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Aristotle argues that there are four kinds of causes. 1 Everyone who has tried
to read something written by Aristotle has come across this doctrine one way
or another. The four causes may be understood as four ways of explaining
what is responsible for the being of a thing, and for changes that take place in
things or in relation to things in the world. The efficient cause is on the one
hand the productive cause of the existence of something, like the male,
1
I would first like to make a terminological remark. The term double activity
designates a certain causal scheme. One part of this activity is internal the
other is external. In my usage these terms are of a wider application, and do
not exclusively designate Plotinus doctrine of causation. The reader has,
therefore, to be aware of distinctions in the application of this terminology.
One thing is the Plotinian use of this conceptual scheme. The Christian
application differs from this, as we shall see.5
As indicated above, we do not now leave the topic of causality, but
rather enters the field of central and interconnected ideas in the philosophy of
late antiquity, of relevance both for pagan Neoplatonism and for Christian
thought. Plotinus distinguishes between three divine entities that are
hierarchically arranged, viz. the One, the Intellect or Mind, and the Soul.
There is a fourth entity called nature, and on the level of nature matter
emerges. We shall start with what a lot of people associate with Plotinus, viz.
that he teaches how lower levels of being emanate from the higher principles,
basically from the One, the highest Neoplatonic divinity. Plotinus, it is
claimed, holds a doctrine of emanation. As a matter of fact, Plotinus uses terms
that indicate that this is the case. He speaks of a radiation (perilampsis) from
the One, like the radiation of light from the sun, or like the emission of scent
from perfumes.6 However, I am quite sure that these likenesses in effect are
images and metaphors illustrating a difficult but highly sophisticated doctrine
of causation.
I am indebted to Emilsson (2007) for some basic aspects of the Plotinian doctrine of double activity.
The Christian application is worked out by me in Activity and Participation (a draft for a book, sent to
the publisher).
6
Ennead 5.1.6.
same picture, snow is essentially a cooling process in itself, but it lets off a
external cooling process which may be experienced around it. And perfumes
are essentially an active substance internally, that it experienced beyond its
own limitation in time and space: we may scent the perfume from a distance.
There is something we should note about these examples that strikes
me as especially important. It we consider the internal process as a cause and
the external result as an effect, we clearly see that there is a certain connection
between what goes on internally and what goes on externally. Cause and
effect have some quality in common. It is because the internal activity has a
certain quality that the external activity has its distinctive quality. Both
Aristotle and his commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias points out that there
are instances in which cause and effect have the same qualities, like fire and
things heated.7 Further, in the generation of substances a substance generates
something of the same species as itself. However, Aristotle sees that a quality
does not have to be generated by a quality of the same kind, when he
acknowledges that hardness is generated, not by what is hard, but, for
instance, by heat that dries out moisture from, let us say, clay. This last is
important. Plotinus says:8 It is not necessary that one should possess what
one gives. Rather, we should think in such cases that the giver is greater, and
the given less than the giver. One should note, however, that the immediate
effect of an internal heat is heat, while dryness is a second effect.
On the one hand, in the instances we have considered from Plotinus, it
is quite easy to understand his point of double activity as a causal scheme
whenever the same quality is active in cause as well as in effect. On the other
hand, Aristotles example of the quality of hardness would not function in any
different way, since it is the internal activity of heat that produces an external
7
Aristotle, GC 1,5: 320b17-21 and Alexander, In Metaph. 147,15-28. [Cf. Sorabji, The Philosophy of
the Commentators, Physics, 141-3.]
8
Ennead 6.7.17. [Cf. Sorabji, 144.]
heat that dries out the moisture form clay. However, in this instance we may
acknowledge that heat is the cause of a quality that differs from itself as well,
viz. dryness. When we turn to intelligible realities things become more
intricate and definitely more difficult to explain. We saw above that the One
remains in the condition of intelligibility, and this, as an internal activity, has
the external effect of being thought. Its being thought is on a secondary level,
which means that like the heat springing from the internal heat in fire,
Intellect or Mind springs from the internal activity of the One. If such is the
case, to remarks is appropriate. (i) The strength of the idea is that there is
somehow a common quality in cause as in effect. (ii) The weakness is that it is
easier to see how heat follows heat than to see how Intellect follows
intelligibility. One could, probably, say that it is only sensible to talk of
something being intelligible if there is an intellect to think it. But this does not
make this creation-process intuitively evident. However, there are more
difficulties. In Ennead 5.1.6 Plotinus says: So if there is a second after the One
it must have come to be without the One moving at all, without any
inclination or act of will or any sort of activity on its part. The One, according
to Plotinus, is even beyond activity.9 The One of Plotinus is not self-thinking
thought. It does not think at all. It is not even conscious of itself. 10 Even so the
One is an activity.11 This activity is in Ennead 6.8.16 described as hypernoesis, a
beyond-thinking. Whatever this may mean, the One obviously is in an even
better condition when it comes to mental activity than any kind of thinking
or contemplation we may be able to conceive.
