Explaining Materialism

Keith Ward on Materialism, 6     1  2  3  4  5

“It is easy to forget how very recent and meteoric the rise of materialism has been in philosophy”, Ward further explains. “How could it get from being a joke to being a claimant to obvious truth in forty years? I think there have been two major factors at work. One is the rise of cynicism about any sort of idealistic approach to life, about all human institutions, including religious ones, and about the failures of religious people to prevent violence and hatred, and indeed their tendency to increase violence and hatred in the world.”

Here it seems important to make a distinction with regard to the “idealistic approach to life”. It is true to say that there has been a rise of cynicism about “any sort of” such approach. But I think there are nonetheless two basically different sorts that must be kept apart.

One is the strictly philosophical, metaphysical, religious and traditionalist, which may or may not express itself in moral and social concerns, but which, when it does, is allied to a proper, classical and indeed classicist humanistic view of man, based on ethical dualism and realistic discernment with regard to the nature of man, society and the world (something which does not preclude the acceptance and incorporation of the important partial truths of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, or modernity in general, which can contribute to creative renewal of tradition and beneficent change). This is the idealistic approach to life which I am inclined to defend.

The other is the modern romantic and rationalist one which Irving Babbitt calls humanitarian, an undiscerning, illusorily progressivist pseudo-idealism based on a facile, immanentizing modern pantheism and monism in its view of both man and the world. Such idealism often had no problems accepting, in practice at least, materialism as sound, and to affirm it as part of an expression of honest, emancipated, sensual life-affirmation against the bigoted metaphysical idealism and religion of the reactionaries. There is certainly cynicism today about this form of idealism too; the liberals and leftists who used to believe in it are indeed often cynics and rather nihilists in both theory and practice. (There is a third sense of idealism, namely unselfish commitment to things believed in, and various associated qualities. This sense is not really determined by what those things are, but it often merges with the second sense by the addition of the characteristics of humanitarianism.)

This disillusion is made inevitable by the illusoriness of this kind of idealism itself; it was prefigured already in the nineteenth century and has been thoroughly analysed and explained by Babbitt and others. The problem is that it affects also the understanding of and attitude towards the first, genuine form of idealism.

Ward observes that the cynicism “has been largely motivated by the Marxist ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’, the accusation that all religious and moral systems are in fact ideologies, no more than sophisticated disguises for egoistic self-seeking on the part of their proponents”. Ward rightly uses the term “hermeneutics of suspicion” about Marxism, but it should be pointed out that this is not an exclusively Marxist phenomenon. As I remember it, it was introduced by Ricoeur for the purpose of describing a wider range of such hermeneutics, including those of Nietzsche and Freud. The reason Ward does not mention this is perhaps that he does not regard Nietzsche as a materialist, and it is certainly true that those other forms of the hermeneutics of suspicion are more relevant for the understanding of general non- and anti-idealism rather than for materialism specifically.

But classical philosophy “can thus be seen as a disguise for elitist social systems that privilege the sort of cultivated discussion that only leisure and wealth can bring. The realities of life lie further down, in work and physical effort. The material is the real, while the spiritual is a fictitious construct to delude the oppressed and keep them in their place.” Ward enters into the kind of extra-philosophical explanation in terms of an analysis of political and cultural history, psychology etc. which I mentioned as required. He does so both because the extra-philosophical agenda and motivation are obvious, but also because the weakness of materialism as philosophy proper calls for such explanation.

The philosophical arguments of materialism should of course not simply be reduced to and explained in terms of something else, but considered in themselves. But on the condition that they are also considered as such, other explanation is legitimate in the case where other motivation than the purely philosophical is obviously at work. Such explanation of idealism is of course attempted by materialists when they perceive other forces and interests as being involved. The problem is that they do so often inadmissibly reduce and explain away the arguments in terms of those other factors.

