereby an exemplary case of how Plotinus proceeds with respect to authorities like Aristotle, Plato and the “Ancients”. Plotinus’ conviction of the presence of the levels of reality in the individual soul determines to a large extent his solution to the problem of time, insofar as time appears here as inextricably related to consciousness, a position which may be implied by, but is not explicit in Aristotle’s definition of time as “the number of motion according to the before and after.”

Plotinus; Aristotle; Plato; philosophy; commentary; time; timelessness; eternity; intellect; soul

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