What do you think?
Rate this book
Enneads II
Loeb Classical Library #441
Plotinus (204/5-270 CE) was the first and greatest of Neoplatonic philosophers. His writings were edited by his disciple Porphyry, who published them many years after his master's death in six sets of nine treatises each (the Enneads).
Plotinus regarded Plato as his master, and his own philosophy is a profoundly original development of the Platonism of the first two centuries of the Christian era and the closely related thought of the Neopythagoreans, with some influences from Aristotle and his followers and the Stoics, whose writings he knew well but used critically. He is a unique combination of mystic and Hellenic rationalist. His thought dominated later Greek philosophy and influenced both Christians and Moslems, and is still alive today because of its union of rationality and intense religious experience.
In his acclaimed edition of Plotinus, Armstrong provides excellent introductions to each treatise. His invaluable notes explain obscure passages and give reference to parallels in Plotinus and others.
Plotinus (204/5-270 CE) was the first and greatest of Neoplatonic philosophers. His writings were edited by his disciple Porphyry, who published them many years after his master's death in six sets of nine treatises each (the Enneads).
Plotinus regarded Plato as his master, and his own philosophy is a profoundly original development of the Platonism of the first two centuries of the Christian era and the closely related thought of the Neopythagoreans, with some influences from Aristotle and his followers and the Stoics, whose writings he knew well but used critically. He is a unique combination of mystic and Hellenic rationalist. His thought dominated later Greek philosophy and influenced both Christians and Moslems, and is still alive today because of its union of rationality and intense religious experience.
In his acclaimed edition of Plotinus, Armstrong provides excellent introductions to each treatise. His invaluable notes explain obscure passages and give reference to parallels in Plotinus and others.
301 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 250
3 people are currently reading
79 people want to read
About the author
Plotinus
400 books317 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
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 9, 2018
Volume II is even better than Volume I and surprisingly one does not need to have read the first Volume in order to fully appreciate the second volume. There is no doubt that this is a complex and hard to follow book, but it’s well worth the effort, and the narrator does such a good job narrating at times I thought I was in Rome in 250 C.E. and was listening to Plotinus himself giving me a lecture.
People often say that all of philosophy is a commentary on Plato. I would have to make a modification to that statement after having read the Enneads. There is a reason why Peter Brown in ‘Through the Eye of the Needle’ (available at audible) said that Augustine takes Cicero’s civic duty and combines that with Plotinus’ metaphysics and the teachings of St. Paul and makes a religion. Plotinus does subsume Plato and Aristotle but he definitely takes their thoughts through his own filter and firms them up in such a way that this book stands firmly on its own.
Yes, this is an incredibly complex book to follow, but it’s obvious that this book dominated medieval thought well past Thomas Aquinas (1250ish C.E.), and if one has read Aquinas one sees the debt he owes to Plotinus (and of course Aristotle). In the 800 page book, ‘The Selected Writings of Thomas Aquinas’, Aquinas will cite Plotinus in his arguments repeatedly and when he wasn’t directly quoting him one could see the same structure within his other arguments. Plotinus’ Paganism was structurally sound enough to allow Augustine to dominate the medieval age by reworking Plotinus and was fluid enough when coupled with Aristotle to allow Aquinas to make faith subordinate to reason thus allowing science (knowledge, where truth equals being) to ultimately take a foothold.
As to structure, Plotinus will appeal to the ‘laws of thought’: identity, exclusion, and contradiction. The last of the three can be hard to follow since Plotinus would assume the contra to show the absurdity and one could lose the original point the author was trying to make, but once I got into what the author was really trying to say everything started to click. I’ve read Spinoza’s Ethics and Hegel’s Phenomenology multiple times and when I would get confused (which was often) I would put Plotinus into those authors system because there is a definite overlap between all three thinkers. That’s why I would say that all of Philosophy is a commentary on Plato and Plotinus not just Plato.
Identity as a law of thought depends on the nature of the substance and the essence for the object. This relates to Aristotle’s four (be)causes, in particular ‘form’ and ‘matter’. The middle ages will turn the concepts into ‘whatness’ and ‘thatness’ (the Latin was ‘quiddity’ and ‘haecceity’ and nobody remembers the latter today, that’s why I had to look it up before I wrote it!). Does justice come before the thought of the word within the One or is it only a definition for convenience sake? (It’s somewhat like the Euthyphro dilemma and Plotinus will offer his answer for it. Unfortunately, he’ll do it by fiat and it is with ‘fiat’ how Bertrand Russell will explain the Euthyphro dilemma).
The moment Plotinus said that what Parmenides really meant with his One was that knowing is being and being is truth and truth is the Good this book clicked for me. It took about 10 hours before he said that, but after that I was able understand what was going on. This book is antithetical to one of my most favorite books ‘On the Nature of Things’, by Titus Lucretius. That book dealt with understanding the world by being composed of atoms, this book deals with the Good, the source of all, the One, where ‘the intellectual principal’ springs from giving ‘the reason principal’ leading to the creation of the soul and being. What is meant by the Good? The Rational, the Moral and the Beautiful make up the Good and spring from the source of the One, he’ll say.
