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The Enneads
Plotinus is the last great philosopher of antiquity, although in more than one respect, a precursor of modern times. The Enneads bring together Neoplatonism--mystic passion and ideas from Greek philosophy--together with striking variants of the Trinity and other central Christian doctrines, to produce a highly original synthesis.
688 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 250
About the author
Plotinus
326 books283 followersEgyptian-born Roman philosopher Plotinus and his successors in the 3rd century at Alexandria founded and developed Neoplatonism, a philosophical system, which, based on Platonism with elements of mysticism and some Judaic and Christian concepts, posits a single source from which all existence emanates and with which one mystically can unite an individual soul;
The Enneads
collects his writings.
Saint Thomas Aquinas combined elements of this system and other philosophy within a context of Christian thought.
People widely consider this major of the ancient world alongside Ammonius Saccas, his teacher.
He influenced in late antiquity. Much of our biographical information about Plotinus comes from preface of Porphyry to his edition. His metaphysical writings inspired centuries of pagan, Islamic, and Gnostic metaphysicians and mystics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus
Saint Thomas Aquinas combined elements of this system and other philosophy within a context of Christian thought.
People widely consider this major of the ancient world alongside Ammonius Saccas, his teacher.
He influenced in late antiquity. Much of our biographical information about Plotinus comes from preface of Porphyry to his edition. His metaphysical writings inspired centuries of pagan, Islamic, and Gnostic metaphysicians and mystics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus
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July 11, 2017
I suppose, once again, I will prove my Platonist sympathies by reviewing this book so positively. It's not that I am always in agreement with Plotinus (I'll follow this up below), but this is such an influential and foundational work of Philosophy and Neo-Platonism that I really can't give it a lower review in all fairness. I also was engaged in the book from beginning to end.
This is a dense work. It's the full unabridged Enneads published by Digireads. I had already read the Essential Plotinus, which was a very sparse selection of the Enneads. I am incredibly glad that I did not let the reading of that very insufficient sampling be my only foray into Plotinus. Just to give an idea of how meager that sampling was, let me list by Ennead and treatise what was found in the Essential Plotinus: I, 2; I, 3; I, 6; III, 8; IV, 3; IV, 8; V, 1; V, 2; V, 9; VI, 9. There are six Enneads, each containing nine treatises, in the complete Enneads. Elmer O'Brien did not include any treatises from the second Ennead and barely touched Enneads 3 and 6. There are many treatises in here that are equally, if not more, thought provoking and engaging, e.g. II, 6; III, 2; III, 7, III, 9; IV, 4; V, 1; V, 3-6; VI, 2; VI, 6; VI, 7--are some that I've marked for re-reading. All of the above prove beyond any doubt the merits of Plotinus.
The one thing I was struck by was Plotinus discussions of Being. There is much here that was later explored by the German Idealists; given my penchant for that school of philosophy, I was surprised and intrigued by how many parallels exist between Plotinus and Hegel and Schelling, but even with Kant and Fichte to some degree. The first treatise where this starts to become evident is treatise 6 of the second Ennead, entitled Quality and Form-Idea. Thankfully, the translators included in brackets the Greek original for Plotinus' terms for kinds of Being, e.g. "to on" and "e ousia", translated here as "being" and "reality", respectively. In various places throughout the Enneads, the way Plotinus uses these terms, parallels Schelling's and Hegel's use of the German terms "Seyen" and "Seyende". There are some differences, but the parallels are close enough to say without question that Plotinus was working within the same lines of thought. He discusses passivity and activity within these concepts of being, which is a notable feature of Schelling's work. Mind is also important for Plotinus as it was for Hegel's work. Here, presumably, the word translated as "Intellectual-principle" is most likely the Greek "nous", but, unfortunately, the underlying Greek term is not cited here. To say that Plotinus foreshadowed all later Idealism would be an understatement I think.
There are plenty of things I disagree with Plotinus about. Like most Platonists going back to Plato himself, Plotinus believed in the transmigration of souls (i.e. reincarnation)--one of the concepts Plato most likely took from the Pythagoreans. I won't get into my issues with that doctrine here. He also has a vacillating view regarding matter. He argues that all evil stems from matter (yet opposes the gnostics on related issues, ironically enough) but also believes that the supra-lunar world has some more divine and "pure" form of matter. He never really explains why sub-lunar and supra-lunar forms of hyle differ. One is left to speculate that the supra-lunar forms consist of less matter and more mind. Still, it is curious that the luminaries wind up taking part in less matter and earthly forms in more. What exactly initiated that cosmic lottery is not explored. If the luminaries are, say, 3/4 mind and 1/4 matter, they are still 1/4 evil. They are still evil to some degree. Some actions of these divine luminaries must be questionable if that is the case. He also believes in an eternal universe. I reject that idea for the absurdities that result.
The above brings up my other issue: Plotinus, like the gnostics, utterly trivializes the nature of evil. How matter can display overt willful evil seems to contradict the Platonic notion of the passivity and inert nature of matter. Once again, one is left to speculate that because in Platonism no being is willfully evil, they are only evil by ignorance or by obstruction; matter seems to function more as an ignorance inducing, and good obstructing, hindrance. But using this as an explanation for the nature of willful evil, which certainly exists (counter to Platonist doctrine), can only be said to be a poor explanation. Plotinus' pantheism is somewhat ambiguous. He always keeps an aspect of divinity transcendent, so not all aspects of divinity are embodied in the cosmos. I don't feel the need to comment on that aspect of his philosophy.
I don't want to make this review too long. The point of all my reviews is to provide my thoughts on the book I've read and I've done that. The complete Enneads is highly recommended. The history of Philosophy in general, and Platonism and Idealism in particular, are indebted in varying degrees to Plotinus.
This is a dense work. It's the full unabridged Enneads published by Digireads. I had already read the Essential Plotinus, which was a very sparse selection of the Enneads. I am incredibly glad that I did not let the reading of that very insufficient sampling be my only foray into Plotinus. Just to give an idea of how meager that sampling was, let me list by Ennead and treatise what was found in the Essential Plotinus: I, 2; I, 3; I, 6; III, 8; IV, 3; IV, 8; V, 1; V, 2; V, 9; VI, 9. There are six Enneads, each containing nine treatises, in the complete Enneads. Elmer O'Brien did not include any treatises from the second Ennead and barely touched Enneads 3 and 6. There are many treatises in here that are equally, if not more, thought provoking and engaging, e.g. II, 6; III, 2; III, 7, III, 9; IV, 4; V, 1; V, 3-6; VI, 2; VI, 6; VI, 7--are some that I've marked for re-reading. All of the above prove beyond any doubt the merits of Plotinus.
The one thing I was struck by was Plotinus discussions of Being. There is much here that was later explored by the German Idealists; given my penchant for that school of philosophy, I was surprised and intrigued by how many parallels exist between Plotinus and Hegel and Schelling, but even with Kant and Fichte to some degree. The first treatise where this starts to become evident is treatise 6 of the second Ennead, entitled Quality and Form-Idea. Thankfully, the translators included in brackets the Greek original for Plotinus' terms for kinds of Being, e.g. "to on" and "e ousia", translated here as "being" and "reality", respectively. In various places throughout the Enneads, the way Plotinus uses these terms, parallels Schelling's and Hegel's use of the German terms "Seyen" and "Seyende". There are some differences, but the parallels are close enough to say without question that Plotinus was working within the same lines of thought. He discusses passivity and activity within these concepts of being, which is a notable feature of Schelling's work. Mind is also important for Plotinus as it was for Hegel's work. Here, presumably, the word translated as "Intellectual-principle" is most likely the Greek "nous", but, unfortunately, the underlying Greek term is not cited here. To say that Plotinus foreshadowed all later Idealism would be an understatement I think.
There are plenty of things I disagree with Plotinus about. Like most Platonists going back to Plato himself, Plotinus believed in the transmigration of souls (i.e. reincarnation)--one of the concepts Plato most likely took from the Pythagoreans. I won't get into my issues with that doctrine here. He also has a vacillating view regarding matter. He argues that all evil stems from matter (yet opposes the gnostics on related issues, ironically enough) but also believes that the supra-lunar world has some more divine and "pure" form of matter. He never really explains why sub-lunar and supra-lunar forms of hyle differ. One is left to speculate that the supra-lunar forms consist of less matter and more mind. Still, it is curious that the luminaries wind up taking part in less matter and earthly forms in more. What exactly initiated that cosmic lottery is not explored. If the luminaries are, say, 3/4 mind and 1/4 matter, they are still 1/4 evil. They are still evil to some degree. Some actions of these divine luminaries must be questionable if that is the case. He also believes in an eternal universe. I reject that idea for the absurdities that result.
The above brings up my other issue: Plotinus, like the gnostics, utterly trivializes the nature of evil. How matter can display overt willful evil seems to contradict the Platonic notion of the passivity and inert nature of matter. Once again, one is left to speculate that because in Platonism no being is willfully evil, they are only evil by ignorance or by obstruction; matter seems to function more as an ignorance inducing, and good obstructing, hindrance. But using this as an explanation for the nature of willful evil, which certainly exists (counter to Platonist doctrine), can only be said to be a poor explanation. Plotinus' pantheism is somewhat ambiguous. He always keeps an aspect of divinity transcendent, so not all aspects of divinity are embodied in the cosmos. I don't feel the need to comment on that aspect of his philosophy.
I don't want to make this review too long. The point of all my reviews is to provide my thoughts on the book I've read and I've done that. The complete Enneads is highly recommended. The history of Philosophy in general, and Platonism and Idealism in particular, are indebted in varying degrees to Plotinus.
July 16, 2018
I have chosen to perhaps write this review prematurely, before my thoughts settle and before I've reread certain parts of the text that I want to reread. But it is difficult to tell whether freshness or certainty is more beneficial for a review, and for now I choose the former.
I read this book because of my more mystic leanings and because Plotinus is referenced in the footnotes on just about every other page of my copy of Augustine's Confessions. I'm on a hunt for significant primary texts in the history of philosophy, and Plotinus seemed both interesting and influential.
The opening biographical chapter by Porphyry is entertaining. It seems that Plotinus was fond of nursing until he was eight. Most interesting to me, however, from this part is Porphyry's statement that, as opposed to caring about style, Plotinus' "one concern was for the idea" (7). Of course, I did not read this book in the Greek, so translation might have polished it, but I think a large part of my love for it is a result of its style.
I mentioned that I have mystic leanings, and as one might imagine this leads me to prefer Plato to Aristotle, and Plotinus, perhaps taking this aspect of Plato even further than Plato, was quite agreeable to me. The most enjoyable parts to me were his discussions of the contemplative life, found throughout the work but especially at the very end. A passage from nearer the beginning:
"Murders, death in all its guises, the reduction and sacking of cities, all must be to us just such spectacle as the changing scenes of a play; all is but the varied incident of a plot, costume on and off, acted grief and lament. For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not the Soul within but the Shadow outside of the authentic man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on this world stage which men have dotted with stages of their own constructing ... Those incapable of thinking gravely read gravity into frivolities which correspond to their own frivolous nature ... we cannot take laments as proof that anything is wrong; children cry and whimper where there is nothing wrong" (III.2.15, 194-195).
A long passage but a good one. What has led me away from literary studies lately has been its lack of purpose for life. It is enjoyable to unlock new methods to analyze a poem, but this does not affect my perception of things that I think matter more, such as real life. Thus, part of my interest in philosophy is a determination to flesh out my own beliefs about reality. Plotinus' mystic philosophy is just what I am looking for: it seems to grow distant, at times, from the practical, but ultimately I view it as a push toward a certain approach to life, culminating in VI.9. All of the ideas leading to that point do in fact lead to it. His philosophy necessitates - if it's correct - a certain style of living. And he has not abandoned the eudaimonic goal. "But there is a third order," he writes in V.9.1, "those godlike men who, in their mightier power, in the keeness [sic] of their sight, have clear vision of the splendour above and rise to it from among the cloud and fog of earth and hold firmly to that other world, looking beyond all here, delighted in the place of reality, their native land, like a man returning after long wanderings to the pleasant ways of his own countries" (499). He goes on to discuss the necessary attributes of such a person in V.9.2. This is a philosophy of life, and I view his other metaphysical discussions as a method to attain this lifestyle. And I believe it is correct. As I believe, and have always believed, this world is something of a mess, and not very pleasant, and Plotinus seems to believe this too, but he gives a large dose of hope, an escape from this realm in this life.
I could quote all of VI.9 if I'm not careful, but to wrap up this review, I will restrain myself to a single much shorter quote: "'Not to be told, not to be written': in our writing and telling we are but urging towards it: out of discussion we call to vision: to those desiring to see, we point the path; our teaching is of the road and the travelling; the seeing must be the very act of one that has made this choice" (VI.9.4, 701-702). This plainly states that a view and way of life is his goal.
I regret not discussing in detail his less directly practical ideas, which are very interesting, but I think other reviewers have done so, and this is my review, and therefore I review what I mainly took from the text which, as the above quote states, would have likely pleased Plotinus. I guess this makes me a Plotinian.
I recommend this book to anyone. It helps to have read some Plato first, but everybody should read Plato anyway, so my recommendation stands. This translation was clear, and the edition is nice, including multiple translations of tricky passages and helpful/pretty appendices. I plan on eventually working through the Loeb multi-volume edition as well.
I read this book because of my more mystic leanings and because Plotinus is referenced in the footnotes on just about every other page of my copy of Augustine's Confessions. I'm on a hunt for significant primary texts in the history of philosophy, and Plotinus seemed both interesting and influential.
The opening biographical chapter by Porphyry is entertaining. It seems that Plotinus was fond of nursing until he was eight. Most interesting to me, however, from this part is Porphyry's statement that, as opposed to caring about style, Plotinus' "one concern was for the idea" (7). Of course, I did not read this book in the Greek, so translation might have polished it, but I think a large part of my love for it is a result of its style.
I mentioned that I have mystic leanings, and as one might imagine this leads me to prefer Plato to Aristotle, and Plotinus, perhaps taking this aspect of Plato even further than Plato, was quite agreeable to me. The most enjoyable parts to me were his discussions of the contemplative life, found throughout the work but especially at the very end. A passage from nearer the beginning:
"Murders, death in all its guises, the reduction and sacking of cities, all must be to us just such spectacle as the changing scenes of a play; all is but the varied incident of a plot, costume on and off, acted grief and lament. For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not the Soul within but the Shadow outside of the authentic man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on this world stage which men have dotted with stages of their own constructing ... Those incapable of thinking gravely read gravity into frivolities which correspond to their own frivolous nature ... we cannot take laments as proof that anything is wrong; children cry and whimper where there is nothing wrong" (III.2.15, 194-195).
