PLOTINUS Ennead IV.8

PLOTINUS Ennead IV.8 PDF Author: Barrie Fleet
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972784
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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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.

PLOTINUS Ennead IV.8

PLOTINUS Ennead IV.8 PDF Author: Barrie Fleet
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972784
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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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.

Plotinus: Enneads IV

Plotinus: Enneads IV PDF Author: Plotinus
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
PLOTINUS (A.D. 204/5-270), possibly of Roman descent, but certainly a Greek in education and environment, was the first and greatest of Neoplatonic philosophers. Practically nothing is known of his early life, but at the age of 28 he came to Alexandria, and studied philosophy with Ammonius 'Saccas' for 11 years. Wishing to learn the philosophy of the Persians and Indians he joined the expedition of Gordian III against the Persians in 243, not without subsequent danger. Aged 40 he came to Rome and taught philosophy there till shortly before his death. In 253 he began to write and continued to do so till the last year of his life. His writings were edited by his disciple Porphyry, who published them many years after his master's death in six sets of nine treatises each (the Enneads). He regarded Plato as his master, and his own philosophy is a profoundly original development of the Platonism of the first two centuries of the Christian era and the closely related thought of the Neophthagoreans, with some influences from Aristotle and his followers and the Stoics, whose writings he knew well but used critically. There is no real trace of Oriental influence on his thought, and he was passionately opposed to Gnosticism. He is a unique combination of mystic and Hellenic rationalist. He was deeply respected by many members of the Roman aristocracy and a personal friend of the Emperor Gallienus and his wife. He devoted much of his time to the care of orphan children to whom he had been appointed guardian. But before his death his circle of friends had broken up, and he died alone except for his faithful friend and doctor Eustochius. His thought dominated later Greek philosophy and influenced both Christians and Moslems, and is still alive today because of its union of rationality and intense religious experience.

PLOTINUS Ennead IV.7

PLOTINUS Ennead IV.7 PDF Author: Barrie Fleet
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972962
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Ennead IV.7 is a very early treatise (second according to Porphyry's chronological table), and unlike the many treatises devoted to attempts at untangling various issues Plotinus found problematic in Plato's thinking, this one presents the teachings of the other main schools current in Plotinus' day: the Stoics, Epicureans, Pythagoreans, and Peripatetics, all of whom presented soul as something material or as contingent upon material soul, and so as being neither truly immortal nor imperishable. It includes observations on many mainly Stoic doctrines on perception, memory, sensation, thought, virtue, powers of material bodies, mixture and reproduction (Chapters 1-83); on Pythagorean attunement (84); and on Peripatetic entelechy (85). In Chapters 9-10 Plotinus presents, in broad terms, Plato's doctrines on soul's immortality-mainly that of the individual soul, but a fortiori that of the soul of the cosmos. These chapters offer some of Plotinus' most powerful prose. He is not concerned to prove the soul's immortality-that was an uncontroversial tenet of Platonism, to be taken for granted. In this treatise Plotinus is laying down the indisputable foundations for his later writings.

PLOTINUS Ennead IV.3-4.29

PLOTINUS Ennead IV.3-4.29 PDF Author: John Blumenthal H.J. Dillon
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972709
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
For Plotinus, the nature and status of the human soul is one of the central problems of philosophy. Ennead IV.3-4.29 constitutes his most penetrating enquiry into this topic, addressing the issues of the relation of the individual soul to the World Soul, the descent of the soul into body, its relations with that body, problems of personal identity and the nature of memory, sense perception, and the true seat of the emotions -many of which still have a resonance today. The treatise is an excellent example of Plotinus' distinctive method of enquiry: not dogmatic (though he is no sceptic), but worrying away at questions until he has uncovered their complexities to the best of his ability. Such a work requires detailed commentary, such as is provided here, to tease out fully the fascinating convolutions of his thought.

