Neoplatonic Epistemology: Knowledge, Truth, and Intellection

Lloyd P. Gerson
University of Toronto
1. Introduction
Neoplatonic epistemology generally is rooted in the Platonic-Aristotelian account of
knowledge (epistm) and belief (doxa), reflection on the materialist challenge to this account by
the Stoics, and a response to the later Pyrrhonian arguments against the very possibility of
wisdom, the central pretension of all dogmatists.
Since Neoplatonists saw no essential difference between Plato and Aristotle regarding
fundamental epistemological matters, they felt free to draw on both in order to meet the
challenges posed by their opponents. The central challenge comes from materialism, first, for
Plato and Aristotle, probably from Atomists and then later, more powerfully, from the Stoics
themselves.
In Timaeus, Plato explains the nature of this challenge. 1 He argues as follows. If
knowledge is different from true belief, then separate Forms must exist, for these are the objects
of knowledge. 2 But Forms are immaterial entities; hence, materialism is false. Clearly, what
requires scrutiny is the assumption that knowledge is something distinct from true belief and the
further assumption that knowledge is exclusively of immaterial entities. As it happens, the
reason for both assumptions is identical: knowledge is infallible or unerring. 3 Knowledge is
different from true belief because the latter does not have this property even though a true belief
is, by definition, not false. Infallibility differs from truth as a property of a belief because one
might have a true belief and yet not know that it is so. One might have it by accident, so to
speak. By contrast, infallibility is the impossibility of error, that is, the knower cannot be in a
state of knowing and at the same time not realize that he is in this state. Given the infallibility of
knowledge, we can see at once that there cannot be knowledge of material entities or, stated
otherwise, that knowledge can only be of immaterial entities. This is so because a material entity
must be outside of the intellect and so, whatever is in the intellect, must be merely a
representation of that putative material object of knowledge. But there is no way to guarantee
infallibility in the representation of anything. That is, there is no entailment from S has a
representation of p to S knows p. The only way that infallibility is possible is if the objects of
knowledge are immaterial entities such that they can actually be present to the intellect, a
presence that does not, of course, preclude their presence to other intellects, too.
Aristotle in De Anima comes to the identical conclusion via a somewhat more circuitous
path. 4 He is arguing against materialists who maintain that sense-perception and thinkingthe
genus of which knowledge is a subspeciesare the same sort of thing, namely, a sort of physical
change in the cognizer produced by an external physical object. He argues in reply that thinking
must be different from sense-perception because thinking can be false whereas sense-perceptions
are true. If thinking were a mere physical change, then there could be no falsity in thinking only
the presence or absence of the change. But the faculty which is capable of falsity is identical
1

See Tim. 51C-E.

The word is nous, not epistm, though they seem to be used synonymously. Cp. Rep. 534A4 with 511D6-E5.
3
See Rep. 477E6-7 where the property of knowledge is anamartton. At Tht. 152C5-6 the property is apseudes.
4
See DA 3.3.427a17ff.
2

with that which is capable of truth. To be capable of a false belief it is necessary to have an
immaterial intellect. For a false belief (or a true one) requires that (a) a subject of that belief be
present in the intellect. Assume, like the materialist, that what is in fact present is a
representation of the external physical object. In order to have the belief, one must then (b)
cognize something universal in the attribution of a predicate to that subject. If this were not so,
then falsity would not be possible because no one could have the false belief that A is B where
A and B are representations of different physical objects. The predicate in the judgment or
belief must be understood universally if the claim of predicative identity is to be made. The
cognition of a universal could not be a bodily or material state, since every one of these has
determinate particularity. So, to believe that this is a dog is to cognize dog universally, but
universal cognition is not exhaustible by an particular instantiation or representation. That is,
cognition of universals requires their non-representational presence. So, belief requires an
immaterial intellect. But belief could not be possible unless one is capable of knowledge, that is,
the presence of an intelligible object in the intellect and the awareness of its presence. 5 In a
belief, the cognition of a universal is not an example of knowledge. But such cognition is not
possible unless knowledge is possible, too.
The presence of the intelligible object in the intellect for Plato is a possessing
(kektsthai); the awareness of its presence is a having (echein). 6 For Aristotle, possessing
becomes first actuality and having second actuality. 7 Knowledge in the primary sense is the
having or the second actuality. It is absolutely crucial for grasping this account that we
recognize that the subject in which the intelligible object is present be identical with the subject
which is aware of that presence. This is, of course, only possible if the subject is immaterial. So,
fully actualizing knowledge or having it requires that the knower know himself, at least insofar
as he is an intellect. 8 That is, knowledge is self-knowledge.
In this light, it is not difficult to see why Plato insists that knowledge must be infallible.
To maintain that it is coherent to say, I know but I may be mistaken is to use the word know
in a way significantly different from the way that Plato uses the verbal forms of the word
epistm. It is to make knowledge a form of belief, something that Aristotle no more than Plato
accepts. 9
The Academic Sceptic Arcesilaus deserves a brief mention in this context, since it is he
who, in his attack on Stoic epistemology, was the first after Aristotle to see the essential
connection between knowledge, immaterialism, and infallibility. As Arcesilaus showed, if the
Stoic claim to knowledge rests on presentations (phantasiai) then, since there is no such thing
as false knowledge, there must be some criterion for distinguishing knowledge from a false
belief. But presentations leading to the one or the other may be indistinguishable. 10 From this it
follows that one cannot know unless one is certain or infallible, but the grounds for claiming
5