A long passage but a good one. What has led me away from literary studies lately has been its lack of purpose for life. It is enjoyable to unlock new methods to analyze a poem, but this does not affect my perception of things that I think matter more, such as real life. Thus, part of my interest in philosophy is a determination to flesh out my own beliefs about reality. Plotinus' mystic philosophy is just what I am looking for: it seems to grow distant, at times, from the practical, but ultimately I view it as a push toward a certain approach to life, culminating in VI.9. All of the ideas leading to that point do in fact lead to it. His philosophy necessitates - if it's correct - a certain style of living. And he has not abandoned the eudaimonic goal. "But there is a third order," he writes in V.9.1, "those godlike men who, in their mightier power, in the keeness [sic] of their sight, have clear vision of the splendour above and rise to it from among the cloud and fog of earth and hold firmly to that other world, looking beyond all here, delighted in the place of reality, their native land, like a man returning after long wanderings to the pleasant ways of his own countries" (499). He goes on to discuss the necessary attributes of such a person in V.9.2. This is a philosophy of life, and I view his other metaphysical discussions as a method to attain this lifestyle. And I believe it is correct. As I believe, and have always believed, this world is something of a mess, and not very pleasant, and Plotinus seems to believe this too, but he gives a large dose of hope, an escape from this realm in this life.
I could quote all of VI.9 if I'm not careful, but to wrap up this review, I will restrain myself to a single much shorter quote: "'Not to be told, not to be written': in our writing and telling we are but urging towards it: out of discussion we call to vision: to those desiring to see, we point the path; our teaching is of the road and the travelling; the seeing must be the very act of one that has made this choice" (VI.9.4, 701-702). This plainly states that a view and way of life is his goal.
I regret not discussing in detail his less directly practical ideas, which are very interesting, but I think other reviewers have done so, and this is my review, and therefore I review what I mainly took from the text which, as the above quote states, would have likely pleased Plotinus. I guess this makes me a Plotinian.
I recommend this book to anyone. It helps to have read some Plato first, but everybody should read Plato anyway, so my recommendation stands. This translation was clear, and the edition is nice, including multiple translations of tricky passages and helpful/pretty appendices. I plan on eventually working through the Loeb multi-volume edition as well.
October 30, 2010
Plotinus is my favourite philosopher. He was hugely influential on the Church Fathers who lived after him. They often considered him an honourary Christian, though Plotinus never actually participated in that group, but was very much a "pagan" philosopher in the "pagan" Roman society of his day. He and Origen had the same philosophy teacher (Ammonius Sacchas), but Origen was about 15 years older than Plotinus, so they probably did not study with him at the same time. If you are up for a mental challenge, and want to explore life, the universe, and everything, read this.
June 25, 2020
the soul is a meteor / a blossom of light / burned by harsh skies. so influential it is the skeleton key to Christian thought and Renaissance Painting, a primary text alike the Timaeus, the Vedas, the Nikayas (which all happen to rhyme), and an indispensable guide to the mystic on how to become One with the Void. scaling up the Ennead of Parmenides 8+1 affirmative/negative to eventually reach the Top, an ineffable meta-principle. the circle of emanation and return is the ultimate story of the stuttering of the One, recoils of shots in the War in Heaven that sparked between the logos and the void that took place before the Fiat Lux, the war was not fought with missiles and spears but axioms of being, propositions and proofs in the vacuum. and God won through reflexion: in the Nothing only the tautology of identity is self-supporting. the One is the ultimate meta-tautology, Atum masturbating ouroborically, a self-study in henosis. the main concepts are the arborescent hierarchy of the One-Being-Intellect triad. this fractalizes and is responsible for spirit's descent into matter which one must eventually escape by tracing back up the emanationist ladder one has tragically fell down from. oneness is goodness because individuation commits an object to being an intelligible unity. there can be no distinction between inside and outside within the One, being and center as a dimensionless point, God's being is his centrality and yet also this flickering as its own emanationist contraction and expansion in all its quasi-gnostic contours with theses like the badness of Nature but doesn't quite reach finality. finality as gnosis cannot be voiced or even thematized, yet even a deeper truth is the apophatic non-conceptualization of a negative/unknowable God is yet another capture mechanism, the inclusion of its own negation within the meta-logic in the Game with Being as an internal production of the One, that black hole brain structure you see from time to time: the Demiurge is a donut. the annular repetition of the torus coinciding and retroactively refuting yet clarifying Campbell's monomyth: the Hero's Journey is really an immanentized Spirit's journey. somewhere Plotinus says that the Odyssey is the eternal story of the Journey of the Spirit. spirit always has a story to tell precisely because it's there to tell it, because its being and its telling are one and the same. the One's overflow is the jouissance that fissions into Two. there is no room for a positive Evil in Plotinus only privations just as the monists before him, the Nous for him is Good. the Gnostic co-opts it as the origin of Evil, determination: the Demiurge. the je ne sais quoi, things best left unsaid, the black square as an art piece, or better, a black Sphere. man as a creator is himself co-operating in demiurgy, his art and ornament distractions or reminders to re-member your true Self, like how re-membering the limbs of Osiris is akin to restructuring the estranged Self. Plotinus thought the world-soul was something like a star that radiates Light (internality) everywhere and "adheres" only in that substance given to adhere to it and this mutual relation between ground and issue became the principle of non-contradiction. the One neither is one, nor is. the hierarchy of Spirit is the only hierarchy climbed by its recognition: it is hierarchy as such, of which all others participate in only formally. the chain of being as it should be. symbols speak in rhizomatic bursts of signification. there will come a time you'll read in color. the One overflows because it overflows, yet this statement seems more like an evasion than anything else and perhaps even neoplatonism is yet another root in this meta-intellectual fingertrap of the Demiurge, which is the God creating this material world easily demonized to a being of affect, terror, sense and horror. one question resounds and echoes after all the mysticalization: why did the One plunge himself into nescience?
he who is self-luminous is his own shadow
he who is self-luminous is his own shadow
March 21, 2011
A heavy reliance on Plato’s Timaeus and Parmenides results in Plotinus being classified as one of the first Neoplatonists by the many or an advocate of orthodox Platonism by the few. Either way, Plato had an impact.
Plotinus’ reliance on the more mystical, and perhaps the most ambiguous (Parmenides), Platonic works cues the reader to Plotinus’ style. Though this point is debatable, he strikes me much more of a mystic than a philosopher. To those who have given any thought to purpose in our being, it doesn’t take long to come to the realization that using solely rational thought fails to provide the longed for answers. Therefore there is always a leap to some value. To God, to gods, to truth, to experience. Plotinus at least doesn’t attempt to cloak his irrationality in the doublespeak endemic to philosophy. For Plotinus, the Sage finds answers through introspection after whittling away the illusions of life through the dialectic. This introspection yields a vision of the One from which Intelligence emanates and which thereby reflects upon the One through its own emanations which we view as the Soul. Or something close to this. The six Enneads take up just over 700 pages so I’m leaving a few things out.
At times, many times, a tedious read. Plotinus meanders, sometimes poetically but oftentimes randomly, as he constructs an internally consistent worldview that is reminiscent of Buddhism. Goodness is gauged by the distance one is from unity with the One. The One is beyond rational thought and is beyond Activity and Rest in its august Repose. Soul is not described as a personal attachment to the body, but an essence that surrounds us and fragments to the individual. Like a noise that is exists outside of ourselves but is heard by each or light that divides in a prism. In a rather intriguing sleight of hand to Aristotle’s prime mover hypothesis, Plotinus takes the One and its reflective emanation, Intelligence, and takes them outside of Time making Time a measurement for activity of the Soul. (III. 7, Time and Eternity) The One is beyond time and even Being, therefore to question who made the One is to miss the point that the unthinking, unbeing One is beyond creation. It is only through the unintended emanation of Intelligence that the question can even be posed by us.
The plethora of hyphenated proper nouns (i.e. the All-Soul, Real-Beings, Reason-Principle, etc) along with the infrequent definitions provided to terms gives the book an overall feel of a third century New Age cult handbook, but there are some good things buried within if you have the fortitude to dig them out.
Plotinus’ reliance on the more mystical, and perhaps the most ambiguous (Parmenides), Platonic works cues the reader to Plotinus’ style. Though this point is debatable, he strikes me much more of a mystic than a philosopher. To those who have given any thought to purpose in our being, it doesn’t take long to come to the realization that using solely rational thought fails to provide the longed for answers. Therefore there is always a leap to some value. To God, to gods, to truth, to experience. Plotinus at least doesn’t attempt to cloak his irrationality in the doublespeak endemic to philosophy. For Plotinus, the Sage finds answers through introspection after whittling away the illusions of life through the dialectic. This introspection yields a vision of the One from which Intelligence emanates and which thereby reflects upon the One through its own emanations which we view as the Soul. Or something close to this. The six Enneads take up just over 700 pages so I’m leaving a few things out.
At times, many times, a tedious read. Plotinus meanders, sometimes poetically but oftentimes randomly, as he constructs an internally consistent worldview that is reminiscent of Buddhism. Goodness is gauged by the distance one is from unity with the One. The One is beyond rational thought and is beyond Activity and Rest in its august Repose. Soul is not described as a personal attachment to the body, but an essence that surrounds us and fragments to the individual. Like a noise that is exists outside of ourselves but is heard by each or light that divides in a prism. In a rather intriguing sleight of hand to Aristotle’s prime mover hypothesis, Plotinus takes the One and its reflective emanation, Intelligence, and takes them outside of Time making Time a measurement for activity of the Soul. (III. 7, Time and Eternity) The One is beyond time and even Being, therefore to question who made the One is to miss the point that the unthinking, unbeing One is beyond creation. It is only through the unintended emanation of Intelligence that the question can even be posed by us.
The plethora of hyphenated proper nouns (i.e. the All-Soul, Real-Beings, Reason-Principle, etc) along with the infrequent definitions provided to terms gives the book an overall feel of a third century New Age cult handbook, but there are some good things buried within if you have the fortitude to dig them out.
February 3, 2014
One of the most important and influential philosophers ever in my opinion. Don't get tangled up in the introduction for too long, once you get into the thick of it, you will need to drink a coffee and then call someone who cares! Big foundational ideas that shaped Western civilization.
August 14, 2019
Beautiful.
Whenever Plotinus mentioned beauty, its categories and how he saw it. As oppose to Aristotle which emphasized the idea of the soul, something was missing in his writing which I cannot quite grasp. Perhaps it was because he was to analytical and didn't use enough showing language. Plotinus on the other hand, had a similar message filled with idealism. He presented Morality and empathy, these modern concepts and mentioned that a person isn't able to really realize the struggle of virtue, only if he himself lives in it, or to what we would call today as empathy.
Moreover when he mentioned that some beauty can be a part of a bigger thing. For example a Comedian would appreciate the comedy of Richard Pryor; where's a regular person is wouldn't see the beauty. His example was of the Older gentleman seeing himself in a young man.
On Personal immortality is the ability for an individual in philosophical terms to live on for a prolonged period. A person needs to believe and be part of the category of immortality and fit every criterion, which is found in Abrahamic religions, and many others. An Athiest or non-believer wouldn't fulfill personal immortality because he's a non-believer. We're already immortal. For example, if I decide to take the mystic approach Plotinus drives; individuals and souls have always been continuous and on until they stop existing in our relative universe. Why should we assume another a medium of oblivion exists.
Unlike Aristotle which rejects the idea, Plotinus presents the concept of the soul carrying on, given its fulfilling a particular purpose He gives different parts of the individual and love.
Whenever Plotinus mentioned beauty, its categories and how he saw it. As oppose to Aristotle which emphasized the idea of the soul, something was missing in his writing which I cannot quite grasp. Perhaps it was because he was to analytical and didn't use enough showing language. Plotinus on the other hand, had a similar message filled with idealism. He presented Morality and empathy, these modern concepts and mentioned that a person isn't able to really realize the struggle of virtue, only if he himself lives in it, or to what we would call today as empathy.
Moreover when he mentioned that some beauty can be a part of a bigger thing. For example a Comedian would appreciate the comedy of Richard Pryor; where's a regular person is wouldn't see the beauty. His example was of the Older gentleman seeing himself in a young man.
On Personal immortality is the ability for an individual in philosophical terms to live on for a prolonged period. A person needs to believe and be part of the category of immortality and fit every criterion, which is found in Abrahamic religions, and many others. An Athiest or non-believer wouldn't fulfill personal immortality because he's a non-believer. We're already immortal. For example, if I decide to take the mystic approach Plotinus drives; individuals and souls have always been continuous and on until they stop existing in our relative universe. Why should we assume another a medium of oblivion exists.
Unlike Aristotle which rejects the idea, Plotinus presents the concept of the soul carrying on, given its fulfilling a particular purpose He gives different parts of the individual and love.
January 3, 2008
Pro: interesting.
Con: if you didn't like Plato's Parmenides, run away fast.
Con: if you didn't like Plato's Parmenides, run away fast.
October 27, 2019
Plotinus says in this work the goal is not to become a good man but to become a god.
I love that about this and know it’s not meant in an egoistic way. For even Buddha is in agreement:
“Virtuous and devout men go to “heaven” - but a different path is taken by the Awakened Ones.”
[Dhammapada 126]
This man, Plotinus, was born possibly even a little before 200 AD and was purported to be close to those at the very root of esoteric, primordial Christianity; as well as riding the zeitgeist on the verge (as one of it’s fountainheads) of the Neo-Platonist Reconquista Movement.
Ammonius the Sack Bearer was claimed to be the one who initiated Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Plotinus here, later Longinus who taught Odenathus and his queen, young Poryphry later and a few others, into many mysteries - as it was said he was affiliated with the original gnostic 12 disciples’ adepts per Clement - see Rodney Collin and Lady Hahn who mention a few sources for this too. So much for Plotinus’ possible influences then.
Now Plotinus shows in this work the lower part of the soul is in coalescence with the senses and thought and goes whither such does (hypnos=undergnos).
But the upper is imperturbable and uses the biological machine as it’s instrument it need not be identified with at all - anymore than a craftsman need feel always the vibration in his tools in order to operate them; nor need he always use the same tools, he says.
As the Upanishads teach, we belong essentially to a third world of man of Direct Consciousness that can be equally Self Remembered in it’s dream or walking around state suddenly, and which is not contingent to either state once self awareness is dis covered, the Nous or Gnos awakened in the Astral Consciousness behind and before both.
For consciousness is principally centered and seated in the Lingha Sharira or Astral Body which is the most important and real soul to become cleansed (as Eliphas Levi and Theosophy speak of) and lucid. Such is a finer materia and denser materiality like brains and bodies arise from it’s effluvium moving out from immaterial consciousness in the astral, not the other way around in the links. Such clearing, disengaging from hypnos, cleansing of the lower soul bringing it up into the upper where the astral resides when this increases; this comes about principally by increasing direct consciousness as Plotinus shows.
