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Authors: Brian Hines
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our own selves, which is the place where Plotinus advises us to start in accord with the Socratic adage “Know yourself.” His goal, then, is to help the reader form his or her consciousness into an empty receptacle for receiving (or becoming) wisdom. This is much more a process of emptying the mind of erroneous conceptions than of filling the mind with accurate information.
From this perspective, if we come to know only one thing, the nature of the One, we are wise; if not, we are ignorant, no matter how many facts about how many separate things we may possess.
A Buddhist sage, Ching K’ung, puts it nicely: “Prajna [wisdom] means having a profound and correct understanding of the true nature of all things. It is completely different from what is known in this world as intelligence.” 5
This helps explain why it is normal to feel uncomfortable at times while reading this book. Plotinus challenges us. He forces us to compare what we believe about God and spirituality with what we know as an indisputable fact because it is identical with our very beings. He asks us to consider if what we are confident is true actually is.
Plotinus isn’t comfortable
A LONG THESE LINES , when I wrote Michael Chase complimenting him on the tone of his translations, he responded that he tried to bring urgency to his scholarly work, adding, “Whatever else one may say about Plotinus, he is not comfortable.” I heartily agree. But different readers of the Enneads find Plotinus’s teachings uncomfortable in different ways.
For example, scholars struggle with the difficulty of making sense of Plotinus’s highly idiosyncratic and apophatic use of the Greek language. Chase told me that in 1999 a seminar was held at the Sorbonne that attracted the world’s best Plotinus scholars to speak on a single section (V-3) of the Enneads. “Scarcely any two experts gave the same interpretation of the same texts,” he said. Certain sections of the Enneads, Chase added, are “some of the most ragged, jagged, harsh, and just plain difficult philosophical prose ever written, in any language.”
I can testify to the truth of this statement. Plainly put, I wouldn’t wish reading the Enneads straight through on any but my worse enemies. Even though I’m a glutton for intellectual punishment, making my way through the seven volumes of Armstrong’s English translation, pen and highlighter in hand, definitely tested my fortitude. Plotinus can write marvelously passionately and simply; he also is capable of writing horribly dryly and complexly.
How I wrote what you re reading
O NE OF MY PURPOSES in writing Return to the One was to relieve non-scholars of having to read the Enneads directly. I put considerable effort into finding quotations that contain the clearest and most definitive descriptions of Plotinus’s teachings. These quotations frequently are brief, because less tends to be more with Plotinus. If lengthier quotations from the Enneads had been cited, in most cases it would have diminished the meaning of a passage, since what precedes or follows a quotation included in Return to the One often is barely comprehensible.
I used two approaches for selecting quotations. First, I read almost all of the scholarly books in English about Plotinus’s teachings. These are cited in the “Bibliography” and “Suggestions for Further Reading” sections at the end of this book. In the course of taking copious notes, I became aware of the passages in the Enneads repeatedly cited by scholars as being representative of some aspect of Plotinus’s philosophy. These constituted my initial set of “must quote” passages.
Second, in reading Armstrong’s translation of the Enneads I found some quotations that appeared significant or simply appealed to me, but hadn’t been cited by anyone else I had read. It’s interesting to ask why. I’m not sure, but often it seems that these passages relate more to the mystical side of Plotinus than to his
From this perspective, if we come to know only one thing, the nature of the One, we are wise; if not, we are ignorant, no matter how many facts about how many separate things we may possess.
A Buddhist sage, Ching K’ung, puts it nicely: “Prajna [wisdom] means having a profound and correct understanding of the true nature of all things. It is completely different from what is known in this world as intelligence.” 5
This helps explain why it is normal to feel uncomfortable at times while reading this book. Plotinus challenges us. He forces us to compare what we believe about God and spirituality with what we know as an indisputable fact because it is identical with our very beings. He asks us to consider if what we are confident is true actually is.
Plotinus isn’t comfortable
A LONG THESE LINES , when I wrote Michael Chase complimenting him on the tone of his translations, he responded that he tried to bring urgency to his scholarly work, adding, “Whatever else one may say about Plotinus, he is not comfortable.” I heartily agree. But different readers of the Enneads find Plotinus’s teachings uncomfortable in different ways.
For example, scholars struggle with the difficulty of making sense of Plotinus’s highly idiosyncratic and apophatic use of the Greek language. Chase told me that in 1999 a seminar was held at the Sorbonne that attracted the world’s best Plotinus scholars to speak on a single section (V-3) of the Enneads. “Scarcely any two experts gave the same interpretation of the same texts,” he said. Certain sections of the Enneads, Chase added, are “some of the most ragged, jagged, harsh, and just plain difficult philosophical prose ever written, in any language.”
I can testify to the truth of this statement. Plainly put, I wouldn’t wish reading the Enneads straight through on any but my worse enemies. Even though I’m a glutton for intellectual punishment, making my way through the seven volumes of Armstrong’s English translation, pen and highlighter in hand, definitely tested my fortitude. Plotinus can write marvelously passionately and simply; he also is capable of writing horribly dryly and complexly.
How I wrote what you re reading
O NE OF MY PURPOSES in writing Return to the One was to relieve non-scholars of having to read the Enneads directly. I put considerable effort into finding quotations that contain the clearest and most definitive descriptions of Plotinus’s teachings. These quotations frequently are brief, because less tends to be more with Plotinus. If lengthier quotations from the Enneads had been cited, in most cases it would have diminished the meaning of a passage, since what precedes or follows a quotation included in Return to the One often is barely comprehensible.
I used two approaches for selecting quotations. First, I read almost all of the scholarly books in English about Plotinus’s teachings. These are cited in the “Bibliography” and “Suggestions for Further Reading” sections at the end of this book. In the course of taking copious notes, I became aware of the passages in the Enneads repeatedly cited by scholars as being representative of some aspect of Plotinus’s philosophy. These constituted my initial set of “must quote” passages.
Second, in reading Armstrong’s translation of the Enneads I found some quotations that appeared significant or simply appealed to me, but hadn’t been cited by anyone else I had read. It’s interesting to ask why. I’m not sure, but often it seems that these passages relate more to the mystical side of Plotinus than to his
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