See DA 3.4.429a24-9.
See Tht. 197B-D.
7
See DA 3.4.429b5-9.
8
Cf. DA 430a4-5; 3.5.430a19-20; 3.6.430b25-6; 431a22-3; Meta. 12.9.1074b38-75a5.
9
See Post. An. 1.33.88b30-7. Cf. 1.8.75b24; 1.18.81b5-7; Meta. 7.15.1040a1-2; EN 6.3.1139b19-24. Plato, Tht.
187Aff, argues that if true belief were knowledge, then false belief would not be possible. But since false belief is
possible, true belief is not knowledge. This is because knowledge is (a) the presence of the knowable and (b) the
awareness of its presence. If condition (a) alone is met that is not false belief; if neither (a) nor (b) are met, then
there is not false belief either since there would be no object of belief.
10
See Cicero, Acad. 2.40; cf. Sextus Empiricus, M 7.402-10. Sextus attributes this argument to Carneades, not to
Arcesilaus.
6

knowledge can never in principle be conclusive. Hence, knowledge is not possible. The
materialist Stoics had no way of countering this argument. 11
More important for our purposes is the argument found in Sextus Empiricus which is
directed not against materialists exclusively but against all dogmatists, that is, against all those,
immaterialists included, who maintain that knowledge must be infallible. As Sextus so clearly
sees, if knowledge is to be infallible, then, as noted above, the subject in which the knowable
object is present must be identical with the subject who is aware of its presence. But then,
If intellect (nous) grasps itself, either it is as a whole that it will grasp itself or
not as a whole, but using some part of itself for this. It will not be able to grasp
itself as a whole. For if it grasps itself as a whole, it will as a whole just be the
grasping and, in grasping, since the grasping is the whole [that is, all there is of
it], it will not be that which is grasped. But it is the height of absurdity that the
grasping should exist but not that which is grasped. Nor can intellect use some
part of itself for this. For how does the part itself grasp itself? If as a whole,
the object sought will be nothing; if with a part, how will that part in turn
cognize itself? And so on indefinitely. So, grasping is without a beginning
(anarchon), since either there is no first subject to be found to do the grasping
or else there will be no object to be grasped.12

Sextus argument is intended to drive a stake through the heart of any dogmatic pretension to
knowledge precisely because all dogmatists recognize that knowledge must be infallible. So,
even if we grant the immateriality of the putative knower, if it can be shown that infallibility is
not possible, then there can be no knowledge and the dogmatists quest for wisdom is vain. 13
2. Plotinus
In one of the very few passages in the Enneads in which Plotinus seems to take notice of
Sextus or at least of Pyrrhonian Sceptics, he actually responds to this argument or to one very
much like it. He asks,
Must that which thinks itself be complex in order that, with one part of itself
contemplating the others, it could in this way be said to think itself, on the
grounds that were it altogether simple, it would not be able to revert to itself,
that is, there could not be the grasping of itself?. 14

The reply made by Plotinus is to the effect that self-thinking would not be possible if the
complexity of the intellect were bodily complexity, that is, if it had parts outside of parts or
extension. In that case, knowledge would not be possible because infallibility would not be
11

Sextus, M 7.252, says that the Stoics tried to counter the argument by adding the criterion of such kind as could
not come from that which does not exist. In other words, they wanted to guarantee the distinctness of the
graspable presentations (katalptkai phantasiai) as experienced by the knower from that experienced by the mere
believer. But this can hardly be correct: there can be no such externalist criterion of infallibility, even if there can be
an externalist criterion of truth.
12
See Sextus, M 7.310-13 and Gerson (2009: 124-33).
13
See also PH 2.70-2 for the reductio argument that the truth or falsity of representations is ungraspable
(akatalptikos), that is, indeterminable.
14
5.3.1.1-4. On the essential self-reflexivity of knowledge in Plotinus, see Khn (2009).

possible. Knowledge would in that case consist in one part of the intellect monitoring or
otherwise taking cognizance of the state of another part. 15 As we have seen, there can be no
infallibility in this case. So, the intellect must be immaterial and knowledge must be the selfreverting awareness by the intellect of its own state (epistroph pros heauton). Infallible
cognition is indistinguishable from having the truth, in Platos terminology. 16
Like Plato, Plotinus takes knowledge as the paradigm of cognition and all other types of
cognition as imitations or inferior versions of this. But, again, following Plato, he maintains that
these inferior types of cognition would not be possible unless we were the sort of creatures
capable of the highest type. Indeed, unless we already do possess knowledge, modes of
cognition like discursive reasoning would not be available to us. As Plotinus puts it, we reason
discursively by the rules (kanones) that we have from Intellect. 17 These rules are not
themselves the intelligibles or Forms; they are representations (tupoi) of them. 18 It is difficult to
know precisely what Plotinus means to indicate here, but perhaps the simplest interpretation is
that the rules or representations are elementary logical principles which are a necessary condition
for thinking at all. 19 What distinguishes these rules from mere signs is their universality.
Animals can react to signs, but they cannot cognize universally. Only with such rules can we
think at all.
The need for access to rules is owing to the fact that we possess undescended
intellects. 20 Briefly, the claim is based on the argument that since intellect and intelligibles are
inseparable, the separateness of the one from the sensible world entails the separateness of the
other. What this means is that our access to intelligibles is at the same time access to our own
undescended intellects. The possibility of access is accounted for by our embodied souls beings
images of their paradigms, the undescended intellects.
So, the paradigm of thinking, as Aristotle says, is self-thinking.
In general, thinking seems to be an awareness (sunaisthsis) of the whole with
many things coming together into that which is identical, whenever something
thinks itself, which is thinking in the principal sense.21

