The Freedom of the One

Ethics and Metaphysics in Plotinus

“…Eliasson (2008) 206. For the broader context of Plotinus' analysis of human and divine autonomy in Imperial philosophy see O'Meara (1992), Lavaud (2007) 176-179 andFrede (2011) 125-130. I myself think that, when we are pushed around among opposing chances and compulsions and strong assaults of passions possessing our soul, we acknowledge all these things as our masters and are enslaved to them and carried wherever they take us, and so are in doubt whether we are not nothing and nothing is in our power, on the assumption that whatever we might do when not enslaved to chances or compulsions or strong passions, because we wished it (βουληθέντες) and with nothing opposing our volition, this would be in our power. But if this is so, our notion of 'being in our power' (ἡ ἔννοια τοῦ ἐφ' ἡμῖν) would be 'what is enslaved to our volition (βούλησει) and would come to pass (or not) to the extent to which we wished it' (VI 8.…”