By A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus
Plotinus (204/5-270 CE) was once the 1st and maximum of Neoplatonic philosophers. His writings have been edited through his disciple Porphyry, who released them a long time after his master's demise in six units of 9 treatises every one (the Enneads).
Plotinus seemed Plato as his grasp, and his personal philosophy is a profoundly unique improvement of the Platonism of the 1st centuries of the Christian period and the heavily comparable considered the Neopythagoreans, with a few affects from Aristotle and his fans and the Stoics, whose writings he knew good yet used significantly. he's a distinct blend of mystic and Hellenic rationalist. His inspiration ruled later Greek philosophy and prompted either Christians and Moslems, and remains to be alive this day due to its union of rationality and excessive spiritual event.
In his acclaimed variation of Plotinus, Armstrong presents very good introductions to every treatise. His necessary notes clarify imprecise passages and provides connection with parallels in Plotinus and others.
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Extra resources for Ennead VI.1-5 (Loeb Classical Library, Volume 445)
Sample text
Philo’s most frequent contention is that knowledge of God is beyond human capacity, because man’s creaturely state prevents such knowledge. It is not — and here we have a characteristically Platonist strain — because God out of envy denies man knowledge of Himself. So God addresses Moses thus: I freely bestow what is in accordance with the recipient; for not all that I can give with ease is within man’s power to take, and therefore to him that is worthy of my grace I extend all the boons which he is capable of receiving.
12 But does Philo go further? Does he speak of any kind of ecstatic union with God? We have seen that for Plato the Wnal vision of the Idea of the Beautiful is some sort of rapture and we shall Wnd again in Plotinus an understanding of ecstasy in which the soul is united with the One. What about Philo? Philo does discuss ecstasy. In one place (Quis Her. 249) he distinguishes four types of ecstasy: madness or melancholy, amazement, stillness of mind, and divine possession or frenzy. The fourth type is certainly literal ek-stasis: the mind is expelled and the divine spirit takes its place: When the light of God shines, the human light sets; when the divine light sets, the human dawns and rises.
There is also a long discussion in H. A. , 1947), I. 200–94, 325–59. 8 According to J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists 166. Philo 27 himself the Image of God, chiefest of all beings intellectually perceived, placed nearest, with no intervening distance to the Alone truly existent One. For we read, ‘I will talk with thee from above the Mercy-Seat, between the two Cherubim’ (Exod. 25:21): words which show that while the Word is the charioteer of the Powers, He who talks is seated in the chariot, giving direction to the charioteer for the right wielding of the reins of the Universe.