Plotinus’ Theory of Empirical Responsibility1
In addition to the intrinsic interest in the problem of freedom, determinism, and responsibility, the study of Plotinus' views is stimulated by a clash between two well-known scholars. Thomas Whittaker in The Neo-Platonists (page 76) says, "He is without the least hesitation a determinist"; while Dean Inge in The Philosophy of Plotinus (Volume II, page 185) replies, "It is not correct to say, with Mr. Whittaker, that Plotinus is 'without the least hesitation a determinist.'" A more extensive examination than either of these authors gives may therefore be desirable.
Plotinus organizes his solution to the whole problem on three levels. First there are the arguments applicable to the empirical or phenomenal self. This is the level on which the question is popularly discussed, and it involved chiefly questions of mechanism. In the second place the analysis of the empirical self, reveals, as is always the case with Plotinus, a higher self, and consequently a higher freedom. On this level the chief problem centers around the theory of emanation. Finally one must consider to what extent the freedom discovered on the first and second levels can be predicated of God. In this article only the first phase is discussed.2
The main discussion of freedom on the empirical level is found in Ennead III, tractates i, ii, and iii. The first tractate is virtually a preliminary survey designed to lead up to a statement, in chapter 8, of the conditions necessary to the solution of the problem.
First of all every particular thing subject to generation and every eternal being that does not always have the same activity, such as the soul of man, comes within the sphere of causation. The Epicureans and perhaps some others have attempted to save human freedom by repudiating universal causality. The declination of atoms, however, and capricious spurts of the soul, independent of any preceding condition, must be ruled out from the start. A soul, the victim of such senselessness, could not be said to act voluntarily, for volitional action requires at least an object willed or desired. A theory of free will that denies any pre-existing motive, such as going to the market place to collect a debt, does not in fact retain a will at all. Later the insistence on proximate causation becomes highly significant; at this point it may not be so profound, but it is indispensable, for Plotinus thus sees, what has sometimes escaped the minds of other religious writers, that the emancipation of the soul from ordinary psychological conditions enslaves it to a fate worse than that of the Stoics and destroys both responsibility and religion.
If the inviolability of causation is the first necessary condition for the solution of the problem of the will, the next step is to review the various types of causation. In general these either appeal to a multiplicity of corporeal principles - Democritean atoms or Aristotelian elements - or to a single omnipresent Fate.
Since Plotinus had just written a detailed refutation of materialism (IV, vii), he here merely touches on the chief considerations.
Given atomic motions only, it would be, according to Plotinus, impossible for a world to arise. To have the orderliness of the world on the disorderly swirl of atoms is an absurdity. Plotinus does not consider as such the mathematical argument and the base of atomism, that in an infinite time all possible combinations of swirling atoms must be realized, and that this world is one of the possible combinations. He apparently regards such an argument as a begging of the question, not because one over infinity is zero so that a bare possibility becomes an impossibility, but because this world is not just a combination of atoms and because no possible arrangement of them can provide a basis for teleology and divination of result in life and mind. If like and mind could by a bare possibility arise from atomic combinations, Plotinus still might argue that the derivation of the corporeal world from mind would be a more elegant and therefore a more reasonable solution of the cosmological problem; but in fact he argues not that atomism is less plausible, but that it is impossible,
Having disposed of materialism and mechanism, Plotinus proceeds to eliminate the theory that a single soul permeated and controls all things. This view requires each particular thing to be regarded as a part of the whole, somewhat as each part of a plant derives its motion from the plant as a whole. Thus the central life of the plant would illustrate the overruling destiny of the world.
Obviously universal causation is recognized here as well as in materialism; and, further, this view is superior to the last by reason of its immaterial basis; and still further, it seems at first glance so similar to the opinion of Plotinus himself that one wonders at its being introduced for refutation. The objections that Plotinus levels against it, however, show that he understands this Stoic thesis to involve a denial of all other causes. The single soul is considered the only and immediate cause of every act, so that nothing can be referred to our own personality.3
And in the same manner [writes Plotinus] if also in the case of the universe it is, both as active and passive, all one; and if it is impossible to trace a causal series among items that are not identical with one another, then it is not true that all things happen by causes, for all things will be one. Consequently, we are not we, nor is any act ours; we ourselves do not thing, and our volitions are the reasoning of another being.4
In chapters five and six, devoted to a refutation of astrology, Plotinus again insists on the necessity of individual realities and causes. To refer all our fortunes to the stars is simply another way of denying that volitions, passions, evils, and initiative are ours. The stars, the weather, the world, all have an effect on us; but individual personality must not be obliterated.
