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1
Weiss, Sonja. "Plotin: O Ljubezni." Keria: Studia Latina et Graeca 12, no. 2-3 (December 31, 2010): 429. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/keria.12.2-3.429-437.
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Besedilo je prevedeno po kritični izdaji R. Beutlerja in W. Theilerja v: Richard Harder, prev., Plotins Schriften, Band V (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1960). Na mestih, označenih v opombah, slovenski prevod sledi izdaji: Paul Henry in Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer, izd., Plotini, Opera I–III (Pariz in Bruselj: Desclee De Brouwer, 1951–73). Na označenih mestih nekajkrat upošteva spremembe besedila predlagane v: Pierre Hadot, prev., Plotin, Traite 50 (Pariz: Les editions du Cerf, 1990). Ostale izdaje, prevodi in študije, ki jih navaja prevod: Arthur Hilary Armstrong, izd. in prev., Plotinus in Seven Volumes, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, London: William Heinemann, 1978–88). Émil Brehier, izd. in prev., Plotin, Enneades III (Pariz: Les Belles Lettres, 1954). Roberto Radice, prev., Plotino, Enneadi (Milano: Mondadori, 2002). Albert M. Wolters, Plotinus »On Eros«, a detailed exegetical study of Enneads III, 5 (Toronto: Wedge Publishing Foundation, 1984).
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Gabor, Gary. "Commentary On Van Den Berg." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 28, no. 1 (2013): 232–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22134417-90000021.
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I agree with Robbert Van den Berg that Plotinus endorses Socratic intellectualism, but I challenge his view that Plotinus rejects the phenomenon of akrasia. According to Van den Berg, the only form of akrasia acknowledged by Plotinus is a conditional, or ‘weak,’ akrasia. I provide some reasons for thinking that Plotinus might have accepted complete or ‘strong’ akrasia—full stop. While such strong forms of akrasia are usually taken to conflict with Socratic intellectualism, I argue that Plotinus’s complex, dual-self psychology allows a way in which he, unique among ancient philosophers (and perhaps any thinker in the history of philosophy), could simultaneously endorse Socratic intellectualism and hard akrasia.
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Soloviev, Roman S. "Philosophical renovation in the 3rd century: The polemical component of Porphyry’s Vita Plotini in relation to Gregory of Neocaesaria’s Oratio Panegyrica." Philologia Classica 18, no. 1 (2023): 16–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.21638/spbu20.2023.102.
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This paper offers an analysis of similar and parallel developing projects of creating a true philosophy by the disciples and followers of Origen and Plotinus. Two texts permeated by the eulogy of the scholarch are analysed: Gregory the Wonderworker’s The Address of Thanksgiving to Origen and the Life of Plotinus by Porphyry. Gregory was a student of Origen, while Porphyry attended his school long enough to become familiar with the doctrine, teaching methods and personality of the scholarch. The author establishes the structural, thematic and lexical similarity of both texts. The text by Gregory the Wonderworker, chronologically earlier, was a pushing away point for Porphyry in creating an image of the ideal scholarch in the person of Plotinus. This is confirmed by the structural and lexical contrast in the portrayal of Plotinus in Vita Plotini and Origen in the passage preserved by Proclus (Procl. In Tim. I.63. 29–33). In particular, the negative image of Origen in Vita Plotini 13. 10–17 is echoed by the figure of Thaumasius, dissatisfied with the protracted dispute between Plotinus and Porphyry, which rarely draws the scholars’ attention. Nowhere else mentioned, Thaumasius appears as a marginal figure: either he himself was interested in general statements and wanted to hear Plotinus speaking in the manner of a set treatise (trans. Armstrong), or he wanted Plotinus to “faire une conférence suivie et propre à être écrite” (trans. Bréhier). The author hypothesises that it is not a proper name but a nickname. The author suggests that Thaumasius is not an accidental participant in a specific episode of the Neoplatonists’ school life but the philosophical rival of the Neoplatonists, theologian Origen, ironically presented in an unattractive manner. Thus, the deliberately constructed episode with Plotinus and Thaumasius is a polemical jab at Origen’s followers, who put forward a programme of philosophical renovation alternative to the Platonic, and the very depiction of Plotinus as a ‘divine man’ (θεῖος ἀνήρ) responds to the image of Origen painted by his followers. The supposed allusions in Vita Plotini 13. 5–17 testify to the openness of the Roman Neoplatonic school to the already-formed Christian version of philosophy. For this reason, Porphyry chose to portray a situation in which Plotinus showed attention and patience in interpreting difficult philosophical questions for three days. In contrast, Origen, in a similar situation, showed impatience and irritability.
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Schäfer, Christian. "Matter in Plotinus's Normative Ontology." Phronesis 49, no. 3 (2004): 266–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1568528042568631.
