The Cambridge history of later Greek and early medieval philosophy

Augustine. Biographical introduction: Christianity and philosophy

Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology, and Ethics

Plotinus, Self and the World addresses the question of the individual subject in its relationship with the world, the 'all'. It traces the self through its experience of memory and forgetfulness, looks at whether the idea of the subconscious exists in Plotinus, and notes the probable impact of Plotinus' thought on the development of the autobiography, in the form of Augustine's Confessions. Augustine historicises the Plotinian individual self. The book reinterprets the idea of to oikeion in Plotinus and places great emphasis on the importance of the idea of 'having', and the ability to possess is itself linked to being: thus we are close to the idea of personal authenticity. Lastly the book examines Plotinus' view of images and art, and notes his respect for the beauty of the human face. His positive view of the physical world is stressed.

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Plotinus, Self and the World

Plotinus is the first Greek philosopher to hold a systematic theory of consciousness. The key feature of his theory is that it involves multiple layers of experience: different layers of consciousness occur in different levels of self. This layering of higher modes of consciousness on lower ones provides human beings with a rich experiential world, and enables human beings to draw on their own experience to investigate their true self and the nature of reality. This involves a robust notion of subjectivity. However, it is a notion of subjectivity that is unique to Plotinus, and remarkably different from the Post-Cartesian tradition. Behind the plurality of terms Plotinus uses to express consciousness, and behind the plurality of entities to which Plotinus attributes consciousness (such as the divine souls and the hypostases), lies a theory of human consciousness. It is a Platonist theory shaped by engagement with rival schools of ancient thought.

Plotinus on Consciousness

The collected philosophical essays of Plotinus—to which we still unfortunately give the senseless and unplotinian title Enneads —constitute a nodal point in the evolution of Western ideas. In this book converge almost all the main currents of thought that come down from 800 years of Greek speculation; out of it there issues a new current, destined to fertilize minds as different as those of Augustine and Boethius, Dante and Meister Eckhart, Coleridge, Bergson, and Mr. T. S. Eliot. And the historian cannot but ask himself what is the secret of this transmutation by which the old is taken up in the new and given a fresh direction and significance. Such a question admits of no complete answer and none is offered here. The present paper seeks merely to illustrate a few aspects of the problem for the benefit of readers who are not deeply versed in Plotinus. It omits much that a Plotinian specialist would rightly think important; and it uses broad terms where an expert might well insist on the need for qualification.

Tradition and Personal Achievement in the Philosophy of Plotinus

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Tradition and Personal Achievement in the Philosophy of Plotinus