As we see, Ward immediately identifies the relation between the growth of materialism and its becoming part of a political ideology as central to the needed explanation: “When Karl Marx boasted that he had taken the philosophy of Hegel, and stood it on its head, so that the world is not the self-expression of Absolute Spirit, as in Hegel, but a purposeless and violent by-product of blind material forces, he described the dethronement of Spiritual reality exactly. The irony is that Capitalists as well as Marxists fell under this revolutionary spell. Capitalists may have resisted the idea of a centralised State-run economy, but they often fell completely for the idea that ‘realism’ requires that the profit-motive (the morally neutral capacity to satisfy any or all desires) is the real driving force of history, and that spiritual ideals are artificial stimulants to distract the attention of the toiling masses.”

It could of course be argued that the capitalists had this orientation even before Marx, ever since the classical liberals and classical political economy, and that it was quite as much Marx who took it over from them, as well as from others. Yet Marxism in its many forms remains a major cause of the ascendancy of materialism, even though many who consider themselves materialists are not aware that to a considerable extent this is why they do so.

Despite the incessant insistence throughout the twentieth century that materialists are often good and morally upright people while religious and metaphysically idealist people are evil, oppressive hypocrites,  and indeed the obvious truth of this insistence in many cases, what we have long seen before us is a culture continuously declining under the impact of materialism, along with public and private morality. Materialism often has very real existential consequences, both for the materialists themselves, decisively shaping their lives, their personal development and their spiritual destinies, and for the lives of others who live together with them. Although theoretical and practical materialism are different things, and although theoretical idealists can be practical materialists and theoretical materialists can be practical idealists, they are nevertheless related things.

It was obvious from the beginning that the problem of materialism had a political dimension or a dimension of political philosophy and ideology, a dimension which had to be addressed as such. Opposing materialism had to involve opposing Marxism, or Marxism as materialism, as including the affirmation of matter as what Marx considered matter to be. Understandably, and in strict accordance with Marxist ideology, idealism, in a vague sense, was always a main enemy in the rhetoric of the communist regimes, and sometimes personalism too. But opposing materialism also had to involve opposing capitalism and the main forms of liberalism, for the reason Ward mentions.

Most materialist radicals were once idealists in the second sense described above. They opposed what they perceived to be the narrow-minded, egotistical and materialistic conservatives. Needless to say, there were such conservatives, conservatives who were certainly not idealists in the first sense. There were decisive partial truths in the radicals’ criticism, truths which of course need to be affirmed and assimilated by the creative traditionalist defender of an alternative modernity. Marxists opposed idealism because it was perceived to be only an obstacle to the spread of the truths of historical and dialectical materialism. They rejected personalism because it saw the person it defended as only the bourgeois individual that was the class enemy. They turned against Christianity and the churches because they were inextricable ideological parts of the oppressive power-structures of the remaining, semi-feudal class society. But it soon turned out the whole truth was different and much more complex than the radicals thought.

There are, of course, also other reasons for the ascendancy of materialism: “In addition to this sense that the material, not the spiritual, is the driving-force of history, the incredible progress of the natural sciences is the second major factor that has contributed to the rise of materialism.” Ward gives examples of this from cosmology, genetics, and brain and computer science, examples of how developments in those fields have made materialism seem more plausible. These examples, which I will not cite here, do not make it particularly clear to me why this should necessarily be so. And Ward will soon proceed to show how other developments in science have rather made materialism seem utterly implausible.

But, Ward says, “It can look as if our increasing knowledge of physical processes is at last revealing the secrets of consciousness and thought. It is not only ideas that are ideological constructs. Now minds themselves are often seen as illusions produced by physical processes in the brain.” I have to admit I have always found it impossible to understand how people can experience themselves and reality in this way. Is it really true that there are people who see their minds, consciousness and thought as illusions? Ward’s further description hardly makes it more comprehensible:

“Classical philosophers began from what was most evident to them – their own experiences and thoughts. But now science seems to some to show that experiences are by-products of brain-processes, and brains can function very well whether or not conscious experiences exist. Thoughts are the dimly perceived epiphenomena of computational sequences in the brain-computer, which are the really effective causes of all our apparently mental behaviour. Marxism dethroned Spirit from having a primary role in how the world is. Science has dethroned consciousness from having a primary role in our understanding of the world. Thus materialism pricks the bubble of our spiritual illusions, and reveals that we are in fact computational, inefficiently designed and largely malfunctioning, physical entities without any larger purpose or meaning within the blind, pointless, freak accident of a wholly physical universe.”

