Eternity and Time

Abstract

This chapter discusses the notion of eternity in Ennead III.7, where, against the Pythagorean interpretation of eternity as intelligible substance, Plotinus argues that it primarily characterizes being as the intellect, which is the paradigm of all things. The intellect is marked by simplicity, which, however, presupposes a differentiation between the thinkable and thinking. Yet the intellect is also life, which is the life of thinking that turns toward the one, the source of the intellect—of its being, thinking, and life. This allows the intellect to think its objects as determinate in an act that surpasses discursive thought, thus defying and suspending temporality. Against the Pythagoreans, then, eternity is the everlasting non-discursive and self-identical life of the intellect.