VIRTUE AND THE SOUL IN GREEK AND GNOSTIC TEACHING
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Chapter 11. Virtue and the Soul in Greek and Gnostic Teaching
(a) THE IDEA OF VIRTUE: ITS ABSENCE IN GNOSTICISM
Among the reproaches which Plotinus raises against the Gnostics (all of which relate to what is typically un-Hellenic in them) is that they lack a theory of virtue; and he maintains that it is their contempt of the world that prevents them from having one.
This point must least escape our attention: what influence their teachings have on the souls of their hearers and of those who are persuaded by them to despise the world and the things in it. ... Their doctrine, even more audacious than that of Epicurus [who only denied providence], by blaming the Lord of providence and providence itself, holds in contempt all the laws down here and virtue which has risen among men from the beginning of time, and puts temperance to ridicule, so that nothing good may be discovered in this world. Thus their doctrine nullifies temperance and the justice inborn in the human character and brought to fulness by reason and exercise, and in general everything by which a man can become worthy and noble. . . . For of the things here nothing is to them noble, but only something "different," which they will pursue "hereafter." But should not those who have attained "knowledge" [gnosis] pursue the Good already here, and in pursuing it first set right the things down here, for the very reason that they [the Gnostics] claim to have sprung from the divine essence? For it is of the nature of this essence to regard what is noble. . . . But those who have no share in virtue have nothing to transport them from here to the things beyond.
It is revealing that they conduct no inquiry at all about virtue and that the treatment of such things is wholly absent from their teaching: they do not discourse on what virtue is and how many kinds there are, nor do they take notice of the many and precious insights which can be found in the writings of the ancients, nor do they indicate how virtue originates and how it is acquired, nor how to tend and to purify the soul. For simply saying "Look towards God" is of no avail without teaching how to look. What prevents one, somebody might say, from
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looking towards God without abstaining from any pleasure and curbing violent emotion? or from remembering the name of God and yet remaining in the grip of all passions? ... In fact only virtue can reveal God to us, as it progresses and becomes real in the soul together with insight. Without true virtue, God remains an empty word.
(Enn. II. 9. 15)
The polemic is exceedingly instructive. It exposes more than a mere omission on the part of the Gnostics. The absence of a doctrine of virtue in gnostic teaching is connected with the anti-cosmic attitude, that is, the denial of any worth to the things of this world and consequently also to man's doings in this world. Virtue in the Greek sense (areté) is the actualization in the mode of excellence of the several faculties of the soul for dealing with the world. By doing the right things in the right way at the right time, man not only fulfills his duty toward his fellow men and the city but also furthers the good of his soul by keeping it in the shape of excellence, much as running keeps a racehorse in shape, while at the same time being that for which it is to be in shape. Thus is "action according to virtue" means and end at the same time. The good of the racehorse and the good of man are vastly different, but they both are the good of their subjects in basically the same sense: each represents in terms of activity the most perfect state of its subjea according to its inborn nature. In man's case this nature involves a hierarchy of faculties, of which the highest one is reason. Its being "naturally" superior to the other faculties in man does not assure its being accorded this superiority in the actual life of a person. Virtue, therefore, though bringing "nature" understood as the true human nature into its right, is not itself present by nature but requires instruction, effort, and choice. The right shape of our actions depends on the right shape of our faculties and dispositions, and this on the actual prevailing of the "naturally" true hierarchy. To perceive what is the natural hierarchy and the position of reason therein is itself a feat of reason; therefore the cultivation of reason is part of virtue. In other words, it is up to man to transform his inchoately given nature into his true nature, for in his case alone nature does not automatically realize itself. This is why virtue is necessary both toward the full realization and as the full realization of man's being. Since this being is a being in the world with fellow
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GNOSTICISM AND THE CLASSICAL MIND
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beings, in the context of the needs and concerns determined by this setting, the exercise of virtue extends to all the natural elations of man as part of the world. He is most perfect in himself when he is most perfectly the part he was meant to be; and we have seen before how this idea of self-perfection is connected with the idea of the cosmos as the divine whole.
It is obvious that Gnosticism had no room for this conception of human virtue. "Looking towards God" has for it n entirely different meaning from the one it had for the Greek philosophers. There it meant granting the rights of all things as graded expressions of the divine within the encompassing divinity of the universe. The self-elevation in the scale of being through wisdom and virtue implies no denial of the levels surpassed. To the Gnostics, "looking towards God" means just such a denial: it is a jumping; across all intervening realities, which for this direct relationship are nothing but fetters and obstacles, or distracting temptations, or at best irrelevant. The sum of these intervening realities is the world including the social world. The surpassing interest in salvation, the exclusive concern in the destiny of the transcendent self, "denaures" as it were these realities and takes the heart out of the concern with them where such a concern is unavoidable. An essential menal reservation qualifies participation in the things of this world and even one's own person as involved with those things is viewed from the distance of the beyond. This is the common spirit of the new transcendental religion, not confined to Gnosticism in particular. We remind the reader of St. Paul's saying:
But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remained, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.
