MacKenna-Plotinus: morality

The existence, or half-existence, of Matter brings about the necessity of morality. The Divine perfection is above morality, is ‘unmoral’; the purely material is below morality; morality is for man; man - being divine at his topmost pitch and ‘human’ at the mean, and brute below that and merely vegetative below that and merely Matter in the lowest range of his nature -man, if he is to reach his good, the desired of every being, must ‘what in him is dark illumine, what is low raise and support’, if he is to rise to the height of his great argument, become what his highest is, attain his eternally destined Term.

And what is there pleasant in the memory of pleasure? What is it to recall yesterday’s excellent dinner? Still more ridiculous, one of ten years ago. So, too, of last year’s morality. Enneads  : I. V. 8

Again since the one face, constant in symmetry, appears sometimes fair and sometimes not, can we doubt that beauty is something more than symmetry, that symmetry itself owes its beauty to a remoter principle? Turn to what is attractive in methods of life or in the expression of thought; are we to call in symmetry here? What symmetry is to be found in noble conduct, or excellent laws, in any form of mental pursuit? What symmetry can there be in points of abstract thought? The symmetry of being accordant with each other? But there may be accordance or entire identity where there is nothing but ugliness: the proposition that honesty is merely a generous artlessness chimes in the most perfect harmony with the proposition that morality means weakness of will; the accordance is complete. Enneads: I. VI. 1

What do you feel in presence of the grace you discern in actions, in manners, in sound morality, in all the works and fruits of virtue, in the beauty of souls? When you see that you yourselves are beautiful within, what do you feel? What is this Dionysiac exultation that thrills through your being, this straining upwards of all your Soul, this longing to break away from the body and live sunken within the veritable self? These are no other than the emotions of Souls under the spell of love. Enneads: I. VI. 5

If the purification puts the human into knowledge of the highest, then, too, the science latent within becomes manifest, the only authentic knowing. For it is not by running hither and thither outside of itself that the soul understands morality and right conduct: it learns them of its own nature, in its contact with itself, in its intellectual grasp of itself, seeing deeply impressed upon it the images of its primal state; what was one mass of rust from long neglect it has restored to purity. Enneads: IV VII. 10

So understood, virtue is a mode of Intellectual-Principle, a mode not involving any of the emotions or passions controlled by its reasonings, since such experiences, amenable to morality and discipline, touch closely - we read - on body. Enneads: VI VIII. 6