Author: Kieran McGroarty
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199287120
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 261
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Book Description
"This is the first full-length commentary on Plotinus' Ennead I.4 (46), a work written at a late stage in Plotinus' life when he was suffering from an illness that was shortly to prove fatal. The main concern of Ennead I.4 (46) is the good man and his pursuit of the good life. The treatise is therefore central to our understanding of Plotinus' ethical theory, and Kieran McGroarty's commentary seeks to explicate and elucidate it from a philosophical standpoint. The author's own English translation is printed on pages facing the Greek text (the editio minor of P. Henry and H. R. Schwyzer). Each chapter of the commentary begins with a short summary of the content followed by detailed discussion of paragraphs, lines, and, where necessary, individual words. McGroarty explains the structure of Plotinus' argument and identifies the sources he uses and critiques. The commentary confirms what Porphyry notes in his Life of Plotinus, that the Enneads are indeed full of hidden Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines. Appendices contain discussions of Plotinus' view on suicide, and his use of St. Ambrose's sermon On Jacob and the Good Life."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Dominic J. O'Meara
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198751478
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Book Description
This is the ideal introduction to the thought of the third-century AD writer Plotinus, one of the greatest of ancient philosophers, now enjoying a major revival of interest. Dominic O'Meara has tailored the book carefully to the requirements of students: he writes clearly and authoritatively, assumes no knowledge of Greek or expertise in ancient philosophy, stays close to the texts, and relates Plotinus's ideas to modern philosophical concerns.
Author: Barrie Fleet
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972784
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 186
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Book Description
Plotinus was much exercised by Plato's doctrines of the soul. In this treatise, at chapter 1 line 27, he talks of "e;the divine Plato, who has said in many places in his works many noble things about the soul and its arrival here, so that we can hope for some clarity from him. So what does the philosopher say? It is clear that he does not always speak with sufficient consistency for us to make out his intentions with any ease."e; The issue in this treatise is one that has puzzled students of Plato from ancient to modern times-and is indeed a popular topic for undergraduate essays even today: Why should the philosopher, who has ascended through a long and painful process of dialectic to "e;assimilation to the divine,"e; ever descend back into the body? Plotinus himself is said by Porphyry to have attained such a state of other-worldly transcendence on at least four occasions during his lifetime, so this was a very real and personal issue for him. In this treatise we see him grappling with it.
Author: Gerard O'Daly
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972997
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
Ennead I.1 is a succinct and concentrated analysis of key themes in Plotinus' psychology and ethics. It focuses on the soul-body relation, discussing various Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic views before arguing that there is only a soul-trace in the body (forming with the body a "e;compound"e;), while the reasoning soul itself is impassive and flawless. The soul-trace hypothesis is used to account for human emotions, beliefs, and perceptions, and human fallibility in general. Its problematic relation to our rational powers, as well as the question of moral responsibility, are explored. Plotinus develops his original and characteristic concept of the self or "e;we,"e; which is so called because it is investigated as something common to all humans (rather than a private individual self), and because it is multiple, referring to the reasoning soul or to the "e;living thing"e; composed of soul-trace and body. Plotinus explores the relation between the "e;we"e; and consciousness, and also its relation to the higher metaphysical entities, the Good, and Intellect.
Author: James Wilberding
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199277265
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
In Ennead II.1 (40) Plotinus grapples 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. James Wilberding presents an extensive introduction, the text itself, and a commentary offering a line-by-line interpretation of the work's philosophical, philological and historical details.
Author: Eric D Perl
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 193097292X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 213
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Book Description
Plotinus' Treatise V.1 comes closer than any other to providing an outline of his entire spiritual and metaphysical system, and as such it may serve to some degree as an introduction to his philosophy. It addresses in condensed form a great many topics to which Plotinus elsewhere devotes extended discussion, including the problem of the multiple self; eternity and time; the unity-in-duality of intellect and the intelligible; and the derivation of intelligible being from the One. Above all, it shows that the so-called "e;three hypostases"e;-soul, intellect, and the One-are best understood not as a sequence of three things additional to one another, but as three levels of possession of the same content, so that each lower level-soul in relation to intellect and intellect in relation to the One-is an "e;image"e; and "e;expression"e; of its superior. Plotinus exhorts the human soul to overcome its alienation from its own true nature and its divine origin by first recognizing itself as superior to the body and the same in kind as the animating principle of the entire cosmos, and then discovering within itself the still higher levels of reality from which it derives: intellect and, ultimately, the One or Good, the supreme first principle of all things. To do so the soul must redirect its attention inward and upward to become aware of the divinity which is always within it but from which it is distracted by the clamor of the senses.
Author: Andrew Smith
Publisher: SBL Press
ISBN: 9781628372489
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
A Greek edition of Plotinus's philosophical works with notes for students of Classical Greek Plotinus, the father of Neoplatonism, composed the treatise On Beauty (Ennead 1.6) as the first of a series of philosophical essays devoted to interpreting and elucidating Platonic ideas. This treatise is one of the most accessible and influential of Plotinus's works, and it provides a stimulating entrée into the many facets of his philosophical activity. In this volume Andrew Smith first introduces readers to the Greek of Plotinus and to his philosophy in general, then provides the Greek text of and English notes on Plotinus's systematic argument and engaging exhortation to foster the inner self. The volume ends with the text of and notes on Plotinus's complementary statements in On Intelligible Beauty (Ennead 5.8.1–2). Features: An overview of Plotinus's life Background discussion of Plotinus's thought and outline of his philosophical system Analysis of the relationship of Plotinus's thought to Plato’s
Author: Mark Z. Danielewski
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 0375714413
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 106
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Book Description
Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Lièvre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life. Beautiful, heartfelt, and tragic, this correspondence reveals the powerful and deeply moving relationship between a brilliant though mentally ill mother and the precocious, gifted young son she never ceases to love. Originally contained within the monumental House of Leaves, this collection stands alone as a stunning portrait of mother and child. It is presented here along with a foreword by Walden D. Wyhrta and eleven previously unavailable letters.
Author: Eyjolfur Strange Emilsson, Steven
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972148
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
Ennead VI.4-5, originally written as a single treatise, contains Plotinus' most general and sustained exposition of the relationship between the intelligible and the sensible realms, addressing and coalescing two central issues in Platonism: the nature of the soul-body relationship and the nature of participation. Its main question is, How can soul animate bodies without sharing their extension? The treatise seems to have had considerable impact: it is much reflected in Porphyry's important work, Sententiae, and the doctrine of reception according to the capacity of the recipient, for which this treatise is the main source, resonated in medieval thinkers.
Author: Henri Oosthout
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 906032319X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
The philosophy of Plotinus is usually depicted as a quest for the absolute, outside and beyond the world of human knowledge and experience. Yet in the late treatise Ennead 5.3 [49], Plotinus shows himself a philosopher of the transcendental, rather than of the transcendent. Starting from a critical analysis of the idea of self-knowledge, he develops a world-view in which central notions of his metaphysics are represented, not as different hypostases or transcendent beings, but as limiting cases of reality as we human beings know it. Fundamental to this world-view is Plotinus' assumption that a close analogy can be established between the psychological and the physical description of man.
