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The Enneads: Abridged Edition (Penguin Classics)

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The Enneads is a staggering vision of unity. The concept of the soul plays a central part. Here's my take at a very brief summation:

1. The source of the soul ... and of everything else lies in a oneness (the One) that can be inferred but never contacted. So the One isn't a personal God. It isn't aware of us, so it doesn't intervene in our affairs.

2. What the soul receives ... are the goodness and intelligence that emanated from the source and are the principal characteristics of our cosmos. We exist in a cosmos that is fundamentally good and intelligent and we can sense and see that.

3. The mixed blessing for the soul ... is embodiment in matter, which, on the positive side, provides a context for helping and for personal growth. In a world of many, the one soul appears as many souls.

4. The downside of that blessing ... are pain, isolation, and the suffering and distraction caused by attachment to material things. Evil is real but we're created in a fundamentally good and intelligent place and with powers to deal with it.

5. The way to live ... includes recognizing that the many souls are in fact one. Individuality is the reward and the price the soul paid to become embodied. Just as the One gives richly via its emanations, so we should give to the cosmos. Enjoy and feel awed by the beauty around and within you.

6. We're no small things ... but a product of the One, of its Intelligence and Soul... each of our souls linked to each other via that one soul.

7. Soul and body go well together. The individual body being material isn't permanent. But the soul and the cosmos are, so the soul re-enters material life via a new body.

Unlike some religious positions that may seem similar, all of this and more can be demonstrated in a rational presentation that begins with just a few stated assumptions. That's what you'll find in The Enneads, a culmination of centuries of ancient Greek philosophy. As much a treasure as a book can be.

This is the cheapest edition of Plotinus that you can buy and is a decent edition for those who wish just to dip into Plotinus or read him for pleasure. The main stumbling block is the translation by MacKenna which reads majestically, but which is not as faithful to the text as it should be. If you are studying Plotinus as a philosopher then the best translation is the Armstrong in the Loeb series. However, that edition runs to seven volumes in hardback and thus is quite expensive. I must admit that I really do enjoy the MacKenna translation as art but not as philosophy.

The Enneads: Abridged Edition (Penguin Classics) translated by Stephen MacKenna (ISBN 014044520X).

The Penguin edition of Stephen MacKenna's translation Of Plotinus' 'Enneads' is printed on newsprint in a miniscule font, is sadly and inexplicably incomplete, and has a lengthy and condescending 40-page introduction by the Jesuit Paul Henry followed by a more interesting though much shorter one of 18 pages by editor John Dillon.

If it's the MacKenna translation you want - and there are some who feel it is one of the truly great translations of the age - skip this Penguin travesty of a book and treat yourself instead to a copy of the freshly edited Larson Publications 'Plotinus: The Enneads':

Plotinus: The Enneads (LP Classic Reprint Series)

An important feature of the Larson edition is that it has been annotated, not as the Penguin with mere references to Plato's dialogues (as if we didn't know that Plotinus had read Plato), but with useful and interesting alternate translations of many passages.

Also, unlike the Penguin which with its glued spine that cracks when opened and seems to have been designed to self-destruct after minimal use, the LP Classic Reprint is a PERMANENT BOOK, well-printed in a readable font on excellent paper, sewn in the traditional manner so that it opens flat, and is both clothbound and COMPLETE.

The Enneads (the Nines) is/are the greatest surviving work of spiritual philosophy of late antiquity.

Here we have expounded Plotinus' interpretation of the perennial philosophy. We are shown that the material world has a spiritual origin, for all of creation emanates down from the divine Source, through the various levels of manifestation, to our own world. Moreover, we are shown that mankind's ultimate goal is to turn away from the distractions of this lower material creation and seek union with this divine Source (God, the One, the Good.)

While Plotinus critised the Gnostic sects of his day, it is obvious that his own idea of intuitive intellectual knowlege, where subject and object unite in perfect understanding, is pure gnosis. The main disagreement seems to have been on the nature of the material world: The Gnostics held it to be inherently evil, while Plotinus saw it as simply lower and inferior, yet basically good.

This Penguin edition has a large and informative introductory section. It includes an excellent biography of Stephen Mackenna, the translator, who gave his life and health to this work. There is also a good brief historical sketch of late historical times to help the reader to understand the period in which Plotinus wrote. Plus, the brief, condensed, well-structured, outline of Plotinus' system of Philosophy is invaluable in getting an initial grip on the concepts that are expanded upon in the main work. Finally, Porphyry's brief contemporary biographical sketch of Plotinus is included.

There is great wisdom in this book for those who can penetrate the traditional intuitive mindset. This only to be expected since Plotinus studied the perennial philosophy at the great library of Alexandria for over a decade. There is also the fact that Plotinus admitted to three episodes of enlightenment, epiphany, or cosmic consciousness in his life. Like all true masters, he was more of a receiver of timeless divine truths than an originator of anything new and contrived.

Porphyry, the Greek philosopher who wrote the infamous but witty polemic "Against the Christians," edited and compiled the Plotinian corpus and divided them into six groups of nine, and named them the Enneads. Plotinus was the originator of Neoplatonism; and his philosophical ingenuity impacted the world significantly. Without taking any notice of Christianity himself, Plotinus' ideas still amazingly concur with numerous doctrines of the Church, such as the Trinity; and also his philosophical monism helped to repudiate the dualism of the Gnostics. The beginning of this volume contains several dissertations on the life and thought of Plotinus, which provides excellent background information that will act as a helpful prelude to reading the Enneads. As the Enneads were originally a collection of chatty essays and short articles compiled after his death, it interesting to note how clearly and intelligibly the translator Stephen Mackenna rendered this text. Overall, it is a good volume, and should be on the shelves of anyone enamored with good philosophy.