He shows mind as consciousness and somewhat as a miner and the brain mined inside by it, and the mountain ratiocination of thoughts in us mined by it, the sort of in in the word in-tellect (tell meaning a hill and extension). Mind, intellect, intelligence then is not the briney brain or material; or psychic or akashic rolls of memories chiefly but asleep in all such until 3rd state self consciousness arises centered in the astral self and upper unhypnotized soul.
Plotinus speaks of this experience and of his most important moments in his life being where he experienced this Nous beyond the abode body, such enlightenment, a few times. It is the most important secret in Buddhism the Tathagata’s paths all lead to; and all Primordial Shamanic and Religious texts point toward such as paramount.
Forget saving the anima psyche (lower psychology) in life with a little “L” with all manner of psycho-analysis and religion - save the astral body while one has time, the extraction of the upper soul. Otherwise, even as it is exoterically written in the Old Testament by such as Solomon: “the Spirit returns to God and the body returns to the dust and what is left?”
Such is the liet motif in Plotinus too, easily missed by most re viewers. It is really key to so much.
As my spiritual godfather once told me, concerning even exoteric Christianities doctrines: “people forget the most important event was the Transfiguration. The Resurrection - however you take such to mean - was just an after effect of that.”
Now before him Pythagoras and after him Iamblichus also both made this distinction - as Plotinus does - between the upper (more unconditioned and conscious) and lower (more animus/psyche/passion filled) sides/siddhe’s of the entire soul - in it’s full undeveloped to developed spectrum. And they made clear, of the same, which to go toward. But Pythagoras said it was forbidden to reveal the border secrets of the way from the phenomenal world of becoming to the unconditioned world of noumena and spirit except to his students. So Plotinus is invaluable then as a revealer here in this work.
It is also mentioned a bit by the mystics in the early Christian Church in the writings of the Philokalia and in Old Egyptian Temple Writings as well; these distinctions and the goal.
So it is a great thing Plotinus made all this more clear and really so many things about the Cosmoses, Consciousness and the Highest good as well he also made wide open for us to ruminate in and act on.
The Enneads, which also means ninefold - more so than any other modern, and almost any other ancient, Philosophical work - are more ordered, lucid, compact, crystalline and clear. I think that is what one might enjoy most about reading it if you decide to. It is a great work.
It betrays every marking of an Olympian and Heroic - Highly and Well Ordered - Soul. Such writings we have come down to us from him are a rare treasury.
“I’m so sick and tired of trying to change your mind when it’s so easy to disconnect mine:
High(er) Time, High Times. I feel fine.”
- High Times, Elliott Smith
“Lifting the mask from a local clown,
feeling down like him
Seeing the light in a station bar
traveling far in sin
Sailing downstairs to the northern nine,
watching the shine of his shoes
Hearing the trials of the people there,
who's to care if they lose?
Take a look, you may see me on the ground
For I am the para site of this town
Dancing a jig in a church with chimes,
a sign of the times today
Hearing no bell from a steeple tall,
people all in dismay
Falling so far on a silver spoon,
making the moon for fun
Changing a robe [the Lingha Sharira] for a size too small,
people all get hung
Take a look, you might see me coming through
For I am the para site
who travels two-by-two:
I'm lifting the mask from a local clown,
feeling down like him
And I'm seeing the light in a station bar
traveling far in sin
And I'm sailing downstairs to the northern nine, watching the shine of his shoes
And hearing the trials of the people there,
who's to care if they lose?
Take a look, you might see me on the ground
For I am the para site of this town
Take a look, you may see me in the dirt
For I am the para site who hangs
from your skirt [outer abode body]”
- Para Site by Nick Drake
(a friend of Ayers, Pentangle and other Gurdjieffians carrying on the Neo-Platonist and *Esoteric* Christian’s Mysteries in his day)
I love that about this and know it’s not meant in an egoistic way. For even Buddha is in agreement:
“Virtuous and devout men go to “heaven” - but a different path is taken by the Awakened Ones.”
[Dhammapada 126]
This man, Plotinus, was born possibly even a little before 200 AD and was purported to be close to those at the very root of esoteric, primordial Christianity; as well as riding the zeitgeist on the verge (as one of it’s fountainheads) of the Neo-Platonist Reconquista Movement.
Ammonius the Sack Bearer was claimed to be the one who initiated Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Plotinus here, later Longinus who taught Odenathus and his queen, young Poryphry later and a few others, into many mysteries - as it was said he was affiliated with the original gnostic 12 disciples’ adepts per Clement - see Rodney Collin and Lady Hahn who mention a few sources for this too. So much for Plotinus’ possible influences then.
Now Plotinus shows in this work the lower part of the soul is in coalescence with the senses and thought and goes whither such does (hypnos=undergnos).
But the upper is imperturbable and uses the biological machine as it’s instrument it need not be identified with at all - anymore than a craftsman need feel always the vibration in his tools in order to operate them; nor need he always use the same tools, he says.
As the Upanishads teach, we belong essentially to a third world of man of Direct Consciousness that can be equally Self Remembered in it’s dream or walking around state suddenly, and which is not contingent to either state once self awareness is dis covered, the Nous or Gnos awakened in the Astral Consciousness behind and before both.
For consciousness is principally centered and seated in the Lingha Sharira or Astral Body which is the most important and real soul to become cleansed (as Eliphas Levi and Theosophy speak of) and lucid. Such is a finer materia and denser materiality like brains and bodies arise from it’s effluvium moving out from immaterial consciousness in the astral, not the other way around in the links. Such clearing, disengaging from hypnos, cleansing of the lower soul bringing it up into the upper where the astral resides when this increases; this comes about principally by increasing direct consciousness as Plotinus shows.
He shows mind as consciousness and somewhat as a miner and the brain mined inside by it, and the mountain ratiocination of thoughts in us mined by it, the sort of in in the word in-tellect (tell meaning a hill and extension). Mind, intellect, intelligence then is not the briney brain or material; or psychic or akashic rolls of memories chiefly but asleep in all such until 3rd state self consciousness arises centered in the astral self and upper unhypnotized soul.
Plotinus speaks of this experience and of his most important moments in his life being where he experienced this Nous beyond the abode body, such enlightenment, a few times. It is the most important secret in Buddhism the Tathagata’s paths all lead to; and all Primordial Shamanic and Religious texts point toward such as paramount.
Forget saving the anima psyche (lower psychology) in life with a little “L” with all manner of psycho-analysis and religion - save the astral body while one has time, the extraction of the upper soul. Otherwise, even as it is exoterically written in the Old Testament by such as Solomon: “the Spirit returns to God and the body returns to the dust and what is left?”
Such is the liet motif in Plotinus too, easily missed by most re viewers. It is really key to so much.
As my spiritual godfather once told me, concerning even exoteric Christianities doctrines: “people forget the most important event was the Transfiguration. The Resurrection - however you take such to mean - was just an after effect of that.”
Now before him Pythagoras and after him Iamblichus also both made this distinction - as Plotinus does - between the upper (more unconditioned and conscious) and lower (more animus/psyche/passion filled) sides/siddhe’s of the entire soul - in it’s full undeveloped to developed spectrum. And they made clear, of the same, which to go toward. But Pythagoras said it was forbidden to reveal the border secrets of the way from the phenomenal world of becoming to the unconditioned world of noumena and spirit except to his students. So Plotinus is invaluable then as a revealer here in this work.
It is also mentioned a bit by the mystics in the early Christian Church in the writings of the Philokalia and in Old Egyptian Temple Writings as well; these distinctions and the goal.
So it is a great thing Plotinus made all this more clear and really so many things about the Cosmoses, Consciousness and the Highest good as well he also made wide open for us to ruminate in and act on.
The Enneads, which also means ninefold - more so than any other modern, and almost any other ancient, Philosophical work - are more ordered, lucid, compact, crystalline and clear. I think that is what one might enjoy most about reading it if you decide to. It is a great work.
It betrays every marking of an Olympian and Heroic - Highly and Well Ordered - Soul. Such writings we have come down to us from him are a rare treasury.
“I’m so sick and tired of trying to change your mind when it’s so easy to disconnect mine:
High(er) Time, High Times. I feel fine.”
- High Times, Elliott Smith
“Lifting the mask from a local clown,
feeling down like him
Seeing the light in a station bar
traveling far in sin
Sailing downstairs to the northern nine,
watching the shine of his shoes
Hearing the trials of the people there,
who's to care if they lose?
Take a look, you may see me on the ground
For I am the para site of this town
Dancing a jig in a church with chimes,
a sign of the times today
Hearing no bell from a steeple tall,
people all in dismay
Falling so far on a silver spoon,
making the moon for fun
Changing a robe [the Lingha Sharira] for a size too small,
people all get hung
Take a look, you might see me coming through
For I am the para site
who travels two-by-two:
I'm lifting the mask from a local clown,
feeling down like him
And I'm seeing the light in a station bar
traveling far in sin
And I'm sailing downstairs to the northern nine, watching the shine of his shoes
And hearing the trials of the people there,
who's to care if they lose?
Take a look, you might see me on the ground
For I am the para site of this town
Take a look, you may see me in the dirt
For I am the para site who hangs
from your skirt [outer abode body]”
- Para Site by Nick Drake
(a friend of Ayers, Pentangle and other Gurdjieffians carrying on the Neo-Platonist and *Esoteric* Christian’s Mysteries in his day)
August 12, 2017
It's an arcane book but a good workout for the mind. Affords a rich glimpse of Greek thought; to hear Plotinus explaining his universe in his simple and direct voice is as vital in its way as anything by Plato/Aristotle, Homer, or the various Greek myths you've probably read. If none of the Greek writing you're familiar with seems convincing or relevant; check out Plotinus. There are some spell-binding passages in this dissertation of his.
Plotinus has a sober, dry, matter-of-fact delivery; he alternates between question-and-answer style and more simple itemization. The flow of words is tight and dense and blocky. But what emerges (even from the passages of near-gibberish) is that he is an honest writer and not afraid to admit when his knowledge falls short.
But he is at at least writing in the Christian world and so when he talks about 'evil' he treats it with a dimension that the Socratic schools before him, lack; (and in their lack, seem remote and unfamiliar to us).
Plotinus uses a large lexicon of opaque terms which are marvelous in showing how ancient schools of philosophy debated about metaphysical topics. You can tell by the way he keeps combing out the same strand of thought time and time again, (yet rarely the same way twice) and the words themselves are quite plain: one which recurs often is 'Magnitude'. This means little to us today, but concepts like these were crucial to Plotinus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaximander, and all these other joes. Magnitude, Quantity, Attribute. No end of reliance on these ideas.
Plotinus is naturally confronting a wide array of contradictory arguments from thinkers in other Schools and so he darts hummingbird-like, to-and-fro; over many hedges. It gets utterly incomprehensible at times; but that's because he's anatomizing abstract concepts which are meaningful to the other Greeks he was debating with, (not to us). 'The One' or 'entities', 'elements' or 'The First', 'the Primary'.
Still, his writers show a huge talent and it is enjoyable for this alone. Various topics: how the soul migrate to heaven (if at all); how does the soul arrive in newborns (if at all); do the stars truly affect anything; what is Matter; what is Beauty; what is Mind. What is the Self; what is Judgment. What is destiny and fate.
One thing I admire about this cryptic sage is that he is unafraid to advance his statements. He faces challenges squarely and stoutly. Refreshing!
Plotinus has a sober, dry, matter-of-fact delivery; he alternates between question-and-answer style and more simple itemization. The flow of words is tight and dense and blocky. But what emerges (even from the passages of near-gibberish) is that he is an honest writer and not afraid to admit when his knowledge falls short.
But he is at at least writing in the Christian world and so when he talks about 'evil' he treats it with a dimension that the Socratic schools before him, lack; (and in their lack, seem remote and unfamiliar to us).
Plotinus uses a large lexicon of opaque terms which are marvelous in showing how ancient schools of philosophy debated about metaphysical topics. You can tell by the way he keeps combing out the same strand of thought time and time again, (yet rarely the same way twice) and the words themselves are quite plain: one which recurs often is 'Magnitude'. This means little to us today, but concepts like these were crucial to Plotinus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaximander, and all these other joes. Magnitude, Quantity, Attribute. No end of reliance on these ideas.
Plotinus is naturally confronting a wide array of contradictory arguments from thinkers in other Schools and so he darts hummingbird-like, to-and-fro; over many hedges. It gets utterly incomprehensible at times; but that's because he's anatomizing abstract concepts which are meaningful to the other Greeks he was debating with, (not to us). 'The One' or 'entities', 'elements' or 'The First', 'the Primary'.
Still, his writers show a huge talent and it is enjoyable for this alone. Various topics: how the soul migrate to heaven (if at all); how does the soul arrive in newborns (if at all); do the stars truly affect anything; what is Matter; what is Beauty; what is Mind. What is the Self; what is Judgment. What is destiny and fate.
One thing I admire about this cryptic sage is that he is unafraid to advance his statements. He faces challenges squarely and stoutly. Refreshing!
February 28, 2015
If there was ever a work that would require a lifetime of reading and rereading it would be "The Enneads". Every passage can become a basis for treatise and many in fact have. I have combined its reading with multiple commentaries on it and some available lectures that try to expound the main ideas and concepts of the work.
Would be going back and forth in this work for many years to come trying to untangle the many levels of meaning and interpretations of core ideas.
Would be going back and forth in this work for many years to come trying to untangle the many levels of meaning and interpretations of core ideas.
February 27, 2021
I never thought I’d give a book 1 star because I reserve 1 star reviews for books that I believe make you worse off for reading them. This one deserves it. Maybe one day I’ll revise to a 2-star rating to reflect the historical importance...
I’ve been going through a solid 12-month philosophical journey and read Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and some more modern writers like Tolstoy or (yes, blasphemy) Ray Dalio. Reading Plotinus was supposed to close the chapter on Ancient philosophy which so far had been an absolute treasure trove of wisdom and applicable philosophies for life.
Plotinus is where humanity went wrong. It’s a dogmatic text that tries to cram reality into a made-up theory which clearly doesn’t work (demonstrated by Plotinus contradicting himself). Going the mystic/religious route rather than continuing the exploration of “good living” and inquiries on the meaning of life and how this world is built through scientific work and dialectic, is exactly why the Middle Ages happened and wasted centuries of human lives.
