For Human Suicide
Plotinus’ metaphysics and his thought on the subject of willful departure from mundane life seem to have been influenced by other strands of thought. One is the Pythagorean, to which Porphyry attributes four primary theses: a) the soul is immortal (the immortality thesis), b) the soul migrates into different kinds of animals or bodies (the metempsychosis thesis), c) at certain periods, whatever has happened happens again – nothing being absolutely new (the eternal-recurrence thesis) and d) all living things should be considered as belonging to the same kind (the unity-of-the-living-world thesis). None of these four theses, either when taken by itself or conjoined with some other in the set, straightforwardly implies the wrongness of terminating a life. Indeed, the metempsychosis and the immortality theses seem to imply that the end of ordinary life is of no consequence. Plotinus shares these Pythagorean views (Anagnostopoulos 2000, 262-3).
Another thesis put forward by Plato and shared by Plotinus is that of the embodiment of the soul in any body as a kind of imprisonment (Idem 263). Liberation comes about by death, which is the freeing of the soul from the bonds of the body. Even when taken without the immortality of the soul thesis, the imprisonment thesis implies that prolonging life is prolonging evil. The imprisonment thesis argues clearly in favor of terminating life. Life has no redeeming features. Thus Socrates in the Phaedo is eager to depart from life and enjoy the benefits of the liberation of the soul from the body.
Plotinus did not reject human intervention in the course of nature, even though he assumed that salvation lies in preoccupation with the intellect, not the mundane realm. According to Porphyry, his disciple and editor of his works, when Plotinus was ill, he had a personal doctor but «refused to take medicines containing the flesh of wild beasts” (Vita Plotini, 2.1-30). Porphyry did not attend Plotinus’ deathbed. In his last years Plotinus, whose health had never been very good, suffered from a painful and repulsive sickness that Porphyry describes so imprecisely that one modern scholar has identified it as tuberculosis and another as a form of leprosy. This made his friends, as he noticed, avoid his company, and he retired to a country estate belonging to one of them in Campania and within a year died there. The circle of friends had already broken up. Plotinus himself had sent Porphyry away to Sicily to recover from his depression. Amelius was in Syria. Only his physician Eustochius arrived in time to be with Plotinus at the end.8
One can wonder, if Plotinus committed indirect suicide? Did he stop caring for his body? When does inattention to the body amount to suicide? As we know he refused to take some drugs, on the other hand, he had medical care administered by a doctor, Eustochius, who was a very close friend. Today we often wonder, when someone is terminally ill, should we help him or her depart? When is care for the body too much or too little? We will never know whether Plotinus was helped by Eustochius to terminate his life sooner. According to his writings, Plotinus allowed for the wise man who has reached the good life, to judge by himself whether he will discontinue his life. Did he consider himself a sage? Probably he did, since he experienced contemplation of the One at least four times.
Plotinus’ originality lies in the way he combines various philosophical outlooks to give his own solution to the problems created by human suffering and the inescapability of human fate. He allows for the possibility of suicide if one is not to live well (εὐδαιμονεῖν). He holds in this passage that a soul has the right to chose whether or not to remain in the body. For example, if one were to become a war-slave, if s/he found the burden too heavy, s/he should depart.
It is rather peculiar of Plotinus to regard madness or incurable illness as insufficient grounds for suicide, while he allows the status of war slave to be regarded as a more severe ailment and thus a sufficient reason for willful departure from this life (Enn.1.4.7.33). As John Dillon (1994, 236) points out, this may have been a personal nightmare of Plotinus. In this context one cannot but remember that when he was in his 30s he did participate in an ill fated military campaign to India. He joined the expedition of the Roman emperor Gordian III against Persia (242-243 AD), with the intention of trying to learn something at first hand about the philosophies of the Persians and Indians. The expedition came to a disastrous end in Mesopotamia, when Gordian was murdered by the soldiers and Philip the Arabian was proclaimed emperor. Plotinus escaped with difficulty and made his way back to Antioch.9
In the case of the wise man, Plotinus assumes that he is not to be compared with common people. “His light burns within, like the light in a lantern when it is blowing hard outside” (Enn.1.4.8.5). If his pain becomes too deep and yet does not kill him, he should consider his options, since “the pain has not taken away his power of self-disposal”. Because the wise man’s experiences do not penetrate his core self, he remains impassive within, regardless of the storms raging without. Therefore he can choose whether to commit suicide, taking his decisions in a dispassionate state. “He must give to this bodily life as much as it needs and he can, but he is himself other than it and free to abandon it, and he will abandon it in nature’s good time”, and, “besides, has the right to decide about this for himself” (Enn.1.4.16.10-20).