The rather obscure phrase many things coming together into that which is identical is firmly
embedded in Plotinian metaphysics wherein the first principle of all, the One or the Idea of the
Good, is absolutely simple or one or self-identical. Intellect, the second principle of all, is, as
Plotinus says, minimally complex, that is, it is a one-many. 22 It is unavoidable complex because
the One is uniquely simple. Its complexity consists in the facts that (a) there must be some
distinction between intellect and intelligible and (b) there must be a multiplicity of intelligibles to
See 1.2.7.3 where Plotinus clearly identifies the activity of intellect, nosis, with epistm or sophia. Cf. 5.9.5.30,
quoting Aristotle.
16
See 5.3.5.19-26; 5.3.8.36.
17
See 5.3.4.15-17.
18
See 5.3.2.10, 12 (tupoi); 5.3.3.12, traces (ichn). At 5.3.4.2, Plotinus uses the metaphor of laws (nomoi). See
Emilsson (2007: 207-13). Plotinus may also have in mind the megista gen of the Sophist, namely, being, identity,
difference, motion, and rest.
19
At 5.3.3.8-9, normative rules are included, i.e., the rules that give us the ability to judge something good or bad.
Perhaps such judgments are a function of judgments of unity; that is, the more unity, the better something is.
20
See 6.4.14.16-22; 4.8.4.31-5; 4.8.8; 4.7.13 for Plotinus claim that our intellects are undescended, a claim that
most later Platonists rejected. On the undescended intellect, see Szlezk (1979: ch.4).
21
5.3.13.13-15; cf. 2.9.1; 5.6.1.
22
See, e.g., 5.4.1.1-21.
15

account for all the multiple genuine cases of sameness in the world. So, the many things
coming together into that which is identical are the intelligibles or Forms with which Intellect is
eternally cognitively identical, that is, they make it to be what it is by informing Intellect while
Intellect is simultaneously eternally aware of this information. 23
Accordingly, every image or inferior form of thinking constitutes an act of identification,
in two phases, so to speak. Consider belief. To engage in the type of thinking that is belief is to
affirm that, say, A is B, where A stands for the subject and B for an instance of the universal
property or attribute that is predicated of it. Plotinus takes the is in this predicative judgment
to be an act of identification, saying that B names one thing that A is. Of course, the identity
may be accidental or adventitious. But the judgment or belief is an act of thinking that two
things are, in a way, one. The second phase of this sort of thinking is the awareness of ones
own intellect being qualifiedly identified by, that is, identical with this belief. This is a qualified
identity since the object cognized here, that is, the subject of the belief and its identity with an
instance of the predicate, cannot identify or inform the intellect the way an immaterial entity can.
A belief stands to knowledge or thinking in the primary sense roughly analogous to the way an
instance of a Form or intelligible stands to that Form itself. Embodied thinking always occurs by
imaging the perfect thinking of Intellect, the locus of intelligibility.
The Pyrrhonian argues that if we do not have a criterion for distinguishing true beliefs
from false beliefs, there is no more reason to belief a proposition p is true rather than false. In
other words, rational belief would not exist. But we can never have a criterion, for that would
have to provide a means of distinguishing appearances that guarantee that they are appearances
of reality from appearances that are deceptive. But there is no entailment from s appears to me
thus and so to s really is thus and so. How could there be such an entailment so long as we
distinguish appearance and reality? But if we do not distinguish them, not only will it follow that
all appearances are true, but any effort to explain appearances will fail; there will be nothing to
explain. Philosophy and science will be pointless activities.
Plotinus response to the Pyrrhonian objection is that if we do not right now know eternal
truths, we are incapable of any higher cognition, perhaps nothing more than sense-perception and
imagination. But if we are capable of higher cognition, including, say, a belief that there are no
rational beliefs, then we must have access to eternal truth. The desiderated criterion for true
belief is our possessing knowledge of eternal truth. The proof that we possess such knowledge is
that if we did not possess it, we could not understand our own belief claims, regardless of
whether these are true or false. So, Plotinus responds to the Pyrrhonists by hewing to the
Platonic-Aristotelian account of knowledge and refusing to accept the assumption that the
criterion of knowledge or rational belief must somehow consist in showing how sense-perception
or appearance provides entailing evidence for the truth of belief.
It is crucial for Plotinus argument that our access to our intellectswhether these be
undescended or notis necessarily also access to intelligibles. That is, the intellect must be
cognitively identical with these intelligibles or, as he puts it in a treatise the first part of which is
devoted to the problem, they must not be external to it. 24 If our access to our intellects were
only access to a power, say, like using our muscles to lift something, then we would not have
access to eternal truth, but only to some sort of cognitive images or representations of the truth.
But then the problem raised by the Pyrrhonists would be replicated at the level of the intelligible
realm. In the first chapter of 5.5., Plotinus wants to show that, given that intelligibles or Forms
23
24

See 5.8.4.4-12. Cf. Proclus, ET 52.