PLOTINUS Ennead IV.4.30-45 & IV.5

PLOTINUS Ennead IV.4.30-45 & IV.5 PDF Author: Gary M. SJ Gurtler
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972725
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Ennead IV.4.30-45 and IV.5 retrieves the unity in this last section of Plotinus' treatise on Problems concerning the Soul. Combining translation with commentary, Gurtler enhances both the accuracy of the translation and the recovery of Plotinus' often unsuspected originality. This is especially true for IV.5, where previous translations fail to convey the concise nature of his argument against both the Aristotelian and Platonic theories of vision. Plato and Aristotle each claim that vision depends on the light between the eye and the object, but Plotinus presents evidence that this is not the case and develops a novel theory of light as a second activity that moves from source to object directly, even arguing that color is in the light itself rather than merely a quality of the object. This theory of vision, in turn, depends on the nature of sympathy developed especially in IV.4.30-45, where Plotinus shows how action at a distance is both possible and necessary for the proper unity in diversity of the sensible cosmos.

PLOTINUS Ennead VI.4 & VI.5

PLOTINUS Ennead VI.4 & VI.5 PDF Author: Eyjolfur Strange Emilsson, Steven
Publisher: Parmenides Publishing
ISBN: 1930972148
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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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.

Plotinus

Plotinus PDF Author: Dominic J. O'Meara
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191524956
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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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.

Heathen

Heathen PDF Author: Kathryn Gin Lum
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674275799
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
An innovative history that shows how the religious idea of the heathen in need of salvation undergirds American conceptions of race. If an eighteenth-century parson told you that the difference between “civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far,” the words would hardly come as a shock. But that statement was written by an American missionary in 1971. In a sweeping historical narrative, Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the heathen has been maintained from the colonial era to the present in religious and secular discourses—discourses, specifically, of race. Americans long viewed the world as a realm of suffering heathens whose lands and lives needed their intervention to flourish. The term “heathen” fell out of common use by the early 1900s, leading some to imagine that racial categories had replaced religious differences. But the ideas underlying the figure of the heathen did not disappear. Americans still treat large swaths of the world as “other” due to their assumed need for conversion to American ways. Purported heathens have also contributed to the ongoing significance of the concept, promoting solidarity through their opposition to white American Christianity. Gin Lum looks to figures like Chinese American activist Wong Chin Foo and Ihanktonwan Dakota writer Zitkála-Šá, who proudly claimed the label of “heathen” for themselves. Race continues to operate as a heathen inheritance in the United States, animating Americans’ sense of being a world apart from an undifferentiated mass of needy, suffering peoples. Heathen thus reveals a key source of American exceptionalism and a prism through which Americans have defined themselves as a progressive and humanitarian nation even as supposed heathens have drawn on the same to counter this national myth.

Plotinus on Eudaimonia

Plotinus on Eudaimonia PDF Author: Plotinus
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199287120
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
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.

The Enneads of Plotinus, Volume 1

The Enneads of Plotinus, Volume 1 PDF Author: Paul Kalligas
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : PHILOSOPHY
Languages : en
Pages : 729

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Book Description
This is the first volume of a groundbreaking commentary on one of the most important works of ancient philosophy, the Enneads of Plotinus-a text that formed the basis of Neoplatonism and had a deep influence on early Christian thought and medieval and Renaissance philosophy. This volume covers the first three of the six Enneads, as well as Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, a document in which Plotinus's student-the collector and arranger of the Enneads-introduces the philosopher and his work. A landmark contribution to modern Plotinus scholarship, Paul Kalligas's commentary is the most detailed and extensive ever written for the whole of the Enneads.For each of the treatises in the first three Enneads, Kalligas provides a brief introduction that presents the philosophical background against which Plotinus's contribution can be assessed; a synopsis giving the main lines and the articulation of the argument; and a running commentary placing Plotinus's thought in its intellectual context and making evident the systematic association of its various parts with each other.