This point is so important that one must also reject the Stoic theory of a single soul, even when modified by the introduction of seminal reasons. Apparently these forces provide for a distinction and concatenation among causes, and the Stoics intend to place some things in our power. Nonetheless the theory is a failure. It is necessitarian because, when all the causes are taken into account, nothing can be otherwise than it is.5 Our impressions and ideas result from antecedent conditions, and our initiative is governed by our impressions. To speak of anything being in our power is on this showing, a mockery. It is of no use to say the impressions and the initiative are ours, for this does not advance us beyond the level of children, of the insane, or even of the inanimate activities of fire. Beyond these, other causes of human action must be discovered.
It is at this point that Plotinus, as a result of the foregoing critique, sets down four conditions that must be satisfied if a proper view is to be obtained. What explanation is there, he asks, other than the preceding, that will maintain the principle of universal causation,6 preserve sequence and order, place something in our power, and sustain prediction and divination?
At this point it is possible to pass a preliminary judgment on Whittaker and Inge. The particular statements that Inge makes to support his contention that Plotinus is not a determinist are by no means incorrect. But one must seriously consider whether his statements justify his conclusion. The expressions of Plotinus in III, i are less deterministic than those of other sections, as will be point out later, yet even in this tractate, since he has made universal causation a requirement, it seems that he can be absolved from determinism only by identifying determinism with mechanism. If Inge has fixed his attention on the materialistic determinism of the nineteenth century, there is no question of the justice of his conclusion. Whittiker, however, recognizes other forms of determinism, such as psychological and theological determinism. Will a study of the details of later passages absolve Plotinus of the charge of determinism in these other forms? Let it be noted that Ennead III, i is the third tractate Plotinus wrote, while III, ii and iii are the forty-seventh and forty-eighth. Granting that Plotinus at the age of forty is not likely radically to alter his views, and observing that the remainder of III, i gives in brief the view that pervades all the Enneads7, it is nonetheless true that the later tractates treat this topic more consistently, more realistically, or more harshly if you wish. Therefore, whatever of indeterministic tone of implication is found in the early writing must be scrutinized and, if necessary, discounted in the light of later explicit statements.
It is not true, however, that all the later passages give prima facie evidence of a deterministic view. And it seems best to proceed by first collecting and summarizing the indeterministic sentiments without paying attention to the other side of the picture.
Order is primary, disorder secondary. But order does produce disorder. Disorder may result from the fact that things that tend to order are hindered by their own nature or by circumstances (III, ii, 4, 30-33).
One should not blame providence for the evil acts of men. Responsibility rests on the voluntary agent (III, ii, 7, 19-20). This passage is fairly important because the main phrase comes from Plato's Republic, X, 617e. The complete phrase is, "Responsibility rests on the chooser; heaven is guiltless," and it was frequently employed by later Greek writers defending the freedom of the will.8
Providence is not to be considered a force that reduces men to nothing; rather its function is to preserve the nature of each thing. Man has chosen his intermediate position in the universe, and providence by the moral law is leading him upward. Man has the power to act in defiance of the gods; man is a first principle (III, ii, 9).
As in a drama, the words are fixed by the author, but the actor contributes his personality; he has been chosen for his ability and will be promoted for success or will be assigned less important roles in cases of failure (III, ii, 17).
The universal Logos does not generate evils (III, iii, 1, 3).
These passages as summarized apart from their context seem strongly indeterministic. But before final judgment can be made, their contexts and other passages must be examined.
The quotation from Plato, that "responsibility rests on the chooser; heaven is guiltless," is an idea that Plotinus emphasizes. But it is an idea so easily discounted by a critic who sees Plotinus as a determinist that one wonders at the emphasis. The choice in question, on which responsibility here is founded, is not a choice in this empirical world. Plato was talking of souls about to be born choosing their lot for their coming life. And Plotinus returns to this pre-incarnate choice so frequently and so forcibly that it must be taken, not as a pleasant myth to lighten his argument, nor as a device of caution to deceive his readers, but as an integral part of his serious system.9 In addition to the two occurrences of this idea in the list of passages above, it is also found in III, ii, 13, III, iii, 4, 53-54, and, implicitly at least, in all those passage which describe the empirical souls of men as parts of the Logos of World Soul.