Plotinus bases his thinking on Plato and even sometimes the stoics, and then breaks everything they built by taking them literally and making everything about a mystic creator whom we should aspire to rejoin. It’s the easy solution to complex problems, but complex problems can’t be solved by easy solutions and a rule-book made up by one guy in his attic. We might never really figure it out, and we’ll probably realise that that’s part of the fun. So... please don’t shut down the scientific method and proper dialectic?
The Greeks and Romans didn’t take the gods too seriously, and they made some serious progress in thinking. I’ve been quoting and using their concepts constantly, and this stuff is 2000 years old! Plotinus just had to spoil the party... it’s unusable and almost unreadable mystic BS. If it wasn’t so old I’d call it “New Age”. Have I mentioned it’s poorly written, a chore to read and often contradictory from one tractate to the next...?
I’m going back to my stoics and the OGs Plato and Aristotle and I’ll try to forget I ever read this.
I’ve been going through a solid 12-month philosophical journey and read Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and some more modern writers like Tolstoy or (yes, blasphemy) Ray Dalio. Reading Plotinus was supposed to close the chapter on Ancient philosophy which so far had been an absolute treasure trove of wisdom and applicable philosophies for life.
Plotinus is where humanity went wrong. It’s a dogmatic text that tries to cram reality into a made-up theory which clearly doesn’t work (demonstrated by Plotinus contradicting himself). Going the mystic/religious route rather than continuing the exploration of “good living” and inquiries on the meaning of life and how this world is built through scientific work and dialectic, is exactly why the Middle Ages happened and wasted centuries of human lives.
Plotinus bases his thinking on Plato and even sometimes the stoics, and then breaks everything they built by taking them literally and making everything about a mystic creator whom we should aspire to rejoin. It’s the easy solution to complex problems, but complex problems can’t be solved by easy solutions and a rule-book made up by one guy in his attic. We might never really figure it out, and we’ll probably realise that that’s part of the fun. So... please don’t shut down the scientific method and proper dialectic?
The Greeks and Romans didn’t take the gods too seriously, and they made some serious progress in thinking. I’ve been quoting and using their concepts constantly, and this stuff is 2000 years old! Plotinus just had to spoil the party... it’s unusable and almost unreadable mystic BS. If it wasn’t so old I’d call it “New Age”. Have I mentioned it’s poorly written, a chore to read and often contradictory from one tractate to the next...?
I’m going back to my stoics and the OGs Plato and Aristotle and I’ll try to forget I ever read this.
June 1, 2023
Platonism as a hierarchy of Matter, Soul, Intellect, the One. Surprisingly interesting (esp. I.1-4, III.2-3, III.5.9, V.3.10, VI.8).
March 2, 2022
Odd amount of pregnancy allegories.
August 2, 2021
Plotinus and his Neoplatonic school exerted a deep and lasting influence on the philosophical, religious, and, importantly, mystical traditions of the Western and Near-Eastern worlds for over a thousand years. In fact, it would probably not be an overstatement to say that the work of Plotinus and his followers acts as the wellspring of the Western mystical and theological tradition, both in the Christian and Islamic worlds. For instance, Christian theologians attempting to characterize God’s nature through a method of “negative theology” reflected Plotinus’s argument that the ultimate divine principle was incapable of being circumscribed by any predicate, while Islamic philosophers often appropriated Neoplatonic notions of “emanation” to explain the apparent contradiction between a wholly transcendent God and the self-evident reality of the corporeal world.
Regardless, Plotinus’s contributions remain obscure relative to the other ancients, which probably shouldn’t be surprising given the hyper-materialist and positivist tenor of contemporary thought. While ancient thinkers like Aristotle, Socrates, and even Plato can be spun as admirable anticipators of the modern secular and scientific methods (however misleading this caricature can be), Plotinus is not susceptible to such an interpretation. In a sense, Plotinus’s Enneads is the summation and most radical statement of the idealist strain of ancient Greek thought --- for Plotinus, the physical world we inhabit is the terminal point and most faint expression of an enigmatic principle he refers to as the “One,” the infinitely powerful, transcendent, undivided, and supremely aloof ultimate principle.
The One is perhaps the main innovation Plotinus contributes to Greek thought. While Plato hinted at such a concept in dialogues like The Republic and Parmenides as a means of grappling with the transcendence of the Forms and their underlying unity, readers of Plato will recognize that it is generally not a central element of Plato’s system (if his dialogues can even be interpreted as advocating for a systemic philosophy). In contrast, Plotinus appropriates the concept and exalts it as the transcendent source of all “expressed principles.” While contemporary readers might see an obvious analogue to the Christian God in the One, this would be a mistaken impression, and the Neoplatonists were strongly critical of Christian division of the Godhead into the Trinity as well as their tendency to impart human characteristics like wrath, love, and even awareness to the ultimate principle. Neoplatonists like Plotinus saw the One as utterly impassive, self-sufficient, and simple; to imply that it experienced any concern with, or awareness of, the foibles of mortals introduced an unacceptable division of its simplicity. Plotinus relegated the act of creation to the mere third principle: Soul, a concept roughly analogous to Plato’s Demiurge, or the divine intelligence which shaped matter according to the transcendent Forms.
As alienating, even Lovecraftian, as the One may seem to a West accustomed to the notion of a personal deity, Plotinus’s account is suffused with a wonder and joy at the magnificence of the One and its emanations, and this acts as the inspiration for some of the Ennead’s most engrossing images. Often, he depicts a corporeal world whose order and beauty exist as a sort of divine efflorescence exuded by an inexhaustible source, and in this way, the One sustains reality through a sort of beneficent (albeit disinterested) outflowing.
There is a great deal to say about The Enneads, which is hopefully the case for any book pushing 900 pages in length. However, I would like to remark on the frequent criticism that this book embraces a sort of uncritical mysticism over genuine philosophical argument. Setting aside the unfortunate fact that mysticism has become a sort of hand-waving pejorative for any point of view that rejects or challenges scientific modernity, the fact of the matter is that The Enneads is a series of hard-nosed analytical philosophical treatises written squarely in the Greek philosophical tradition. Starting from a small number of initial premises, Plotinus constructs an internally coherent systematic philosophy that accounts for human psychology, motion, the cosmos, and their relationship to the Hypostases of Intellect and Soul via the mechanisms of emanation and return.
His account is mystical insofar as it attempts to address the lofty philosophical problems related to Being and its first principles, but this is generally the goal of all metaphysics carried out within the Greek tradition. At times, Plotinus does reject dialectical reason as a means of truly experiencing the One in favor of ecstatic union, but this is consistent with his overall characterization of the One and its relationship with Being and the corporeal world. How could the reasoning of a finite and imperfect intellect encompass the divine unity of the One? Reasoning itself implies division between subject and object, thesis and antithesis, problem and solution, but none of these polarities can be predicated of the One, according to Plotinus. For Plotinus, reasoning can only carry us so far towards the ultimate truth, and in my view, this expresses an important point about the nature of human reasoning. While contemporary science and scholarly methods rightly emphasize a sort of exhaustive articulation of problems through clear documentation and agreed-upon systems of symbolic languages, the cosmos and human experience within it are largely inexplicable in their totality, and growing towards truth means acknowledging that our accounts of things, as persuasive and well-argued as they might be, must inevitably fall short.
I found Plotinus’s depiction of a universe teeming with life, suffused with a divine and beneficent order, and emanating from a sublime and mysterious fountainhead that is simultaneously different yet immediately present to human subjectivity to be an engrossing and rewarding corrective to our dystopian and cynical age. This pivotal text is well worth a read (though a read-through is a tall order for most) for those interested in Platonism, the history of philosophy, and the origins of Western mystic and religious thought. Also, I urge you to purchase the Gerson version of the Enneads; without its extensive footnoting, clarifying notes, and its up-to-date translation, I’m afraid this difficult text would be rendered almost completely unintelligible.
Regardless, Plotinus’s contributions remain obscure relative to the other ancients, which probably shouldn’t be surprising given the hyper-materialist and positivist tenor of contemporary thought. While ancient thinkers like Aristotle, Socrates, and even Plato can be spun as admirable anticipators of the modern secular and scientific methods (however misleading this caricature can be), Plotinus is not susceptible to such an interpretation. In a sense, Plotinus’s Enneads is the summation and most radical statement of the idealist strain of ancient Greek thought --- for Plotinus, the physical world we inhabit is the terminal point and most faint expression of an enigmatic principle he refers to as the “One,” the infinitely powerful, transcendent, undivided, and supremely aloof ultimate principle.
The One is perhaps the main innovation Plotinus contributes to Greek thought. While Plato hinted at such a concept in dialogues like The Republic and Parmenides as a means of grappling with the transcendence of the Forms and their underlying unity, readers of Plato will recognize that it is generally not a central element of Plato’s system (if his dialogues can even be interpreted as advocating for a systemic philosophy). In contrast, Plotinus appropriates the concept and exalts it as the transcendent source of all “expressed principles.” While contemporary readers might see an obvious analogue to the Christian God in the One, this would be a mistaken impression, and the Neoplatonists were strongly critical of Christian division of the Godhead into the Trinity as well as their tendency to impart human characteristics like wrath, love, and even awareness to the ultimate principle. Neoplatonists like Plotinus saw the One as utterly impassive, self-sufficient, and simple; to imply that it experienced any concern with, or awareness of, the foibles of mortals introduced an unacceptable division of its simplicity. Plotinus relegated the act of creation to the mere third principle: Soul, a concept roughly analogous to Plato’s Demiurge, or the divine intelligence which shaped matter according to the transcendent Forms.
As alienating, even Lovecraftian, as the One may seem to a West accustomed to the notion of a personal deity, Plotinus’s account is suffused with a wonder and joy at the magnificence of the One and its emanations, and this acts as the inspiration for some of the Ennead’s most engrossing images. Often, he depicts a corporeal world whose order and beauty exist as a sort of divine efflorescence exuded by an inexhaustible source, and in this way, the One sustains reality through a sort of beneficent (albeit disinterested) outflowing.
There is a great deal to say about The Enneads, which is hopefully the case for any book pushing 900 pages in length. However, I would like to remark on the frequent criticism that this book embraces a sort of uncritical mysticism over genuine philosophical argument. Setting aside the unfortunate fact that mysticism has become a sort of hand-waving pejorative for any point of view that rejects or challenges scientific modernity, the fact of the matter is that The Enneads is a series of hard-nosed analytical philosophical treatises written squarely in the Greek philosophical tradition. Starting from a small number of initial premises, Plotinus constructs an internally coherent systematic philosophy that accounts for human psychology, motion, the cosmos, and their relationship to the Hypostases of Intellect and Soul via the mechanisms of emanation and return.
His account is mystical insofar as it attempts to address the lofty philosophical problems related to Being and its first principles, but this is generally the goal of all metaphysics carried out within the Greek tradition. At times, Plotinus does reject dialectical reason as a means of truly experiencing the One in favor of ecstatic union, but this is consistent with his overall characterization of the One and its relationship with Being and the corporeal world. How could the reasoning of a finite and imperfect intellect encompass the divine unity of the One? Reasoning itself implies division between subject and object, thesis and antithesis, problem and solution, but none of these polarities can be predicated of the One, according to Plotinus. For Plotinus, reasoning can only carry us so far towards the ultimate truth, and in my view, this expresses an important point about the nature of human reasoning. While contemporary science and scholarly methods rightly emphasize a sort of exhaustive articulation of problems through clear documentation and agreed-upon systems of symbolic languages, the cosmos and human experience within it are largely inexplicable in their totality, and growing towards truth means acknowledging that our accounts of things, as persuasive and well-argued as they might be, must inevitably fall short.
I found Plotinus’s depiction of a universe teeming with life, suffused with a divine and beneficent order, and emanating from a sublime and mysterious fountainhead that is simultaneously different yet immediately present to human subjectivity to be an engrossing and rewarding corrective to our dystopian and cynical age. This pivotal text is well worth a read (though a read-through is a tall order for most) for those interested in Platonism, the history of philosophy, and the origins of Western mystic and religious thought. Also, I urge you to purchase the Gerson version of the Enneads; without its extensive footnoting, clarifying notes, and its up-to-date translation, I’m afraid this difficult text would be rendered almost completely unintelligible.
June 19, 2009
The essense of mystic thought of all times. Grandeur of Logos and Ecstasy. This is an abridged edition, for a first contact with Plotinus's masterpiece. His thought of course isn't accesible easily. One shouldn't have the illusion that reading only one time a translation of the Enneads, in English, will understand the complicated and at the same time simple in its architecture Plotinian system of thought. If someone tries to be absorbed in the text, probably he will be disappointed. If again tries to read indirectly, and believes he understands the skeleton of Plotinus's thought, probably he will leave somehow or other with empty hands. Only with the combination of both, maybe, at the end, will comprehend something of his thought.
December 3, 2017
The peak of pagan philosophy; like a cathedral in thought. You can immediately see why so many Church Fathers adopted Plotinian themes (though adapted for Trinitarian theology, of course).
One curious thing about Plotinus is that you keep expecting him (or at least I kept expecting him) to refer to a revelation as the source of his system ... I found myself thinking, "wait, how does Plotinus know this?" It seems that he almost treats all previous thought as scripture, and then sets himself the very challenging hermeneutic task of making it all align, somehow (even passages in Plato and Aristotle that are literally not reconcilable).
One curious thing about Plotinus is that you keep expecting him (or at least I kept expecting him) to refer to a revelation as the source of his system ... I found myself thinking, "wait, how does Plotinus know this?" It seems that he almost treats all previous thought as scripture, and then sets himself the very challenging hermeneutic task of making it all align, somehow (even passages in Plato and Aristotle that are literally not reconcilable).
February 12, 2013
Invoking the Tyler Cowen rule: if it isn't worth the effort, put it down. A few parts in the First Ennead sparked thought, but he lost me in the Second/Third. Too much mysticism for my taste anymore.
January 1, 2019
This was an utter diarrhea of words in which the author drones on and on about philosophical concepts with the passion of a bored professor and often the intelligence of an orangutan. His abuse of syllogism through sophistry is truly painful to read in places.
August 23, 2007
One of the most important of the great world mystics.
December 11, 2022
Where does the soul go after death, according to the great thinkers in the history of philosophy? In the Phaedo, Plato tells us how we present the soul for judgement after death, and how it resumes the form it had before birth. Plato also tells us how we present the soul for punishment in its period of renewed life, which is a time not so much of living but of expiation. However, while Plato said that the soul was immortal, his pupil Aristotle said that the soul, like the body, was subject to decay. While the Stoics believed in a limited and impersonal sort of immortality where after death the souls of the wise become one with the divine spirit permeating the world, for the Epicureans, who believed that everything was but a series of temporary groupings of atoms in the void, the soul was a grouping of atoms, and therefore destined to disintegrate after death. In his Enneads, Plotinus argues for Plato’s position by disproving the theories of all the other three positions. Plotinus devotes his time to show that the soul is indeed immortal by exploring what the nature of the soul is. He argues against the view that the soul is a body.
