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Preface to the English Edition
Translator's Preface
Main Abbreviations
Porphyry: On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of His Books
Appendixes
A.
B.
C. Porphyry in Sicily and His Literary Activity There
First Ennead
I 1 [53]. What Is the Living Being, and What Is Man?
I 2 [19]. On Virtues
I.3 [20]. On Dialectic
I 4 [46]. On Well-Being
I 5 [36]. On Whether Well-Being Increases with Time
Synopsis
1. Well-being is of the present.
2. The propensity for life and actualization always concerns
the present.
3. The measure of well-being is not influenced by the prolongation of contemplation,
4. nor of pleasure,
5. nor of itself.
6. Ill-being may increase in time, but not so well-being.
7. Well-being transcends time.
8-9. Memory has no effect on it.
10. Virtuous actions are the result, not the cause, of well-being.
I 6 [1]. On Beauty
I 7 [54]. On the Primal Good and the Other Goods
I 8 [51]. On What Are and Whence Come Evils
I 9 [16]. On Going out of the Body
Synopsis
Theory: The soul must not be withdrawn violently, but must be allowed to divest itself of the body naturally.
Problems and solutions:
Violent suicide is not without passion.
Drugs are perhaps damaging to the soul.
Suicide deprives man of the possibility of progress.
Second Ennead
II 1 [40]. On Heaven
II 2 [14]. On the Movement of Heaven
II 3 [52]. On Whether the Stars Are Causes
II 4 [12]. On Matter
II 5 [25]. On What Exists Potentially and What Actually
II 6 [17]. On Substance, or on Quality
II 7 [37]. On Complete Transfusion
II 8 [35]. On Sight, or How Distant Objects Appear Small
II 9 [33]. Against the Gnostics
Third Ennead
III 1 [3]. On Destiny
III 2-3 [47-48]. On Providence, Books I-II
III 4 [15]. On Our Allotted Guardian Spirit
III 5 [50]. On Love
III 6 [26]. On the Impassibility of Things without Body
III 7 [45]. On Eternity and Time
III 8 [30]. On Nature and Contemplation and the One
Synopsis
1. Inaugural proposition: Everything aspires to contemplation.
Problem: How does Nature contemplate?
2. Nature as an unmoved and creative rational formative principle.
3. This logos is contemplative in character.
4. Hence Nature creates as it contemplates,
and action is a weakened form of contemplation.
5. The soul: each one of the different levels of its life is also a level of contemplation.
6. Action and reasoning in relation to contemplation.
7. Summary.
8. Contemplation in its primary form: the Intellect.
It is unitary, but also inherently multiple.
9. The highest principle: the One.
It transcends multiplicity of any kind.
It can only be grasped by that within us which is like it.
It is present in all things, as cause of all things.
10. The One as universal possibility.
11. As the ultimate end to which all things aspire, the One is also the supreme Good.
Introduction
As R. Harder has persuasively shown, the present “treatise” is in substance the first section of a far lengthier work, composed by P. around 265 CE with the primary aim of drawing up against those Gnostic apocalyptic treatises that were circulating at the time in Rome the “sublime mysteries” of the true philosophy, and more particularly of authentic Platonism.
III 9 [13]. Various Considerations
List of Variant Readings
Key to the Chronological Order of Plotinus' Treatises
Suggested Further Readings on Individual Treatises
Figures
Index of Passages Cited