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Advaita and Neoplatonism (1961)

Advaita and Neoplatonism

(1961)–Frits Staal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy


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8. Freedom

The concept of freedom is central also in Neoplatonism. As one of the best Plotinus scholars, P. Henry, devoted a series of

three articles to his question,317 we shall first restate some of his conclusions in the present context.

 

Plotinus calls the individual soul free (eleutliéra) when it is ‘master of itself’ (kuriōtátē hautēs), ‘separated from the body’ (àneu sōmatos) and ‘outside all cosmical causality’ (kosmikēs aitías éxō).318 This is the kind of freedom which Śaṅkara calls mokṣa or release from the ‘cosmic causality’ of karman, whether separated from the body (videhamukti) or ‘while embodieḍ’ (jīvanmukti). Plotinus speaks about the latter possibility as one admitting a less high degree of freedom,319 but he does not denounce it as for instance Rāmānuja did.

 

The freedom of release or mokṣa is different from our own and typically human freedom; i.e., the freedom of choice. In Advaita, in the vyāvahārika realm souls are free to act and create good or bad karma. In Neoplatonism, Plotinus believed that man is free; this is shown by Henry.320 But Plato had taught that evil is involuntary. Therefore Plotinus concludes, in the form of a syllogism from the premises ‘we are free’ and ’we do not choose evil freely’ that ‘we choose the good freely’.321 Whenever we are free we choose the good. When we choose between a good and a bad possibility, we can choose the good freely, but not the bad. But this can only mean that the choice itself is not free. Freedom of choice is therefore for Plotinus a lower freedom. In the highest freedom one is no longer able to choose: ‘the ability to choose between opposites (antikeímena) denotes an inability to remain on the most perfect level’.322 By rejecting choice and preferring divine perfection, Plotinus rejects limitation (which is inherent in choice) and prefers the unlimited (which is also here the potentially unlimited).323

 

This most perfect level is a divine level and human freedom does not occur there. Human freedom exists only when there is

also a possibility of choosing evil. The above divine freedom, which is according to Plotinus the human goal, therefore deifies man and makes him perfect, but takes his human freedom of choice away. This is in accordance with the fact that for many of the ancient Greeks the Gods were blessed, blissful (the mákares theoí of Homer), but subject to Fate (Moîra) and to Necessity (Anágkē); whereas man can choose freely, but is subject to pleasure and pain, to bliss and misfortune. Goethe described the ancient idea of man and his relation to the divine as follows:

 
‘The infinite Gods give everything,
 
To their favourites unreservedly.
 
All joys infinite,
 
All pains infinite,
 
Unreservedly’.324

The Neoplatonic idea of the deification and perfection of man reverses this tradition and takes man's freedom of choice away; it bestows in its place upon him divine bliss. The same holds for the jīvanmukta, who has attained the status of Īśvara: he acts in accordance with the good, automatically and freely in as far as this means ‘perfectly’. But he is not free to act either according to the good or according to evil: he does not possess the freedom of choice. The latter holds in Advaita only for the soul who is in bondage, the saṁsārī: he can freely act in the right or wrong way. For that reason he is in bondage.

 

There are several difficulties underlying these ideas. If the individual soul is free to choose also evil and if this choice is real, the evil choice must be as real as the right choice and thus evil itself as real as good. Alternatively if choice is really free, something entirely new and not previously determined or even expected may come into being. In both cases, the universe cannot be a unity in the sense of a plenum, a plērés, a pūrnam. While divine freedom or the freedom of mokṣa, which is the same for all who have realized it, does not affect the unity of the universe, freedom of choice for each individual destroys the unity and continuity of the whole. Philosophers who accept individual freedom are therefore generally pluralists. Does this imply that Advaita and

Neoplatonism cannot explain human freedom, despite the fact that they accept its existence?

 

In the case of Advaita the answer can be easily given. (1) In the vyāvahārika realm human freedom exists and if this contradicts the unity and plenitude of the universe, this is only interpreted as one of the manifestations of the anirvacanīyatva of this world: this dūṣana is a bhūṣana. (2) In the pāramārthika realm human freedom does not exist, not in the sense that there would be determinism, but in the sense that separate individuality does not exist so that the problem vanishes.

 

In the case of Plotinus the solution is less conspicuous. He is well aware of the dangerous consequences of the determinism of a unified universe, i.e., abolition of human freedom. If one principle, says he, would connect everything or if everything were guided by one universal soul, and if also the effect of each cause were predetermined, freedom would be ‘a mere word’ (ónoma mónon).325 Plotinus is anxious to preserve reality, when it is in danger of becoming a ‘mere word’, whereas Śaṅkara denounces it exactly because it is ‘a mere word’ (nāma eva). But for Plotinus it becomes difficult to explain freedom when at the same time he aims at maintaining the unity of being. If choice of evil is involuntary human freedom is inexplicable.

 

Despite these ‘technical’ difficulties the existential intention of both Plotinus and Śaṅkara is clear: it is to transcend the level of human freedom and to go beyond to the divine perfection, where choice of an evil possibility is no longer realizable. This is at the same time good (agathón) and bliss (ānanda), but not the pleasure of heaven, for pleasure is linked up with pain and belongs to the realm of human choice and karman. Thus there is accord in interpretation, but difrerence in evaluation, between the traditional Greek view on the one hand and the Neoplatonic and Advaitic view on the other. In the first, human being accepts pleasure and is free, but has to accept pain and is neither perfect nor blessed; in the second human being sacrifices his personal freedom and pleasures, thereby conquering all possible suffering as well, and thus becomes perfect and blissful. The last solution was

clearly presented by the Buddha as the means for abolishing suffering: who does not want to suffer, has to sacrifice pleasure.

 

The modern concept of freedom is different from Plotinus' concept of freedom. The former is essentially a freedom of the human personality and individuality, the latter a state of perfection which is divine and which is in fact the same as the freedom of the One. The several denotations of the concept of divine freedom in Plotinus have been enumerated by Henry.326 They are: not being subject to contingency or change; absence of (external) force; transcendence; power over itself (but not power to choose); being for itself; omnipotence (but inability to choose evil); selfcreativity.

 

Henry has also pointed out that there is no freedom of creation for the Plotinian divine.327 The One produces according to its will. But this will is reasonable, leaves nothing to chance and is even necessary: the production takes place ‘as it ought to be’ (hōs édei). Thus the will of the One is no free will in the usual sense and can hardly be called a will. Similarly Īśvara does not freely act when creating a new universe, but is led by the (subtle forms of) good and bad karman of a previous universe. This is in accordance with the fact that creation has a very subordinate place in Neoplatonism as well as in Advaita.

 

Modern Western consciousness stresses free creativity in consequence of the monotheistic idea of a God, who created once at a special time according to his will and pleasure. In the monotheistic religions divine freedom always assumed a certain kind of arbitrariness inaccessible to reasoning and the rational expectations of mankind. This God decided the time and place where he wished to reveal himself, preferred (according to some) one race to others or forgave according to others the sins of some while condernning others.

 

Such an unreasonable divine personality would be a strange and troublesome body in the well ordered systems of Advaita and Neoplatonism - and this holds for human freedom too: for while it is unexplained by Neoplatonism, it is inexplicable according to Advaita.


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