And so, the first order to business for the Neoplatonist philosophy of Platonis is to sketch the physiology of the soul: "The vehicles of touch are at the ends of the nerves and the nerves start from the brain; the brain has therefore been considered the seat and center of the principle which determines feeling and impulse and the entire act of the organism as a living thing, which the instruments are found to be linked, there the operating faculty is assumed to be situated." Re-reading the Phaedo, Plotinus concludes that the soul arises from the seat of sensation, the brain, to couple, combine and, finally, to blend, in memory and the sensible objects of experience. Although in a general sense Plotinus champions Plato's philosophy, he differs from Plato by rejecting the idea that the soul and body are mixtures of essentials; he says they are distinct entities.
In assessing these different viewpoints, Plotinus suggests that our fundamental alienation from ourselves consists in the fact that we do not have knowledge or perception; perhaps this theory simply means that the Good exists in and of itself; "it consists, not in the condition itself, but in the knowledge and perception of it"; the fourth condition is that, as a society, we can be diagnosed as having a collective psychotic disorder, in the sense that we are suffering from a whole body problem where we are fundamentally unaware of the deterioration of our collective health and that we are subject to mental delusions. In my opinion, the soul arises from the seat of sensation to couplement with the outer world and, finally, to blend in memory and the sensible objects of experience.
Plotinus says, "We are not to think of evil as some particular bad thing, such as injustice for example, but as a principle distinct from any of the particular forms in which it becomes manifest." In this harmonized universe where external evil and suffering take their place as necessary elements in the great pattern, the great dance of the universe, evil and suffering can affect humans’ lower selves but can only exceptionally, in a thoroughly depraved way, touch their true, higher selves and so cannot interfere with the real well-being of the philosopher. How do we explain the teaching that evils can never pass away but exist of necessity; that while evil has no place in the divine order, it haunts mortal nature and this place forever? Does this mean that heaven is clear of evil, ever moving its orderly way, spinning on the appointed path, no injustice there nor any flaw, no wrong done by any power to any other, while injustice and disorder prevail on earth? Some critics argue that many Neoplatonic concepts and ideas are ultimately derived from Christian Gnosticism during the third century in Lower Egypt, and that Plotinus himself may have been a Gnostic before nominally distancing himself from the movement.
Plotinus also says that "there is another principle establishing the necessary existence of evil; given that the good is not the only existent thing, it is inevitable that by the continuous down-going or away-going from it, there should be produced a Last, something after which nothing more can be produced, this will be evil." Here we see that Plotinus' project is Leibnizian in nature, his object is to structure a theodicy, a way to account for the presence of evil in the world. Plotinus uses various principles to be expostulated later by Leibniz to shed light on the very careful distinctions about the nature of the One that Plotinus articulates in the Enneads. As in the present context, Plotinus identifies the One with the Good beyond being and thus distinct from the form of the good in the intelligible. Plotinus takes these three terms, unity, the good and being, and applies them to the One, with transformations in their meaning that correspond in relation to the transcendent One. They are examined here, however, in relation to the One’s omnipresence, undergoing a similar fundamental change, moving from external to internal causes of things. Although he distinguishes between causes, Plotnius does not consider explicitly the omnipresence of the One in his analysis.
According to Plotinus, there are beings who are evil in the world and thus have no soul; soulless, these are the truly the untouchables; and thus the idea of an ideological purity is born from essentializing the human condition, as intellectual principles comes to be embodied in community-based language-bonds. As Plotinus says, "We come to the Gnostic doctrine which denies matter or, admitting it, denies its evil; we need not seek elsewhere; we may at once place evil in the Soul, recognizing it as the mere absence of Good." This radical distinction between our bodies and our spirits led Gnostics to twist the early church's understanding of who Jesus was and is. The Gnostics saw Jesus as a messenger bringing the special knowledge of salvation to humanity's imprisoned soul. They believed that when Jesus came to earth He didn't possess a body like our own; instead, the Gnostics taught that He only seemed to have a physical body. This was a denial of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, the belief that Jesus was both fully God and fully human. But the Gnostics went even further: they also denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus, an event Paul argued must have taken place or our faith is in vain
There may me merit in the view that Plotinus promulgates a Neoplatonist worldview and a pre-Gnostic worldview, where the existence of evil fundamentally establishes the existence of the good and, vice versa, in an oppositional relation, they mark the same boundaries, setting up the ideological consciousness of the bicameral mind. Plotinus' conclusion is that evil exists in order to establish time as a memorial to the presence of Good. However, there remains the other half of Plotinus' question, regarding the administration of riches to the undeserving: since the good are in poverty while the wicked are wealthy, wouldn't that argue that, in God's kingdom on earth, his ordering is in reverse? Our resolved principle says that if there was no evil, then moral goodness wouldn't exist. According to Plotinus, moral goodness is a gift that has an essential relationship to the will of its bearer and recipient. As Joseph Conrad says, the bearer of a gift is entitled to his reward.
"This indicates the relation of the guiding spirit to ourselves; it is not entirely outside ourselves, it is bound up in our entire nature; it belongs to us as belonging to our very soul, but not insofar as we are human beings living a life to which it is superior." What is this Neoplatonic, pre-Gnostic reality which Plotinus bids us enter? It is this description of Spirit which saves us from falling into an even deeper evil, it is this power which consummates the chosen Life. In the face of the black man we find perfect finitude and, in the face of the white woman, perfect infinity; through the activities of the body, we can obtain knowledge of the immediate reality and true knowledge of the thing in itself. Plotinus says, "Matter is also an incorporeal substance; in this manner we must correct certain prevailing errors about authentic existence, about the ultimate essence of presence and about Being itself." It follows from all this that love, like our intellectual faculties, is concerned with absolute things (but we love most the mask which displays the face of infinity). As Plotinus says, "If we are sometimes advocates of the partial, that affection is not to be construed as direct but as only accidental, like our synthetic a priori judgment that a given triangular figure is composed from two right angles because the perfect triangle is absolutely so."
The turning away from material pleasures is made manifest in the faith of believers, an eternal existence among all existences, and blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of Heaven, for he shall have eternal life. "Still," Plotinus says, "this love is of a mixed quality: on the one hand there is in it the lack which keeps it craving and, on the other, it is not entirely destitute; as the deficient seeks more of what it has, and in the fact that certainly nothing which is absolutely void of the good would ever go seeking the Good." As it is said, to spring from poverty and dispossession, in the sense of one who lacks the good life and aspires to attain the will of reasoned principles, all present together in the soul, act so as to produce the good, which is Love. God will work all things together for the good of those who love Him. We are comforted with the knowledge that our decision to align our will with God's, and to always trust Him, will be rewarded.
And so, the first order to business for the Neoplatonist philosophy of Platonis is to sketch the physiology of the soul: "The vehicles of touch are at the ends of the nerves and the nerves start from the brain; the brain has therefore been considered the seat and center of the principle which determines feeling and impulse and the entire act of the organism as a living thing, which the instruments are found to be linked, there the operating faculty is assumed to be situated." Re-reading the Phaedo, Plotinus concludes that the soul arises from the seat of sensation, the brain, to couple, combine and, finally, to blend, in memory and the sensible objects of experience. Although in a general sense Plotinus champions Plato's philosophy, he differs from Plato by rejecting the idea that the soul and body are mixtures of essentials; he says they are distinct entities.
In assessing these different viewpoints, Plotinus suggests that our fundamental alienation from ourselves consists in the fact that we do not have knowledge or perception; perhaps this theory simply means that the Good exists in and of itself; "it consists, not in the condition itself, but in the knowledge and perception of it"; the fourth condition is that, as a society, we can be diagnosed as having a collective psychotic disorder, in the sense that we are suffering from a whole body problem where we are fundamentally unaware of the deterioration of our collective health and that we are subject to mental delusions. In my opinion, the soul arises from the seat of sensation to couplement with the outer world and, finally, to blend in memory and the sensible objects of experience.
Plotinus says, "We are not to think of evil as some particular bad thing, such as injustice for example, but as a principle distinct from any of the particular forms in which it becomes manifest." In this harmonized universe where external evil and suffering take their place as necessary elements in the great pattern, the great dance of the universe, evil and suffering can affect humans’ lower selves but can only exceptionally, in a thoroughly depraved way, touch their true, higher selves and so cannot interfere with the real well-being of the philosopher. How do we explain the teaching that evils can never pass away but exist of necessity; that while evil has no place in the divine order, it haunts mortal nature and this place forever? Does this mean that heaven is clear of evil, ever moving its orderly way, spinning on the appointed path, no injustice there nor any flaw, no wrong done by any power to any other, while injustice and disorder prevail on earth? Some critics argue that many Neoplatonic concepts and ideas are ultimately derived from Christian Gnosticism during the third century in Lower Egypt, and that Plotinus himself may have been a Gnostic before nominally distancing himself from the movement.
Plotinus also says that "there is another principle establishing the necessary existence of evil; given that the good is not the only existent thing, it is inevitable that by the continuous down-going or away-going from it, there should be produced a Last, something after which nothing more can be produced, this will be evil." Here we see that Plotinus' project is Leibnizian in nature, his object is to structure a theodicy, a way to account for the presence of evil in the world. Plotinus uses various principles to be expostulated later by Leibniz to shed light on the very careful distinctions about the nature of the One that Plotinus articulates in the Enneads. As in the present context, Plotinus identifies the One with the Good beyond being and thus distinct from the form of the good in the intelligible. Plotinus takes these three terms, unity, the good and being, and applies them to the One, with transformations in their meaning that correspond in relation to the transcendent One. They are examined here, however, in relation to the One’s omnipresence, undergoing a similar fundamental change, moving from external to internal causes of things. Although he distinguishes between causes, Plotnius does not consider explicitly the omnipresence of the One in his analysis.
According to Plotinus, there are beings who are evil in the world and thus have no soul; soulless, these are the truly the untouchables; and thus the idea of an ideological purity is born from essentializing the human condition, as intellectual principles comes to be embodied in community-based language-bonds. As Plotinus says, "We come to the Gnostic doctrine which denies matter or, admitting it, denies its evil; we need not seek elsewhere; we may at once place evil in the Soul, recognizing it as the mere absence of Good." This radical distinction between our bodies and our spirits led Gnostics to twist the early church's understanding of who Jesus was and is. The Gnostics saw Jesus as a messenger bringing the special knowledge of salvation to humanity's imprisoned soul. They believed that when Jesus came to earth He didn't possess a body like our own; instead, the Gnostics taught that He only seemed to have a physical body. This was a denial of the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, the belief that Jesus was both fully God and fully human. But the Gnostics went even further: they also denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus, an event Paul argued must have taken place or our faith is in vain
There may me merit in the view that Plotinus promulgates a Neoplatonist worldview and a pre-Gnostic worldview, where the existence of evil fundamentally establishes the existence of the good and, vice versa, in an oppositional relation, they mark the same boundaries, setting up the ideological consciousness of the bicameral mind. Plotinus' conclusion is that evil exists in order to establish time as a memorial to the presence of Good. However, there remains the other half of Plotinus' question, regarding the administration of riches to the undeserving: since the good are in poverty while the wicked are wealthy, wouldn't that argue that, in God's kingdom on earth, his ordering is in reverse? Our resolved principle says that if there was no evil, then moral goodness wouldn't exist. According to Plotinus, moral goodness is a gift that has an essential relationship to the will of its bearer and recipient. As Joseph Conrad says, the bearer of a gift is entitled to his reward.
"This indicates the relation of the guiding spirit to ourselves; it is not entirely outside ourselves, it is bound up in our entire nature; it belongs to us as belonging to our very soul, but not insofar as we are human beings living a life to which it is superior." What is this Neoplatonic, pre-Gnostic reality which Plotinus bids us enter? It is this description of Spirit which saves us from falling into an even deeper evil, it is this power which consummates the chosen Life. In the face of the black man we find perfect finitude and, in the face of the white woman, perfect infinity; through the activities of the body, we can obtain knowledge of the immediate reality and true knowledge of the thing in itself. Plotinus says, "Matter is also an incorporeal substance; in this manner we must correct certain prevailing errors about authentic existence, about the ultimate essence of presence and about Being itself." It follows from all this that love, like our intellectual faculties, is concerned with absolute things (but we love most the mask which displays the face of infinity). As Plotinus says, "If we are sometimes advocates of the partial, that affection is not to be construed as direct but as only accidental, like our synthetic a priori judgment that a given triangular figure is composed from two right angles because the perfect triangle is absolutely so."
The turning away from material pleasures is made manifest in the faith of believers, an eternal existence among all existences, and blessed is the man who will eat at the feast in the kingdom of Heaven, for he shall have eternal life. "Still," Plotinus says, "this love is of a mixed quality: on the one hand there is in it the lack which keeps it craving and, on the other, it is not entirely destitute; as the deficient seeks more of what it has, and in the fact that certainly nothing which is absolutely void of the good would ever go seeking the Good." As it is said, to spring from poverty and dispossession, in the sense of one who lacks the good life and aspires to attain the will of reasoned principles, all present together in the soul, act so as to produce the good, which is Love. God will work all things together for the good of those who love Him. We are comforted with the knowledge that our decision to align our will with God's, and to always trust Him, will be rewarded.
May 23, 2019
Književne novine
Beograd, 1984.
Prijevod sa starogrčkog, predgovor i napomene: Slobodan Blagojević
Ovo je trebao biti osvrt petog toma "Eneada", no kada sam pisao osvrt za četvrti tom greškom ga upisah u profil knjige petog toma "Eneada".
Primijetih da za prvi i drugi tom nisam uopće napisao osvrt, pa ih sada samo ozvjezdičih.
Zbrkao sam sve u organizacijskom smislu moje čitateljstvo. Što ćete, ni ja nisam više mlad, pa ja ću u prosincu imati dvadeset i sedam godina, ako ih uopće doživim.
Plotin je bez ikakve šale ili ironije bio bogolik. Stara kulerčino zbilja ti iz 2019. šaljem veliki respekt, zapravo i živiš i ovim mojim čitanjima tvojih "Eneada".
Kada ostvarim neograničenu vlast i osobnu diktaturu tiskat će se milijuni primjeraka "Eneada" na svim svjetskim jezicima. I prevest će se Plotin na hrvatski.
Dakle, pod profil sveukupnih "Eneada" bacam samo citate iz zadnjeg petog toma "Eneada".
