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Under the Influence of Plotinus: Augustine’s Ascent of the Soul

Kyle Sanders

            This earthly life cannot be it.  It’s passing; it’s finite; it’s not totally beautiful.  There must be something for the soul to contemplate other that what is lower than itself, or even itself, namely substantial truth.  For Augustine, this was God.  In The Magnitude of the Soul, he, with a Plotinian tinge, gives seven steps to ascend to this contemplation of substantial truth as God.

            The first step, or degree, is “of the body,”[1] as Augustine says.  Here the soul gives animation to the earthly body.  The soul unifies and regulates the body.  The soul in fact contemplates the body, and focuses its attention on it.  This, however, can be said of any living thing, including plants, animals, and humans.  This idea of the soul animating and managing the body comes straight from Plotinus, “It would seem that our souls, charged with managing of bodies less perfect than they, had to penetrate into them if they were to manage them truly.  For such bodies have a tendency to come apart.”[2]  Augustine just adds soul to plants and animals.

            Augustine takes Plotinus’ idea a step further with his second degree, “through the body.”  “In the higher living organism, how great is the soul’s power in the sense and in locomotion?”[3]  Through the body we are able to sense and discern with greater clarity our surroundings, something plants cannot do.  Humans and animals share in the memory that is habit, acquired through the senses.  Plotinus at least accounts for the rational soul sensing, “All men . . . live more by sensation than by thought,”[4] but he does not mention animal souls sensing.  He would probably agree with Augustine, though, that animals sense. 

            The third degree leaves contemplation of material things into “about the body.”  This is where rational souls are separated from irrational souls.  Rational souls have a memory that is “the recorder and compiler of facts without number.”[5]  This is knowledge that goes beyond the sensory memory of the previous degree.  Augustine names human occupations such as farming, building, and speaking in different languages to give examples of knowledge.  Plotinus bridges the gap between sensation and knowledge, “Contemplation is aimed at by discursive reason, and below it, by sensation whose end is knowledge.”[6]  Knowledge is superior to sensation because it allows a rational soul to deduct ideas through reason, a pillar of Augustine’s spiritual ascent. 

            The fourth degree of the soul is “toward itself.”  Here the soul begins to acquire and contemplate virtue and moral goodness.  The soul turns away from that which brings down, mainly sin.  It begins a dynamism towards goodness and beauty through virtue.  This is almost straight from the Enneads, “To the beauty of the soul he turns his attention—to virtue, knowledge, noble deeds, law.”[7]  The soul turns towards itself and away from the material, the lesser of the human.  In this turn, the soul moves closer to contemplation of truth itself, God.   However, the soul is still weak enough to fall back from temptation, and it is still afraid of death.

            The fifth degree of the soul is “in itself.”  Here the soul is purified from “all disease and cleansed of all its stains” possessing itself joyfully and without fear.[8]   Here the soul stays pure and is disgusted by sin.  It advances toward the contemplation of truth.  Contemplating itself purely, the soul moves closer to that contemplation of truth.  Augustine here is no different from Plotinus, “It (the soul) contemplates its priors, its own content, and its issue.  Purity and simplicity characterized its issue, and even more, its content, and most of all, it priors or Prior.”[9]  The Prior that Plotinus is referring to would be what Augustine interprets as God, substantial truth, creator of all beings. 

            Then there is the sixth degree, “toward God.”  Here the soul yearns “to understand what things are true and best.”[10]  This Augustine says is the soul’s highest vision.  It is not enough for the soul to be free of stain; it must look towards something that is greater than itself, mainly those trascendentals, truth, good, and beauty. All of these embody God, truth, goodness, and beauty itself.  God is that which the soul desires to be united with and wishes to contemplate for the length of its existence.  This degree is the highest intellection of the soul.  Again Augustine can be seen as drawing from Plotinus, “All life is thought, thought of greater or less obscurity as is life itself.  But the life of which it is question now is a life of complete clarity.  It is the highest life and the highest intellection identified.”[11]  The soul wishes contemplation of the One, of substantial truth, of beauty itself, of God. 

            The final degree of the ascent of the soul is “in God,” the goal of the soul, contemplation of God as substantial truth.  This a dwelling place of the soul.  This place, this contemplation is attained with “perseverance to the course that God lays down for us and which we have undertaken to hold, we shall come by God’s power and wisdom to that highest Cause,”[12] substantial truth.  Through the contemplation of truth we come to understand that vanity is not truth because “comparable to unseen realities, they are as nothing.”[13]  Fear of death disintegrates; instead, death is embraced as a passage to unity with God.  This dwelling place transcends all knowledge, all understanding, all physical reality into something greater, something more beautiful.  Augustine mirrors Plotinus, “Awareness of the One comes to us neither by knowing not by the pure thought that discovers the other intelligible things, but by a presence transcending knowledge.”[14]  Sheer contemplation of the One of substantial truth, of God, this is such a great and awesome goal.  Unity is restored.  Being is fuller.  The soul is one with that which created it and nurtured it and gave power and knowledge.  This ascent is necessary, not futile or empty.  To Augustine, these are the necessary steps to heaven, eternal life, the goal of a Christian, contemplation of God as truth.

Works Cited

1. Augustine of Hippo. The Magnitude of the Soul.  Handout.
2. Plotinus.  Enneads.  Handout.