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AbstractTo most interpreters, the case seems to be clear: Plotinus identifies matter and evil, as he bluntly states in Enn. I.8[51] that 'last matter' is 'evil', and even 'evil itself'. In this paper, I challenge this view: how and why should Plotinus have thought of matter, the sense-making εσχατον of his derivational ontology from the One and Good, 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's 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 is speaking quoad nos here rather than referring to 'matter per se ' (for Plotinus, somewhat of an oxymoron) 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. As I buttress this view, it will also become clear that matter cannot tritely be considered to be the αυτο κακον as a prima facie -reading of Enn. I.8[51] might powerfully suggest, but that the αυτο κακο&ν, far from being a principle of its own, has to be interpreted within the dynamics of Plotinus's philosophical thinking as a unique, though numerously applicable flaw-pattern for all the single κακα(hence the Platonic αυτο). To conclude, I shall offer a short outlook on the consistency of this interpretation with Plotinus's teaching on the soul and with the further Neoplatonic development of the doctrine of evil.
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Wibowo, A. Setyo. "Manusia Sebagai “Kami”Menurut Plotinos." DISKURSUS - JURNAL FILSAFAT DAN TEOLOGI STF DRIYARKARA 13, no. 1 (April 14, 2014): 25–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.36383/diskursus.v13i1.92.
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Abstrak: Bertitiktolak dari teori Prosesi (proodos) realitas, Plotinos menyatakan bahwa manusia adalah sebuah pluralitas, sebuah “kami,” di mana sebagai bagian utuh dari realitas, jiwa manusia merangkumi di dalamnya ketiga hipostasis intellingibel (Yang Satu, Intellek, Jiwa). Kesatuan aktual manusia dengan dunia intelligibel diungkapkan Plotinos dalam doktrinnya yang kontroversial tentang bagian jiwa manusia yang tidak turun ke dunia. Pemikiran Plotinos ini merupakan rangkuman orisinal atas ajaran-ajaran Platon tentang imortalitas jiwa, doktrin hylemorfisme Aristoteles dalam ranah Fisika—kategori-kategori forma, materia, potentia actus, entelekheia, dan energeia, motor immobil, noûs yang memikirkan dirinya sendiri—serta teori Logos dari Stoicisme. Sebagaimana tampak dalam prinsip energeia ganda, Plotinos secara kreatif menggunakan sumber-sumber para pendahulunya untuk mengemukakan teori barunya tentang realitas, khususnya tentang jiwa manusia.
Kata-kata kunci: imortalitas jiwa, hylemorfisme, logos, prosesi, hipostasis, Yang Satu, Intellek, Jiwa.
Abstract: The procession of reality leads Plotinus to assert that man is a plurality. As part of reality, each of us is a “we,” because all three hypostases (the One, the Intellect, and the Soul) are present in us. This is a controversial theory of soul. Plotinus affirms that man is actually present in the intelligible world by the undescended part of his soul. To understand this original theory, one has to consider the way Plotinus used his predecessors’ theories: the Platonic theory of the soul’s immortality, the hylemorphism theory of Aristotle’s Physics (form, matter, potency, actuality, entelechy, energy, unmoved mover, noûs which thinks its noema), and the Stoics’ theory of Logos. As shown in the theory of double energy, Plotinus used creatively the theories of those predecessors to invent his own theory of the procession of reality, more specifically, his unique theory of man’s soul.
Keywords: immortality of the soul, hylemorphism, logos, procession, hypostase, the One, Intellect, Soul.
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Stern-Gillet, Suzanne. "Le Principe Du Beau Chez Plotin: Réflexions sur Enneas VI.7.32 et 33." Phronesis 45, no. 1 (2000): 38–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852800510117.
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AbstractThe status of beauty in Plotinus' metaphysics is unclear: is it a Form in Intellect, the Intelligible Principle itself, or the One? Basing themselves on a number of well-known passages in the Enneads, and assuming that Plotinus' Forms are similar in function and status to Plato's, many scholars hold that Plotinus theorized beauty as a determinate entity in Intellect. Such assumptions, it is here argued, lead to difficulties over self-predication, the interpretation of Plotinus's rich and varied aesthetic terminology and, most of all, the puzzling dearth of references, in the whole of the Enneads, to a Form of Beauty. A detailed reading of VI.7.32 and 33 reveals that, in these two crucial passages at least, Plotinus adopts an aesthetic approach to the One and that, far from confining Beauty to Intellect, he equates the One, the Good and the Beautiful. This reading is here supported not only by an analysis of the text but also by a consideration of the semantic differences between μορη and ειδος, the inter-relatedness, in Plotinus' philosophy, of the concepts of love and value, and the exclusion of beauty from the πρωτα γενη. In turn, the exegesis of VI.7.32 and 33 raises the issue of the significance for aesthetics understood in the narrow sense of the word, of Plotinus's ontology of beauty. It is here claimed that in so far as sensible beauty, both artistic and natural, can be nothing else than an effect of the shaping action of the Forms and a reflection of their radiance, singular or global, it should not be held that Plotinus had an aesthetics in the modern sense of this term.