From the Vedantic perspective and that of similar traditions, materialism is of course accounted for in terms of an imperfect awareness of reality caused by ignorance and illusion and a low level of development of consciousness. This, clearly, must on this view be what on the deepest level explains the contemporary materialist view of reality described by Ward, although it has spread due to distinctive historical forces and agendas. As phenomenology too attests, for philosophers to ”begin from” a ”wholly physical universe” etc. and not from ”their own experiences and thoughts”, presupposing that the former and not the latter is ”most evident to them”, involves a strange and inadmissible speculative leap. It is based on illusion.

Despite all the historical developments that have, as it were, facilitated, reinforced and promoted this illusion, Ward still finds the materialist conclusion absurd. Yet the reason some of “the ablest contemporary philosophers” are materialists is, Ward thinks, “partly because it takes a huge amount of logical ingenuity to make the materialist programme seem plausible, so that it is an interesting challenge to good philosophers”. This explanation is revealing with regard to contemporary philosophy and the general cultural and intellectual climate in which it has developed. Later, he returns to the explanation of materialism on a more fundamental and timeless level.

Själen, personen och kroppens återuppståndelse

Det individuella själsbegreppet i de olika former det förelegat i den hellenska och hellenistiska filosofin kom med tiden att på olika sätt delvis förenas med den kristna religionens läroutformning. Redan NT uppvisar exempel på grekisk-filosofisk påverkan som skiljer det från GT. Något med platonismens jämförbart själsbegrepp återfinnes inte i GT. Det kristna själsbegrepp som småningom utvecklas, ännu, liksom det filosofiska men av ytterligare tillkommande skäl, behäftat med filosofiska oklarheter, fick emellertid stor betydelse på grund av den större vikt man här lade vid det värde den individuella själen förlänade varje “människa” redan här och nu.

Samtidigt måste man förstå att det inte enbart är själen som enligt den ortodoxt kristna läran förlänar människan detta värde. Själen sågs som på visst sätt nödvändigt förenad med den likaledes individuellt-unika kroppen. Enligt den rena, exoteriska bibliska läran var människan till hela sitt väsen skapad. Ingen förnuftssjäl eller väsensgrund förenade henne i sig med Gud och evigheten. Människan hade en själ, men den var liksom kroppen skapad och oskiljaktig från denna.

Hela detta synsätt erhåller nu en oerhörd förstärkning när den tidiga kristna kyrkan antog läran om kroppens återuppståndelse. Vi har redan sett hur Filon inom den judiska religionen vänder sig mot denna lära. Plotinos föraktar den som barbarisk. Den filonska såväl som hela den platonska och gnostiska förståelsen av själen och dess bestämmelse är, trots att fragment av den, som vi skall se, kommer att fortleva inom sektorer av teologin, oförenliga med denna av kyrkan antagna lära. Biggs framhåller det självklara förhållandet att “while it strengthened her [kyrkans] hold upon the masses, [it] was a great stumbling-block in the way of the educated”. [The Christian Platonists of Alexandria (1886 (1970)), 108.]

Sannolikt finner vi här något av det mest väsentliga för förståelsen även av personbegreppet i västerlandet. Med tiden utvecklas vad som i motsats mot Hirzels föreställning om die Seelenpersönlichkeit kan kallas die Körperpersönlichkeit, eller den nödvändigt förenade kropp-själ-personligheten, i vilken själen förstås på annat sätt än i den platonska traditionen.

