Abstract

Ennead VI.7, the thirty-eighth treatise in order of composition, opens with a sustained attack on the idea that the form and function of various animal organs are the result of divine forethought and deliberation. In the first three chapters of the treatise, Plotinus argues that no formulation of the notion of deliberation can be made consistent with the facts about the nature of the intelligible2 and its priority over the physical world. As has been noted in the past,3 Plotinus's arguments against the Platonic idea that teleological thinking is a genuine cause in the sphere of biology can also be taken, from the standpoint of his own philosophical principles, to be effective against an Aristotelian ..