Plotinus becomes all too explicit in the detailed justification of evil on the basis of reincarnation. He explains that evil masters in one life becomes slaves in the next; prodigals become paupers; a murderer is reborn to be murdered; and so on (III, ii, 13). Such argument as this supports determinism because it shows that Providence takes care of every detail and leaves nothing to chance.
Against one objection to the appeal to reincarnation Plotinus can easily defend himself. Inge (II, 185) complains that Plotinus "nowhere clears up the difficulty about the original choice of a character which inevitably produces evil actions." The defense is obvious. There never was an original choice; there has never been a first life in which evil lacks justification; every life is a rebirth, and every incarnation depends on the preceding.
There is, however, and objection that Plotinus might have found embarrassing. Aristotle, it will be remembered, argued that there was no first motion: Every motion followed on a previous motion. Yet this fact of an everlasting series is not an explanation of motion. The logical series of steps in a real explanation proceeds in another dimension and arrives at the Unmoved Mover. Similarly evils and their punishments are not explained by an infinite series of evils and punishments in previous lives.
Fortunately Plotinus, though stressing the series of reincarnations, also gives an explanation in technique resembling Aristotle's progress toward the Unmoved Mover. Assuming that the appeal to a previous life is not a subterfuge on Plotinus' part to distract the reader from the basic explanation - any more than Aristotle's theory of endless time and motion detracts from this theology - it is only the emphasis Plotinus lays on reincarnation that causes wonder. If the modern critic must dismiss this argument as useless, why should Plotinus have used it? The answer is no doubt that since Plotinus believer Plato's myth to be sober truth, it becomes one of those items intended to implement the contention that this is the best of all possible worlds. But where Leibniz was ridiculed by Voltaire, Plotinus was favored by Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus. At any rate, the choice before reincarnation does not make Plotinus an indeterminist.
The mention required for the items that show all is for the best may well begin with the present punishments of previous evil lives. The evil master becomes a slave: This is of advantage to him for he is thereby taught a lesson in sound morality. The poverty to which the previous prodigal is born, and as well a robbery (III, ii, 15), teach the victims that wealth is unimportant. Vice and its consequences rouse men from their lethargy and start them thinking (III, ii, 5). And the murderer who is murdered in this life may not now derive profit, nor is his murderer any less unjust, but distributive justice has been satisfied and the arrangements of the world are thus seen to be good.
In showing that this is the best of all possible worlds, Plotinus does not rely on the argument that the apparent evil is itself really good. Ware and crime, brutality and vice, are real evils; but the best world as a whole requires them.
The whole, say of a painting, is not ugly because a part of it is. Each part must be considered in its relation to the whole. Though a toe or some hair may produce no aesthetic response, the statue or painting may be a great work of art for all of that. If we are looking at men, we should not fix our attention on Thersites (III, ii, 3).
Or again, a drama cannot be composed of all heroes; there must be servants and low characters, for otherwise it would be incomplete (III, ii, 11). In the world, as in the drama, conflicts between parts occur, but the whole harmonizes these conflicts (III, ii, 16). Wickedness therefore has its place in the beauty of the universe (III, ii, 17, 83).10
It is in this attempt to show that the best possible world cannot dispense with evils, that some rather harsh statements are made.
If it is possible for souls to be happy in this world [Plotinus writes] then if some are not happy, we must not blame the place [i.e. this world], but their inability to put up a goof fight where the rewards of virtue are offered (III, ii, 5, 1-4).
Evil men often rob and maltreat the virtuous. But the virtuous were not virtuous in failing to provide for their self-defense. One should not be astonished if a pugilist can beat up a philosopher. People ought to learn how to take care of themselves. Victory in battle requires an army, not prayer; and harvest requires work. There is no ground for complaint if the ignoble work and fight harder. They gain their power through the laziness or cowardice of their victim. And these arrangements are just; the reverse would be unjust (III, ii, 8).
It was the occurrence of injustice that originally threw doubt on the doctrine of an all embracing Providence (III, ii, 1), and on the tenability of determinism. These attempts to show that certain details are for the best, and the explicit general assertions, such as that providence extends to all things (III, ii, 6, 21 and 13, 18), and that the world could not have been made better (III, ii, 14, 2), tend to remove the original doubts as to Providence and so far forth to sustain a deterministic interpretation of Plotinus. But the root of the matter, even on the empirical level, has not yet been touched.