See 5.5, That the Intelligibles are not External to the Intellect.

must exist if we are to explain sameness in difference in the sensible world, these intelligibles
cannot be external to Intellect.
But the greatest objection is this. If, indeed, one were to grant that these
intelligibles are totally external to Intellect, and then claim that Intellect
contemplates them as such, it necessarily follows that it does not itself have the
truth of these things and that it is deceived in all that it contemplates: for it is
those intelligibles that would be the true reality. It will contemplate them
though it does not have them, instead receiving reflected representations of
them in a kind of cognition like this. Then, not having true reality, but rather
receiving for itself reflected representations of the truth, it will have falsities
and nothing true. If, then, it knows that it has falsities, it will agree that it has no
share in truth. But if it is ignorant of this as well, and thinks that it has the truth
when it does not, the falsity that is generated in it is double, and that will
separate it considerably from the truth.
This is the reason, I think, that in acts of sense-perception truth is not found,
but only belief, because belief is receptive, 25 and for this reason, being belief, it
receives something other than that from which it receives what it has. If, then,
there is no truth in Intellect, an intellect of this sort will not be truth nor will it
be truly Intellect, nor will it be Intellect at all. But there is nowhere else for the
truth to be. 26

The last line of this passage reveals the underlying strategy in this argument. Truth must exist in
Intellect if intellection is to be possible. If intellection is not possible because truth does not exist
there, then, as we have seen, no higher cognition is possible, including belief.
The truth that is in Intellect is ontological truth, a property of being in relation to an
intellect. 27 What Plotinus is disputing is the claim that what is in Intellect is only semantic truth,
that is, the truth of putative propositional representations of being. Suppose that the ne plus ultra
of cognition were true belief. Then reality, the truth makers for true belief, would be external
to all cognizers. In that case, the highest form of cognition would not be knowledge, for
knowledge is infallible, and infallibility in the cognition of representations is not possible. But if
there is no knowledge, then, as we have seen, there is no belief or at least true belief distinct from
false belief.
The explanation of why we must have access to Intellect, or to our own intellects, if we
are to have higher cognition is essentially the same as the explanation of why we must have
access to intelligibles. But if the explanation is the same, then this must be because Intellect and
intelligibles are inseparable, that is, intelligibles are not external to the Intellect. The only way
that ontological truth can be internal to Intellect is if being is internal to Intellect. If ontological
truth is not internal to Intellect, then even the claim that we are representing reality is a sort of
bluff. For the very idea of representation assumes a reality independent of that representation.
But if intelligibles are not internal to Intellect, then the reality is completely inaccessible and
claims to represent it are empty.
The internality of intelligibles to Intellect is the condition for what we do as embodied
intellects. If I grasp, say, a mathematical truth, that is, if I see the truth of a mathematical
25

Taking the word for belief, doxa, as derived from the word for receive dechomai.
5.5.1.50-68. Cf. 5.3.5.21-5.
27
At Rep. 508E1, the Idea of the Good provides truth to Forms and knowability (gignskesthai). Cf. 509B5.
26

proposition, I am not doing what Intellect does eternally, but I am doing something that I could
not do if Intellect, and my own undescended intellect, were not eternally cognitively identical
with intelligibles. Plotinus agrees with Aristotle (and Plato) that all our embodied cognition
requires images. 28 But he insists further that only those with intellects can recognize the images
for what they are.
The ability to cognize images as images is closely connected to the general principle
enunciated above that thinking is essentially, that is, paradigmatically, self-thinking. In selfthinking, there are no images or representations. There is cognitive identity with intelligibles. In
the inferior or derived modes of cognition, there is also cognitive identity, but because there are
images, this identity is qualified. And because the identity is qualified, it is easy to confuse the
cognitive state with representationsincluding propositional representationsof it. In
contemporary epistemological parlance, the things I know and believe are propositions;
according to the Platonic model, my knowledge or belief are expressed in propositions which are
representations of my cognitive state. It is because I know or believe that I make such
representations either to myself or to others. Even if the case of belief, however, there is
qualified self-thinking, my awareness of the state I am in. I cannot be unqualifiedly cognitively
identical with anything that is materially constituted. But I cannot cognize anything without
some form of self-thinking.
The non-propositional and non-representational nature of primary or paradigmatic
thinking follows from its perfect cognitive identity with all that is intelligible. This cognitive
identification is also an activity (energeia). Accordingly, all of its inferior images, that is, all
types of cognition, are images of this activity. For example, when I am in a belief state, I am, in
my awareness of being in this state, not only identical with myself as informed by an instance of
an intelligible, but I am also engaged in an activity which consists in identifying the predicate of
the judgment with the subject. When I believe that A is B I cognize B as naming one of the
things that is that which A names. Even though A is not necessarily B, its contingent identity
with B is how the belief is represented to myself. The identity represented in a necessary
proposition is, of course, closer to the paradigmatic state, indeed closer to the absolutely selfidentical first principle of all. To see two (or more) things as one is the essence of higher
cognition. At the level of Intellect, all intelligibles are seen in this way.
In order to complete this picture, it is necessary to emphasize that the paradigm of
cognition is not, for Plotinus, as it is for Aristotle, identified with primary being. In short,
Intellect is not the Unmoved Mover. This needs to be stressed because the cognitive identity in
Intellect is not perfect identity. Intellection, that is, self-thinking, could not be what the first
principle of all consists in since all thinking is complex. The first principle of all can neither
engage in cognition nor be cognized, at least insofar as cognition is understood as the presence of
an intelligible in a cognizer and the awareness of that presence. The problem that this poses for
Plotinus is that since all things desire the Good, that is, the first principle, how else could
Intellect attain this Good but by engaging in intellectual activity, thinking itself as all that is
intelligible? Plotinus implicit response to this is to maintain that the Good is virtually all things
28