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Helleman, Wendy Elgersma. "Plotinus and Magic." International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 4, no. 2 (2010): 114–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187254710x524040.
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AbstractContemporary scholarship accents incipient theurgical practice for Plotinus; this lends a certain urgency to the question of his acceptance of magic. While use of magic recorded in Porphyry’s Vita Plotini has received considerable attention, far less has been done to analyze actual discussion in the Enneads. Examination of key passages brings to light the context for discussion of magic, particularly issues of sympathy, prayer, astrology and divination. Equally important is Plotinus’ understanding of the cosmos and role of the heavenly bodies. Plotinus’ affirmation of the highest part of the soul as undescended, together with the claim that our soul has a common origin with the World Soul in Soul-Hypostasis, is significant for the relative unimportance he attributes to the role and effect of magic.
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Berg, Robbert Van Den. "Colloquium 7: Plotinus’s Socratic Intellectualism." Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 28, no. 1 (2013): 217–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22134417-90000020.
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The Platonic tradition offered Plotinus two, possibly conflicting, explanations of why people do wrong: the Socratic intellectualism of the Protagoras and the Timaeus and the account of the akratic soul in the Republic. In this paper I argue that Plotinus tacitly rejects akrasia, because it suggests that the superior part of the soul is overcome by inferior parts. It thus sits ill with Plotinus’s doctrine of the impassive soul. He prefers Socratic intellectualism instead. Socratic intellectualism holds that all wrongdoing is due to ignorance and hence occurs involuntarily. Plotinus understands ignorance in this context as the failure of the embodied soul to fully actualize its powers, in particular its knowledge of the Forms. This knowledge is needed in order to correctly evaluate our desires that stir us into action. These desires arise spontaneously from the body and hence they occur involuntarily.
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Charles-Saget, Annick. "The Limits of the Self in Plotinus." Antichthon 19 (1985): 96–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0066477400003269.
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Psychoanalysis is born of the fact that the notion of the self appears unable to take account of the whole of psychological life. Rejecting the limits of the self is recognizing the fact that it is invaded by forces which are completely other than it; it also involves both an analysis of why these are not understood, and a recognition that it is possible for the self to be obliterated. Plotinus asks: “But we . . . who are we?” (6.4.[22].14, 16). Does it involve flagrant anachronism to establish a link between the contemporary philosophy of the limits of the self and the Plotinian opening up to what is activity beyond the self? That this is not merely an arbitrary comparison may be demonstrated firstly on negative grounds, in that psychoanalysis rejects the cogito, exactly in the manner of Plotinus; the subject is born neither of itself nor of thought. However psychoanalysis, while accepting the partial state of the self, affirms the constitutive value of narcissism. The child’s identification with his image, called the mirror stage by Lacan(Écrto 1.89ff.: 1966 edn.), is the crucial stage in the building of the self. If this identification fails, or the image of the self is rejected, serious personality destructuring results. We are not here in the business of confusing philosophy with psychology, or child personality development with the progress of the spirit, but Plotinus’ reticence about images throughout the Enneads does bear a connection with Porphyry’s anecdotes in theLtfe of Plotinus: “Plotinus was ashamed of being in a body”; Plotinus refused to divulge any details of his family, or his place of birth; Plotinus was opposed to a portrait being made of him (Vita Plotini 1). This concurrence of life and writing cannot be neglected: Plotinus refused to allow Porphyry to write his biography, as if to assert the paradox of such an undertaking: an effort to paint the portrait of one who rejected all portraits.
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Lim, Richard. "The auditor Thaumasius in the Vita Plotini." Journal of Hellenic Studies 113 (November 1993): 157–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/632405.
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In his Vita Plotini, Porphyry recounts a colourful episode which, for a brief moment, brings to life the dynamics within the lecture room of Plotinus in Rome. The author explains how he was in the habit of posing questions to Plotinus frequently and persistently while his teacher was conducting his philosophical discourse before a mixed body of listeners. On one occasion, such an exchange between the two over the issue of the connexion between the soul and the body continued intermittently over a period of some three days, with the following outcome (Porph. V. Plot. xiii 12-15):
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Brito Martins, Maria Manuela. "Problem of Evil in Plotinus." Florentia Iliberritana 32 (December 29, 2022): 73–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.30827/floril.v32i.21474.