Elaine Pagels analyserade hur läran om kroppens återuppståndelse övertogs som kristen dogmatik i kampen mot gnosticismen. Kyrkan betonade Kristi läras överensstämmelse med det residualt literalistisk-mytologiska GT och dess skapelsesyn contra gnostikernas “pessimistiska” filosofiska dualism. De kristna gnostikerna med sin uppfattning om själens nödvändiga befrielse från materiens fängelse medels den frihalsande kunskapen gjorde anspråk på att ha tillgång till direkta uppenbarelser från den uppståndne Kristus som bekräftade deras egen uppfattning i allmänhet och om Kristi väsen i synnerhet. [The Gnostic Gospels (1979 (1990)), 41-52] För att säkra den nyetablerade, till Rom centrerade kyrkoorganisationens ställning var det nödvändigt att hävda att endast dess egen ståndpunkt i frågan om Kristus var den rätta. [Ibid. 54.] Detta gjordes bäst genom att hävda att endast den egna successionen var i besittning av den autentiska uppenbarelsen från Kristus, trots att denna tolkning icke gjorde rättvisa åt alternativa tolkningar även i vad som kom att utgöra de kanoniska evangelierna. [Ibid. 37-40] Läran att endast vad man uppfattade som Kristi uppenbarelse för Petrus var den sanna fastslogs emedan denna gav den romerska kyrkan ett övertag över gnostikerna. [Ibid. 41, 59-70.] Enligt denna uppenbarelse hade Kristus nämligen uppstått kroppsligen, och de som inte som Petrus hade mött den kroppsligen uppståndne Kristus kunde inte anses ha mottagit någon sann uppenbarelse.

Gnostikernas anspråk på inre, andliga uppenbarelser från Kristus kunde därmed avvisas. [Ibid. 38, 40 f.] Genom sin uppfattning av kunskapens och uppenbarelsens inre, pneumatiska natur och den därur följande förståelsen av Kristi inte blott historiska utan också mer tidlöst-andliga gärning var gnostikernas lära oförenlig med de kyrkliga exklusivistiska och monopolistiska auktoritetsanspråken, den extrema version av det världsliga ordningssystemets exoteriska religion som så länge kom att forma västerlandet. Med anammandet av denna ståndpunkt följde också införlivandet och hävdandet av läran om den kroppsliga uppståndelsen i allmänhet. Den verkliga “personliga” identiteten är nu icke den som från kroppen åtskiljbar uppfattade själen, eller icke denna själ allena, utan den nödvändiga föreningen av kropp och själ, Människans enhet.

I själva verket låg läran om kroppens uppståndelse i sin bjärta exotericitet helt i linje med bibelns grundkonception ifråga om Skapelsen och Människan. Hela eskatologin och soteriologin kan förstås som bara en eternalisering av det Skapade. Den Skapade Människan, satt att Råda över Skapelsen och lägga den under sig, uppstår till evigt liv Som Sådan, på en likaledes eternaliserad Ny Jord. Parallellt med den klassiska hellenska Människoidealiseringen är detta den åskådningsmässiga huvudkällan för den Människocentrering, den rena Humanism, den Mänskliga Maktutövning över Skapelsen, som definierar västerlandet. Den är inte bara en produkt av moderniteten, vetenskapen, ateismen o.s.v., och inte ens bara av den klassiska grekisk-romerska antikens protomoderna filosofi och vetenskap, utan i hög grad ett med västerlandets Religion och förhanden även under dess mest Religiösa historiska epok, den kristna medeltiden. Med den bokstavliga, dogmetablerade läran om kroppens återuppståndelse och Människans eternalisering går västerlandets historiska religion i själva verket oändligt långt utöver den antika filosofin i denna Människocentrering. Det är bibeln, både det gamla och det nya testamentet, som är huvudkällan; den klassiska filosofin är sekundär.