Aristotles insistence that there is no thinking without images (see DA 3.7.431a17, 432a9, De Mem. 1.449b31450a1) is, I assume, a Platonic point. Thinking for Plato is logos in the embodied soul, and logos is or contains
images. See Tht. 189E4-190A6; Soph. 263E3-8. The paradigm or principle of thinking is epistm, which is nonimagistic. For that reason it is the prerogative of the separate intellect, not its embodied manifestation. See Plotinus,
5.1.6.45-6; 5.1.3.8-10; 5.1.7.42 for the sense in which Soul is a logos, that is, an image of Intellect. At 5.3.3.44-5
Plotinus concludes his discussion of our identity as discursive reasoners with the pronouncement: sense-perception
is our messenger, but Intellect is our king, referencing Plato, Phil. 28C7.

including all that is intelligible. 29 It is virtually all things roughly in the way that white light is
virtually the spectrum. Intellect has the Good in the best way possible; it knows all that the
Good is virtually.
3. Porphyry
Porphyry, pupil of Plotinus and editor of his Enneads, wrote voluminously in defence of
the Platonic system as articulated by his master. In his work, Launching Points to the
Intelligibles (Aphormai pros ta nota). Porphyry collects and more or less briefly comments on a
number of passages from the Enneads collectively intended to orient the embodied human
person in the direction of the first principle of all. On the matter of our return to the One,
Porphyry seems to regard the activity of intellection as only the penultimate stage of ascent.
On the subject of that which is beyond Intellect, many statements are made on
the basis of thinking, but it may be immediately contemplated (thereitai) only
by means of a nonthinking (anosiai) superior to thinking; even as concerning
sleep many statements may be made in a waking state, but only through
sleeping can one gain direct cognition (gnsis) or comprehension for same is
known by same, because all cognition consists in assimilation (homoisis) to
the object of cognition. 30

This portentous passage takes up, however briefly, several remarks made by Plotinus to the
effect that even if there is no cognitional access to the One, nevertheless there must be some way
of attaining it since, ultimately, it is the source of our being. Plotinus addresses the point in his
treatise On Nature and Contemplation.
Since cognition of other things comes to us through Intellect, and we are able
to know Intellect by means of intellect, by what sort of simple grasp (epiboli
athroai) could one get hold of (aliskoito) that which is by nature beyond
Intellect? We shall say to the one to whom we have to explain how this is
possible that it is by sameness in us. 31

So, it is owing to the fact that we are images of the first principle that we can assume that it is
possible somehow to attain some kind of union with this. Plotinus elsewhere connects the
attainment of the One with the greatest study (megiston mathma) of the Idea of the Good in
Republic. 32
Yet what this nonthinking superior to thinking is remains quite obscure. It is highly
plausible that Porphyry has in mind what he reports in his Life of Plotinus, namely, that he
attained (etuch) the goal of union with the One four times in his life. 33 But we cannot suppose
that achieving this goal could consist in the obliteration of the self, given that it occurred four
29

See 3.8.10.1; 4.8.6.11; 5.1.7.10-11; 5.4.1.23-6; 5.4.2.38; 6.9.5.36.

Launching Points, 25.
31
3.8.9.19-23. Cf. 5.3.14.1-6; 5.6.6.32-5.
32
See 6.7.36.3-6 with Rep. 505A2. Cf. 6.7.40.1-4; 6.9.11.22-5. In this passage Plotinus says either cognition or
touching (eite gnsis eite epaph) which I take it is not in contradiction to the claim that the One is beyond
intellection. I suppose that the first alternative indicates knowing the One by knowing all Forms and that the
second alternative indicates a super-intellective activity.
33
See Life of Plotinus, 23.16-17.
30

times. More important, since the One is absolutely simple, there can be no union with it,
something that would evidently compromise its unqualified simplicity. It seems more likely that
what Plotinus achieved was an awareness that the One is all thingsvirtually. For present
purposes, what is most important is the explicit limitation of intellection to intelligibles and its
situation within the overall metaphysical, psychological, and ethical framework of Platonism.
Embodied human life is located on a sort of axis one terminus of which is the One or the Good
and the other terminus is totally unformed matter, as close to absolute non-being as it is logically
possible to get. All human action, including thinking, is judged by Platonists from Plotinus
onwards as orienting a person towards one terminus or the other. Knowledge, therefore, has a
specific goal which is union with the One as far as possible. That is, knowledge is supposed to
be transformative in the specific sense that by recovering the activity of our undescended
intellects we unify the self which is otherwise dispersed as a result of embodiment.
Porphyry thematizes the idea of reversion to our source as a cognitive enterprise in this
way.
Everything that generates in virtue of its essence generates something inferior
to itself, and everything that is generated reverts (epistrephei) by nature towards
that which has generated it.34

