Philosophy: Ancient: Plotinus

Plotinus (204/5-270 CE) was the first and greatest of Neoplatonic philosophers. His writings were edited by his disciple Porphyry, who published them many years after his master's death in six sets of nine treatises each (the Enneads). Plotinus regarded Plato as his master, and his own philosophy is a profoundly original development of the Platonism of the first two centuries of the Christian era and the closely related thought of the Neopythagoreans, with some influences from Aristotle and his followers and the Stoics, whose writings he knew well but used critically. He is a unique combination of mystic and Hellenic rationalist. His thought dominated later Greek philosophy and influenced both Christians and Moslems, and is still alive today because of its union of rationality and intense religious experience. In his acclaimed edition of Plotinus, Armstrong provides excellent introductions to each treatise. His invaluable notes explain obscure passages and give reference to parallels in Plotinus and others.

A good insight into the neo-platonic philosopher.... the Platonic and Aristotelian sources of Plotinus's thought are given, and the influence of Plotinus on later writers is traced from St. Augustine to Tennyson. A sketch of Stephen MacKenna and a good bibliography complete the work.-- Times [London] Literary Supplement

Ennead IV. 7 is a very early treatise, where Plotinus presents the teachings of the main schools current in his day: the Stoics, Epicureans, Pythagoreans, and Peripatetics, all of whom presented soul as something material and neither truly immortal nor imperishable. It includes observations on many mainly Stoic doctrines on perception, memory, sensation, thought, virtue, powers of material bodies, mixture and reproduction; on Pythagorean attunement; and on Peripatetic entelechy.

"Ennead I.6 is probably the best known and most influential treatise of Plotinus, especially for Renaissance artists and thinkers. Although the title may suggest a work on aesthetics and thus of limited focus, this is far from the case. For it quickly becomes apparent that Plotinus' main interest is in transcendent beauty, which he identifies with the Good, the goal of all philosophical endeavor in the Platonist's search to assimilate himself with the divine. The treatise is at once a philosophical search for the nature of the divine and at the same time an encouragement to the individual to aspire to this goal by taking his start from the beauty which is experienced in this world; for it is an image of transcendent beauty. This upward movement of the treatise reflects throughout the speech of Socrates in Plato's Symposium in which he recounts the exhortation of the priestess Diotima to ascend from earthly to transcendent beauty, which for Plotinus is identified with the divine."

"This book is addressed to readers new to the Enneads. One of the greatest of ancient philosophers, Plotinus is attracting ever-increasing attention from those interested in ancient philosophy, late Antiquity, and the importance of this period for the Western intellectual tradition. O'Meara presents a brief outline of Plotinus's life, and of the composition of the Enneads, placing Plotinus within the intellectual context of the philosophical schools and religious movements of his time. He then discusses selected Plotinian texts in relation to a number of central philosophical issues to show how Plotinus's thinking on these issues evolved, and to assess the historical importance of his philosophy."

Contents: Form -- Light -- Silence -- Word -- Love.

This is a major reinterpretation of ancient philosophy that recovers the long Greek and Roman tradition of philosophy as a complete way of life--and not simply an intellectual discipline. Distinguished philosopher John Cooper traces how, for many ancient thinkers, philosophy was not just to be studied or even used to solve particular practical problems. Rather, philosophy--not just ethics but even logic and physical theory--was literally to be lived. Yet there was great disagreement about how to live philosophically: philosophy was not one but many, mutually opposed, ways of life. Examining this tradition from its establishment by Socrates in the fifth century BCE through Plotinus in the third century CE and the eclipse of pagan philosophy by Christianity, Pursuits of Wisdom examines six central philosophies of living--Socratic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Epicurean, Skeptic, and the Platonist life of late antiquity.