The phase of Plotinus' worldview that gives the final solution on the empirical level of the problem of evil and confirms the proposition that Plotinus is a determinist can in principle be stated briefly. It is simply that the universal Logos11 contains differences and that therefore a world, to be a world, must contain and even accentuate those differences. Since any difference is inferior to the First Undifferentiated Good, evil is a necessity in any world.
The Logos, virtually a fourth hypostasis derived from the Soul and the Divine Mind and to all intents identified with the principle of providence, is the immediate cause of the world and its events. Lower in the universal hierarchy than the Divine Mind, which itself contains multiplicity, the Logos must also be unlike in its parts (III, ii, 12, 1 and III, ii, 16, 13ff.).
For this reason, the world must contain not differences only, but greater differences than those in its source. In the first place, without differences, without particular things, there could be no world. In the Divine Mind each Idea can be all Ideas, but in a sensible world each thing must be just itself. And this involves differences (III, ii, 14). In the second place, the Logos makes things as different as possible, not as similar as possible. Therefore the world contains contraries - the greatest possible difference - with their resultant conflicts (III, ii, 17, 52ff.). Then, third, the existence of the greatest possible difference is to be expected because this is a world extended in space. The parts of this world are separated from one another; separation produces hate and imperfection produces discord. Even in a seminal reason, though the parts of an animal are all together, when the animal is born and the parts separate, one part may be an obstacle to another or even destroy it (III, ii, 2 and 17).
These differences are evil - some more colloquially so than others.
In general one can affirm that evil is a deficiency of good, and in this world such a deficiency is necessary because the good is in an alien subject. This alien subject, in which the good resides, by the very fact that it is other than the good, causes the deficiency, for it is not good. Therefore evils are ineradicable, because with respect to the nature of good one thing is less than another, and because, while the cause of their existence is in the good, they are all different from the good and become what they are by their distance from it (III, ii, 5, 22-32).12
The two propositions, that the world must contain differences and that differences are evil, constitute Plotinus' basic explanation of evil. The idea recurs in phrases and hints wherever the problem is raised. 13 There is no other, no deeper solution, to be found. To complete the deterministic interpretation of Plotinus, there remains therefore only the mention of several passages to show that the Logos is the cause of evil. No one objects to referring good things to divine agency; it is the evil that sets the problem, and Plotinus warns against depriving the Logos of doing good by removing from it the causation of evil (III, ii, 18, 20).
Some passages have already contributed to this conclusion, and the following will leave no room for doubt. First, "the Logos, sovereign, makes all these things and wills them as they are; it itself rationally produces even what we call evils for it does not wish everything to be good" (III, ii, 11, 2-6). Again, "The universal reason contains evils as well as goods; both are parts of it" (III, iii, 1, 1-2).14
Plotinus also compares Providence with a general who plans all the details of the army's operation. But he explicitly notes that the comparison fails, in that a general does not arrange the details of his enemy's army, while in the case of "the great general, under whom are all things, what is there unordered, what does not fit the plan?" (III, iii, 2, 13-15).15
Two further points will complete the discussion. It must be shown that the Logos is not blameworthy or responsible for evil, and that man is. On the first of the Plotinus has sufficient to say, but he may need a little assistance on the second.
Plotinus in several places denies that the world is a creation based on reflection a deliberate action. But this consideration does not so much relieve the higher principles of blame as guarantee their immutability against the changes of discursive reasoning. In any event, if the world were the result of reflection and volition, it could not have been made better, and the creator would not need to be ashamed of it (III, ii, 3). Some other factor therefore must absolve its maker from blame.
More to the point; In the same chapter is the idea that the world is the best possible, that every being in the world desires the good and attains the good within the limits of its ability. The injustices of man to man result from their striving to attain the good and their falling short through impotence. And, in this case on cannot blame the cause for having made the best possible world, nor ought one to demand an equal degree of goodness from unequal things.
Furthermore, the human mind, when studying this problem, is subject to the distortion of myopic astigmatism. Undoubtedly the existence of injustice sets a problem of theodicy; but it is not nearly so serious a problem as is commonly believed. Since men are intensely interested in themselves, their sufferings shut out the wider view. This Earth at the center of the universe is but one of the stars in the vast expanse of heaven. Situated between the beasts and the gods, men, some very bad, some very good, and the majority medium, are not the most honorable nor wisest objects in the universe. Their misfortunates therefore ought not to occasion too great solicitude (III, ii, 8).16
A very important factor in absolving Providence from blame, a factor previously discussed in the first tractate, is that Providence is not to be conceived as a force which reduces men and things to nothing. If men were nothing and Providence all, it would be deprived of its sphere of operation. The function of providence, rather, is to preserve the nature of each thing, and preservation for a thing means obedience to the law of its being.