This passage generalizes the claim made by Plotinus that Intellect, after it has been generated by
the One, reverts to the One and becomes Intellect when it looks at it, that is, when it seeks the
Good. 35 Our nature is rational, and reversion is accomplished by cognitive activity, certainly in
the practical sphere when we act virtuously, but even more so as we engage in thinking that is
disengaged from bodily desires.
That human progress consists in a reversion and that this reversion is primarily cognitive
activity is explained ultimately by the One as producer of all things and, hence, virtually all
things. Reflection on even the lowest type of human cognition gives an indication that our goal
or good consists in a process of unification. For as we have seen, we could not have beliefs if
we were not the sort of beings to be able to have knowledge, that is, able to identify cognitively
with intelligibles and to be aware of this identification. 36 Because all things desire their own
good, and because the good of each individual is the same, namely, the Good that is the unique
absolutely simple first principle of all, our good is attained by progressing in the direction of the
Good, and this progress consists in nothing but becoming knowers.
4. Proclus
Proclus Elements of Theology is a kind of summa of systematic Platonism. It draws
heavily on Plotinus, whom Proclus called the exegete of the Platonic revelation and those
between Plotinus and himselfespecially Porphyry, Iamblichus, and his own teacher Syrianus
to set out the principles that integrate the various elements of the hierarchical metaphysics that is
Platonism.

34

Launching Points, 13.1-2.

5.2.1.9-10.
36
Cf. Porphyry, Launching Points, 43.25ff.
35

Plotinus anticipates Proclus in identifying reversion to the Good with reversion to

oneself (epistroph eis hauton) in the case of Intellect. 37 But the centrality of this idea for
Platonism, especially when applied to embodied human life, only becomes clear in the works of
Proclus and his successors. 38
The first claim made in this regard is that all things that are able to revert to themselves
are incorporeal. 39 Following Plotinus in his claim that thinking is essentially self-reverting,
Proclus concludes that the subject of thinking must be incorporeal. The reason for this is that a
body has parts outside of parts and if (a) the presence of an intelligible and (b) the awareness of
that presence are distinguishable, as they must be, then they would have to be attributable to
different parts of the putative corporeal soul. But in that case, (b) would have to become the new
(a) and there would have to be a (c) that is aware of the presence of the intelligible in the new (a).
Next, all that is able to revert to itself has an existence separable from all body. 40 If the
subject of thinking were only immaterial in the anodyne way that, say, a property of a body were
immaterial, then it could not be self-reverting. For the activity of self-reversion could not occur
in that whose existence is dependent on a body. This is so because the self-reversion requires
that there be a subject that is both the subject of the information by the intelligible and the
subject that is aware of this information. But the subject of the putative immaterial property is a
body. 41
Finally, everything which is primarily self-moving is able to revert to itself. 42 That
which is primarily self-moving is the soul. 43 This does not quite amount to the conclusion that
the cognition that is essentially self-reverting is an activity of the soul as such, for as Proclus
points out, if that were the case then all things with soul would be capable of thinking. 44 So,
then, how is the type of soul that is capable of thinking distinguished from the types that are not?
Proclus answer to this question is to argue that self-movers are not uncaused, but must have
their cause in an unmoved mover. 45 Intellect is such a mover, eternally active (aei...energn)
without change. 46 The souls of human beings do not have thought essentially; they can
participate in it. The souls of animals cannot participate, perhaps because their souls are in fact
properties of bodies.
Commenting on the nature of the world soul in Platos Timaeus, Proclus says,
From this it is clear that self-reversion is self-cognition and cognition of all the
things in it, as well as those things that come before it and those that result from
it. It seems, then, that all cognition is nothing other than reversion upon what is
cognized and a self-appropriating (oikesis) or harmonizing (epharmosis) with
37

See 6.9.2.36.
See Gerson (1997); Chlup (2012: 142-4). On the identification of self-reflexivity with recollection, see In Alc. P.
13.12-6 Segonds.
39
ET 15.
40
ET 16.
41
See Ps.-Simplicius, In de An., 211.1-8, where the point is made that self-reversion is necessary for an affirmation
of the truth of what is present in the intellect. One cannot have a belief without believing that it is true, but one
cannot believe ones belief is true unless one engages in self-reversion.
42
ET 17.
43
See 20.8-11.
44
ET 19.
45
ET 20.13-18.
46
Proclus here follows Aristotle in distinguishing energeia from kinsis, though the distinction has its root in Plato
who distinguishes the unique motion that is kinsis nou from all others in Lg. 897D3.
38

it. Because of this, truth is also the harmony of the one who cognizes in
relation to the thing that is cognized. But since reversion is twofoldbeing in
one sense a reversion upon the Good, but in another sense a reversion upon
beingthe organic (ztik) reversion of all things comes to be in relation to the
Good, while the cognitive reversion takes place in relation to being. For this
reason, the one reversion when it has been achieved is said to possess the Good,
but when the other has been achieved it is said to possess being (each of these
being the object of the reversion in question). And to identify with the truth
(altheuein) is the grasp (katalpsis) of being, whether it be in the identical
thing which grasps it, or in what is prior to it, or in what comes after it.47