När personbegreppet diskuteras under medeltiden finner vi därför hur vad som skulle komma att uppfattas som personskapet visserligen fortfarande ofta hänförs primärt till själen, men att dels det mänskligt-kroppsliga alltmer på ett nytt sätt börjar uppfattas som en nödvändig del av det, dels själen nu förstås som oskiljbar från denna kropp, tillsammans med den konstituerande den Skapade Människa allt enligt bibeln handlar om. Och när aristotelismen införs i den kristna teologin – den lära i vilken det kristet inspirerade kropp-själsliga enhetstänkandet hade en av sina tydligast jämförbara, partiella filosofiska föregångare eller paralleller – förmärks också ett mer principiellt åtskiljande av personbegreppet från själsbegreppet och ett mer konsekvent tillämpande av det förra på den nya Mänskliga enheten.

The Exceptionality of Materialism

Keith Ward on Materialism, 5     1  2  3  4

“Materialism has rarely seriously been on the agenda of classical philosophy”, Ward says. Materialists are perhaps not quite as rare in European philosophy as in Indian thought (where it is necessarily represented only by those who – and I think there are, before the importation of Western scientisms and Marxism of course, only two schools – position themselves outside of the major spiritual traditions), but it is remarkable that they are not so much less rare as one might think. Before materialism became part of a political ideology, Marxism, they were in fact very few in the West.

The first philosophical formulation of materialism is still relevant to its definition or for accounts of what materialists mean: “Democritus’ theory that nothing finally exists except material particles with mass, position and velocity, interacting with one another in more and more complicated ways, did not have much appeal as a description of the value-laden, complex world of human experience, with all its depths of feeling and varieties of intellectual description.” This points to some of the experience that is part of the philosophical point of departure and basis of personalism, and to the reasons why this experience speaks against materialism. Personalism is, or should be, a form of idealism.

Ward remembers “the occasion when materialism first hit the world of Oxford philosophy”. This is remarkable. Ward was born in 1938. But he is of course not saying materialism had been unknown in Oxford philosophy. Many of the basic materialist positions became prominent in the nineteenth century and had been widely discussed since then, although materialism has certainly been further developed and radicalized in recent decades, a fact which Ward also discusses. What he means here is that materialism was not embraced and defended by Oxford philosophers – that it didn’t quite “hit” it.

Also, he is speaking only of materialism, not of atheism. It is quite possible to be an atheist without being a materialist, like Hume, and Ward notes elsewhere that there are more atheists than materialists in the history of Western philosophy. It is also possible to be a non-materialist but not an idealist. It is all a matter of various levels of experience, insight, and coherence and comprehensiveness of reasoning. But we define materialism here primarily in such a way as to make it impossible to be both a materialist and a theist, or one who affirms the spiritual view of the world – as the position that matter is all there is, the position of reductionist materialism. But the question of this kind of materialism turns out to be inseparable from a secondary definition, the one according to which materialism is merely the affirmation of the existence of such a thing as matter as understood by materialists in itself, with the exception of its quality of being that to which all reality can be reduced.

As late as the early 1960s, reductionist materialism was unknown in Oxford, Ward recounts. There were then “three main Professors of Philosophy in Oxford – Gilbert Ryle, A. J. Ayer, and R. M. Hare. Hare was an Anglican, Ryle an agnostic, and Ayer an atheist. But they all agreed that materialism was an over-dogmatic, impoverished and over-simplified form of belief that completely failed to account for the sheer diversity of the human world, the importance of human experience, and the exigencies of morality.” This is clearly important to note for those who object to other aspects of the work of those non-idealists.

Ward’s account of the “hitting” is fascinating: “I was sitting in one of Gilbert Ryle’s seminars in 1963 when a visiting Australian doctor, David Armstrong, presented a paper defending a materialist theory of mind. I still remember the sense of shock as this heretical Australian laid into Ryle’s concept of mind and insisted on the need for a purely materialist account of consciousness. It seemed so far beyond the bounds of plausibility that some of us were not sure if it was tongue-in-cheek or not.

Well, it was not. And in about forty years materialism, sometimes called ”physicalism”, has risen to a position of such prominence in philosophy that the materialist Daniel Dennett can say, quite falsely in fact, that virtually every serious philosopher is a materialist.”