This idea is further consolidated in a passage (Enn.1.4.16.18ff) where Plotinus remarks the following:10
“So some of his activities will tend towards well-being (εὐδαιμονία); others will not be directed to the goal and will really not belong to him but to that which is joined to him,11 which he will care for and bear with as long as he can, like a musician with his lyre, as long as he can use it; if he cannot use it he will change to another, or give up using the lyre and abandon the activities directed to it. Then he will have something else to do which does not need the lyre, and will let it lie unregarded beside him while he sings without an instrument. Yet the instrument was not given him at the beginning without good reason. He has used it often up till now”.
According to W. R. Inge (1948, 174), “The desire to be invulnerable is natural to most men, and it has been the avowed or unavowed motive of most practical philosophy. To the public eye, the Greek philosopher was a rather fortunate person who could do without a great many things, which other people need and have to work for”. Those philosophers who rejected pleasure as an end, made freedom from bodily and mental disturbance the test of proficiency and the reward of discipline. The Stoics held that the philosopher who finds life unbearable can commit suicide after a reasoned consideration of the particular circumstances (Rist 1967, 174-7). As long as the decision was taken calmly and rationally (εὔλογος ἐξαγωγή) and does not involve the subjection of reason to the passions, it is to be allowed to the wise man.
Against Human Suicide
On the other hand, when Porphyry was suffering from depression, Plotinus averted him from committing suicide and advised him to travel to Sicily to recondition his thoughts (Vita Plotini, 11.10-20). This course of action was based on the belief that – even though one should not focus on material concerns in order to assist or attain happiness – they should not necessarily reduce mental suffering by curtailing their physical life or that of other living beings.
According to Porphyry, Plotinus advised him against committing suicide because the decision was taken under the pressure of passions. J. Rist (1967, 174-7) remarks that even though this sound like a purely Stoic argument, Plotinus demonstrates in the Enneads that given a choice to remain or to leave the body, a soul should in fact always chose to remain. Flight to the beyond (Enn.1.8.6) does not mean leaving this life, but rather living in accordance with the principles of holiness and justice.
According to Elias, Plotinus does not accept any of the five ways of reasonable departure put forward by the Stoics.12 He likens the human soul’s relationship to the body to that of the sun in the solar system. It has a providential function; it gives life and purpose to the body. In the fragment preserved by Elias,
“the philosopher must imitate god and the sun and not neglect his body altogether in caring for his soul, but take thought for it in the appropriate way till it becomes unfit and separates itself from its community with the soul” (In Elias, Prolegomena 6.15.23-16.2).
Furthermore it would be a curious thing if man decided to separate soul from body, since it was not s/he who bound them together in the first place (cf. Phaedo 62c).
John Dillon (1994, 233) speculates that the provenance of this monobiblon to which Elias refers is quite mysterious. Its contents are plainly divergent from what is contained in the note published by Porphyry. It may emanate from the lost edition of Plotinus’ personal doctor Eustochius, as was originally suggested by Creuzer. But in this case are we to assume that Eustochius is presenting another, fuller version of the same document that Porphyry is presenting?
As Armstrong (1966, 324-5) points out, Plotinus in two passages (Enn.1.4.7-8 and 1.9) dismisses three of the five Stoic reasons 13 as justification for taking one’s own life: long and extremely painful illness, madness and probably coercion to immoral behavior (Enn.1.4.7.43-45). Were one to commit suicide simply in order to avoid misfortunes, s/he would be unwise, because the nature of this universe is of a kind to bring these sorts of misfortunes, and we must follow it obediently” (Enn.1.4.7.42).
Other passages point towards the view that Plotinus was ultimately opposed to suicide.14 In Ennead 1.9, which is a short treatise dealing with suicide, Plotinus holds that the soul cannot detach itself from the body by suicide without becoming prey to the passions of grief or anger and letting something evil come with it. One must wait until the soul leaves the body by natural death. One must therefore not go out of the body by suicide except in the case of desperate necessity (Armstrong 1966, 320). Even taking drugs to let the soul come out is not admissible (Enn.1.9.15).15 Let us see the contents of Enn.1.9 in Plotinus’ own words:
“You shall not take out your soul... for if it goes thus, it will go taking something with it... But how does the body depart? When nothing of soul is any longer bound up with it, because the body is unable to bind it any more, since its harmony is gone; as long as it has this it holds the soul. But suppose someone contrives the dissolution of his body? He has used violence and gone away himself, not let his body go; and in dissolving it he is not without passion; there is disgust or grief or anger; one must not act like this. But suppose he is aware that he is beginning to go mad? This is not likely to happen to a really good man; but if it does happen, he will consider it as one of the inevitable things, to be accepted because of the circumstances, though not in themselves acceptable. And after all, taking drugs to give the soul a way out is not likely to be good for the soul. And if each man has a destined time allotted to him, it is not a good thing to go out before it, unless, as we maintain, it is necessary. And if each man’s rank in the other world depends on his state when he goes out, one must not take out the soul as long as there is any possibility of progress”.