This passage makes a number of important points, especially the distinction between cognitive
reversion and non-cognitive reversion. All living things revert to the Good which is just
Proclus technical way of saying that they all desire the Good by desiring the good of each. Of
course, this is true for us as well. But, uniquely, we are also capable of a cognitive reversion to
being, and this is self-reversion. This is primarily the way we possess the Good. 48
The self-appropriating or harmonizing with the truth, which is later described as
identifying with it, is the awareness of the cognitive identity of oneself and intelligibles or
being that are present to the intellect. We note further that the grasp of being is variously of that
which is in constitutive of Intellect, namely, the Forms, or prior to Intellect, namely, the One or
Good, or that which is posterior to Intellect, namely, images or logoi of the Forms in Soul or in
nature. Thus, Proclus acknowledges the grades of the self-reversion that thinking is.
5. School of Ammonius
Ammonius, son of Hermias, was an Alexandrian pupil of Proclus, and later immensely
influential within his own school, which included Asclepius of Tralles, Simplicius,
Olympiodorus, and the Christian philosophers, John Philoponus, David, Elias, and Stephanus.
Abstracting from the mostly subtle differences among the views of these philosophers, I focus
here on their treatment of a epistemological problem left by the rejection by virtually all later
Platonists of Plotinus argument that our intellects are undescended. 49 It is ultimately a problem
that arises from the systematization of Platonism. The problem, as first encountered in Meno,
and then solved there and in Phaedo, is how it is possible for embodied persons to acquire
knowledge. The solution is that having knowledge is possible because we already possess it
owing to our disembodied life prior to embodiment. We need only recollect it. With the
systematization of Platonism by Plotinus, however, it emerges that our embodied intellects do
not possess this knowledge, for intellect could only have knowledge, that is, eternally actualize
it by being cognitively identical with all that is intelligible. That is, there is no way for embodied
intellects to possess it; what we possess are only images of the intelligibles. Hence, since
intellect is necessary for all higher cognition, we must somehow have access to our undescended
intellects. 50 The undescended intellect is the stand-in for the Platonic embodied intellect that
47

In. Tim. 3.286.32-287.11.

Cf. ET 158. See In Parm. 1047.1ff on the One as the arch of all cognition.
49
The only other Platonist who embraced Plotinus argument for an undescended intellect is apparently Damascius,
whose resultant heterodox epistemology cannot be treated here.
50
When Plotinus says at 5.3.3.44-5, sense-perception is our messenger, but intellect is our king, he is referring to
the intellect that is over us, like a king, namely, the undescended intellect. This intellect is explicitly said to be
48

possesses knowledge as a result of its previous disembodied life. Rejecting the idea that our
intellects are undescended, Ammonius and his followers were led to reflect on our descended
intellects operate in relation to intelligibles and hence how knowledge is possible for embodied
persons. 51
The groundwork for the non-Plotinian solution to this problem is provided by Proclus,
who makes a distinction between Forms considered in themselves and Forms considered as
intentional objects of intellect. 52 Since Intellect is cognitively identical with all intelligibles,
Platonists have to account for the fact that all sensibles with any measure of intelligibility must
partake of Intellect without necessarily having intellectual properties, that is, without cognition
of any sort. Indeed, all the Forms are united in their cognition by Intellect so that participation in
them without cognition reveals a problem. It does not quite solve the problem to note that
everything receives its prior principles according to its own capacity and so things without
immaterial intellects cannot receive Intellect qua knower; they can only receive it qua Form or
Forms. 53 This might explain why chairs do not think, but it does not explain how those
individuals manifestly capable of thinking are able to access intelligibles at the same time as they
are descended, that is, separated from Intellect and so inferior to it in the metaphysical
procession.
We might suppose that for the followers of Ammonius, Intellect can do for the embodied
person what for Plotinus the undescended intellect does. But this cannot be quite right either.
For Plotinus, in his systematic expression of Platonism, argues that we must not merely possess
knowledge but we must have it as well, even though it is not the embodied person who has it.
For the followers of Ammonius, we can only possess it by means of our pre-embodied
encounters with Forms. 54 But we do not possess the Forms themselves; rather, we only possess
logoi of them in ourselves. 55 These are obscured by our embodiment.
What are these logoi supposed to be? Are they the same as the rules or laws that
Plotinus says we have in our embodied intellects coming from Intellect? Perhaps, but the scant
supply of examples suggests rather that they are universal concepts employed in propositional
judgments. If we put this doctrine together with the rejection of the undescended intellect, and
add that much of the discussion of the noera eid is conducted within commentaries on
Aristotles De Anima, the possibility occurs that Ammonius and his school are appealing to
Aristotles active intellect to account for embodied higher cognition. 56
In John Philoponus commentary on Aristotles De Anima Book 3,4-8, extant only in the
translation of William of Moerbeke and known as De Intellectu, Philoponus fairly clearly takes
this strategy. In his commentary on chapter 5, he sets out the elements of the solution. 57 First,
he argues against Alexander of Aphrodisias and others that the active intellect is not to be
separate (christos) in the line above. Proclus, In Tim. 2.251.18-19, quotes this line but interprets it differently
since he rejects the idea of the undescended intellect. Cf. ET 211; in Parm. 948.18-38.
51
One additional major consequence of the rejection of an undescended intellect is the felt need for some alternative
means of access to the intelligible realm. Theurgy or pagan sacramentalism is, beginning with Iamblichus,
motivated in part by this rejection. I shall not deal with this here.
52
See ET 176, 178; In Parm. 776.10. At In Tim. 2.325.7-8 Proclus says that everything in the Living Animal is in
the intelligible mode (nots) and in the Demiruge in the intellective mode (noers). Cf.323.21; 418.6ff.
53
See ET 57, 12-13: for even that which is soulless, insofar as it partakes of Form, partakes of Intellect or of the
productive working of Intellect.
54
See Ammonius, in Cat. 37.11-12; John Philoponus, in de Intell. 16.83-96, 38.84-9.
55
See Ammonius, in Meta. 89.17-20.
56
Cf. Ps.-Simplicius, in de An. 41.31-42.3.
57
See De Intellectu, 42.91-53.84. Cf. Ps.-Simplicius, in De An 244.39.41.

