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.

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.

In this volume, Kieran McGroarty provides a philosophical commentary on a section of the Enneads written by the last great Neoplatonist thinker, Plotinus. The treatise is entitled "Concerning Well-Being" and was written at a late stage in Plotinus' life when he was suffering from an illness that was shortly to kill him. Its main concern is with the good man and how he should pursue the good life. The treatise is therefore central to our understanding of Plotinus' ethical theory, and the commentary seeks to explicate and elucidate that theory. Plotinus' views on how one should live in order to fulfill oneself as a human being are as relevant now as they were in the third century AD. All Greek and Latin is translated, while short summaries introducing the content of each chapter help to make Plotinus' argument clear even to the non-specialist.

In Ennead II.1 (40) Plotinus is primarily concerned to argue for the everlastingness of the universe, the heavens, and the heavenly bodies as individual substances. Here he must grapple both with the philosophical issue of personal identity through time and with the rich tradition of cosmology which pitted the Platonists against the Aristotelians and Stoics. What results is a historically informed cosmological sketch explaining the constitution of the heavens as well as sublunar and celestial motion. This book contains an extensive introduction aimed at providing the necessary background in Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic cosmology, the text itself, and a line-by-line commentary designed to elucidate its philosophical, philological and historical details.