Conclusions
The idea of suicide appears under many guises in Plotinus’ philosophy. One is the more traditional notion that we have today, whether one should kill himself or, according to Plotinian lingo, whether given a choice to remain or to leave the body, the soul should remain? Beyond that, Plotinus enriches our view of suicide with two further notions: One is the idea of soul’s incarnation as committing suicide. It is highlighted by two myths – those of the baby Dionysus and Narcissus – with which Plotinus illustrates the embodiment of the soul in the sensible world as something ultimately painful and negative; an involuntary suicide, committed in the rush to attain matter. Finally there is the notion of suicide in the form of murder or killing a living being or plant. In this case empathy is needed. Killing another living being would be like attempting suicide: killing a part of the one unified, single soul to which we also partake. Also, since reincarnation occurs, killing another living being (human or animal) would entail the possibility of killing a being enlivened by a dead relative’s soul.
In fact, as we noted above, there is disagreement between different passages in the Enneads about Plotinus’ stance towards suicide. This is reflected in the diverging scholarly interpretations of Plotinian texts on the same subject matter. According to Kieran McGroarty (Dufour, 2008) Plotinus changes his attitude on suicide in Ennead 1.4.46 compared to Ennead 1.9.16. At the time he wrote Enn.1.9, Plotinus was opposing the Stoic teaching which advocated a fairly free exit from the body. He wanted to deter Porphyry from his melancholic inclination towards suicide. But in his old age, more concerned with his own poor health, Plotinus thought suicide legitimate for the sage who could not progress anymore towards eudaimonia. This is reflected in Ennead 1.4 where he argues as follows:
“But if our argument made well being (to eudaemonein) consist in freedom from pain and sickness and ill-luck and falling into great misfortunes, it would be impossible for anyone to be well off when any of these circumstances opposed to well-being was present” (Enn.1.4.6.1-5). “Why then does the man who is in a state of well-being want these necessities to be there and reject their opposites? We shall answer that it is not because they make any contribution to his well-being, but rather, to his existence” (Enn.1.4.7.1-5).
Plotinus thinks that the wise man can come in contact with the One or the Good:
“So we must ascend again to the good, which every soul desires ...and the attainment of it is for those who go up to the higher world and are converted and strip off what we put on in our descent; (just as for those who go up to the celebrations of sacred rites there are purification, and stripping off of the clothes they wore before, and going up naked) until, passing in the ascent all that is alien to the God, one sees with one’s self alone. That alone, simple, single and pure, from which all depends and to which all look and are and live and think: for it is cause of life and mind and being” (Enn.1.6.7.1-12).
Plotinus suggests a way of finding a soul’s true self:
“Our country from which we came is there our father is there. How shall we travel to it, where is our way of escape? We cannot get there on foot; for our feet only carry us everywhere in this world, from one country to another. You must not get ready a carriage, either, or a boat. Let all these things go, and do not look. Shut your eyes, and change to and wake another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use (Enn. 1.6.8.22-8).
Plotinus explains that
“It is not in the soul’s nature to touch utter nothingness; the lowest descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: but to utter nothing, never. When the soul begins again to mount, it comes not to something alien but to its very self; thus detached, it is in nothing but itself; self-gathered it is no longer in the order of being; it is in the Supreme” (Enn.6.9.11).
The difference between Plotinus and later Neoplatonists, of which Damascius was one, is that the latter won’t allow for the absolute detachment of the soul from the body, while the body is still alive. It thus becomes impossible for the soul of the prospective wise man, to venture completely into the positive nothingness of the Ineffable, because the soul is always bound to the body, and that results in its inability to escort its own self, so as to say, into that which is total nothingness and alien to the soul.
So even though Plotinus does not give a clear answer, regarding modern deliberations about the pros and cons of curtailing one’s life, he does make us aware of the larger and wider significance of the hypostasis of soul, the consequences of suicide, death and most importantly, the significance of life.
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