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First the aim of my study is to focus on Plotinus’s conception of evil, as presented in both Ennead I 8 [51]. However, this is not the only place that Plotinus speaks about this subject. In other treatises he speaks about the evil in a context of human freedom and destiny, like Ennead III, 1 [3, III, 2 [47] and III 3 [48] or in the Ennead IV 8 [6] On the descent of soul into bodies. The big difference between Enneads I, 8, and Enneads III and IV is that the treatises that touch on evil are being analyzed in terms of mainly anthropological and existential issues. On the contrary, in Ennead I 8 [51] the problem of evil has a mainly metaphysical and theodicy treatment. We will mainly analyze the notion of absolute evil, and its consequences for the notion of matter.
Second, we intend to address the possible esoteric influences on the issue of evil in Plotinus. We will try to argue that Plotinus, in the confrontation with the Gnostics, particularly in the treaty 33, that we find elements consonant with the treaty 51, and that come from a Christian and not a Gnostic influence. This one will be more esoteric than exoteric, contrary to the doctrine professed by certain Neoplatonists, after Plotinus, where exoteric and esoteric elements are mixed with philosophical thought.
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Soloviev, Roman. "Special features of the genre of the "Vita Plotini": who was Porphyry referring to?" St. Tikhons' University Review. Series III. Philology 73 (December 30, 2022): 84–102. http://dx.doi.org/10.15382/sturiii202273.84-102.
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The article presents the analysis of genre dominants of "The Life of Plotinus" by Porphyry and analyses the polemical sources of the text. Having established the lack of research on the genre of the text in the modern bibliography, the author places the Life of Plotinus into the range of the late antique biographies, and determines the main characteristics of the analyzed text. The title of the text indicates Porphyry's dual purpose: to introduce the reader to the personality of Plotinus, whom Porphyry deliberately presents as theios aner, and also to present Plotinus' 54 treatises within the coherent system of the Enneads. The dual task is also reflected in the structure of the Life. Reconstructing the image of Porphyry in the text, the author of the article highlights the techniques that create the image of the author of Plotinus' Life. Emphasizing his own place in the hierarchy of the school is caused by the polemic both within the Neoplatonic school (with the earlier edition of Plotinus' treatises by Amelius; this is shown through the analysis of the introduction of the Life of Plotinus) and outside it. The author establishes the pragmatics of the key episodes of the text and shows that the text is built around a constructed hierarchy of testimonies: from the fellow student, Amelius, to the Oracle of Apollo. By highlighting the essential attributes of the hero of the biography, the author illustrates the dynamism of Porphyry's conception: Vita Plotini is not only an introduction to the edition, but also a didactic text, depicting a contemporary who has achieved the goal of human life. In the final part of the article, the author analyses the approaches to the identification of the opponents of Porphyry in the literature and sets forth his own hypothesis: the text was created in opposition to the school of Origen and to the image of the scholarch, which was drawn by Gregory the Wonderworker and Eusebius of Caesarea. The hypothesis of Porphyry's response to the Christian texts is grounded by the new lexical similarities with Origen.
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Lightbody, Brian. "Socratic Appetites as Plotinian Reflectors: A New Interpretation of Plotinus’s Socratic Intellectualism." Journal of Ancient Philosophy 14, no. 1 (May 22, 2020): 91–115. http://dx.doi.org/10.11606/issn.1981-9471.v14i1p91-115.
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Enneads I: 8.14 poses significant problems for scholars working in the Plotinian secondary literature. In that passage, Plotinus gives the impression that the body and not the soul is causally responsible for vice. The difficulty is that in many other sections of the same text, Plotinus makes it abundantly clear that the body, as matter, is a mere privation of being and therefore represents the lowest rung on the proverbial metaphysical ladder. A crucial aspect to Plotinus's emanationism, however, is that lower levels of a metaphysical hierarchy cannot causally influence higher ones and, thus, there is an inconsistency in the Egyptian's magnum opus, or so it would seem. Scholars have sought to work through this paradox by positing that Plotinus is a "paleolithic Platonist" or Socratic. The advantage of this approach is that one may be able to resolve the tension by invoking Socrates's eliminativist solution to the problem of weakness of will, as found in The Protagoras. In the following article, I argue that such attempts are not wrong-headed just underdetermined. They take up the standard reading of Socratic moral intellectualism, namely the "informational" interpretation and, therefore, fail to render a coherent view of Plotinus's moral philosophy. The following paper, in contrast, utilizes a new reading of intellectualism advanced by Brickhouse and Smith, which, when subtended with a "powers approach" to causality, resolves the aforementioned, problematic passage of Enneads.
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Corrigan, Kevin. "Plotinus." Ancient Philosophy 10, no. 1 (1990): 143–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil199010146.
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Wagner, Michael F. "Plotinus." Ancient Philosophy 15, no. 1 (1995): 307–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil199515167.
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Wagner, Michael F. "Plotinus." Ancient Philosophy 17, no. 2 (1997): 506–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil199717263.
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Clarke, W. Norris. "Plotinus." International Philosophical Quarterly 33, no. 1 (1993): 123–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ipq199333162.
