This is a work of impressive scholarship and argumentative power, from a scholar who has made a number of previous contributions to our understanding of Socrates, Plato and Plotinus, most notably his 2014 book Plotinus the Platonist, also with Bloomsbury. It is divided into three large chapters, one for each of the topics listed in the title, with a short introduction and conclusion, and fully 60 pages of notes.
What Yount wishes to establish, and in my view succeeds in doing, is the principle that Plato and Plotinus actually differ in no essential respect on a series of basic issues in philosophy, namely their acceptance of a First Principle, the Good, or the One, which generates the realm of Forms (which latter is the proper object of knowledge), but which is itself strictly ‘beyond knowledge’, and which can only be accessed, if at all, by a supra-rational contact that may be denominated ‘the ultimate experience’ (and this is accordingly the title of the first chapter of the book). Yount meticulously details, with copious quotation, both the key passages of both authors and illustrative passages from their main opponents, both those who deny that Plato is a ‘mystic’, because he is a champion of reason, and those who tend to denigrate Plotinus as a mystic, implying that he abandons reason. Yount shows convincingly, Ithink, that they are both ‘rational mystics’, that is, philosophers who have indeed had supra-rational visions of an ultimate reality, but who are concerned to fit such visions into a rational philosophical framework.
The second chapter concerns epistemology and sets out to show that both thinkers hold to a strong distinction between knowledge, which is of the Forms, and opinion (doxa, pistis), which is of sensible particulars, once again with copious quotation of key passages from both thinkers. Yount divides this chapter into sections on ‘Wisdom’, ‘Knowledge’, ‘The doctrine of recollection’, ‘Prayer’ and ‘Opinion’, each buttressed with the quotation of key passages from the two authors. The only detail on which Iwould diverge from him is the question of Plotinus’ belief in a ‘non-descended’ rational element of the soul, itself a product of his ‘mystical’ experience, which he himself accepts is not properly Platonic, and of which there is no real sign in Plato. But this hardly interferes with the validity of his overall thesis, which Ithink is amply proven.
The third and longest chapter concerns ethics, though this relates fairly closely to the second, since it is a basic Platonic and Plotinian principle that wisdom produces happiness. It is divided into the following sections, all amply illustrated by key passages and commentary: (1) On happiness; (2) On love; (3) On purification and reverence; (4) How to live; (5) How not to live: the ways in which the soul errs; (6) Music and musicians; (7) Arts and artisans; (8) Desire for the Good; (9) That no one errs willingly; (10) Pleasure and pain. What may seem a somewhat eclectic series of headings actually covers more or less the totality of the philosophical positions of both men, together with a fairly comprehensive conspectus of the history of criticism of both thinkers over the last 150 years or so, from such figures as Eduard Zeller, Dean W. R. Inge, A.E. Taylor and Paul Shorey, through Léon Robin, John Findlay, A.H. Armstrong, John Rist, Lloyd Gerson and Richard Wallis, to a host of contemporary authorities.
This is, then, a formidable effort on the part of David Yount. Ithink he proves his point very adequately. He will inevitably not please everyone, nor put a permanent end to the argument, but the basic concordance of Plato and Plotinus has now in my view been placed on a firm footing. They were doubtless very different in character (though, since we have no biography of Plato from a devoted disciple, we really do not know how different) but they had very much the same outlook on life, and Plotinus is largely justified in his claim to be expounding the philosophy of Plato.