This is in effect an assertion of the reality of secondary causes, and if responsibility can somehow be referred to the proximate cause instead of the highest cause, then it will be man who is responsible and heaven guiltless.
Before developing this hint in order to show that man is responsible, there is one idea or one set of ideas that provides the final defense of providence against the charge of being evil. If the Logos were a force external to the soul, and if it had forced independent souls to enter the world against their nature and to their hurt, the Logos could be held blameworthy. But souls are not independent, and the Logos is not external; souls are parts of the Logos and constitute one spiritual reality (III, ii, 12; compare III, ii, 10, 11; III, iii, 3). The relation of the individual soul to the World Soul and the discovery of a higher self beyond the everyday person become part of the solution of the problem of freedom above the empirical level.
How then can man be held responsible? It must be said that Plotinus has not evaded stating the objections clearly and even forcefully. Possibly every objection ever raised against determinism is found in these three tractates. Since they are so pointedly stated, it must be assumed that Plotinus thought he had answered them.
Superficial objections are easily brushed aside. If evil is something contrary to nature, and if in a deterministic system everything happens according to nature, how can there possibly be any evil? Such an objection becomes plausible only by a failure to attend to the proper points of reference. Everything happens according to the universal nature, but not everything is in accord with an individual nature. Wickedness really exists and has its place in the beauty of the universe, for that which is contrary to nature for an individual is according to nature from a universal standpoint (III, ii, 17, 83ff.).17
But if the wickedness has been determined and cannot be otherwise, how is man responsible? Should he not be pardoned? No, he should not, for the prerogative of pardon belongs to the Logos and the Logos, instead of granting pardon, determines to hold man responsible (III, ii, 17, 14-16).
Though there may be no logical answer to this position, the problem is not completely solved until the proximate ground of responsibility is uncovered. That ground is man's agency.
Taking up the burden of Plato, Plotinus holds that men sin involuntarily, but nonetheless it is they that sin (III, ii, 10). Even if the descent of the soul into the body is in a sense necessitated, necessity involves free agency; and, therefore, a soul suffers justly for its own action (IV, viii, 5). If man's nature were fixed so that he acted and was acted upon always in the same way, blame would no more attach to him than to the animals (III, iii, 4). The bare fact that man is an agent is therefore insufficient to be a ground of responsibility. But under actual conditions man is justly blamed when he does evil because he acts by a free principle the animals do not possess. This free principle does not make man independent of Providence or the Logos (III, iii, 4), but it frees him from the laws of mechanism, chemistry, and animal psychology.18 Similarly man is to be praised for his good acts, for man, not Providence, is the agent (III, ii, 5, 24ff.).
For this reason the application of some broad statements that Plotinus made in attacking unsatisfactory theories must be limited to their narrower context. He had said (III, i, 7, 15) that the mere fact that man initiates an action no more makes him responsible than it does a lunatic or an animal. But this must be taken in conjunction with a theory of sensation and imagination that Plotinus rejects, and must not be taken to invalidate his later insistence on agency.
Agency, however, though essential, is not sufficient. And Plotinus does not seem to have completed the detailed justification of empirical responsibility. He might have identified the free principle with volition and made it the differentium between human and animal action. But he says in many places that evil is involuntary and is not an act of the true self. If, however, there are two selves, could there not also be two volitions? And in this case empirical volition, distinguishing man from animal, could be the sufficient ground for empirical responsibility. Thus, in an altered sense, blame would lie with the chooser, and heaven would be guiltless.
This study therefore justifies Whittaker rather than Inge. If Whittaker has erred, it is merely in the phrase "without the least hesitations," for it must be admitted that there are a few hesitant passages; the theory itself, however, is thoroughly deterministic.
1. The New Scholasticism, January 1943.
2. Hugo von Kleist, H. P. Miller, and Theodor Gollwitzer have contributed articles on the general subject. The first of these writers attempted merely a running exposition of Enneads III, i; the second, under the title, Plotinos uber Notwendigkeit and Freiheit, has given a more general discussion culminating in an exposition of Ennead VI, viii; the third has undertaken a comprehensive treatment of Plotins Lehre von her Willensfreiheit. None of them, however, distinguishes the empirical level of the problem as it is considered here.