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Clark, Stephen R. L. "Plotinus." International Philosophical Quarterly 34, no. 3 (1994): 382–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ipq199434331.
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Gurtler,, Gary M. "Plotinus." Epoché 9, no. 2 (2005): 197–214. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/epoche20059212.
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McGroarty, Kieran. "Plotinus." Classical Review 49, no. 2 (October 1999): 440–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cr/49.2.440.
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Harnett, Gerald. "Plotinus." Christianity & Literature 44, no. 3-4 (June 1995): 274. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/014833319504400302.
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Harnett, Gerald. "Plotinus." Christianity & Literature 50, no. 3 (June 2001): 475. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/014833310105000343.
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Filin, Dmitriy. "Plotinus’s Apophatic Theology." Ideas and Ideals 12, no. 3-1 (September 23, 2020): 108–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.17212/2075-0862-2020-12.3.1-108-120.
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The purpose of this article is to analyze the content of Plotinus’s apophatic theology. The problem of the limit of human cognition has always been topical in the history of the human thought. The absolute reality acted as such a limit in Platonism. The apophatic aspect was the final step of its cognition. The founder of Neoplatonism systematized the Plato’s teaching about hypostases of the being and by doing so he transferred the center of the philosophical speculations in the sphere of the Unity of Oneness. Thus, his apophatics is more consequent than the Plato’s one. Narrating about the Unity of Oneness, Plotinus is sort of synthesizing certain peculiarities of the apophatic theology of his two great predecessors: Aristotle and Plato. One can say, Plotinus’s apophatic theology “vanished” in the description of the mystical blending to the Unity of Oneness of the first cause of being. However for a philosopher intuitive aspects of its cognition are as important in a certain context as logical ones. Plotinus’s philosophy is the way of antinomies, the way of upper-and-non-predicative apophatic darings. The first Unity of Oneness in his philosophy is uncertain and formless because the Unity of Oneness causes all things but doesn’t need them. The latter ones are incidental to It. In their incidental nature is the lack of Good what one can’t say about the Unity of Oneness Itself. It is neither anything qualitative nor quantitative, neither in the rest nor in the movement, neither in any place nor in any time. It is neither Intelligence nor Soul. Thus, the Unity of Oneness according to Plotinus is the energy without essence. Because it creates being transcendental to all things in existence. At the same time Plotinus has in the first place the proper experience of the ecstatic ascents to the exorbitant limit of all things in existence. Staying in It is for a thinker a happiness of the Soul, life of the gods and of the godlike happy people, “escape of the unity to the Unity of Oneness”. As a matter of fact apophatic for Plotinus is the first step taking aside from that experience to a random thought. However in the teaching of the founder of Neoplatonism the thought and the mystical life are so connected to each other that it is practically impossible to separate them—they are the unified whole of existence.
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Gurtler, Gary M. "Plotinus (review)." Journal of the History of Philosophy 36, no. 1 (1998): 128–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/hph.2008.0931.
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Saffrey, Henri D. "Florence, 1492: The Reappearance of Plotinus*." Renaissance Quarterly 49, no. 3 (1996): 488–508. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2863364.
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In the western world, Plotinus was only a name until 1492. None of his treatises had been translated during the Middle Ages, and the translations dating back to antiquity had been lost. He was not totally unknown, however, thanks to scholars like Firmicus Maternus, Saint Augustine, Macrobius, and to those parts of the works of Proclus translated in the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke. But Plotinus's own writings remained completely unknown,and as Vespasiano da Bisticci observed in his Vite, “senza i libri non si poteva fare nulla” (“without the books, nothing can be done”). This fact was to change completely only with the publication by Marsilio Ficino of his Latin translation of the Enneads.
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Regnier, Daniel. "Plotinus on Care of Self and Soul." PLATO JOURNAL 21 (January 28, 2021): 149–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/2183-4105_21_10.
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Plotinus’ philosophical project includes an important Socratic element. Plotinus is namely interested in both self-knowledge and care of soul and self. In this study I examine how through his interpretation of three passages from Plato (Timaeus 35 a, Phaedrus 246 band Theatetus 176 a-b), Plotinus develops an account of the role of care in his ethics. Care in Plotinus’ ethical thought takes three forms. First of all, care is involved in maintaining the unity of the embodied self. Secondly, situated in a providential universe, our souls – as sisters to the world soul - take part in the providential order by caring for ‘lower’ realities. Finally, Plotinus develops an ethics of going beyond virtue, a process which involves care for the higher, potentially divine, self.
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Hankey, Wayne J. "Self-Knowledge and God as Other in Augustine." Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter 4 (December 31, 1999): 83–123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/bpjam.4.06han.
