Preface\\ Acknowledgments [xxi] Implicit in that acknowledgement is a further debt, to the inventers and sustainers of the Word Wide Web, which serves — in addition to its practical advantages — as a working image, //eikon aei eikonizomene// ("an image always reimagining itself" ["Un'immagine che perennemente si riproduce"((Cfr. Platone, //Tim.//, 92c7.))]; after [[II.3 [52]]].18, 17), of the Plotinian Intellect. ==== Part I: Prolegomena ==== 1. Why Read Plotinus? 2. How to Read Plotinus? 3. Theories about Metaphor 4. Dialectic ==== Part II: Metaphorically Speaking ==== 5. Naked and Alone 6. On Becoming Love 7. Shadow Plays and Mirrors 8. Reason Drunk and Sober 9. Dancing 10. Remembering and Forgetting [122] It is //forgetting// that is more significant for Plotinus than this-wordly use of the art of memory. Heracles's shadow might recall his earthly life, but //Heracles himself// does not remember it [[IV.3 [27]]].27.((After Homer, //Odyssey// 11.601ff.; see also [[IV.3 [27]]].32, 24-5; [[I.1 [53]]].12, 32-40.)) [...] [128] But the chief point of his art was to go naked into the shrine, beyond the statues, beyond our internal heroes. "Memory can play no part in well-being" ([[V.8 [31]]].10, 14). "We must certainly not attribute memory to God, or [to] real being or Intellect" ([[IV.3 [27]]].25, 13-4). Purification is a waking up from inappropriate images ([[III.6 [26]]].5, 23ff.), as dreams dissolve and are forgotten. But in the heavens, he says, we may still remember enough to recognize our friends, "by they characters and the individuality of their behaviour" ([[IV.4 [28]]].5, 20), even if they have spherical bodies (i.e., even if they are stars), and even if neither they nor we have any memory of our lives below. Nor do they need to //speak//. "For here below, too, we can know many things by the look in people's eyes when they are silent; but There all their body is clear and pure and each is like an eye, and nothing is hidden or feigned, but before one speaks to another that other has seen and understood" ([[IV.3 [27]]].18, 19-24).((Plotinus may have recalled the stories of how pantomimes conveyed their meanings so lucidly that even a skeptical Cynic, after watching an unaccompanied performance of the scandalous story of Ares and Aphrodite, exclaimed, "This is not seeing, but hearing and seeing, both: 'tis as if your hands were tongues!" (Lucian, "On Pantomime", 256).)) 11. Standing Up to the Blows of Fortune ==== Part III: The Plotinian Imaginary ==== 12. Platonic and Classical Myths 13. Spheres and Circles 14. Charms and Countercharms 15. Invoking Demons 16. Images Within and Without 17. Fixed Stars and Planets 18. Waking Up ==== Part IV: Understanding the Hyposteses ==== 19. Matter 20. Nature 21. Soul 22. //Nous// 23. The One ==== Part V: The Plotinian Way ==== [296] [The quotation is not from [[Isaiah 12]].6 but from [[Isaiah 11]].6]. Bibliography\\ Index of Passages from the //Enneads//\\ Index of Names and Subjects ---- Stranamente ignora [[KALLIGAS 2014]], sia nella bibliografia che nell'indice.