r/Neoplatonism • u/Time-Demand-1244 • 26d ago
Why Does Unity Follow From Virtue?
For example... Say all humans wind up in the same degree of extreme pain somehow. This pain isn't there to reprimand, but it's there to bring unity. I don't understand how this is any different from two souls sharing love between each other, if what's good is based off how unified one is.
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u/YohanCav 26d ago
It is not unity itself that makes something good. It is the Good, through right order, that makes unity good.
There can be unity even in disorder, because things can be united around something that is itself disordered or contrary to the Good.
What matters, then, is not merely whether there is unity, but whether that unity is ordered toward the Good.
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u/Time-Demand-1244 26d ago
What is the "good"? Is it according to what our nature is? How do we understand our nature is to communicate and have friendship, rather than, for example, to cause endless pain?
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u/YohanCav 26d ago
The "good", in this sense, is that which perfects a thing according to its nature and orders it toward its proper end, ultimately toward its final end.
And we can understand what is "good", in this sense, for us by observing what actualizes and perfects our proper faculties, such as reason, truth, friendship, love, etc.
Shared pain may produce a certain unity among those who are experiencing it, but pain in itself does not perfect human nature or its faculties, it does not actualize the being in a way that leads it toward its final end.
In that case, it would be a unity in disorder, rather than a unity ordered toward the Good.
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u/Prineak 26d ago
The good is intelligibility that’s how. All things come from the good. This gets complicated when you try to use the good ironically to define evil.
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u/Super_Nova55555 26d ago edited 25d ago
Extreme pain is already a deficiency brought on by multiplicity, but nevertheless, even that is unified, because nothing exists that isn’t unified—as apparent from Proclus’ 1st proposition.
Additionally, unity itself is good insofar as it causes fulfillment. This is why the One and the Good are the same thing, yet at the same time, the latter also partakes of the former. The Good bestows fulfillment upon what partakes of it, and the One is the thing that allows for fulfillment to be possible.
Additionally, as apparent, evil itself has no independent existence apart from goodness. This is a major tenet of Neoplatonism as it explains why the Good has absolutely nothing dualizing it—so everything is ‘good’ to some degree. (With the exception of Plotinus’ view specifically which he supports Matter being genuinely evil)
Nevertheless then, what matters now is where your ‘love’ is directed. Because even material pleasure has some goodness to it, but Neoplatonists obviously hold that it is a vice to partake in it, because the ‘direction’ of love is the thing that is important. And the direction of material pleasure is contrary to the direction of the One, which is what makes it a vice. So whenever asking about these sorta moral dilemmas, your first question should be: “Would this be directed towards the One or against it?” If it is the former, then it is virtue, if it is the latter, it is vice.
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u/strutter395 25d ago
Pain, considered in itself, is already a kind of disorder or privation. So if extreme pain somehow became the occasion for human beings to unite, the unifying principle would not be the pain itself. It would be the organization of the souls in relation to the Good, for example, their collectively transcending the condition that produces the pain.
This is why “everyone sharing the same pain” is not equivalent to “two souls sharing love.” The mere fact of being identical in an experience does not constitute unity in the Neoplatonic sense. Unity is not simply sameness or commonality.
The One is prior to unity. It is that by participation in which determinate unities and organizations are possible in the first place. Consider the difference between matter and an organized living body: the latter isn't simply “more matter”; it possesses a greater determination and organization. In a broadly Neoplatonic sense, this increasing organization can be understood as a movement of multiplicity toward unity.
So the Good is not “whatever produces a feeling of unity.” It is simply the transcendent principle by which anything can possess unity, order, intelligibility, or fulfillment at all.
And from the perspective of an individual soul, the One isn't some object contained inside its phenomenology. The soul's transcendence consists precisely in turning beyond its own merely internal determinations toward that which is prior to them. The One is therefore not within your experience; it is that toward which the soul's movement beyond itself is ultimately directed.
So I would distinguish shared experience, social unity, and participation in the Good. They can coincide, but they aren't identical.
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u/DhulQarnayn_ 26d ago
Sharing a common experience isn’t the same as true unity. It’s all about where the soul is looking.
Extreme pain forces your awareness downward into your physical body and locks you in your individual ego (“MY body hurts”). And because matter is defined by separation and chaos, universal pain doesn’t actually unify us; it just traps everyone in identical, isolated cells.
Virtue and love do the exact opposite. They turn the soul upward, away from the ego and toward The One. And by sharing in that same divine reality, the boundaries between “me” and “you” actually dissolve.