Online research in philosophy

Plotinus (c. AD 205-270) can be regarded as the greatest Greek philosopher of late Antiquity, and as the father of Neoplatonism. His Enneads (`the nines') are now recognised as seminal works in the development of Western thought. This book is the only detailed scholarly commentary available on this part of Plotinus' work, and should be invaluable to all scholars interested in ancient philosophy and early Christian theology. All Greek in the commentary is translated.

I INTRODUCTION INTERPRETING PLOT1NUS Methods of Interpretation,; Plotinus and the History of Greek Philosophy, 8; Preliminary Remarks, ...

Plotinus maintains that our intellect is always thinking. This is due to his view that our intellect remains in the intelligible world and shares a natural kinship with the hypostasis Intellect, whose being and activity consists in eternal contemplation of the Forms. Moreover, Plotinus maintains that although our intellect is always thinking we do not always apprehend our thoughts. This is due to his view that “we“ descend into the sensible world while our intellect remains in the intelligible world. Furthermore, Plotinus maintains that it is only when logoi unfold the content of our thoughts into the imagination that we apprehend them. This is due to a complex account between, on the one hand, the relationship between intellect and discursive reasoning, and on the other hand, the relationship between discursive reasoning and language. Plotinus tells this story with remarkable brevity in Ennead 4.3.30. In this paper I explain the role the imagination plays in the apprehension of thoughts through a close analysis of this treatise in connection with Ennead 1.4.10.

v. 1. The ethical treatises, being the treatises of the first Ennead with Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, and the Preller-Ritter extracts forming a conspectus of the Plotinian system . Psychic and physical treatises; comprising the second and third Enneads.--v. 2. On the nature of the soul [being the foruth Ennead] The divine mind, being the treatises of the fifth Ennead. On the One and Good being the treatises of the sixth Ennead.

This paper challenges the traditional view that Plotinus identifies matter and evil. A rational reconstruction of Plotinus’s tenets should neither accept the paradox that evil comes from Good, nor shirk the arduous task of interpreting Plotinus’ texts on evil as a fitting part of his philosophy on the whole. Therefore, I suggest a reading of evil in Plotinus as the outcome of an incongruent interaction of matter and soul, maintaining simultaneously that neither soul nor matter are to be considered as bad or evil. When Plotinus calls matter evil, he does so metonymically denoting matter’s totally passive potentiality as perceived by the toiling soul trying to act upon it as a form-bringer. As so often, Plotinus speaks of matter per se which, as mere potentiality (and nothing else) is not nor can be evil. In short, matter is no more evil than the melancholy evening sky is melancholy—not in itself (for it isn’t), but as to its impression on us who contemplate it.