Early on, I came to think that materialism was in fact philosophically refutable, in the sense in which things are at all refutable by philosophy. I.e., I came to think it was refutable not only in terms of spiritual experience and realization, but on the theoretical level, through the particular intellectual discipline of philosophy. Materialism – all possible variations of Democritus’ basic theory – always seemed unbelievable and often simply absurd to me. Therefore I could never take the materialist or physicalist development in the last forty years, which Ward mentions, quite seriously. I could hardly even really accept it as philosophical.

Not only did the materialists for the most part have an often clearly identifiable agenda and motivation, which are not in themselves of a philosophical nature. And these do require analysis in terms of political and cultural history, psychology, and other perspectives. They also made false claims of the kind Ward cites from Dennett. It is obvious, despite the recent development, not only how many serious philosophers are not materialists, but how many serious philosophers are idealists and personalists.

The exceptionality of materialism implied by the majority consensus is of course also in itself a part of the case, for the obvious reasons that follow from the ones that make the consensus such a part, although it is certainly not in itself a sufficient one.

The Philosophical Consensus

Keith Ward on Materialism, 4     1  2  3

“That is”, Ward continues, “they have held that ultimate reality has the nature of mind or consciousness, and that the material universe is the appearance or creation of the ultimate mind.” Ward here says that this is what is meant by ”a basically spiritual view of the world”, the view on which there is a broad consensus among classical philosophers.

This is important in itself, being that for which the positive case is made. But it is also necessary for the definition of materialism, in which the decisive thing is the negation of these positions in the name of a different principle, matter. It should be noted that it is possible to define materialism and matter in a different way. All affirmation of the existence of matter does not negate these positions, i.e., is not reductionist. And, with the help of a different concept of matter, materialism too could in fact be defined in an altogether different way, a way that does not contradict idealism, not even the kind of idealism that denies the existence of matter in the ordinary sense(s).

It should also be said that the case against materialism and for the spiritual view of the world” does not imply that the experience of what materialists account for with their concept of matter is not real. Nor is there necessarily anything “wrong” with that experience as such, apart from the kind of practical and moral dimensions which Ward will discuss later. It is just that matter is not what they think it is. Or, perhaps more precisely: what they think is matter is not what they think matter is.

But we mean here by the terms materialism and matter what the philosophers Ward refers to meant by them, and also what philosophers who have regarded and today regard themselves as materialists mean by them. Inasmuch as they do not all mean precisely the same, these are broad concepts. But this does not make any difference for the basic case, as long as the definition includes the negation of the central positions here formulated by Ward.

With regard to the question of the existence and nature of a ”material universe”, Ward includes philosophers who and forms of idealism in the broad sense which accept the existence of a universe which is really material in the sense accepted here. I.e., they accept the existence of matter without being materialists. Only they do not regard it as ”ultlimate reality”. Other forms of idealism do not accept the existence of such a universe, the existence of matter.

”Appearance” is an important word in this connection and in many forms of idealism; it is appropriate also for accounts of some central Eastern traditions. But it too can mean different things. It can mean simply non-creational causality, manifestation, emanation. But in addition to this and sometimes even instead of this it can also mean – and Ward certainly has this in mind too, having used the formulation ”ultimate reality” of that which is not appearance – that which is not real or fully real, not as real as that of which it is an appearance, and in which there is an element of illusion.

“Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, and many others all shared this general view”, Ward reminds us. And it can of course be noticed how many the ”many others” are: some of the pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plotinus, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, the late medieval Franciscans, the Renaissance Platonists (not just the Italian but also the Cambridge ones), the rest of the German Idealists and the nineteenth-century idealists in France, Britain, America and elsewhere. Ward soon notes how few the materialists really are.