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Abstract Recent philosophical and theological writing on Augustine in France, England and North America is sharply divided between readings which serve either a historicist, anti-metaphysical, postmodern retrieval or an ahistorical, metaphysical, modern reassertion. The postmodern retrieval begins from a Heideggerian «end of metaphysics» and goes at least some distance with Jacques Derrida's development of its consequences. This essay starts from engagements with Augustine by Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, moving then to Rowan Williams on the De trinitate, read to prevent comparison with Descartes' Meditations, and considers how Williams relates Augustine to Plotinus. The opposed modernist interpretation appears in Stephen Menn's Descartes and Augustine, which sees a continuity between Plotinus, Augustine and Descartes. Finally, the essay treats Plotinus and Augustine on God and self-knowledge, maintaining that Augustine's De trinitate is better understood from within a modern ahistorical stance which, within metaphysics, places Augustine together with Plotinus and Descartes. This view better captures his difference from Plotinus than the alternative postmodern perspective tending to assimilate Augustine to Plotinus.
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Leonardi, Vinícius José Henrique da Costa. "O BELO ENQUANTO ESPLENDOR DO UM NO TRATADO I, 6 DE PLOTINO." Sapere Aude 10, no. 19 (July 14, 2019): 61–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.5752/p.2177-6342.2019v10n19p61-72.
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A partir do tratado Sobre o Belo (I, 6), de Plotino, é discutida no presente artigo a afinidade entre as vias estética e intelectiva como modo de acesso à união com o Um. Para tanto, propomos que o Belo seja entendido como um esplendor do Um, ou seja, como o que se manifesta concomitante e dependente do Um, atraindo para este o olhar daquele que empreende a ascensão filosófica. Assim, procuramos demonstrar que o Belo se fundamenta na intelecção da unidade, e que a ascensão ao Um é tanto estética quanto intelectiva.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Estética. Alma. Experiência mística. Ascensão. Plotino. From the treaty On Beauty (I 6), by Plotinus, the affinity between the aesthetic and intellectual paths as a way of accessing the union with the One is discussed in this article. For that, we propose that the Beauty be understood as a splendor of the One, that is to say, as that one who manifests concomitant and dependent on the One, attracting to the latter the look of one who undertakes the philosophical ascension. Thus, we seek to demonstrate that the Beauty is based on the intellection of unity, and that the ascension to the One is both aesthetic and intellectual. Keywords: aesthetic; soul; mystical experience; ascension; Plotinus.
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Berg, Robbert van den. "Procheirisis: Porphyry Sent. 16 and Plotinus on the similes of the waxen block and the aviary." International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 4, no. 2 (2010): 163–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187254710x524059.
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AbstractThis paper studies Sentence 16 of Porphyry’s Pathways to the Intelligible. It is argued that it should be understood against the background of Plotinus’ discussions of the similes of the waxen block and the aviary from Plato’s Theaetetus. The first part of the paper concentrates on Plotinus’ reception of these similes. In the second part of the paper Plotinus’ discussions of the two similes are used to shed light on Sentence 16, in particular on the term προχείρισις. Furthermore it is argued that Porphyry does not reject Plotinus’ claim that, pace Aristotle, intellection does not require imaging.
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Catana, Leo. "Changing Interpretations of Plotinus: The 18th-Century Introduction of the Concept of a ‘System of Philosophy’." International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 7, no. 1 (2013): 50–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18725473-12341250.
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Abstract This article critically explores the history and nature of a hermeneutic assumption which frequently guided interpretations of Plotinus from the 18th century onwards, namely that Plotinus advanced a system of philosophy. It is argued that this assumption was introduced relatively late, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that it was primarily made possible by Brucker’s methodology for the history of philosophy, dating from the 1740s, to which the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’ was essential. It is observed that the concept is absent from Ficino’s commentary from the 15th century, and that it remained absent in interpretations produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. It is also argued that the assumption of a ‘system of philosophy’ in Plotinus is historically incorrect—we do not find this concept in Plotinus’ writings, and his own statements about method point in other directions. Eduard Zeller (active in the second half of the 19th century) is typically regarded as the first to give a satisfying account of Plotinus’ philosophy as a whole. In this article, on the other hand, Zeller is seen as having finalised a tradition initiated in the 18th century. Very few Plotinus scholars have examined the interpretative development prior to Zeller. Schiavone (1952) and Bonetti (1971), for instance, have given little attention to Brucker’s introduction of the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’. The present analysis, then, has value for an understanding of Plotinus’ Enneads. It also explains why “pre-Bruckerian” interpretations of Plotinus appear alien to the modern reader; the analysis may even serve to make some sense of the hermeneutics employed by Renaissance Platonists and commentators, who are often eclipsed from the tradition of Platonism.
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Laurent, Jérôme. "Lecture de parole selon Plotin." Hors-collection des Cahiers de Fontenay 13, no. 1 (1993): 185–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/cafon.1993.1010.