More than six centuries of Greco-Roman intellection culminate in a carefully reasoned monotheism. "Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it," says Plotinus, 'the last great philosopher of antiquity' and, by some accounts, the first of the "neo-Platonists" (although this has been said of earlier philosophers as well). Drawing on the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, and indeed centuries of Hellenistic argument, Plotinus (AD204-270), presents an epistemology and mysticism that has obvious and fundamental similarities to Judeo-Christian theology. Plotinus offers a single but essentially triune deity, One God in three related but separate roles. Interestingly similar to Trinitarian theology, but there are huge differences in Plotinus' theology and that of Christianity. Recall that in Plotinus' day, Christianity was viewed as an indefatigable social pariah, an anti-establishment cult. For Plotinus, man was reconciled with the divine by means of diligent intellection, discernment, and imitation of the Absolute and immaterial consciousness (God). In other words, man may reconcile himself with God by virtue of his own will and effort. Here is an idea not uncommon to theism, we find it in Gnosticism, Islam, and Hinduism, for example. By contrast, in Christian doctrine, reconciliation is a divine gift which man can accept, but could never earn by virtue of his own intrinsic merit and/or efforts. Yet Plotinus approaches more closely to a Christian understanding of ethics and knowledge than he himself might have known, stating that if the aspiration towards logic and virtue "which is in our nature exists also in this Ruling-Power, then we need not look elsewhere for the source of order and of the virtues in ourselves."
MacKenna's slightly pared-down translation of the Enneads [Penguin Classics] is a collection of six sets of treatises compiled by Porphyry, a student and confidant of Plotinus. Although they are not presented in the order in which Plotinus produced them (and a few are omitted here), the tractates embody Plotinus' system, which he held to be an advancement of Plato's system and one wholly superior to Aristotle's.
Plotinus' theology seems inadequate when compared to that of Augustine a century and a half later. But his logic is interesting -- Augustine cited him often -- and his understanding of the primacy of "the One" is something that readers will recognize as resembling the theology of monotheism:
"This Highest cannot be divided and allotted, must remain intangible but not bound to space, it may be present at many points, wheresoever there is anything capable of accepting one of its manifestations. ... It is precisely because there is nothing within the One that all things are from it: ... Seeking nothing ... lacking nothing, the One is perfect ... and in its exuberance has produced the new; this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator..."

it influenced 10 centuries of European Medieval thought, even though
no European had read it! But important Medieval writers and thinkers like St Augustine and the Pseudo-Dionyseus acted as conduits for his thought.

Plotinus borrowed from all the philosophies of the Classical and Ancient World. At the same time he placed great emphasis on the individual, so in this sense he is a kind of bridge between the modern and ancient worlds. Although his ideas are quarried by later Christian thinkers, Plotinus regards negative acts or behaviour as the product of a lack of intelligence, rather than the later Christian idea of evil itself being a kind of positive force. In fact pure intellect Plotinus regards as intrinsically good. It is this idea that becomes the foundation of Christian mysticism in the West, the idea that it is possible to know God through the intellect. God has three parts, the hightest of which is also a pure intelligence, according to Plotinus, who calls this highest part 'The Good.'

This book is really about the structure and order of Man, the Universe and Everything as it was seen in the late classical period, from a Platonist viewpoint. Interesting sections are on things like Astrology, then seen as a science: 'Are stars causes?'

One of the problems early Christians had is that the New Testament, unlike -say- Islam, does not provide a model of the Universe, a system of metaphysics or a detailed idea of what it is to be human, save in being sinful and requiring redemption. This book, like many others, was used as a source material by theologians such as St Thomas Aquinus, who were trying to construct an intellectual foundation around Christianity.

One of the problems people had in the past was not understanding biochemistry, of how matter can live, so they constructed a beautiful and interesting series of ideas about how souls enter and leave beings causing them to live or die.

One of the many interesting ideas here is how ideas themselves can have independent lives, as spirits as it were. This could be a forerunner of CG Jung's archetype theory of psychology.

This book is beautifully translated and very easy to read.

This is one of the best spirtual books I have ever read. It possesses an incomparably lofty spirituality. Through this book you can know that your soul is immortal and destined to return to the One. Reading this book brings me a deeper sense of peace than the Bible.

Plotinus was a deep thinker who gained great spiritual insight into many of the issues that are timeless in this great world of ours--just as relevant today as they were then, 17 centuries ago. Enneads cuts through the distractions of ritual that detract from true spirituality, and gives timeless messages, often in beautiful language, that are quite memorable.

On one hand, it's pointless reviewing this Penguin edition, because the only translation of Plotinus that is generally available and widely quoted is Stephen Mackenna's legendary, rhapsodic life-work presented here. This abridgement is still lengthy (500+ pages) and probably more of Plotinus than most readers want, but there it is. Armstrong's translation, available only at high price for many volumes, in the Loeb Library, is more literal. But as far as I know, the only time selections were made from that set, in an all English edition, was 1953, by Allen and Unwin. It was a gem, and I'm sorry I lost it. So this IS Plotinus.