Our soul is a copy from the One by way of the 'intellectual principal' and as with all copies it is not as good as the original. All souls are of the One and are one and the same soul and as all geometrical truths are a reworking of the definitions, axioms and theorems each soul is part of the same soul, he’ll say. There is definitely an Eastern Buddhist/Hindu vibe within Plotinus’ version of Paganism and a modern reader will connect Schopenhauer’s Volume I of ‘Will and Representation’ to Plotinus without too much effort.
This is a complex book, but not impenetrable. Its influence is obvious. This book stands on its own and gives a peek into Paganism and is well worth the effort that is required in reading it. Most of what we do while experiencing being human we do ‘for the sake of which’ of something outside of itself, but Plotinus will convincingly argue that of which we do for its own sake is of the highest good or as Hannah Arendt will say, sometimes we just want to play chess for the sake of playing chess itself. In case it’s not obvious from what I said above, my highest Good, after life’s mundane chores have been taken care of, is learning about the real world through studying Philosophy, History and Science for their own sake. A book like this one belongs on anyone’s list who shares a similar goal to mine, but this book needs to be read in its proper context to be fully appreciated and probably should not be dismissed unceremoniously.
People often say that all of philosophy is a commentary on Plato. I would have to make a modification to that statement after having read the Enneads. There is a reason why Peter Brown in ‘Through the Eye of the Needle’ (available at audible) said that Augustine takes Cicero’s civic duty and combines that with Plotinus’ metaphysics and the teachings of St. Paul and makes a religion. Plotinus does subsume Plato and Aristotle but he definitely takes their thoughts through his own filter and firms them up in such a way that this book stands firmly on its own.
Yes, this is an incredibly complex book to follow, but it’s obvious that this book dominated medieval thought well past Thomas Aquinas (1250ish C.E.), and if one has read Aquinas one sees the debt he owes to Plotinus (and of course Aristotle). In the 800 page book, ‘The Selected Writings of Thomas Aquinas’, Aquinas will cite Plotinus in his arguments repeatedly and when he wasn’t directly quoting him one could see the same structure within his other arguments. Plotinus’ Paganism was structurally sound enough to allow Augustine to dominate the medieval age by reworking Plotinus and was fluid enough when coupled with Aristotle to allow Aquinas to make faith subordinate to reason thus allowing science (knowledge, where truth equals being) to ultimately take a foothold.
As to structure, Plotinus will appeal to the ‘laws of thought’: identity, exclusion, and contradiction. The last of the three can be hard to follow since Plotinus would assume the contra to show the absurdity and one could lose the original point the author was trying to make, but once I got into what the author was really trying to say everything started to click. I’ve read Spinoza’s Ethics and Hegel’s Phenomenology multiple times and when I would get confused (which was often) I would put Plotinus into those authors system because there is a definite overlap between all three thinkers. That’s why I would say that all of Philosophy is a commentary on Plato and Plotinus not just Plato.
Identity as a law of thought depends on the nature of the substance and the essence for the object. This relates to Aristotle’s four (be)causes, in particular ‘form’ and ‘matter’. The middle ages will turn the concepts into ‘whatness’ and ‘thatness’ (the Latin was ‘quiddity’ and ‘haecceity’ and nobody remembers the latter today, that’s why I had to look it up before I wrote it!). Does justice come before the thought of the word within the One or is it only a definition for convenience sake? (It’s somewhat like the Euthyphro dilemma and Plotinus will offer his answer for it. Unfortunately, he’ll do it by fiat and it is with ‘fiat’ how Bertrand Russell will explain the Euthyphro dilemma).
The moment Plotinus said that what Parmenides really meant with his One was that knowing is being and being is truth and truth is the Good this book clicked for me. It took about 10 hours before he said that, but after that I was able understand what was going on. This book is antithetical to one of my most favorite books ‘On the Nature of Things’, by Titus Lucretius. That book dealt with understanding the world by being composed of atoms, this book deals with the Good, the source of all, the One, where ‘the intellectual principal’ springs from giving ‘the reason principal’ leading to the creation of the soul and being. What is meant by the Good? The Rational, the Moral and the Beautiful make up the Good and spring from the source of the One, he’ll say.
Our soul is a copy from the One by way of the 'intellectual principal' and as with all copies it is not as good as the original. All souls are of the One and are one and the same soul and as all geometrical truths are a reworking of the definitions, axioms and theorems each soul is part of the same soul, he’ll say. There is definitely an Eastern Buddhist/Hindu vibe within Plotinus’ version of Paganism and a modern reader will connect Schopenhauer’s Volume I of ‘Will and Representation’ to Plotinus without too much effort.
This is a complex book, but not impenetrable. Its influence is obvious. This book stands on its own and gives a peek into Paganism and is well worth the effort that is required in reading it. Most of what we do while experiencing being human we do ‘for the sake of which’ of something outside of itself, but Plotinus will convincingly argue that of which we do for its own sake is of the highest good or as Hannah Arendt will say, sometimes we just want to play chess for the sake of playing chess itself. In case it’s not obvious from what I said above, my highest Good, after life’s mundane chores have been taken care of, is learning about the real world through studying Philosophy, History and Science for their own sake. A book like this one belongs on anyone’s list who shares a similar goal to mine, but this book needs to be read in its proper context to be fully appreciated and probably should not be dismissed unceremoniously.
August 28, 2015
I love Plotinus.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews