Plotinus, or the Meaning of the Meaning Question

Abstract

Plotinus’ theology anticipates Darwin’s theory of evolution, though it reverses Darwin’s development from the simple to the complex. Doesn’t it anticipate modern science? It does presuppose a divine origin but that doesn’t make it unscientific. For though modern science contributed to the disenchantment of the world, it wouldn’t have arisen without Plato conceiving being as perfect and divine. Nor is it unscientific because Plotinus values evolution, preferring the complex. Modern biologists, too, consider the complex higher than the primitive, though Darwin forbad himself to think of the more complex as higher.

The reason we cannot accept Plotinus’ theory as science is not that he finds meaning in nature but that he understands meaning as something imposed by a (divine) mind on meaningless facts. He doesn’t allow things and facts to be immanently meaningful. But a sunset, say, may be meaningful without implying that behind it there is a mind that intends us to understand the meaning of the event. True, sometimes there is a mind behind something meaningful for us, say someone who wants us to understand a smile as the sign of happiness. But such an intention is possible only because certain movements and gestures have meaning for us regardless of someone’s intention.

Science understands the meaning that it does discover, such as the natural evolution, like a sunset or an unintended smile. It takes any meaning it finds in nature for immanent, not for transcendent and a proof of the existence of a creator god who imposed his meaning on the world, as did Plotinus. Science doesn’t deny that we might look for a transcendent meaning, but distinguishes itself from such an enterprise, which we may call theology, by limiting itself to immanent meaning. It is important to stick to immanent meaning. Otherwise, science would be theology.