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

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 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.