(I Or. 7:29-31)
The world and one's belonging to it are not to be taken seriously. But virtue is seriousness in the execution of the different modes of this belonging and the taking seriously of oneself in meeting the demands of the world, i.e., of being. If as in Platonism the world
is not identical with true being, it is yet a stepping stone to it. But "this world" of gnostic dualism is not even that. And as a dimension of existence it does not offer occasion to the perfectibility of man. The least, then, that the acosmic attitude must cause in the relation to inner-worldly existence is the mental reservation of the "as-though-not."
But gnostic dualism goes beyond this dispassionate position. For it regards the "soul" itself, the spiritual organ of man's belonging to the world, as no less than his body an effluence of the cosmic powers and therefore as an instrument of their dominion over his true but submerged self. As the "terrestrial envelopment of the pneuma," the "soul" is the exponent of the world within man—the world is in the soul. A profound distrust, therefore, of one's own inwardness, the suspicion of demonic trickery, the fear of being betrayed into bondage inspire gnostic psychology. The alienating forces are located in man himself as composed of flesh, soul, and spirit. The contempt of the cosmos radically understood includes the contempt of the psyche. Therefore what is of the psyche is incapable of being elevated to the condition of virtue. It is either to be left to itself, to the play of its forces and appetites, or to be reduced by mortification, or sometimes even extinguished in ecstatic experience.
The last statement indicates that the negative attitude to the world, or the negative quality of the world itself, though it does not give room to virtue in the Greek sense, still leaves open the choice between several modes of conduct in which the negativity is turned into a principle of praxis. Insofar as such forms of conduct are put forward as norms and express a gnostic "ought," they embody what can be called gnostic morality. In its context, even the term "virtue" may re-emerge; but the meaning of the term has then radically changed, and so has the material content of particular virtues. We shall give some examples of types of gnostic morality and of the rather paradoxical kind of "virtue" it admitted; and we shall occasionally take our evidence from beyond the strictly "gnostic" realm, since the dissolution and controversion of the classical areté-concept is a broader phenomenon connected with the rise of acosmism or transcendental religion in general.
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(b) GNOSTIC MORALITY
The negative element we have so far emphasized represents of course one side only of the gnostic situation. Just as the cosmos is no longer the All but is surpassed by the divine realm beyond, so the soul is no longer the whole person but is surpassed by the acosmic pneuma within—something very different from the "reason" and "intellect" of Greek teaching. And just as the profound cosmic pessimism is set off against the optimism of the eschatologi-cal assurance, so the profound psychological pessimism, despairing of the soul as a slave of the cosmos, is set off against the overweening confidence in the ultimately unassailable freedom of the pneuma. And if the contra-position of the cosmos to that which is not cosmos means that from the prison of the former there is an escape, so the inner duality of "soul" and "spirit," i.e., the inner presence of a transcendent principle, indefinable as it is in its difference from everything "worldly," holds out the possibility of stripping off one's own soul and experiencing the divinity of the absolute Self.
Nihilism and Libertinism
The purest and most radical expression of the metaphysical revolt is moral nihilism. Plotinus' critique implied moral indifference in the Gnostics, that is, not only the absence of a doctrine of virtue but also the disregard of moral restraints in real life. The polemic of the Church Fathers tells us more about the theory or metaphysics of what is known as gnostic libertinism. We quote from Irenaeus:
Psychical men are instructed in things psychical, and they are steadied by works and simple faith and do not possess the perfect knowledge. These (according to them) are we of the Church. To us, therefore, they maintain, a moral life is necessary for salvation. They themselves, however, according to their teaching, would be saved absolutely and under all circumstances, not through works but through the mere fact of their being by nature "spiritual." For, as it is impossible for the earthly element to partake in salvation, not being susceptible o£ it, so it is impossible for the spiritual element (which they pretend to be themselves) to suffer corruption, whatever actions they may have
indulged in. As gold sunk in filth will not lose its beauty but preserve its own nature, and the filth will be unable to impair the gold, so nothing can injure them, even if their deeds immerse them in matter, and nothing can change their spiritual essence. Therefore "the most perfect" among them do unabashed all the forbidden things of which Scripture assures us "that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." . . . Others serve intemperately the lusts of the flesh and say you must render the flesh to the flesh and the spirit to the spirit.
(Adv. Haer. I. 6.2-3)
There are several important arguments contained in this report. One is based on the idea of invariable natures or substances, and according to this argument the pneumatic is "naturally saved," i.e., saved by virtue of his nature. The practical inference from this is a maxim of general license which permits the pneumatic the indis...
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