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Essential Plotinus: Representative Treatises from the Enneads

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Few people today read Plotinus whose work ranked with Plato's and Aristotle's in Antiquity. Indeed a knowledge of this difficult and esoteric philosopher's thought is a must for understanding western philosophy through Spinoza. Unfortunately, MacKenna's edition-- the standard in English-- is lacking for many reasons (looseness and excessive liberty in translation for one). O'Brien avoids these pitfalls. This is a beautiful translation of a well-chosen representation of texts. Start with "On Beauty" for an easy introduction to a mystic tradition now largely forgotten. Make no mistake about it, however, Plotinus is difficult, albeit rewarding, to read under any circumstances (I almost suspect it is a proof of insanity to claim to comprehend fully "The Three Primal Hypostasis"). Luckily O'Brien has done several things to help the reader. Aside from a beautiful translation ably annotated, he supplies a useful introduction and an appendix of texts from Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics that Plotinus creatively appropriated and reinterpreted in a highly original way. O'Brien thoughtfully directs the reader's attention to the appropriate passage[s] in Plotinus. Read this book and you will begin to understand how the teaching of this esoteric Neo-Platonist was once a serious rival to Christianity. I highly recommend this book.

The base of Plotinus' philosophical system begins with what he calls The One, which is all things and no things... absolute unity, completely indivisible and set beyond existence. From The One emanates the less perfect universal Intellect from which the universal Soul emanates also less perfect, from which individual souls emanate. Plotinus postulates that every man is conflicted between a desire for individuality and a stronger, but poorly guided, yearning to return to the absolute unity of the one. He outlines that all beautiful things are more or less reflections of the Unity that all souls seek, but we are easily distracted by the reflections, blinded by the bodily, and led astray. he offers a cosmological view of the universe as it extends from the One and a partial guide to returning oneself to the One, although it is a journey he himself has not been able to complete.
Partially philosophic and partially a beautiful spiritual account, The Enneads are essential reading for anyone wanting to fully understand western philosophy; to see a crucial development on Platonic ideas and to see his influence in later philosophy/theology such as the works of Thomas Acquinas. It is so valuable its own right as a well written and thoughtful attempt to express something very familiar but unwordable that runs through the human psyche.
The Elmer O'Brien translation is a good introductory text for anyone wishing to become acquinted with, but not deeply familiar with the works of Plotinus. He presents a sort of "best of the treatises" arranged in a way that he finds most accesible to the reader. For the more devoted scholar, the multitude of Loeb copies will both be more accurate, more complete, more comprehensive and offer the oppurtunity to read the greek text directly, which offers many insights that can't be conveyed into a perspicacious english text. As an introductory read, however, the O'Brien far outweighs the McKenna translation in accuracy and conveys a tone somewhat more akin to the actual writings of Plotinus.

This is a very fine selection from the Enneads, in a lucid, quite readable translation. Far more accurate than McKenna's paraphrase, it is also much more euphonious than Armstrong's Loeb translation.

I have used this text with an undergraduate reading group; we read one of the selected Enneads (or two of the shorter ones) per week over the course of half a semester. It was a great success. The Enneads here are arranged in a logical order, leading students deeper and deeper into the metaphysics. There is a clear introduction to each treatise; and, what I like most about this edition, a group of related readings (from Plato, Aristotle, the presocratics and Stoics) keyed to the Plotinus readings. The edition also comes with a helpful glossary, defining Plotinian terms and crossreferencing them to the selected Enneads, and a 20-page introduction to Plotinus's thought. Taken all together, it is a (nearly) complete self-contained course in Plotinus, either for private study or in a group.

I have only a few criticisms. The selections concentrate on the distinction among the three hypostases and their natures. It can thus get a little repetitive: after reading Intelligence, Ideas and Being (V.9), The Good or the One (VI.9) and The Three Primal Hypostases (V.1), one does begin to feel that the same ideas are being hammered into one's head again and again (though Plotinus can be a bit like that...). It would have been interesting, for variety's sake, to have a little more on such subjects as providence, the nature of evil, free will etc. To supplement the text, I had my students read Pierre Hadot's wonderful "Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision," which avoids getting too much into the complexity of the metaphysics, stressing the transformative and ethical sides of Plotinus's philosophy; and Dillon & Gerson's "Neoplatonic Philosophy," which has (less finely translated) substantial excerpts from Plotinus on evil, providence etc., and continues on through to Proclus.

But having said that, I still think that this is the book to start with for anyone who wants to discover for him or herself the beauty and subtlety of Plotinus's philosophy.

The Essential Plotinus: Representative Treatises from the Enneads by Elmer O'Brien provides a short selection of Plotinus' more important writings. Though not widely read today Plotinus had a tremendous influence on ancient and medieval thought. Rather esoteric and oblique from a twentieth-first standpoint, his work remains relevant for students of philosophy and theology. In particular, Plotinus' view of the One's (God) transcendence and his thoughts regarding the limitations of intellectual analysis and reason are helpful.

I would recommend the book as an entry point for someone seeking an introduction to Plotinus. This is not, however, a good starting point for someone who is new to the field of philosophy. From my perspective, as others have noted, O'Brien's translation is quite readable (about as readable as Plotinus gets anyways). A potential drawback is the limited analysis and context provided by the author.

