Plotinus' Account of Participation in Ennead VI.4-5

Plotinus' Account of Participation in Ennead VI.4- 5 STEVEN K. STRANGE 1. THE PROJECT OF ENNEAD VI. 4-5 IN THE INTRODUCTION TO the third book of his commentary on Plato's Parmenides (p. 784 Cousin), Proclus lists four problems concerning the Theory of Ideas which it was apparently traditional to discuss in commenting on the first part of that dialogue. These are: (1) whether Ideas exist, (2) which things have Ideas corresponding to them and which do not, (3) what is the nature of the Ideas, and (4) in what way sensible things participate in Ideas. l The fourth problem on Proclus' list, like the second, is connected with a specific puzzle from the first part of the Parmenides. This is the difficulty that Parmenides raises at Parm. 13 la4-6, namely, whether what participates in an Idea does so by participating in the whole of it, in a part of it, or in some other way. This puzzle is often referred to as the 'sailcloth dilemma', from the example that Parmenides uses to illustrate it at ~3 ~b7-9. I will refer to the associated problem , for the sake of convenience, as "the problem of participation." My purpose in what follows will be to try to clarify Plotinus' position with respect to this problem. I think that some important details of his position have not been fully grasped by commentators. I also think that a more adequate grasp of his position may help us better understand Plotinus' general view of the metaphysics of the sensible world. No philosopher of the imperial period would have counted as a Platonist who did not affirm the existence of the Ideas,' but it is evident from Proclus' A similar list is given by Syrianus, In Meta. io8.31 ft. Syrianus adds the question whether anything else besides sensible items participate in Ideas. On this issue in Plotinus, cf. below, p.486 and n. *3- "Cf. Atticus apud Eusebius PE 15.13.4 fir. 9.29 ft. des Places),who equates abandoning the Ideas with abandoning Platonism. Proclus (In Parm. IV. init., p. 837 Cousin) mentions certain people who thought, as do some modern commentators, that Parmenides is presented in the Parmenides as attacking the Theory of Ideas. However, even these thinkers, if they were Platonists [479] 480 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3o:4 OCTOBER 1992 commentary as well as from earlier sources, such as the Middle Platonic handbook the Didaskalikos, that there was a considerable amount of controversy among ancient Platonists concerning the other three questions on Proclus' list, as indeed there still is among interpreters of Plato today. No doubt these controversies had already arisen at the very earliest period of systematic commentary on Plato: they are for instance reflected in the traditional subtitle of the Parmenides, On the Ideas. Indeed the first part of the Parmenides itself, together with what we know of Aristotle's own treatise On the Ideas, provides clear evidence that these controversies date to the Academy of Plato's time, and their persistence suggests that they are not merely difficulties of exegesis, but that they reach to the core of the Theory of Ideas as a philosophical position, and hence touch the essence of Platonism itself. Plotinus in the Enneads addresses all four of the traditional problems about the Ideas that are mentioned by Proclus. The question of what sorts of things have Ideas corresponding to them is briefly discussed in the early scholastic treatise on intellect and the Ideas, V.9 [5] 9-x2, and Plotinus returns to the specific controversy over whether there are Ideas of individuals (cf. V.9.12) in another treatise of the first period, V.7 [I8]. He does not devote much space to arguments for the existence of Ideas. This is perhaps due to the fact that he is writing for an audience of committed Platonists who would have already been convinced by such arguments, but it may also be because he is more interested in the deeper and for him more important issue about the nature of the Ideas and their relation to the intellect, on which we know his views were considered unusual and...