3. III, i, 4, 12. The word for personality is το ὴγἐμονουν, and the argument is clearly ad hominem.
4. III, i, 4, 16-22.
5. This is introduced as an objection to the theory in question, but below, II, i, 9, 3, it is made a part of Plotinus' own view.
6. With the exception, of course, of the primary, eternal beings, which, since they are the causes of all else, have themselves no cause.
7. Since the remainder discusses the freedom of the higher self, it is omitted here.
8. James Adam, Republic of Plato, II, 455.
9. Plato, Laws 870d, e, and 872d, e, takes it as an edifying myth.
10. Plotinus stressed the illustration of a drama; he obviously thinks it is a good one. Contrariwise, George B. Foster, quoted by D. C. Mackintosh, in The Problems of Religious Knowledge, 118, exclaims, "Anything but a man being a character in a drama!"
11. The embarrassment of a fourth hypostasis in Plotinus' system need not be discussed here. Compare A. H. Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe, 102ff.
12. B. A. G. Fuller, The Problem of Evil in Plotinus, 83 and passim, underlies an inconsistency in Plotinus. If all difference is evil, evil should make its first appearance in the second hypostasis; yet Plotinus has only eulogy for the Divine Mind and the Soul, and evil is mentioned only in connection with the physical world. Fuller, 87, refers to I, viii, 2, and II ix, 13.
13. III, iii, 4, 44ff.
14. The next phrase is, "for the universal Logos does not generate them." By itself such a phrase might indicate that the Logos is not the cause of evils. But note that in that case neither would it be the cause of goods. And the conjunction would have had to be "but" rather than "for." The idea seems to be merely that "generate" is the wrong word to describe the relation between the Logos and the goods and evils which are its parts. "Include" is a better word. It is at least clear that evil is not independent of the Logos.
15. B. A. G. Fuller, page 200, would probably not agree with this interpretation. He writes, "Evil is an effect necessitated by a cause indeed, but by a cause not implicated in the providential order..." He refers to III, iii, 6. This may be taken as a hesitant passage, since Plotinus says that providence does not compel evil acts. This inconsistency rests, I believe, upon a common confusion between, to use Christian theological terms, the preceptive and the decretive will of God. God decrees all events, but his precepts describe the type of act that he will reward. He decrees evil acts also, but he will punish them nonetheless. In the present passage, "Providence" has taken on the meaning of precept. In this sense Providence does neither good nor evil, but one act is in accordance with Providence and another is not. Fuller would have none of this because he himself is a dualist and can see no good in monism. "If she [the soul] must fall, there is no moral responsibility" (321). He attacks the value of Plotinus' basic analogy of light on the ground that light never "fades by any inner necessity of its nature, but is dissipated by the agency of principles other than itself... Given but a single force overflowing from its source with nothing to oppose or dissipate it, and that force would forever express the full strength of its origin without any diminution" (324). And he concludes (327), "With the collapse of the great Plotinian analogy, all the effort to deduce the imperfect from the perfect which it seemed to encourage and validate comes equally to naught."
16. Crude attacks on Christianity sometimes identify it with geocentric astronomy, and Copernicus is pictured as having shaken not only the Earth from the astronomical center but man from the theological center. This crudity does not express the correct relationship between theology and astronomy. It is interesting to note that in Plotinus' pagan system geocentric astronomy is affirmed and homocentric theodicy is denied.
17. In emphasizing the paradox of a perfect world that is yet imperfect, and in arguing that Plotinian mysticism is strangely similar to Stoic naturalism, B. A. G. Fuller, pages 150-161, seems to neglect the point of reference: The world as a whole is good, but man is not, and needs improvement. This is not a logical impossibility as Fuller seems to think.
18. With respect to the question of responsibility Fuller, pages 203-204, writes, "Plotinus' reply is unsatisfactory... The real point at issue is not touched... To disengage the will from the causal nexus of phenomena is merely to assert its freedom from phenomenal determination. But that freedom had still to be reconciled with the necessity of the emanatory process. On this problem Plotinus offers no solution." But Fuller immediately, though too timidly, comes to Plotinus' rescue with a very plausible solution. On the phenomenal or empirical level Plotinus needs to be rescued by much the same method of pointing up the hints actually found in the Enneads.
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