Despite his desire to elevate the perfect condition of the One beyond
any human comprehension, Plotinus seems to stick to the idea of the One as
somehow intelligible.12 One wonders why, and one wonders how this
9
Ennead 1.7.1.
Ennead 3.9.9.
11
Ennead 5.6.6.
12
Cf. Ennead 5.4.2.
10
the essence of the One. This activity emerges as a potential act of contemplation
in which the One becomes a potential object of contemplation. In the act of
conversion the activity of the essence of the new entity is established as a new
hypostasis: the potential act of contemplation becomes an actual act of
contemplation, this actuality or activity (these translates the same Greek
word, energeia) is a contemplation of itself as derived from the One, and as
such a self-contemplation it becomes the hypostasis of the Intellect.
The above try to highlight the causal process of generation does not, of
course, clear up all the difficulties surrounding the generation of hypostases
or entities in the Plotinian system, but it has to suffice. At least I hope I have
contributed a bit to some better understanding of the sophisticated
philosophy of Plotinus.
There is one more important thing to take notice of before we move on,
viz. the hierarchical character of Plotinus concept of causality: the cause is
greater than its effect.15 I suppose Plotionus has concept of horizontal
causation, like when father engenders his son, but the causal scheme of
double activity and procession and conversion is, in Plotinus, conceived to
explain generations in the intelligible realm, as well as sensible changes in
which cause could reasonably be taken to be greater than its effect. The
illustrations applied above would be if this kind: fire and heat, perfume and
scent, snow and cold, etc. One might ask, however, if this causality of double
activity as conceived by Plotinus necessarily secures such a sequence of
greater and lesser. As a matter of fact, I cannot see that it necessarily does. It is
at least not self-evident to me that the effect needs to be on a lower ontological
level in the scale of being that the cause. This feature makes it easier to apply
the term double activity, and internal and external activity, when speaking of
certain aspects of Christian thinking as well.
15
The concept of double activity involves, it seems, three to four of the six
causes mentioned in section 4.1. The activity of the essence is an instance of a
formal cause, the activity out of the essence is efficient causality, and the
conversion represents final causality. I suppose that the paradigmatic cause
may be involved in efficient causality, whenever something is made in
accordance with a pattern. Causal schemes are involved in explanation of
processes in the different realms of intelligible and sensible nature.
The Neoplatonist Proclus () exploits the Plotinian conception of
causality in a rather distinctive way. Proclus adheres to the principle,
considered above, that causes and effects have the same qualities. 16 In a
famous proposition from his Elements of theology (35), Proclus says: Evert
effect remains in its cause, proceeds from it, and converts upon it. This
doctrine of remaining, prosession, and conversion is, as we have seen, already
present in Plotinus. In Proclus it becomes a central feature of his system. The
first part of the proposition probably means that the qualities that occur in the
effect are already present in the cause, and in a more perfect way that is. The
second part means that the effect is distinguished from its cause. The third
part of the proposition means that the effect is fully constituted in its character
when it turns to its source and gets constituted as it is somehow filled
metaphorically speaking with it.
In Plotinus we saw that it is the higher principle itself that remains in
its own perfection, in Proclus it is the effect that remains in its cause. This,
however, could be understood as two sides of the same case: the remaining of
the effect in the cause is the preservation on the higher level of the quality that
16
And if they had nothing identical, the second having nothing in common with the existence
of the first, could not arise from its existence (to einai). It remains, then, that where one thing
receives bestowal from another in virtue of that others mere existence, the giver possesses
primitively the character which it gives, while the recipient is by derivation what the giver
is.
17
For from Him, and by Him, and to Him are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.
17
For in Him were all tings created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and
invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers all things
were created by Him, and to Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
This prepositional metaphysics (cf. the in, by, and to) of St Paul suggests that
the world is somehow contained in God, as if God is its paradigmatic cause,
that beings proceed from God by an act of creation, that they convert to God,
and that God is the reason for their existence. In a general sense, this is what
Dionysius intends. In The scheme is further developed in the thought of St
Maximus the Confessor. In his 7th Ambiguum he speaks of a procession that
keeps together and a converting transference. 18 This is the procession and
conversion-aspects of the causal idea. The part of the doctrine that concerns
remaining is in Maximus connected with his teaching on divine logoi (similar
to Platonic Forms in a divine intellect) that are conceived eternally in God as
the paradigmatic cause of the cosmos. All beings are eternally present in the
divine mind in these logoi. God knows all things He will make, intelligible as
well as sensible, in His logoi.19 We shall return to the details concerning
Maximus thinking in later chapters.
18
19