Epitome of Plotinus, Ennead 1.3: On Dialectic, or the Upward Way

Below is an epitome of Plotinus: Dialectic, or The Upward Journey, in his own words. From: The Enneads 1.3,  Stephen MacKenna (transl.), London, 1917–1930.  Plotinus identifies three methods of upward ascent or anagogy, associating these with the musician, the lover, and the thinker.  These correspond to the Platonic ascents to the Form of Goodness (God) via the Higher Forms of Moral Goodness, Beauty, and Truth, described in the Phaedrus Chariot Myth, Diotima’s Ladder of Love in the Symposium, and the Cave Allegory in Book 7 of the Republic, respectively.  These paths are not completely distinct, however.  As Plotinus notes, dialectic is relevant to all three.  The same, of course, may be said for love of Beauty, and Moral Virtue.

OUR journey is to the Good. What art or method will bring us there? How lies the course? Is it alike for all, or is there a distinct method for each class of temperament? There are several paths; for all, there are two stages. First, is conversion from the lower life. Second, those who already gain a footprint in the upper sphere may advance still further, until they reach the topmost peak of the Noetic (pure Intellectual) realm. But discussion of this highest degree must wait. Let us here speak of the initial process of conversion. We must begin by distinguishing the three types.

1. The musician we may think of as being exceedingly quick to beauty, drawn in a very rapture to it. All that offends unison, harmony, and measure repels him. He must be shown that what ravished him was no other than the Harmony of the Noetic universe. The truths of philosophy must be implanted in him to lead him to a faith in that which, unknowing it, he already possesses within himself.

2. The born lover, to whose degree the musician also may attain. Spellbound by visible loveliness he clings amazed about that. His lesson must be to fall down no longer in bewildered delight before some, one embodied form; he must be led, under a system of mental discipline, to beauty everywhere and made to discern and love the One Principle underlying all.

3. The metaphysician or thinker, winged already and not like those others, in need of disengagement, attracted to the supernal but doubting of the way, needs only a guide. He must be led to make his virtue perfect; after Mathematics he must be put through a course in Dialectic.

But this science, this Dialectic essential to all the three classes alike, — what, in sum, is it? It brings with it the power of pronouncing with final truth upon the nature and relation of things: what each is, how it differs from others, what common quality all have. Dialectic treats also of the Good and the not-Good, and of the particulars that fall under each, and of what is the Eternal and what the not Eternal; and of these, it must be understood, not by the becoming-knowledge of the senses, but with the Being-knowledge of noesis. This accomplished, it gives up its roaming amongst thoughts concerned with material things, and settles contented in the noetic realm of pure Forms. Is Dialectic, then, the same as Philosophy? It is the precious part of Philosophy. We must not think of it as the mere tool of the metaphysician: Dialectic does not consist of bare theories and rules: it deals with verities. It knows above all, the operation of ones own soul.