Chapter 6 - Plotinus on the Worth of Embodied Existence

Summary

This chapter focuses on Neoplatonist engagements with the issue of life worth living as represented in the philosophy of Plotinus. The Platonic metaphysics and ethics regards the highest form of life as the life of pure intellection, and the materiality of the body in strongly negative terms as the limiting and potentially corrupting influence on the soul. Therefore, the question about the conditions of a life worth living emerges specifically as a question about the worth of embodied life. Is it worthwhile for the immortal soul to descend into bodies, and to remain there until the bond between body and soul dissolves naturally? Plotinus’s attempts to answer this questions are best viewed in terms of a negotiation between the anti-corporealist stance, according to which disembodied existence is always better for the soul, and an acknowledgment that the embodied condition is good for the soul, insofar as it enables the realisation of some of its capacities.