Parmenides Publishing


Titles by Wiebke-Marie STOCK


Enneads_Smith


PLOTINUS Ennead III.4:
On Our Allotted Guardian Spirit Translation, with an Introduction, and Commentary

THE ENNEADS OF PLOTINUS
—WITH PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENTARIES

Series Edited by
John M. Dillon and Andrew Smith

October 2020
978–1–7335357-0-0
311 pages - 5 x 7.5 - Paperback
$42.00

 

AndrewSmithWiebke-Marie Stock
(University of Bonn, Germany) is Guest Research Assistant Professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute. She specializes in ancient philosophy, with a particular focus on epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics. Her publications include Theurgisches Denken (2008) on the philosophical relevance of the treatise “Ecclesiastical Hierarchy” by Dionysius the Areopagite, and Denkumsturz (2012) on Hugo Ball’s aesthetic, political, and religious-philosophical thought.







Ennead III.4: On Our Allotted Guardian Spirit is a lively and at times perplexing text combining general reflections on the nature of the soul with a discussion of the phenomenon of a personal guardian spirit. Plotinus wants to interpret Plato, and aims to integrate Plato’s various statements about daimones into one comprehensive theory.

This leads to some views that are, if not exotic, then at least strange on first encounter. However, a closer reading reveals that Plotinus is not interested in demonology per se. Instead, the central concern of the treatise are ideas about the soul, the self, and self-consciousness. The introduction offers an overview of ancient demonologies, starting with Homer and the Presocratics, and is followed by an in-depth examination of Plato, the Stoics, Plotinus, and later Neoplatonic developments. As such the book presents Plotinus’ specific rationalizing response to the idea of a guardian spirit in the context of ancient philosophical demonologies.

Plotinus was a Platonist, committed to expounding the doctrines put forward by Plato some seven centuries earlier. He was born and educated in Egypt, where he studied the teachings of Plato under the guidance of Ammonius Saccas. He came to Rome in 244 CE and built up a circle of followers devoted to studying Plato through Plato's own works and those of philosophers, both Platonist and non-Platonist, of the intervening centuries. From his fiftieth year Plotinus himself wrote down, in Greek, the findings of the seminars, and these writings were later edited by one of his pupils, Porphyry, and published in six groups of nine treatises entitled the Enneads (from the Greek word for nine – ennea).

“Plotinus is a masterful figure: His work has long been recognized as a landmark in ancient thought after Aristotle, and no serious scholar of the history of philosophy should be without some knowledge of his work, for he influences Patristic authors, Renaissance authors, and even German Idealists. He thus indirectly—if not directly—affects most of the history of philosophy.”

—The Review of Metaphysics