Krećem s prvim:
"S jedne strane postoji istinito Sve, a s druge, priroda ovog što je vidljivo koja je podražavanje toga Svega. To zbiljsko Sve nije ni u čemu, jer ništa nije prije njega; a ono što je posle njega, to već mora biti u tom Svemu, ukoliko treba da postoji potpuno od njega zavisi i ne može bez njega ni da miruje ni da se kreće. I, ako se smatra da nešto nije u njemu kao u prostoru shvatajući prostor ili kao granicu tela koje obuhvata utoliko ukoliko obuhvata, ili kao neki razmak koji je ranije imao prirodu praznog i još uvek je ima, već da je u njemu zato što se osniva u njemu i u njemu miruje budući da je ono svuda i sve sadrži... zato što onom Svemu koje je prvo i koje je biće ne treba prostor, niti je ono uopšte u nečemu. Budući da je sve, to Sve ni na koji način ne može nedostajati sebi samom već je ispunjeno samim sobom i jednako je samom sebi.
...
Ukratko ako je u tom Svemu osnovano nešto različito od njega, tada to učestvuje u njemu, združuje se s njim i od njega dobija snagu ne deleći ga pri tom, nasuprot, to ga otkriva, kad mu se približi, kao nešto što jeste u sebi samom budući da ono ne izlazi iz sebe."
Ovaj citat kada govori o Svemu uspostavlja u dvadesetprvostoljetnom čitatelju paralelu s filmom "Matrix" kada ovaj svijet ("priroda ovog što je vidljivo") definira kao podražavanje toga Svega. Prava dubina Plotina leži u tome što se radi o metafizici, a ne o metapolitici, Plotin je time daleko općenitiji i kognitivno oštriji u odnosu na "Matrix" koji Platonovu spilju ne metaforizira kao nešto epistemološko, i metafizičko, nego prije svega kao nešto metapolitičko, može se reći da "Matrix" metaforizira Platonovu spilju kao Deep State.
Nadam se da vam je na prvi pogled jasno da u početnom dijelu Plotinova citata postoji jasna veza s Platonovom prispodobom o spilji.
Platonov utjecaj na Plotina se ogledava u bacanju kognitivštine da treba težiti Ljepoti, a ne lijepim tjelesima, lijepim događajima, lijepim osjećajima:
"To je slično kao kad se duša približava licu koje je doduše lepo ali ne može da privuče pogled zato što ljupkost koja se razliva po njegovoj lepoti nije primjetna. Zato treba reći da i ovde lepota jest pre ono što u samernosti blista nego sama samernost, i da je to ono za čim se žudi. Jer, zašto na živom licu postoji sjaj lepog, a na mrtvom samo trag, mada to lice još u svojoj puti i u svojoj samernosti nije uvenulo? I kod kipova lepši su oni koji su životniji, mada drugi mogu biti više samerni. I, zašto je čak i važniji (čovek) koji je živ lepši od statue lepog? To je zato što ovo više želimo, a želimo zato što poseduje dušu; dušu pak poseduje zato što je to više dobroliko, a više je dobroliko zato što je potpuno obojeno svetlošću Dobra. Obojena duša se budi, podiže se i sa sobom podiže ono što poseduje, i koliko to ono može (podneti), čini ga dobrolikim i budi ga."
Ništa bez duše, genijalno je kako Plotin konstatira da je ružan čovjek ljepši od lijepog kipa. Kada bi Plotin danas bio živ i doživo ovaj suvremeni transhumanistički socijalni inženjering u vidu bolesnih hentai sranja, seksualnih lutaka, seksualnih robota, i nadolazećih novih orijentacija; jebanje životinja je sljedeća seksualna orijentacija (jebači životinja su sljedeće žrtve patrijarhata) te cyber-seksualnosti.
Seksualizacija neljudskog je vrlo bolesna i simptomatična za transhumanizam, simptomatično je i to što većina ljudi s ulice nikada nije ni čula za transhumanizam ili posthumanizam...
O samom Onom/Prapočelu/Dobru/Bogu evo što Plotin u petom tomu Eneada baca:
"Dakle, Ono za sebe nije ni dobro, već je to za sve ostalo; tome je Ono potrebno, a samom sebi Ono ne bi bilo potrebno. Ta, to je smiješno! U tom slučaju Ono bi nedostajalo samom sebi. Ono ni ne gleda samo sebe, jer na osnovu tog gledanja mora u Njemu nešto biti ili postati. Ono je sve to prepustilo tome što je posle Njega, i čini se, u Njemu se ne nalazi ništa od onog što zapada svemu ostalom, tako da u Njemu nije ni bivstvo."
Plotin produbljuje što je već u prošlim tomovima "Eneade" ustvrdio; Ono/Prapočelo je užasno jednostavno, najjednostavnije je te je u tom smislu najpraznije, nema mnoštvenosti. Prapočelu ništa ne treba, ono je bez mišljenja i bez opažanja.
Plotin do u tančine argumentira zašto je Prapočelo bez mišljenja i bez opažanja, nemam vremena ni prostora da to sada bacim u osvrtu, uostalom, sami pročitajte Plotina.
Ako je svećenik boga Keka, inače moj osobni prijatelj kojemu ostadoh dužan piće i koji je u zadnje vrijeme postao sotonist na moje zgražanje i zgražanje doktora Mengelea (koji mi je također osobni prijatelj, čak komšija, semicimer) te sam čak i uvjeren da ni predsjedniku Kekistana (još jedna ikona hrvatske alternativne desnice koji mi je prijatelj) nije navedeno drago, ako je, da ponovim početak rečenice, svećenik boga Keka došao do ovog dijela osvrta neka ostane i za zadnji citat.
Njemu će ovaj citat biti najkul.
Na samom kraju ovog zadnjeg toma "Eneada" Plotin govori o metafizičkoj praksi, kako se umom ne može spoznati Ono/Prapočelo/Dobro/Bog već samo osjećajima, svojevrsnom meditacijom:
"Najviša teškoća od svih jest to što Ga ne možemo shvatiti ni na osnovu nauke, ni na osnovu mišljenja kao sve ostalo što je umstveno, već na osnovu nekog prisustva koje je više od nauke. Duša trpi odvajanje od vlastitog jedinstva i nije u potpunosti jedno kad zadobije naučnu spoznaju nečega, jer nauka je neki govor, a govor je mnoštvo. Ona tada izmiče Jednom i upada u broj i mnoštvo. Dakle, treba prevazići nauku i nikako ne izlaziti iz jedinstva; treba se udaljiti i od nauke i od predmeta nauke, od svega drugog i od prizora lepog. Jer, sve što je lepo docnije je od Njega i potiče od Njega, kao što dnevno svetlo potiče od Sunca. -Upravo zato- kaže Platon- Ono se ne može ni izreći ni napisati. Međutim, govorimo i pišemo o Njemu da bismo uputili ka Njemu, da bismo tim rečima osokolili na gledanje kao pokazujući put onom koji hoće nešto da vidi."
Plotin romantičarski u kasnoj antici shvaća da do Njega nema puta racionalizmom, znanošću jer je to duboko antitradicionalistički, duboko pogrešno i dogmatično, samo iracionalnom stranom možemo Njemu doći. Plotin je već u šestom stoljeću protiv obogotvorenja čovjeka.
Radi toga će Plotin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYJ7p...
Iskreno govoreći čast mi je što sam Plotina dovršio u ovako kul životnom razdoblju na možebitnoj životnoj raskrsnici.
Ponavljam; Plotine hvala ti devo stara, ova ide za tebe; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYJ7p...
¡Hasta luego!
Beograd, 1984.
Prijevod sa starogrčkog, predgovor i napomene: Slobodan Blagojević
Ovo je trebao biti osvrt petog toma "Eneada", no kada sam pisao osvrt za četvrti tom greškom ga upisah u profil knjige petog toma "Eneada".
Primijetih da za prvi i drugi tom nisam uopće napisao osvrt, pa ih sada samo ozvjezdičih.
Zbrkao sam sve u organizacijskom smislu moje čitateljstvo. Što ćete, ni ja nisam više mlad, pa ja ću u prosincu imati dvadeset i sedam godina, ako ih uopće doživim.
Plotin je bez ikakve šale ili ironije bio bogolik. Stara kulerčino zbilja ti iz 2019. šaljem veliki respekt, zapravo i živiš i ovim mojim čitanjima tvojih "Eneada".
Kada ostvarim neograničenu vlast i osobnu diktaturu tiskat će se milijuni primjeraka "Eneada" na svim svjetskim jezicima. I prevest će se Plotin na hrvatski.
Dakle, pod profil sveukupnih "Eneada" bacam samo citate iz zadnjeg petog toma "Eneada".
Krećem s prvim:
"S jedne strane postoji istinito Sve, a s druge, priroda ovog što je vidljivo koja je podražavanje toga Svega. To zbiljsko Sve nije ni u čemu, jer ništa nije prije njega; a ono što je posle njega, to već mora biti u tom Svemu, ukoliko treba da postoji potpuno od njega zavisi i ne može bez njega ni da miruje ni da se kreće. I, ako se smatra da nešto nije u njemu kao u prostoru shvatajući prostor ili kao granicu tela koje obuhvata utoliko ukoliko obuhvata, ili kao neki razmak koji je ranije imao prirodu praznog i još uvek je ima, već da je u njemu zato što se osniva u njemu i u njemu miruje budući da je ono svuda i sve sadrži... zato što onom Svemu koje je prvo i koje je biće ne treba prostor, niti je ono uopšte u nečemu. Budući da je sve, to Sve ni na koji način ne može nedostajati sebi samom već je ispunjeno samim sobom i jednako je samom sebi.
...
Ukratko ako je u tom Svemu osnovano nešto različito od njega, tada to učestvuje u njemu, združuje se s njim i od njega dobija snagu ne deleći ga pri tom, nasuprot, to ga otkriva, kad mu se približi, kao nešto što jeste u sebi samom budući da ono ne izlazi iz sebe."
Ovaj citat kada govori o Svemu uspostavlja u dvadesetprvostoljetnom čitatelju paralelu s filmom "Matrix" kada ovaj svijet ("priroda ovog što je vidljivo") definira kao podražavanje toga Svega. Prava dubina Plotina leži u tome što se radi o metafizici, a ne o metapolitici, Plotin je time daleko općenitiji i kognitivno oštriji u odnosu na "Matrix" koji Platonovu spilju ne metaforizira kao nešto epistemološko, i metafizičko, nego prije svega kao nešto metapolitičko, može se reći da "Matrix" metaforizira Platonovu spilju kao Deep State.
Nadam se da vam je na prvi pogled jasno da u početnom dijelu Plotinova citata postoji jasna veza s Platonovom prispodobom o spilji.
Platonov utjecaj na Plotina se ogledava u bacanju kognitivštine da treba težiti Ljepoti, a ne lijepim tjelesima, lijepim događajima, lijepim osjećajima:
"To je slično kao kad se duša približava licu koje je doduše lepo ali ne može da privuče pogled zato što ljupkost koja se razliva po njegovoj lepoti nije primjetna. Zato treba reći da i ovde lepota jest pre ono što u samernosti blista nego sama samernost, i da je to ono za čim se žudi. Jer, zašto na živom licu postoji sjaj lepog, a na mrtvom samo trag, mada to lice još u svojoj puti i u svojoj samernosti nije uvenulo? I kod kipova lepši su oni koji su životniji, mada drugi mogu biti više samerni. I, zašto je čak i važniji (čovek) koji je živ lepši od statue lepog? To je zato što ovo više želimo, a želimo zato što poseduje dušu; dušu pak poseduje zato što je to više dobroliko, a više je dobroliko zato što je potpuno obojeno svetlošću Dobra. Obojena duša se budi, podiže se i sa sobom podiže ono što poseduje, i koliko to ono može (podneti), čini ga dobrolikim i budi ga."
Ništa bez duše, genijalno je kako Plotin konstatira da je ružan čovjek ljepši od lijepog kipa. Kada bi Plotin danas bio živ i doživo ovaj suvremeni transhumanistički socijalni inženjering u vidu bolesnih hentai sranja, seksualnih lutaka, seksualnih robota, i nadolazećih novih orijentacija; jebanje životinja je sljedeća seksualna orijentacija (jebači životinja su sljedeće žrtve patrijarhata) te cyber-seksualnosti.
Seksualizacija neljudskog je vrlo bolesna i simptomatična za transhumanizam, simptomatično je i to što većina ljudi s ulice nikada nije ni čula za transhumanizam ili posthumanizam...
O samom Onom/Prapočelu/Dobru/Bogu evo što Plotin u petom tomu Eneada baca:
"Dakle, Ono za sebe nije ni dobro, već je to za sve ostalo; tome je Ono potrebno, a samom sebi Ono ne bi bilo potrebno. Ta, to je smiješno! U tom slučaju Ono bi nedostajalo samom sebi. Ono ni ne gleda samo sebe, jer na osnovu tog gledanja mora u Njemu nešto biti ili postati. Ono je sve to prepustilo tome što je posle Njega, i čini se, u Njemu se ne nalazi ništa od onog što zapada svemu ostalom, tako da u Njemu nije ni bivstvo."
Plotin produbljuje što je već u prošlim tomovima "Eneade" ustvrdio; Ono/Prapočelo je užasno jednostavno, najjednostavnije je te je u tom smislu najpraznije, nema mnoštvenosti. Prapočelu ništa ne treba, ono je bez mišljenja i bez opažanja.
Plotin do u tančine argumentira zašto je Prapočelo bez mišljenja i bez opažanja, nemam vremena ni prostora da to sada bacim u osvrtu, uostalom, sami pročitajte Plotina.
Ako je svećenik boga Keka, inače moj osobni prijatelj kojemu ostadoh dužan piće i koji je u zadnje vrijeme postao sotonist na moje zgražanje i zgražanje doktora Mengelea (koji mi je također osobni prijatelj, čak komšija, semicimer) te sam čak i uvjeren da ni predsjedniku Kekistana (još jedna ikona hrvatske alternativne desnice koji mi je prijatelj) nije navedeno drago, ako je, da ponovim početak rečenice, svećenik boga Keka došao do ovog dijela osvrta neka ostane i za zadnji citat.
Njemu će ovaj citat biti najkul.