Plotinus was an unusual philosopher: Gibbon lambasted him and his fellow neo-Platonists for trying to turn philosophy into religion. Be that as it may, Plotinus is surely one of the very few pagan philosophers who could be called a mystic, and, of that group, he was beyond doubt the most influential. He was imitated and "reincarnated" many times during the centuries to come.

He's also legendarily difficult, and that's where this book comes in. If you want to get your feet wet, and get at least a beginner's understanding of Plotinus, this would seem to be the book to get. At the very least, a careful reading of the introduction and the first selection ("On Beauty") will give you an idea of how far you want to go with Plotinus.

Notice, though, Balzac's thought on the matter: "Man only lives, in fact, by some personal satisfaction. The passionless, perfectly righteous man is not human; he is a monster, an angel wanting wings." :-)

By the way, and ignoring Balzac, Plotinus seems to go rather well with Bruckner.

Plotinus, the philosopher. Interesting, how Plotinus takes the writings of Plato, the Stoics, Parmenides and fragments of Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Aristotle and pieces it all together in what he perceives as a clearer model. It's amazing how Plotinus and his predecessors knew all this. How did they? Now on much of their logic, there is validity, but in their assessment of what exactly happens at death and what created the human mind, soul and being is nothing short of human speculation, both valid expressions and those obviously erroneous.

Now the feeling I get from reading this book, that is, the psychology of Plotinus, is that of a both very learned individual with much profundity and yet with a pompous officiality of the "philosopher," sort of like the Martin Heidegger of German philosophy - the Mr. "knowledge" and official doctorate of educated impressiveness. I mean, did any of these philosophers die and come back from the other realm to relate in such accurate detail the accounts of Beinghood, the soul and the origin of life? And yet, Plotinus, in many instances, writes as "proof" from what he is interpreting, expounding and elaborating on. You really have to read this book with a grain of salt. I can't help thinking of Swedenborg and Hildegard von Bingen, the metaphysical visionaries of philosophical insight in the Christian mystic venue of origins and spiritual realms of life, although, these mystics do not appear as the pompous philosophical Plotinus type, but much more as the William Blake side of the coin as visionaries of ambiguity, as opposed to Plato, who although discounting myths for reason, wrote the accounts of Phaedo and Phaedrus, the amazing stories of spiritual life in the heavens and their subsequent returns. Such stories influenced our friend here, Plotinus.

And so with this in mind, the book itself has many limitations, but it is truly an interesting and enlightening read despite all its declared "proofs" of authenticity. And it relays an outstanding view on facilities of reason, intelligence, Beinghood, unity, diversity, multiplicity, oneness, and so forth. The only thing is sometimes Plotinus speaks rather clearly and beautifully and at other times obscurely and wordy like the German Immanuel Kant in his constant repetition of words over and over again defining themselves in Aristotelian terms of definitive over emphasis.

In this book, Plotinus outlays the three hypostasis, the "One," the "Intelligence," and the "Soul." The One transcends essence, existence, beyond number and name, denied of all multiplicity, the first and everything's goal. The Intelligence is undivided Being from which proceeds the Soul which is the maker of the cosmos through Nature. The Soul consists of a multiplicities that are the pilots of earthy life.

Beauty consists of an idea of symmetry of diversity in unity, that is an idea we have of multiplicity that is unified symmetrically, which we perceive in form and interpret as beauty. Not all things however are images of models, as the Soul is not that, but is a thing in itself, soul-as-such. The soul, tired of living with someone else, "falls" down into earthly individuality, and although it can never abandon itself, it becomes severed and fragmented and forgets its worth as it gets caught up in its inquires of bodily life. Souls do not descend freely nor are they sent. They move towards bodies indeliberately, as if by instinct based on a law of karma-justice, drawn without reflection. There is a paradox; humans become imprinted with memories, snapshots, from bodily impressions, so they are reduced from the memories of the collective soul, while the souls, when apart from bodies, then get caught up in the higher levels so that they forget the lower. The soul remembers its previous lives, even though some recollections have vanished through lack of appreciation. When freed of the body, it will remember things it could not remember in its present life, but in time forgets many of the vents it has encountered. There are two types of memories, the fragmented soul with bodily impressions of the earthly reality, and the soul that is joined with the collective Soul that is united in a larger memory database apart from the bodily sensations. (Pages, 91-92, 145, 152-160, 188).

"It is one thing to think; it is another thing to perceive one's thought. We are always thinking. But we do not always perceive out thought because the subject and receives the thoughts receives also, alternately, sensations." P. 158

"The wise man is penetrated by reason and has wholly within himself what he manifests to others. He contemplates himself. He achieves unity and immobility not only in regard to external objects but also in regard to the things within himself. He finds all things within himself." P. 168

One other thing about this book. Its amazing to see, and you can, the influence of Plotinus here on the early church fathers, such as Augustine, Tertullian and others, how they took Plato and Plotinus and covered it over with their Christian grid of terminology and interpretation and "wala," a new, more spiritually sophisticated and profound Christianity was born. This also influenced the Gnostic Christians as well, although Plotinus rejected Christianity in its severe lack of philosophical inquiry, which according to Plato and Plotinus, is the only way towards pure beauty and the higher realms.