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Plotinus: Enneads Iv
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Plotinus (c.205–70) was a Neoplatonist philosopher, his work posthumously published by Porphyry and divided into six books, nine tractates each, called the The Enneads. This book investigates Plotinian “emanation,” its laws of poiesis (contemplative making) and the roles of nature, matter, logos (rational formative principle), and contemplation and highlights the subtler details of Plotinus’ cosmology by disentangling conceptual issues about the nature of soul and self (“we”) and their impact on the process of generation of time and the cosmos.
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Plotinus stands at the crossroads between the Greek tradition spanning the seven centuries from thales to Sextus Empiricus and the beginning of Christendom. Although he did not begin writing until he was forty-nine, his works, edited posthumously by his student Porphyry into fifty-four books called the Enneads, covered every major branch of philosophy except politics. In them, under the influence of all the ancient thinkers, especially Parmenides and Pythagoras, Plotinus tried to resurrect Plato's philosophy. ...Plotinus' works importantly influenced the Catholic theology that came with the end of the Roman Empire and the subsequent Christian era of the Middle ages.
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In his introduction to the philosophy of Plotinus, entitled Launching-Points to the Realm of Mind, Porphyry remarks that the inclination of the incorporeal Soul toward corporeality "constitutes a second nature [the irrational soul], which unites with the body" (Launching-Points 18 [1]). This remark is supposedly a commentary on Ennead IV.2, where Plotinus discusses the relation of the individual soul to the All-Soul. While it is true that Plotinus often speaks of the individual soul as being independent of the highest Soul, he does this for illustrative purposes, in order to show how far into forgetfulness the soul that has become enamored of its act may fall. Yet Plotinus insists time and again that the individual soul and the All-Soul are one (cf. esp. Ennead IV.1), and that Nature is the Soul's expressive act (see above).
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Plotinus is regarded by many modern philosophers as one of the founders of Neoplatonism. He is primarily remembered for his teachings, which were collected by Porphyry into a volume called the Enneads. This work gives Plotinus’s accounts of the religions and cults of his age. His own religious beliefs inclined toward the idea that one could achieve a spiritual union with the good (understood as the Platonic idea of a perfect realm of the ideal) through philosophic reflection.
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One solution Plotinus frequently suggests and argues for, mainly from facts about the unity of consciousness in sensation, is that the Soul is present as a whole at every point of the body it ensouls. In this way it can be at different places without being divided. Its being present as a whole in different parts of space shows its different ontological status from that of bodies which have numerically distinct spatial parts (see, for example, IV 2 (4).2). Another account... presents Soul as not present in body at all, but rather the reverse - body as present in Soul. Body is in Soul in the same way that bodies may be said to be in light or in heat: they thereby become illuminated or warm without (in Plotinus' view) dividing or affecting the source of light or heat in any way. Similarly, bodies become ensouled, alive, by virtue of the presence of Soul.
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Why such a man as Plotinus, with such ideas, remained a pagan, while Christianity offered him a sympathetic refuge, who can tell? Probably natural conservatism, in him as in Dr. Johnson-- conservatism and taste--caused his adherence to the forms at least of the older creeds. There was much to laugh at in Plotinus, and much to like. But if you read him in hopes of material for strange stories, you will be disappointed. Perhaps Lord Lytton and others who have invoked his name in fiction (like Vivian Grey in Lord Beaconsfield's tale) knew his name better than his doctrine. His "Enneads," even as edited by his patient Boswell, Porphyry, are not very light subjects of study.
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