Even Hume, “a philosopher opposed to religious belief, who denied the existence of ultimate mind, did not suppose that matter could be ultimately real. Indeed, he thought that the material universe was a construct out of ‘impressions’ or ‘ideas’, and had no objective reality, or at least not a reality that could be rationally established.” This is of course only an argument against materialism. It could perhaps be clarified that it is ”the material universe”, i.e. a universe of matter as conceived by materialists, lumps of matter, like atoms, floating about out there in objective, absolute time and space, that has ”no objective reality, or at least not a reality that could be rationally established” – not what Hume regards as ”a construct out of ’impressions’ or ’ideas’”. The latter might be a valid expression of what the universe that materialists hold to be material actually is, but contrary to the purportedly material universe it does have objective reality of a different kind, a reality which can be rationally established. This, after all, is part of what is meant when Ward says with the classical, in a broad sense idealist tradition, as he does elsewhere, that the world is intelligible.

Själen och enheten

I det den alexandrinska teologin betraktar den med Gud eller Gudet förenade intelligibla världen med dess mångfald och individualitet som det högsta, skiljer den sig från den samtidigt verksamme Plotinos i det att, fastän han, som vi sett, förvisso erkänner den intelligibla världen som lika evig och oförgänglig som enheten, han samtidigt vill förstå den som i annan mening underordnad den senare. Plotinos’ efterföljare började dock uppmjuka hans fasta åtskillnad mellan den bestämningslösa enheten och den bestämda intelligibla hypostasen.

Fastän Plotinos skiljer mellan förgänglig och oförgänglig individualitet, och äger en klar uppfattning av den senare, tenderar han också på grund av förståelsen av enhetens självklara verklighet och logiska primat att betrakta återföreningen med den som sådan som det högsta målet även för de individuella själarna. Genom att höja sig till allt högre stadier av intuitiv, kontemplativ kunskap, uppnås slutligen den yttersta vision av enheten som samtidigt är en förening med denna. Åtminstone ges det intrycket, och uppfattas Plotinos ofta så.

Men i den mån så är fallet invecklar sig Plotinos här i samma svårigheter som all monism av denna typ. [Arthur Drews, Die deutsche Spekulation seit Kant mit besonderer Rücksicht auf das Wesen des Absoluten und die Persönlichkeit Gottes (2:a uppl. 1895), 22 f. Detta märkliga verk vill samtidigt vara ett filosofihistoriskt arbete, en filosofisk vederläggning av den teistiska (i vanlig, teologisk mening) filosofin – som av författaren anses ha nått sin höjdpunkt under 1800-talet i Tyskland – utifrån Eduard von Hartmanns ståndpunkter, och ett försvar för Hartmanns antiteistiska panteism. Men de många och långa hartmannianska utläggningarna kan inte överskugga det faktum att de initierade avsnitten om idag ofta förbisedda teistiska filosofer ibland är av stort värde.] Och den gör det trots att den alltså inte godtar vad som kanske kan kallas den exklusiva monismens illusionslära, exempelvis hos eleaterna eller vissa tolkningar av Shankaras advaita vedanta (vi behöver här inte gå in på skillnaderna mellan dem), som förnekar all verklig mångfald överhuvud och avfärdar den som ett rent sken – det av något subjekt uppfattade sken som ju dock också representerar en mångfald och som denna typ av monism icke kan förklara, varför illusionsläran knappast innebär något framsteg. Mångfalden är för Plotinos alltså verklig och såvitt jag förstår t.o.m. evig.

Kanske är det just de här involverade svårigheterna snarare än apofatiska insikter som gör att Plotinos är förtegen om föreningen med enheten. [The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (1967), 261.] Då detta inte är illusionsläran, och den intelligibla mångfalden därmed är verklig, kan enhetsvisionen för Plotinos inte som för Shankara involvera uppgivandet av den individuella “själens” identitet i ett slutligt sammansmältande med enheten. Den uppnådda visionen, kontakten, föreningen med enheten är endast en glimt, ej ett definitivt tillstånd. I verkligheten kvarhålles en dualism, enhetens självklara verklighet och logiska primat leder icke till individualitetens och mångfaldens faktiska upphävande i den. I frågan om de ändliga – d.v.s. begränsade – subjektens bestående individualitet som sådan blir därför skillnaden vare sig i praktiken eller ens i teorin särskilt stor gentemot den kristna alexandrinska ståndpunkten.