ABSTRACT
From the contemporary point of view, ethics is o en centrally concerned with behaviour or conduct. Morality is understood as principles about right or wrong, principles that are e ected and govern our life with one another, in a group or society. Further, some theorists today see these principles as being shaped entirely by that same society. ere are many profound ways in which ancient philosophy – and Neoplatonism – di er from this picture. First, the whole idea of ethics as some kind of a search for or a collection of principles of moral behaviour may be intrinsically foreign to the ancient philosopher. In antiquity, the emphasis lies in the virtuous character capable of adapting to di erent circumstances and situations – a view which has, of course, given rise to the contemporary reactionary movement within ethics, virtue ethics. Talk about moral obligations is rare in antiquity, whereas a lot of space is devoted to therapy of emotions and other means of character improvement. Second, in so far as some moral principles are discussed, the search is for principles that would be unquali edly true. at is, many ancient philosophers (apart from Cynics and Sceptics and, according to one interpretation, Artistotle) are ethical realists. Neoplatonists are also ethical realists but of a special and radical kind. Goodness is an objective feature of being, a crucial and existing aspect of the metaphysical system, present in di erent degrees on all its levels, and to be traced all the way to the primary cause, the origin of its derivation, the One. While the relationship of goodness in the sensible realm to the higher kind of goodness it imitates may be tricky (both ontologically and epistemologically), it is only that relationship which ensures that the former truly quali es as goodness, and not mere apparent goodness. ird, as Stern-Gillet argues forcefully in her “Plotinus on metaphysics and morality” (Chapter 25), to understand Neoplatonic ethical treatises one must let go of the modern and contemporary expectation that ethics centrally deals with how to reconcile an inherently dangerous self-interest (or, better, self-partiality) and other-interest. It does not preoccupy itself with what duties we have to other people and how these are in con ict with our own interests, or how we should minimally treat other people well, in a way that would ensure common good.
