Abstract
According to Hesiod, Eros is ‘the most beautiful among the immortal gods, the limb-melter – he overpowers the mind and the thoughtful counsel of all the gods and of all human beings in their breasts’ (Theogony, 120–22; trans. Most), and sexual desire plays a significant, if complex, rôle in the Hesodian conception of the divine cosmos. Since Socrates’ account in the Symposium of Diotima of Mantua’s teaching concerning Eros as ‘a great spirit’ (daimon) and hence as ‘intermediate between the divine and the mortal’ (202d-e; trans. Jowett), however, the Platonic notion of eros has been the subject of considerable philosophical scrutiny, from the Neoplatonists through to Ludwig Klages’s vitalist interpretation in Of Cosmogonic Eros (1922; 1926). In 2021, Dimitrios A. Vasikakis’ study Eros in Neoplatonism and its Reception in Christian Philosophy examined the status of Eros in Plotinus, Proclus, and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite; earlier, studies in French by Joachim Lacrosse (L’amour chez Plotin, 1994) and Agnès Pigler (Plotin, une métaphysique de l’amour, 2002) had addressed what Pigler calls the ‘metaphysics of love’ in Plotinus. Yet Albert Bertozzi’s fascinating monograph (based on his doctoral thesis of 2012 which offered a ‘systematic reconstruction’ of the rôle of Eros in Plotinus) shows how rich a field of philosophical inquiry this topic remains.
His study of Plotinian erotics is itself structured by the traditional Neoplatonic model of procession and reversion; that is to say, the derivation of all reality (as the many) from the One conceived as the principle of all things and the ascent of the soul as a return to the One as the Good or the End of all things. Taken together, the Enneads thus constitute ‘an organic whole with love as its guiding theme and the One as both the origin and the terminus of all love’ (p. 4). Bertozzi’s core argument, as the subtitle of his monograph suggests, is that, among such concepts as unity, being, participation, etc., love is the only one that allows a systematic reconstruction of Plotinus’s metaphysics: love thus constitutes ‘the origin, the culmination, and the regulative force of the double movement that characterizes Plotinus’ metaphysics [. . .] as well as the fundamental link between the different levels of the Plotinian universe’ (pp. 1 and 7; cf. p. 53). Accordingly, he argues in Chapter 1 that the ‘principle of prior simplicity’ (as Dominic O’Meara calls it) is a fundamental law of that metaphysics, according to which everything that is must proceed from one simple, single source: the One. (For all its apparent abstractness, this argument relates immediately to concerns of JES readers: since it involves multiplicity, how can language allow us even to speak about the principle of the One? Following Numemius [fr. 2] and the Didaskalikos of Alcinous, Bertozzi offers two solutions: the language of negation (or the via negativa) and the language of analogy (or the via positiva), in which analysing the effects of this principle enables us to say something about it (pp. 22–8)).
In Chapter 2, Bertozzi argues that the procession of all reality is erotic, inasmuch as the One is the source of all love. In Plotinus’s words, the One is ‘the productive power of all things’ (Enneads, V.4, §2; trans. Armstrong), and this force should be understood, not as appetitive, but as donative; in its superabundance, the One (to borrow a formulation of Jean-Louis Chrétien) ‘gives what it does not have’ (p. 64). That giving, in turn, is said to be governed by the ‘principle of superabundance’ (p. 67) and the ‘principle of henelogic giving’ (and its corollary, the ‘principle of the superiority of cause to effect’); the latter illustrated in the sensible realm by the metaphor of vision famously found in book 7 of Plato’s Republic: the sun, as the giver of (intelligible) visibility and the existence of all things, itself remains beyond such visibility and its mode of existence (p. 71). (A helpful appendix summarizes the various metaphysical principles introduced in this study.) Moving from henelogic Eros (via noetic and psychic Eros) to hyletic Eros and the material world, Bertozzi embarks on a discussion of the generation of matter and its role on the sensible cosmos; its description as ‘evil’ sounds a Gnostic note (but cf. pp. 143, 251, 286–7, 304 and 315), even if he observes that the sensible is not in itself evil (p. 127).
Yet distinguishing between metaphysical and moral evil cannot detract from the fact that, for Plotinus, this material world is not our destiny. In part 2 of his metaphysical diptych, Bertozzi turns – inevitably, with a focus on Ennead, III.5 (On Love) – to the erotic ascent of the soul’s return to the One, discussing Plotinus as an interpreter of Plato (Chapter 3); the One as the universal final cause which is (for that very reason) supremely loved (Chapter 4); the two preconditions for such an ascent (attunement and affinity), and four features common to all its stages (subtraction, implication of lower stages, intensification of love, and non-reciprocal participation) (Chapter 5); and finally the threefold ascent itself, consisting of purification (ascent to soul), noetic reintegration (ascent to Intellect), and union (ascent to the One) (Chapter 6). (In so doing, one might add, Bertozzi raises issues that are pertinent not just to the Platonic, but also to the Christian tradition: how does the soul behold the Beatific Vision, for example? Or as Lela Alexidze has put it: if Eros is the soul’s eye (Enneads, III.5 §2), what does it see – and not see?) This final chapter is, to use the metaphor of light and vision so often found in Plotinus and the Platonic tradition, particularly illuminating: Bertozzi persuasively argues that ‘at the end of its journey, all that is left for the soul is to renounce its last possession – noetic activity – and, by abandoning itself [. . .] to its Good, meet it in the only way it can be truly met: in love. [. . .] In its contact with the One the soul has taken away all that was alien to its center and has been transformed in one simple reality: love for the One – eros’ (pp. 331 and 341).
This is a beautiful book: clearly organized, scrupulously referenced and impeccably argued, and as such it recommends itself to the general reader seeking to understand Plotinus as much as to the specialist. Yet it is in a way also humble: in his concluding section, Bertozzi considers ‘some open questions’, even the objection to this entire metaphysics as finds expression in the opening lines of Bertolt Brecht’s poem, Gegen Verführung [against seduction]: ‘Laßt euch nicht verführen! / Es gibt keine Wiederkehr’, that is, there is no return – because there is no One to which to return (p. 345)! As its reviewer in The Classical Review has noted, Bertozzi’s work is also commendable for its extensively multilingual bibliography; another reason why JES readers can profitably consult this excellent and inspiring study. [Note: Winner of the 2021 Outstanding Academic Titles award in Choice.]