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According to Plotinus, human speech comes from physical impediment. It divides our thought and reveals it only by means of corporeal contingence. Knowing this the author of the Enneads uses words with extreme caution as if going beyond their imperfection. In this way procedures of approximation, quotations from poets, etymologies, chiasmata and oxymorons are so many sites in which Plotinus's text attempts to better correspond to what he is talking about - and indeed succeeds in so doing.
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Okano, Ritsuko. "Nishida and Plotinus." International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 9, no. 1 (March 10, 2015): 1–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18725473-12341299.
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Kitarō Nishida is the most important and representative philosopher in modern Japan, who now attracts increasing attention internationally. He endeavored to give a logical foundation to the Eastern way of thinking through his confrontation with Western philosophers. The aim of this paper is to recover the modern and intercultural significance of Plotinus’ philosophy in the light of Nishida’s philosophy. Nishida refers to Plotinus repeatedly, expressing his deep empathy, though his philosophy, which professes itself to be highly critical, is not mysticism. When we compare him with Plotinus, we can find a great affinity in their fundamental structure. ‘Absolute nothingness (zettai mu)’, the basis of all reality in Nishida’s philosophy, is prior to both subjectivity and objectivity, and corresponds to the Plotinian One, which transcends both thinking and being. The correspondence between their logical structures consists in regarding subjectivity and objectivity as developments of an indefinite principle that transcends and precedes the discrimination of the two, and determination as determination of what is indeterminate. However, differing from Plotinus, Nishida lays stress on corporality, ordinariness and individuality. Though Plotinus was never pessimistic about this world, the experience emphasized in the Enneads was not earthly, while Nishida’s ‘radical ordinariness’ was the standpoint to which we should attain in a mundane life. When we compare Plotinus with Nishida, we encounter the intersection of the West and the East, antiquity and modernity, and mysticity and ordinariness.
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De Haas, Frans. "Did Plotinus and Porphyry disagree on Aristotle's Categories?" Phronesis 46, no. 4 (2001): 492–526. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852801753736517.
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AbstractIn this paper I propose a reading of Plotinus Enneads VI.1-3 \[41-43] On the genera of being which regards this treatise as a coherent whole in which Aristotle's Categories is explored in a way that turns it into a decisive contribution to Plotinus' Platonic ontology. In addition, I claim that Porphyry's Isagoge and commentaries on the Categories start by adopting Plotinus' point of view, including his notion of genus, and proceed by explaining its consequences for a more detailed reading of the Categories. After Plotinus' integration of the Categories into the Platonic frame of thought Porphyry saw the possibilities of exploiting the Peripatetic tradition both as a means to support the Platonic interpretation of the Categories and as a source for solutions to traditional questions. His allegiance to a division of being into ten, and his emphasis on semantics rather than ontology can be explained from this orientation. In the light of our investigation the alleged disagreement between Plotinus and Porphyry on the Categories changes its appearance completely. There are differences, but these can be best explained as confirmation and extension of Plotinus' perspective on the Categories and its role in Platonism.
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Phillips, John. "Plotinus on the Generation of Matter." International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 3, no. 2 (March 17, 2009): 103–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/187250809x12474505283504.
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This study reconsiders Denis O’Brien’s controversial thesis that it was Plotinus’ position that the ‘partial’ soul generates matter. O’Brien relies principally on two core texts, 3.4 (15).1 and 3.9 (13).3, where he finds convincing evidence for his thesis. In the present study I take two approaches. First, I demonstrate that if we accept O’Brien’s thesis, then we are compelled to accept as well that Plotinus is guilty of self-contradiction in his doctrine of soul’s descent. Secondly, I offer a different interpretation of what Plotinus has in mind as the source of matter’s generation in 3.4.1 and 3.9.3. In several passages Plotinus states that the product of the partial soul’s creative activity is the “trace” of soul that, in turn, combines with matter to form the ‘qualified body.’ I argue that it is this trace-soul, not matter, that Plotinus is referring to in these texts.
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Lepajõe, Marju. "On the Demonology of Plotinus." Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore 09 (1998): 7–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.7592/fejf1998.09.plotinus.
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Di Silva, Maurizio Filippo. "Plotinus and Augustine on Beauty and Matter." International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 16, no. 1 (May 31, 2021): 15–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18725473-bja10011.