identified with the divine intellect. Accordingly, the passive and active intellects are one,
operating as principles of matter and form in the embodied person. Second, having already
argued that the intellect pre-exists embodiment, and that intellect is the place of forms, the
embodied intellect does possess, that is, already knows these forms. 58 Third, he follows Aristotle
in maintaining that we are not aware of the presence of forms owing to bodily impediments. 59
Finally, what the active intellect does is actualize the forms present in intellect.
This actualization, however, is not the identification of the intellect with the intelligibles,
as it is for Plotinus in the undescended intellect. 60 Rather, the actualization is of a representation
of these intelligibles, specifically, a ratio cognitivus (gnstikos logos). 61 What these
representations are exactly is not to easy to ascertain. Philoponus writes,
Since the rationes of all things are in the soul, the rationes of the better things
which are superior to it in the form of representations (eikonice), the rationes of
less good things which are posterior to it as exemplars, when it actually
produces the rationes which are in it it actually becomes what they are either in
a representative way or in an exemplary way, as we say that the image of
Socrates becomes what Socrates is or that the ratio in the art of building
becomes what the house is (trans. Charlton).62

So, the actualization of the intelligible or intelligibles in the intellect is a representational state.
The object of knowledge is the content of the representation, not the intelligible itself. 63 The
knowledge is the identification of the intellect with the act of representing. So, presumably,
when one understands or sees the truth of a proposition, the actualization of the intellect is this
state of understanding.
Philoponus does not address the sceptical challenge posed by Sextus and faced by this
account, but it is not too difficult to see how he might do so. Even though we know
representations, we do not have to adduce a criterion whereby we can distinguish good
representations from bad ones, for these representations are in effect actualizations of what we
are potentially. We no more have to justify our claim to know a mathematical theorem than we
have to justify our claims to possess cognitive powers when we are in fact actualizing them.
When Plato in Parmenides has Parmenides sharply reject the claim that Forms are concepts and
so that knowledge of Forms is knowledge of concepts, he is assuming that concepts (nomata)
are purely representational and so not necessarily derived from the Forms themselves. 64 By
contrast, Philoponus seems to be relying on the doctrine of recollection as the basis for the claim

58

Philoponus, 38.84-39.43, is aware that Aristotle insists that the soul is mortal and does not pre-exist embodiment.
But he notes, accurately enough, that Aristotle distinguishes intellect (or the rational soul) from soul, 2.2.413b26,
and seems to want to say in chapter 5 that intellect both pre-exists embodiment and that it continues to exist postembodiment. Cf. Proclus, ET 190; Ps.-Simplicius, in de An. 42.20-2.
59
See 33.87-8, 40.30-43, 57.68-9.
60
See 36.68-9.
61
See 9.11-12, 32.57. Charlton thinks that cognoscibiliter translates gnstiks, but this might well be synonymous
with Proclus noers. Cf. in de An. 111.19, 596.9; Porphyry, Sent. 42.12, noeros logos.
62
83.37-48.
63
See 41.58-65, 92.66-7. These are variously called concept (conceptus) and theorem (theorema).
64
See Parm. 132B-D.

that what is in the embodied intellect potentially is the Form cognitively, that is, in the way that
Aristotle explains knowledge. 65 Representation, then, becomes actualization. 66
Despite the differences among Platonists in accounting for knowledge, there is a deep
underlying consistency in orientation. Knowledge, like digestion or pregnancy, is assumed to be
a natural state. This naturalistic epistemology is, however, considerably removed from its
contemporary counterpart. For the natural state of knowing is held to be an infallible mental
state only available to intellects, the fundamental property of which is immateriality. All
cognition, from the highest to the lowest, is mapped onto a hierarchical, integrated metaphysics.
The epistemology is mostly unintelligible apart from the metaphysics, and vice versa. The
epistemology and the metaphysics provide the framework for the various Platonic accounts of
the facets of embodied human existence.

65

See in An. Pr. 464.25-465.2. Cf. Ammonius, in Cat. 37.11-12. For Aristotles usage see De An. 3.4.427a27-9. In
this regard, Philoponus is hearkening back to the Middle Platonic position. See, e.g., Alcinous, Didask. 155.26-9
Hermann, where embodied concepts (phusikai ennoiai) have as objects expressions of the primary intelligibles
(prta nota) that are stored up in the soul (enapokeimen). Alcinous is, of course, not arguing against Plotinus
undescended intellect, but rather the Stoic materialist conception of knowledge.
66
Cf. Ps.-Philoponus, In de An. 539.34-5.

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