Na samom kraju ovog zadnjeg toma "Eneada" Plotin govori o metafizičkoj praksi, kako se umom ne može spoznati Ono/Prapočelo/Dobro/Bog već samo osjećajima, svojevrsnom meditacijom:
"Najviša teškoća od svih jest to što Ga ne možemo shvatiti ni na osnovu nauke, ni na osnovu mišljenja kao sve ostalo što je umstveno, već na osnovu nekog prisustva koje je više od nauke. Duša trpi odvajanje od vlastitog jedinstva i nije u potpunosti jedno kad zadobije naučnu spoznaju nečega, jer nauka je neki govor, a govor je mnoštvo. Ona tada izmiče Jednom i upada u broj i mnoštvo. Dakle, treba prevazići nauku i nikako ne izlaziti iz jedinstva; treba se udaljiti i od nauke i od predmeta nauke, od svega drugog i od prizora lepog. Jer, sve što je lepo docnije je od Njega i potiče od Njega, kao što dnevno svetlo potiče od Sunca. -Upravo zato- kaže Platon- Ono se ne može ni izreći ni napisati. Međutim, govorimo i pišemo o Njemu da bismo uputili ka Njemu, da bismo tim rečima osokolili na gledanje kao pokazujući put onom koji hoće nešto da vidi."
Plotin romantičarski u kasnoj antici shvaća da do Njega nema puta racionalizmom, znanošću jer je to duboko antitradicionalistički, duboko pogrešno i dogmatično, samo iracionalnom stranom možemo Njemu doći. Plotin je već u šestom stoljeću protiv obogotvorenja čovjeka.
Radi toga će Plotin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYJ7p...
Iskreno govoreći čast mi je što sam Plotina dovršio u ovako kul životnom razdoblju na možebitnoj životnoj raskrsnici.
Ponavljam; Plotine hvala ti devo stara, ova ide za tebe; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYJ7p...
¡Hasta luego!
May 15, 2024
The treatises on Beauty are one of the highest points, I read the translation of Stephen Mackenna, I recommend it, it is the best that I know
June 16, 2021
«In quell’istante bisogna credere che Egli sia presente, allorché, come un nuovo dio, avvicinandosi alla casa di chi lo ha invitato, lo illumini: e se non si avvicina, non lo illumina. È così: un’anima non illuminata è priva di Dio; ma se è illuminata possiede ciò che cercava. Questo è il vero fine dell’Anima: toccare quella luce e contemplarla mediante quella stessa luce, non con la luce di un altro, ma con quella stessa con la quale essa vede. Poiché la luce, dalla quale è illuminata, è la luce che essa deve contemplare. Nemmeno il sole si vede mediante una luce diversa. Ma come questo può avvenire? Elimina ogni cosa.» (Plotino, Enneadi)
Le Enneadi contengono tutti gli scritti di Plotino, ovvero 54 trattati scritti fra il 254 e il 269 e raccolti da Porfirio in un volume unico suddiviso in sei gruppi di nove trattati (ennea, dal greco, significa appunto nove). È volontà plotiniana offrire la sua dottrina come «strumento culturale di salvezza», di ricercare la purezza del pensiero e affermare il valore autentico del philosophari.
Per questo motivo, il filosofo chiede e ottiene dall’imperatore Galieno di fondare in Campania la città di Platonopoli, quale locus di rifugio dalla negatività, dal nihilismus e dalla corruzione della vita mondana e politica.
Il leitmotiv delle Enneadi è, perciò, la trascendenza e la natura spirituale dell’anima. Leggere le Enneadi significa vivere un’esperienza interiore finalizzata al recupero e all’autorealizzazione dell’essere, l’eliminazione dell’effimero e la conquista dell’essenza di sé.
È bene, tuttavia, dare un rapido sguardo ai tre concetti-chiave dell’opera: l’Uno (o il Bene Assoluto), ineffabile e indescrivibile, dappertutto e in nessun luogo; il Nous (o l’Intelligenza), quale pensiero e atto dell’Uno, laddove essere è pensare; l’Anima (o Vita), misura di tutte le cose, aspira al ricongiungimento con l’Uno, il ritorno (epistrophé) a Dio. Sono queste le tre ipostasi che concorrono all’elaborazione della cosiddetta teoria della processione, cioè della generazione che si compie nell’eternità.
In tal senso, le Enneadi sono da Porfirio raccolte e suddivise così: la prima Enneade tratta delle questioni morali; la seconda contiene argomenti che riguardano il mondo e ciò che a esso si riferisce; la terza si sofferma ancora sul cosmo e sulle cose che sono in relazione al cosmo (primo volume). Seguono la quarta enneade che affronta i problemi relativi all’anima; mentre la quinta si sofferma sulle questioni relative all’Intelligenza e sulla realtà che è al di là di essa (secondo volume). La sesta e ultima enneade è focalizzata sui generi dell’essere (terzo volume).
ENNEADE UNO. Il vivente è un composto di anima e corpo: la tendenza al bene è propria dell’anima, mentre «il male noi lo facciamo, perché dominati dalla parte peggiore di noi stessi: difatti noi siamo molte cose, cioè desiderio, collera, immaginazione perversa».
Mediante le virtù civili (prudenza, saggezza, temperanza, coraggio) ci si purifica dalle passioni, si accede alla contemplatio divinorum e dal momento che l’anima si raccoglie in se stessa, separandosi dal corpo, diventa più bella:
«È chiaro che non c’è in lei nessun desiderio di cosa turpe: desidera il mangiare e il bere non per sé, ma per soddisfare i bisogni del corpo […] vorrà purificare anche la sua parte irrazionale […]: sarà come di un uomo che vive presso un saggio e trae profitto da questa vicinanza, o diventando simile ad esso, oppure vergognandosi di osare ciò che l’uom buono non vuole che egli faccia.»
Difatti, la prudenza fa sì che l’anima diventi incorporea e intellettuale; la temperanza è una fuga dai piaceri materiali; la saggezza e il coraggio sono gli ulteriori, indispensabili ingredienti per raggiungere la felicità, che comprende in sé il bello e il bene.
«Ma – si chiede Plotino – come si può vedere la bellezza dell’anima buona? Ritorna in te stesso e guarda: se non ti vedi ancora interiormente bello, fa come lo scultore di una statua che deve diventare bella. Egli toglie, raschia, liscia, ripulisce finché nel marmo appaia la bella immagine: come lui, leva tu il superfluo, raddrizza ciò che è obliquo, purifica ciò che è fosco e rendilo brillante e non cessare di scolpire la tua propria statua, finché non ti si manifesti lo splendore divino della virtù e non veda la temperanza sedere su un trono sacro.»
L’esposizione sul bene, quale centro da cui partono tutti i raggi, e realtà a cui ognuno aspira, non può prescindere dalla riflessione sulla natura e l’origine del male, che è privazione, «deficienza del Bene», e la cui esistenza è possibile ma non necessaria. Nella terza enneade, Plotino riferisce con maggior chiarezza:
«I mali sono conseguenze, e conseguenze necessarie; ed essi derivano da noi quando, senza essere costretti dalla provvidenza, congiungiamo da noi stessi le nostre azioni alle opere della provvidenza e a quelle che derivano da essa, ma non siamo capaci di accordare insieme le nostre azioni secondo la volontà della provvidenza e agiamo secondo il nostro volere […] o non operando secondo la provvidenza o accogliendo in noi qualche passione.»
ENNEADE DUE. A partire dalla contrapposizione tra materia corporea, impassibile e «cosa morta che viene ordinata», e materia divina, sostanza ed essere, Plotino si sofferma sulla creazione del mondo fisico, forgiato dall’anima come imago del mondo di lassù.
In tal senso, l’anima, «causa autodeterminantesi» è la produttrice di tutte le cose:
«Essa [l’anima] è animale in potenza, allorché non è ancora ma sta per essere; è potenzialmente artista, ed è potenzialmente tutto ciò che essa diviene, ma che non è sempre: dunque anche negli intelligibili c’è il potenziale.»
Ogni essere è vita, è cioè al contempo atto e in atto, «il luogo intelligibile è il luogo della vita, il principio e la sorgente vera dell’anima e dell’Intelligenza.»
ENNEADE TRE. Il filosofo asserisce che fra tutti gli esseri, l’uomo occupa nel mondo il posto migliore, in quanto è frutto della sua propria scelta, ma rispetto a quegli stessi esseri non è il migliore. Plotino riconosce sì la cattiveria umana, anche se come fattore caratteristico involontario, ma «partecipa, anche se non del tutto, di saggezza, d’intelligenza, d’arte e di giustizia». Perciò, «l’uomo è una bella creatura».
Inoltre, gli esseri viventi partecipano di ragione, anima e vita, ma la loro esistenza – sembra domandare ancora Plotino – è governata dal destino (unità delle cose inferiori) o dalla Provvidenza (unità delle cose superiori)? Una volta di più, fra l’astrologia e la religione, a prevalere è la philosophia. Il modus vivendi ivi raccomandato è di seguire il dèmone che ci è toccato in sorte, perché «non si può diventare diversi da ciò che si è».
Il saggio è, dunque,
«colui che agisce con la sua parte migliore. Forse non sarebbe saggio se avesse un demone che collaborasse con lui. In lui è attiva l’Intelligenza. Perciò o il saggio stesso è un demone o è al posto di un demone e ha per demone un dio.»
Parlare del mondo fisico e contrapporlo al divino significa altresì soffermarsi sul concetto di tempo e di eternità: il primo è la vita dell’anima, la seconda è vita completa e infinita; il primo è misura, la seconda è non smettere mai di essere (eternità deriva, infatti, da “essere sempre”).
Il tempo riguarda le cose sensibili, in quanto generate e in divenire; l’eternità è propria dell’intelligibile o, intesa aristotelicamente, è “essenza intelligibile”.
ENNEADE QUATTRO. La dissertazione plotiniana sull’anima comincia con la definizione della natura. In primo luogo, asserisce il filosofo, l’anima è un’essenza sempre identica a se stessa e appartiene certamente alla realtà intelligibile. Tale assioma necessita di essere superato, o perlomeno completato.
Subentra qui la descrizione delle sue caratteristiche peculiari. Più precisamente, Plotino sostiene che l’anima sia a un tempo divisibile (perché è in tutte le parti del corpo) e indivisibile (in quanto è tutta e intera in tutte le parti del corpo).
Ciò significa che essa è caratterizzata da molteplicità, essendo le cose molteplici, e unità, dal momento che essa governa le suddette cose. È “signora e dominatrice dei corpi”, dà vita a tutte le cose e possiede la ragione di tutto. Collocata fra sensibile e intelligibile, congiunge gli estremi e non è identica, ma simile, al soggetto conoscente e all’oggetto che deve essere conosciuto.
Dopodiché, Plotino evidenzia il distinguo tra la parte inferiore e superiore dell’anima individuale, ponendola in relazione con l’anima mundi. Illuminante, in tal senso, è il paragone con l’agricoltore che cura le sue piante e che vale la pena riportare integralmente:
«L’Anima dell’universo è simile all’anima di un grande albero che, senza fatica e in silenzio, governa la pianta – ed è questa la parte infima dell’Anima del Tutto; quanto alla parte inferiore dell’anima nostra, invece, è come se in un pezzo putrefatto dell’albero nascessero dei vermi – poiché è tale il corpo animato nell’universo; ma il rimanente dell’anima nostra, che è affine alla parte superiore dell’Anima universale, è simile a un agricoltore che, preoccupato dei vermi che sono nella pianta, rivolga alla pianta tutte le sue cure; oppure a chi, essendo sano in mezzo ad altri sani, si dedichi all’azione o alla contemplazione; ma se si ammala rivolge le sue attenzioni alle cure del corpo.»
L’anima è altresì dotata di percezione (un’immagine) e di immaginazione (conservazione di quell’immagine); di desiderio e di ricordo del desiderio: un cerchio mobile che aspira al centro, cioè all’Uno o Bene Assoluto.
ENNEADE CINQUE. Proseguendo la discettazione sull’anima, Plotino riprende a questo punto l’asserzione platonica circa la differenza tra la forma di conoscenza che deriva dalle impressioni sensibili, che non ha nulla di certo: l’opinione (doxa), e la Verità (epistème) che si trova nell’Intelligenza o Nous. Detta Intelligenza, raccogliendosi in se stessa, vede un lumen che splende all’improvviso. Pertanto,
«Non è necessario cercare da dove essa [la luce] appaia, poiché questo «da dove» non esiste: essa infatti non viene né va, ma appare e non appare: perciò non dobbiamo inseguirla ma aspettarla tranquillamente finché essa non si riveli, preparandoci ad essere spettatori, come un occhio che è in attesa del sorgere del sole, il quale levandosi dall’orizzonte […] si fa cogliere dagli occhi nostri.»
Ad ogni modo, il giusto atteggiamento è il disprezzo delle cose terrene, causa di ignoranza e sorgente dell’errore, e volgere lo sguardo verso la purezza e la perfezione della vita divina che non stanca mai:
«E poi, la vita, quando è pure, non porta stanchezza a nessuno; ciò che vive perfettamente, perché dovrebbe stancarsi? Lassù la vita è sapienza, non una sapienza che è acquisita per mezzo di ragionamenti, poiché è perfetta in eterno e non viene mai meno così che si debba farne ricerca, ed è la sapienza prima e non derivata: il suo stesso essere è sapienza, non un essere che diventi sapiente in un secondo tempo.»
Tripartendo infine gli uomini in coloro che ricercano il piacere e non riescono a volare in alto; coloro che, seppure aspirano alla bellezza, sono incapaci di giungere in cima e cadono nuovamente verso il basso; e gli uomini divini che gioiscono delle cose di lassù, Plotino chiude la quinta enneade con una sorta di elogio ai filosofi.
SESTA ENNEADE. Nell’ultimo dei tre volumi delle Enneadi, Plotino si dedica alla descrizione dei generi dell’essere, i quali derivano dall’Uno, principio e fine di tutte le cose.
Riprende la suddivisione degli uomini (primo uomo, uomo anteriore, ultimo uomo), sottolinea nuovamente l’inganno che deriva dai sensi, e conclude che le actiones forgiano l’essere. Ancora una volta, il filosofo si sofferma sul divario tra il mondo divino, dove l’Intelligenza, peregrinando incessantemente nella «pianura della verità», e il mondo di quaggiù, insozzato dal male, giacché dell’Intelligenza non vi è che una traccia.
L’aspirazione all’unità e al godimento del Bene, grazie al quale si diventa migliori, conduce Plotino ad esplorare e spiegare i concetti di libertà e volontà relativamente all’Uno. Affermando che il caso ha luogo fra le cose divenienti e “non è padrone di generare l’Uno”, in quanto l’Uno è padrone di sé e della realtà che ha voluto, conclude così:
«Non ogni cosa ha il potere di andare verso il meglio, ma nessuna è impedita da un’altra di andare verso il peggio: se non regredisce, è per virtù propria di non regredire, non perché ne sia impedita, ma perché appartiene al suo essere di non regredire. L’impossibilità di andare verso il male non significa impotenza da parte di colui che non ci va, ma deriva dal suo essere e dalla sua volontà. E il non andare verso un altro essere diverso implica, in Lui, una sovrabbondanza di potenza, non perché Egli sia posseduto dalla necessità, ma perché Egli stesso è la necessità e la legge delle altre cose.»
