Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Origins of Plotinus’ Philosophy
1.1 Plotinus’ Predecessors
1.2 Plotinus’ Philosophical Method
1.2.1 Lectures and Writings
1.2.2 Language, Simile, and Metaphor
1.2.3 Quoting Predecessors
1.3 Plotinus’ Philosophical Sources
1.3.1 Plato
1.3.2 Aristotle
1.3.3 Stoics and Epicureans
1.3.4 Middle-Platonists, Aristotelians, and Neopythagoreans
1.3.5 Gnostics, Christians, the Orient, and other Contemporary Movements
1.4 Plotinus and the Presocratics
2. One and Unity
2.1 The One in Plotinus
2.2 The Presocratic One in the Enneads
2.3 Parmenides’ Monism
2.4 The Ineffable One
2.4.1 The Apophatism of the First Principle
2.4.2 The Pythagorean Apophatism of the Monad
2.5 The One as First Principle
2.5.1 Heraclitus’ One
2.5.2 Empedocles’ Philia
2.5.3 Anaxagoras’ Mind
3. Intellect and Being
3.1 Plotinus’ Theory of Intellect
3.2 Eleatic Being in the Enneads
3.3 The Nature of Being
3.3.1 Parmenides’ Theory of Being
3.3.2 Plotinus on Parmenides’ Being
3.3.3 Thinking and Being
3.4 The Predicates of Being
3.4.1 Ungenerated and Indestructible
3.4.2 Indivisible and Self-identical
3.4.3 Imperturbable and Changeless
4. Eternity and Time
4.1 Plotinus’ Theory of Eternity and Time
4.2 Eternity and Time in the Presocratics
4.3 The Presocratic Theories of Eternity and Time in the Enneads
4.4 The Timelessness of Being
4.4.1 Philolaus’ Eternal Continuance and Plato’s Eternity of the Forms
4.4.2 Parmenides’ Timelessness of Being
4.4.3 Plotinus’ Timelessness of Eternity
4.5 The Eternal Life of Intellect
4.5.1 Eternity in Heraclitus
4.5.2 Eternal Life in Empedocles
4.6 The Everlastingness of Time
4.6.1 The Myth of Time
4.6.2 The Everlastingness of the Cosmos
4.6.3 The Movement of the Spheres, Eternal Recurrence, and Spiral Time
5. Matter and Soul
5.1 Matter and Ensouled Body in Plotinus
5.2 Plotinus’ Criticism of Presocratic Matter
5.2.1 Anaximander’s apeiron
5.2.2 Empedocles’ Theory of the Four Elements
5.2.3 Anaxagoras’ Theory of Matter
5.2.4 The Atomic Theory of Matter
5.3 Plotinus’ Theory of the Ensouled Body
5.3.1 The Presocratic Theories of the Ensouled Body in the Enneads
5.3.2 Heraclitus’ Theory of Soul and Physical Alteration
5.3.3 The daimo¯n in Empedocles
6. Conclusion
Appendix. Text of Presocratic Fragments in Plotinus’ Enneads
Notes
Bibliography
Index Fontium
Index of Concepts and Proper Names
