The Philosophy Of Plotinus; The Gifford Lectures At St. Andrews

The Philosophy of Plotinus by William Ralph Inge (1917) Longmans, Green and Co. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface to the Third Edition Preface to the First Edition Introductory The Third Century Forerunners of Plotinus The World of Sense The Soul (ψυχή) Immortality of the Soul The Spiritual World The Absolute Ethics, Religion, and Æsthetics Concluding Reflections Preface to the Third Edition IN preparing this final edition for the press, I have read through the whole of the Enneads again. I have also revised my book throughout, and have made some hundreds of small corrections and alterations. A good deal of work has been done upon Plotinus in the last ten years. Professors Dodds and Sleeman have published a large number of textual emendations, some of which are important as clearing up obscurities caused by errors in the manuscripts. In spite of all that has been done to remove such errors, the text of Plotinus is still faulty in many places. Of recent books on the philosophy of Plotinus, the most important is that of Fritz Heinemann (Platin, Leipzig, 1921). Heinemann claims not only to have restored the chronological order in which the different parts of the Enneads were written, but to have discovered considerable interpolations, which he ascribes to friends and disciples of the philosopher. He also asserts that the doctrine of Plotinus changed materially between the earliest and the latest parts of his book. In the earlier chapters he cannot find the characteristic Plotinian doctrine of ‘the One.’ I have tried to judge this theory on its merits, but I am not convinced. It is unlikely a, priori that a thinker who wrote nothing before the age of fifty, and died sixteen years later, should have altered his views on fundamental questions as he went on. Nor do I find anything more than a slight change of emphasis. On the Problem of Evil it might be possible to find contradictions between earlier and later books; but I do not think that Plotinus ever dealt confidently with this problem. On the whole, I agree with Arnou, that ‘la doctrine est bien la même dans tous les livres.’ Another book which I have found valuable is René Arnou, Le Désir de Dieu dans la Philosophie de Plotin (Paris). N. O. Lossky, The World as an Organic Whole (Oxford, 1928), is interesting as a modern philosophic work avowedly based on the Enneads. Mr. Whittaker has brought out an enlarged edition of his admirable book The Neoplatonists. Mr. Stephen Mackenna has now translated the whole of the Enneads except the Sixth Book. The later volumes confirm the high opinion which I formed of his work after reading the first. I earnestly hope that he will endure to the completion of his labour of love. I have profited by some of Professor Taylor's criticisms of the first edition in Mind (1919). There has been, I rejoice to observe, a great change in the estimate of Plotinus as a philosopher. Some of the errors against which I protested ten years ago are seldom any longer repeated, and it is now more generally recognised that he is one of the greatest names in the history of philosophy. Professor Dodds’ little book, Select Passages Illustrating Neoplatonism (S.P.C.K., 1923), is very sound, and will be helpful to students beginning the subject. My method of treating my subject was necessarily determined by the conditions of the Gifford Lectureship; this has been forgotten by one or two critics. But I was glad to be obliged to treat Neoplatonism as a living, not as a dead, philosophy; for so I believe it to be. In choosing so to deal with it, some parts of the Enneads seemed to me more vital than others. I could not, for example, include a detailed discussion of the Categories in the Sixth Ennead. I wish the book to be regarded as a contribution to the philosophy of religion, rather tha