Memorabili sono le ultime parole plotiniane per ciò che concerne il fine di ogni uomo e la vita vera che è nel Bene, mentre l’esistenza terrena non è altro che “caduta”, “esilio”, “perdita delle ali”:
«Questa è la vita degli dei e degli uomini divini e beati: distacco dalle restanti cose di quaggiù, vita che non si compiace più delle cose terrene, fuga di solo a solo.»
© Antonietta Florio
Le Enneadi contengono tutti gli scritti di Plotino, ovvero 54 trattati scritti fra il 254 e il 269 e raccolti da Porfirio in un volume unico suddiviso in sei gruppi di nove trattati (ennea, dal greco, significa appunto nove). È volontà plotiniana offrire la sua dottrina come «strumento culturale di salvezza», di ricercare la purezza del pensiero e affermare il valore autentico del philosophari.
Per questo motivo, il filosofo chiede e ottiene dall’imperatore Galieno di fondare in Campania la città di Platonopoli, quale locus di rifugio dalla negatività, dal nihilismus e dalla corruzione della vita mondana e politica.
Il leitmotiv delle Enneadi è, perciò, la trascendenza e la natura spirituale dell’anima. Leggere le Enneadi significa vivere un’esperienza interiore finalizzata al recupero e all’autorealizzazione dell’essere, l’eliminazione dell’effimero e la conquista dell’essenza di sé.
È bene, tuttavia, dare un rapido sguardo ai tre concetti-chiave dell’opera: l’Uno (o il Bene Assoluto), ineffabile e indescrivibile, dappertutto e in nessun luogo; il Nous (o l’Intelligenza), quale pensiero e atto dell’Uno, laddove essere è pensare; l’Anima (o Vita), misura di tutte le cose, aspira al ricongiungimento con l’Uno, il ritorno (epistrophé) a Dio. Sono queste le tre ipostasi che concorrono all’elaborazione della cosiddetta teoria della processione, cioè della generazione che si compie nell’eternità.
In tal senso, le Enneadi sono da Porfirio raccolte e suddivise così: la prima Enneade tratta delle questioni morali; la seconda contiene argomenti che riguardano il mondo e ciò che a esso si riferisce; la terza si sofferma ancora sul cosmo e sulle cose che sono in relazione al cosmo (primo volume). Seguono la quarta enneade che affronta i problemi relativi all’anima; mentre la quinta si sofferma sulle questioni relative all’Intelligenza e sulla realtà che è al di là di essa (secondo volume). La sesta e ultima enneade è focalizzata sui generi dell’essere (terzo volume).
ENNEADE UNO. Il vivente è un composto di anima e corpo: la tendenza al bene è propria dell’anima, mentre «il male noi lo facciamo, perché dominati dalla parte peggiore di noi stessi: difatti noi siamo molte cose, cioè desiderio, collera, immaginazione perversa».
Mediante le virtù civili (prudenza, saggezza, temperanza, coraggio) ci si purifica dalle passioni, si accede alla contemplatio divinorum e dal momento che l’anima si raccoglie in se stessa, separandosi dal corpo, diventa più bella:
«È chiaro che non c’è in lei nessun desiderio di cosa turpe: desidera il mangiare e il bere non per sé, ma per soddisfare i bisogni del corpo […] vorrà purificare anche la sua parte irrazionale […]: sarà come di un uomo che vive presso un saggio e trae profitto da questa vicinanza, o diventando simile ad esso, oppure vergognandosi di osare ciò che l’uom buono non vuole che egli faccia.»
Difatti, la prudenza fa sì che l’anima diventi incorporea e intellettuale; la temperanza è una fuga dai piaceri materiali; la saggezza e il coraggio sono gli ulteriori, indispensabili ingredienti per raggiungere la felicità, che comprende in sé il bello e il bene.
«Ma – si chiede Plotino – come si può vedere la bellezza dell’anima buona? Ritorna in te stesso e guarda: se non ti vedi ancora interiormente bello, fa come lo scultore di una statua che deve diventare bella. Egli toglie, raschia, liscia, ripulisce finché nel marmo appaia la bella immagine: come lui, leva tu il superfluo, raddrizza ciò che è obliquo, purifica ciò che è fosco e rendilo brillante e non cessare di scolpire la tua propria statua, finché non ti si manifesti lo splendore divino della virtù e non veda la temperanza sedere su un trono sacro.»
L’esposizione sul bene, quale centro da cui partono tutti i raggi, e realtà a cui ognuno aspira, non può prescindere dalla riflessione sulla natura e l’origine del male, che è privazione, «deficienza del Bene», e la cui esistenza è possibile ma non necessaria. Nella terza enneade, Plotino riferisce con maggior chiarezza:
«I mali sono conseguenze, e conseguenze necessarie; ed essi derivano da noi quando, senza essere costretti dalla provvidenza, congiungiamo da noi stessi le nostre azioni alle opere della provvidenza e a quelle che derivano da essa, ma non siamo capaci di accordare insieme le nostre azioni secondo la volontà della provvidenza e agiamo secondo il nostro volere […] o non operando secondo la provvidenza o accogliendo in noi qualche passione.»
ENNEADE DUE. A partire dalla contrapposizione tra materia corporea, impassibile e «cosa morta che viene ordinata», e materia divina, sostanza ed essere, Plotino si sofferma sulla creazione del mondo fisico, forgiato dall’anima come imago del mondo di lassù.
In tal senso, l’anima, «causa autodeterminantesi» è la produttrice di tutte le cose:
«Essa [l’anima] è animale in potenza, allorché non è ancora ma sta per essere; è potenzialmente artista, ed è potenzialmente tutto ciò che essa diviene, ma che non è sempre: dunque anche negli intelligibili c’è il potenziale.»
Ogni essere è vita, è cioè al contempo atto e in atto, «il luogo intelligibile è il luogo della vita, il principio e la sorgente vera dell’anima e dell’Intelligenza.»
ENNEADE TRE. Il filosofo asserisce che fra tutti gli esseri, l’uomo occupa nel mondo il posto migliore, in quanto è frutto della sua propria scelta, ma rispetto a quegli stessi esseri non è il migliore. Plotino riconosce sì la cattiveria umana, anche se come fattore caratteristico involontario, ma «partecipa, anche se non del tutto, di saggezza, d’intelligenza, d’arte e di giustizia». Perciò, «l’uomo è una bella creatura».
Inoltre, gli esseri viventi partecipano di ragione, anima e vita, ma la loro esistenza – sembra domandare ancora Plotino – è governata dal destino (unità delle cose inferiori) o dalla Provvidenza (unità delle cose superiori)? Una volta di più, fra l’astrologia e la religione, a prevalere è la philosophia. Il modus vivendi ivi raccomandato è di seguire il dèmone che ci è toccato in sorte, perché «non si può diventare diversi da ciò che si è».
Il saggio è, dunque,
«colui che agisce con la sua parte migliore. Forse non sarebbe saggio se avesse un demone che collaborasse con lui. In lui è attiva l’Intelligenza. Perciò o il saggio stesso è un demone o è al posto di un demone e ha per demone un dio.»
Parlare del mondo fisico e contrapporlo al divino significa altresì soffermarsi sul concetto di tempo e di eternità: il primo è la vita dell’anima, la seconda è vita completa e infinita; il primo è misura, la seconda è non smettere mai di essere (eternità deriva, infatti, da “essere sempre”).
Il tempo riguarda le cose sensibili, in quanto generate e in divenire; l’eternità è propria dell’intelligibile o, intesa aristotelicamente, è “essenza intelligibile”.
ENNEADE QUATTRO. La dissertazione plotiniana sull’anima comincia con la definizione della natura. In primo luogo, asserisce il filosofo, l’anima è un’essenza sempre identica a se stessa e appartiene certamente alla realtà intelligibile. Tale assioma necessita di essere superato, o perlomeno completato.
Subentra qui la descrizione delle sue caratteristiche peculiari. Più precisamente, Plotino sostiene che l’anima sia a un tempo divisibile (perché è in tutte le parti del corpo) e indivisibile (in quanto è tutta e intera in tutte le parti del corpo).
Ciò significa che essa è caratterizzata da molteplicità, essendo le cose molteplici, e unità, dal momento che essa governa le suddette cose. È “signora e dominatrice dei corpi”, dà vita a tutte le cose e possiede la ragione di tutto. Collocata fra sensibile e intelligibile, congiunge gli estremi e non è identica, ma simile, al soggetto conoscente e all’oggetto che deve essere conosciuto.
Dopodiché, Plotino evidenzia il distinguo tra la parte inferiore e superiore dell’anima individuale, ponendola in relazione con l’anima mundi. Illuminante, in tal senso, è il paragone con l’agricoltore che cura le sue piante e che vale la pena riportare integralmente:
«L’Anima dell’universo è simile all’anima di un grande albero che, senza fatica e in silenzio, governa la pianta – ed è questa la parte infima dell’Anima del Tutto; quanto alla parte inferiore dell’anima nostra, invece, è come se in un pezzo putrefatto dell’albero nascessero dei vermi – poiché è tale il corpo animato nell’universo; ma il rimanente dell’anima nostra, che è affine alla parte superiore dell’Anima universale, è simile a un agricoltore che, preoccupato dei vermi che sono nella pianta, rivolga alla pianta tutte le sue cure; oppure a chi, essendo sano in mezzo ad altri sani, si dedichi all’azione o alla contemplazione; ma se si ammala rivolge le sue attenzioni alle cure del corpo.»
L’anima è altresì dotata di percezione (un’immagine) e di immaginazione (conservazione di quell’immagine); di desiderio e di ricordo del desiderio: un cerchio mobile che aspira al centro, cioè all’Uno o Bene Assoluto.
ENNEADE CINQUE. Proseguendo la discettazione sull’anima, Plotino riprende a questo punto l’asserzione platonica circa la differenza tra la forma di conoscenza che deriva dalle impressioni sensibili, che non ha nulla di certo: l’opinione (doxa), e la Verità (epistème) che si trova nell’Intelligenza o Nous. Detta Intelligenza, raccogliendosi in se stessa, vede un lumen che splende all’improvviso. Pertanto,
«Non è necessario cercare da dove essa [la luce] appaia, poiché questo «da dove» non esiste: essa infatti non viene né va, ma appare e non appare: perciò non dobbiamo inseguirla ma aspettarla tranquillamente finché essa non si riveli, preparandoci ad essere spettatori, come un occhio che è in attesa del sorgere del sole, il quale levandosi dall’orizzonte […] si fa cogliere dagli occhi nostri.»
Ad ogni modo, il giusto atteggiamento è il disprezzo delle cose terrene, causa di ignoranza e sorgente dell’errore, e volgere lo sguardo verso la purezza e la perfezione della vita divina che non stanca mai:
«E poi, la vita, quando è pure, non porta stanchezza a nessuno; ciò che vive perfettamente, perché dovrebbe stancarsi? Lassù la vita è sapienza, non una sapienza che è acquisita per mezzo di ragionamenti, poiché è perfetta in eterno e non viene mai meno così che si debba farne ricerca, ed è la sapienza prima e non derivata: il suo stesso essere è sapienza, non un essere che diventi sapiente in un secondo tempo.»
Tripartendo infine gli uomini in coloro che ricercano il piacere e non riescono a volare in alto; coloro che, seppure aspirano alla bellezza, sono incapaci di giungere in cima e cadono nuovamente verso il basso; e gli uomini divini che gioiscono delle cose di lassù, Plotino chiude la quinta enneade con una sorta di elogio ai filosofi.
SESTA ENNEADE. Nell’ultimo dei tre volumi delle Enneadi, Plotino si dedica alla descrizione dei generi dell’essere, i quali derivano dall’Uno, principio e fine di tutte le cose.
Riprende la suddivisione degli uomini (primo uomo, uomo anteriore, ultimo uomo), sottolinea nuovamente l’inganno che deriva dai sensi, e conclude che le actiones forgiano l’essere. Ancora una volta, il filosofo si sofferma sul divario tra il mondo divino, dove l’Intelligenza, peregrinando incessantemente nella «pianura della verità», e il mondo di quaggiù, insozzato dal male, giacché dell’Intelligenza non vi è che una traccia.
L’aspirazione all’unità e al godimento del Bene, grazie al quale si diventa migliori, conduce Plotino ad esplorare e spiegare i concetti di libertà e volontà relativamente all’Uno. Affermando che il caso ha luogo fra le cose divenienti e “non è padrone di generare l’Uno”, in quanto l’Uno è padrone di sé e della realtà che ha voluto, conclude così:
«Non ogni cosa ha il potere di andare verso il meglio, ma nessuna è impedita da un’altra di andare verso il peggio: se non regredisce, è per virtù propria di non regredire, non perché ne sia impedita, ma perché appartiene al suo essere di non regredire. L’impossibilità di andare verso il male non significa impotenza da parte di colui che non ci va, ma deriva dal suo essere e dalla sua volontà. E il non andare verso un altro essere diverso implica, in Lui, una sovrabbondanza di potenza, non perché Egli sia posseduto dalla necessità, ma perché Egli stesso è la necessità e la legge delle altre cose.»
Memorabili sono le ultime parole plotiniane per ciò che concerne il fine di ogni uomo e la vita vera che è nel Bene, mentre l’esistenza terrena non è altro che “caduta”, “esilio”, “perdita delle ali”:
«Questa è la vita degli dei e degli uomini divini e beati: distacco dalle restanti cose di quaggiù, vita che non si compiace più delle cose terrene, fuga di solo a solo.»
© Antonietta Florio
May 29, 2022
What a chore. Wait until the NeoPlatonists learn about evolution though.
November 21, 2007
This is an early complete interpretive translation of the Plotinus' Enneads. Plotinus is an extremely influential Neoplatonist. Neoplatonism is an important philosophic/religious stream that has influenced virtually all Western mystical traditions. Required reading for people interested in Western esotericism, kabbalah, Christian mysticism, and sufism. Because this is interpretive, for serious study you will need to supplement it with the Loeb Classical Library edition as well that is extremely literal and very difficult on its own to understand.
July 4, 2014
A major philosopher of the ancient world in the tradition of Plato. He developed a system of belief based on three principles: The One, The Intellect and The Soul. The composite of these principles is easily to prove the existence of God to most Christians, but it is unlikely that Plotinus meant any such thing - even though our concept of the Trinity seems to borrow an awful lot from him. A very difficult read.
October 31, 2016
Love is all you need,
love is all you need at the Butterfly Ball
love is all you need at the Butterfly Ball
February 19, 2019
I enjoy imagining Plotinus as a fellow who discovered the works of Plato, Aristotle's Metaphysics, and PCP.
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