Neoplatonism

ANNE SHEPPARD

More books are published on Plotinus than on any other Neoplatonist. It is a sign of his acceptance as a major philosopher that he now has a Cambridge Companion 1 devoted to him. This is a volume for those who may be new to Plotinus but are not new to philosophy. It o ffers a series of discrete essays of high quality, most of them by well-known scholars. The essays range over metaphysics, philosophical psychology and ethics and PlotinusÕ relation to his predecessors is covered both in Maria Luisa GattiÕs rst chapter entitled ÔPlotinus: The Platonic tradition and the foun- dation of NeoplatonismÕ and from time to time in discussions in other essays. PlotinusÕ in uence on his successors is tackled to a limited extent in the last two chapters where Cristina DÕAncona Costa in ÔPlotinus and later Platonic philosophers on the causality of the rst principleÕ discusses some speci c metaphysical topics and John Rist in ÔPlotinus and Chris- tian philosophyÕ argues that Augustine was the only Christian thinker of late antiquity to be in uenced by Plotinus in particular rather than by Platonism in general. It is impossible to cover all aspects of a philoso- pherÕs thought in a volume of this kind and the selection made is rea- sonable enough. Nevertheless, I am probably not the only reader to regret that neither aesthetics nor mysticism receives much coverage. Some of the essays offer fresh surveys of familiar topics by experts who are well- known for their publications in that area (so, for example, John Bussanich on ÔPlotinusÕ metaphysics of the OneÕ, Dominic OÕMeara on ÔThe hierar- chical ordering of reality in PlotinusÕ or Henry Blumenthal ÔOn soul and intellectÕ); others tackle particular problems or discuss more unusual issues. Of these latter, I found especially interesting Andrew SmithÕs discussion of Ennead III.7, ÔEternity and timeÕ, and, in quite a di fferent style, Sara RappeÕs ÔSelf-knowledge and subjectivity in the EnneadsÕ. I was

1 L.P. Gerson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 462. £40hb; £14.95pb. ISBN 0-521-47093-5hb; 0-521-47676- 3pb.

©Koninklijke Brill NV , Leiden, 1999 Phronesis XLIV/ 4 BOOK NOTES 359 initially wary of R.Õs attempt to compare PlotinusÕ views about self- consciousness and subjectivity with those of Descartes, since there are such signi cant differences between the two philosophers, but was won over by her sophisticated awareness of the di fferences and the interesting way in which she discusses her topic. Overall the essays in the volume vary considerably in their philosophical style: it was refreshing to read Stephen ClarkÕs straightforwardly philosophical ÔPlotinus: Body and SoulÕ and to discover that 5 of this pieceÕs 11 footnotes are references to Wordsworth or Yeats. Writing like this forms a sharp contrast to the extremely learned survey of previous scholarship o ffered in the initial chapter by Gatti – but both kinds of writing have their place in the study of an ancient philosopher and it is good to nd them brought together within the pages of one volume. Some particular issues in PlotinusÕ metaphysics are treated in more detail by Christoph Horn in his Plotin Ÿber Sein, Zahl und Einheit. 2 This published version of a German dissertation focusses particularly on Enneads VI.1-3 and VI.6, relating PlotinusÕ concepts of substance, num- ber and the One to both Middle Platonic and Aristotelian tradition. It is a careful and scholarly discussion. More unusual is a monograph on Plo- tinusÕethics, Giovanni CatapanoÕs Epkeina ts philosoph’as .3 C.Õs concern is with the ethical role of philosophy for Plotinus. His conclusion – that philosophy plays a vital role in assisting the soulÕs ascent to the One, the ultimate aim of life for Plotinus – will surprise no-one but he takes an unusual and interesting route to that conclusion, via a full discussion of PlotinusÕ ethics and two chapters on PlotinusÕ use of the terms filosofeÝn, filosofÛa and filosofñw and on PlotinusÕ view of dialectic. Finally, Luc BrissonÕs introduction to Ôthe philosophy of mythÕ4 surveys philosophical attitudes to myth from Plato to the Renaissance, focussing on allegory. The bulk of the book (170 pages of text out of 224) is devoted to antiquity, late antiquity and Byzantium. The Latin Middle Ages and the

2 Christoph Horn, Plotin Ÿ ber Sein, Zahl und Einheit. Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1995. Pp. 368. ISBN 3-519-07611-X. 3 Giovanni Catapano, Epkeina t s philosoph’as. LÕ eticitˆ del losofare in Plotino. Padua: CLEUP, 1995. Pp. 228. L.30,000. 4 Luc Brisson, Introduction ˆ la philosophie du mythe. 1. Sauver les mythes . Paris: J. Vrin, 1996. Pp. 243. 125F. ISBN 2-7116-1271-6. The volume is apparently also availablein aGermantranslation, as EinfŸhrung in die Philosophie des Mythos. Bd. 1, Antike, Mittelalter und Renaissance , published in 1996 by the Wissenschaftliche Buch- gesellschaft in Darmstadt. A second volume, by Christoph Jamme, on the philosophy of myth in the modern period, appeared in German in 1991.