Changing Interpretations of Plotinus: The 18th-Century Introduction of the Concept of a ‘System of Philosophy’

Abstract

This article critically explores the history and nature of a hermeneutic assumption which frequently guided interpretations of Plotinus from the 18th century onwards, namely that Plotinus advanced a system of philosophy. It is argued that this assumption was introduced relatively late, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and that it was primarily made possible by Brucker’s methodology for the history of philosophy, dating from the 1740s, to which the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’ was essential. It is observed that the concept is absent from Ficino’s commentary from the 15th century, and that it remained absent in interpretations produced between the 15th and 18th centuries. It is also argued that the assumption of a ‘system of philosophy’ in Plotinus is historically incorrect—we do not find this concept in Plotinus’ writings, and his own statements about method point in other directions. Eduard Zeller (active in the second half of the 19th century) is typically regarded as the first to give a satisfying account of Plotinus’ philosophy as a whole. In this article, on the other hand, Zeller is seen as having finalised a tradition initiated in the 18th century. Very few Plotinus scholars have examined the interpretative development prior to Zeller. Schiavone (1952) and Bonetti (1971), for instance, have given little attention to Brucker’s introduction of the concept of a ‘system of philosophy’. The present analysis, then, has value for an understanding of Plotinus’ Enneads. It also explains why “pre-Bruckerian” interpretations of Plotinus appear alien to the modern reader; the analysis may even serve to make some sense of the hermeneutics employed by Renaissance Platonists and commentators, who are often eclipsed from the tradition of Platonism.

Process Metaphysics and Mutative Life

“…For a recent discussion of the organising role of hypostases in scholarship on Plotinus, particularly on whether the threefold set of principles is to be regarded as having real (ontological) weight or merely furnishing an interpretive (systematising) rubric, seeCatana (2013). 2 See the work of Barbara Cassin, after Novalis, on logology.…”

The Origin of the Division between Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism

“…For the World Soul and its vexed relationship to the Christian Trinity, see ibid.,405.28-411.17. 68 SeeCatana (2013). melancholic fluids in the brain, provoking all sorts of phantasms.70 This medical rejection of furor fitted well into his explicit theological rejection of Platonism as a kind of philosophical theology; this objection was clearly stated in the preface to the entire work.71 In Brucker's systematic account of the ancient eclectic sect, Platonic furor and its related doctrine of virtue ethics are thus presented as an insignificant appendix to the metaphysical system, even though furor was an important aim of this way of philosophizing, and even though Porphyry had ordered Plotinus' works quite differently.Let me move on to the third implication of Brucker's determination of the three principles in the eclectic system.…”