The Affections

Abstract

Now that we have examined the framework of faculties into which Plotinus fits the functions, of the soul, we must go on to consider these functions in detail. The intuitive intellect, as we have mentioned, is independent of all the lower faculties of the soul, and thus independent of the body, with which these functions are to a greater or lesser extent involved. The extent of this involvement becomes greater as we descend the scale. At the level of those functions of the vegetative soul which are concerned only with the preservation of the body as a living organism, the furtherance of growth and the reproduction of the species, the involvement is virtually complete. Even here, however, we must bear in mind that Plotinus still regards the soul as separate from the body which it endows with life. But on how it performs these functions he has very little to say. Presumably they are for him just a part of the natural world’s physical processes, in whose details he shows comparatively little interest except in so far as they are relevant to the causal structure of the universe.