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Abstract The aim of this paper is to examine whether and, if so, how far, the Augustinian notion of pulchrum is related to Plotinus’ concept of beauty, as it appears in Ennead I. 6. The Augustinian notion of beauty will be analyzed by focusing on the De natura boni, considering plurality and unity in Augustine’s identification of bonum with esse, both in their ontological and axiological dimensions. Topics selected for special consideration will be, first, beauty as outcome of modus, species and ordo naturalis (De nat. b. 14), and, secondly, corruptio as cause of deformitas (De nat. b. 15). The first part of the paper will attempt to explain the Augustinian identification of esse with bonum and pulchrum (De nat. b. 23).The second part will analyze Plotinus’ notion of beauty, as spelled out in Ennead I. 6, considering the Plotinian identity of to kalon and to agathon. Topics selected for analysis will be, first, the concept of form as cause of beauty (Enn. I. 6.2-3), and secondly, the notion of to aischron as partial or absolute lack of form (Enn. I. 6.2). The second part of the paper will attempt to explain Plotinus’ concept of good as yielding the nature of beauty through an analysis of Plotinus’ reflections on being and unity (Enn. I. 6.2-3). The third part of this paper will consider the differences between Plotinus’ and Augustine’s identity of ugliness and non-being, as related to the notion of matter. Topics selected for analysis will be, firstly, Plotinus’ identity of matter and to aischron (Enn. I. 6.5-6), and, secondly, Augustine’s concept of matter as capacitas formarum (De nat. b. 18). The conclusion will prove how Plotinus’ concept of matter as coinciding with ugliness (Enn. I. 6.6) shows a wide theoretical difference between Augustine’s and Plotinus’ ontological-axiological patterns.
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Lakhonin, M. V. "The Ontological Meaning of the Concept of Contemplation in the Philosophy of Plotinus." Izvestiya of Saratov University. Philosophy. Psychology. Pedagogy 13, no. 2 (2013): 42–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.18500/1819-7671-2013-13-2-42-45.
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The article deals with the ontological status of the concept of contemplation in the philosophy of Plotinus. The author reveals the nature and methodological foundations of Plotinus ’general approach to analysis of the contemplation and its relationship with the teleological vision of the Good in Platonism. The structure of contemplation is investigated in the context of the relationship of various levels of natural existence. Special attention is paid to the relationship of contemplation with the key concepts for Plotinus like the soul, the mind, and the one. In essence, in NeoPlatonism of Plotinus contemplation serves as a way of expansion or emanation of the different levels of existence. The contemplation of the one becomes the contemplation of the mind, and then it goes into the contemplation of the soul, through which in Platonism is performed a natural creation of all that is in the world. Relationship between different levels of contemplation provides a unity of ontological and epistemological approaches in the philosophy of Plotinus.
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Noble, Christopher Isaac. "How Plotinus’ Soul Animates his Body: The Argument for the Soul-Trace at Ennead 4.4.18.1-9." Phronesis 58, no. 3 (2013): 249–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15685284-12341251.
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Abstract In this paper I offer an analysis of Plotinus’ argument for the existence of a quasi-psychic entity, the so-called ‘trace of soul’, that functions as an immanent cause of life for an organism’s body. I argue that Plotinus posits this entity primarily in order to account for the body’s possession of certain quasi-psychic states that are instrumental in his account of soul-body interaction. Since these quasi-psychic states imply that an organism’s body has vitality of its own (a claim for which Plotinus also finds support in the Phaedo), and Platonic souls are no part or aspect of any body, Plotinus draws the conclusion that the soul must be a cause of the body’s life by imparting a quasi-psychic qualification to it. In so doing, Plotinus introduces elements of hylomorphism into Platonist psychology, and addresses a problem for the animation of the body that Platonic soul-body dualism may plausibly be thought to face.
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Stamatellos, Giannis. "The Arabic Plotinus." Ancient Philosophy 26, no. 2 (2006): 472–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil200626232.
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Vassilopoulou, Panayiota. "Plotinus and Individuals." Ancient Philosophy 26, no. 2 (2006): 371–83. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil20062628.
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Nyvlt, Mark J. "Plotinus on Phantasia." Ancient Philosophy 29, no. 1 (2009): 139–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil20092918.
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Stamatellos, Giannis. "Plotinus on Eudaimonia." Ancient Philosophy 30, no. 1 (2010): 207–9. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil201030122.
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Phillips, John. "Plotinus on Self." Ancient Philosophy 30, no. 1 (2010): 210–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil201030123.
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Rappe, Sara. "Plotinus on Intellect." Ancient Philosophy 30, no. 2 (2010): 462–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil201030247.
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Wagner, Michael F. "Plotinus on Number." Ancient Philosophy 31, no. 2 (2011): 464–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil201131241.
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Bussanich, John, and A. H. Armstrong. "Plotinus Vi, Vii." Classical World 83, no. 6 (1990): 528. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4350685.
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Lee, Jonathan Scott, Plotinus, and Stephen MacKenna. "Plotinus: The Enneads." Classical World 87, no. 3 (1994): 255. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/4351489.
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Most, Glenn W. "Plotinus’ last words." Classical Quarterly 53, no. 2 (December 2003): 576–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/cq/53.2.576.
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MacCoull, L. S. B. "Plotinus the Egyptian?" Mnemosyne 52, no. 3 (1999): 330–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852599774228361.
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van den Berg, Robbert. "Plotinus on Intellect." Mnemosyne 62, no. 2 (2009): 315–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852508x321347.
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