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PLOTINUS Ennead II4:
On Matter
Translation, with an Introduction, and Commentary
THE ENNEADS OF PLOTINUS
—WITH PHILOSOPHICAL COMMENTARIES
Series Edited by
John M. Dillon and Andrew Smith
July 2022
978–1–7335357-6-2
239 pages • 5 x 7.5 • Paperback
$42.00
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 A. A. Long
is Chancellor’s Professor of Classics Emeritus and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught previously at the University of Otago, University College London, and the University of Liverpool, where he was Gladstone Professor of Greek from 1973–1983. His books include Hellenistic Philosophy (1974/1986), which has been translated into many European and Asian languages, Stoic Studies (1996/2001), Epictetus. A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2002), and Greek Models of Mind and Self (2015). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the British Academy, and he holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Crete.
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In Ennead II.4 Plotinus investigates the question of what underlies the forms that constitute the contents of our minds and senses. Aristotle had called this substrate “matter,” and Stoic philosophers followed suit. With a critical review of their notions, and reference to Plato’s so-called Receptacle, Plotinus develops an account of matter that makes it a supremely negative entity. How he describes the indescribable, and how he justifies incorporeal matter’s indispensability to bodies, are highlights of this tenaciously argued essay.
A. A. Long translates and interprets Plotinus’ treatise on the matter that underlies all physical and intelligible beings. With a wide-ranging introduction and probing analysis of details, he explains the intricate structure of the text. The book will appeal to everyone interested in the history of Platonism and ancient Greek theories of the world’s ultimate principles.
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).
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"Despite the difficulty of the subject matter and characteristic terseness of Plotinus’s prose, the reader armed with Long’s translation and commentary will be well-equipped to understand Plotinus’s account of matter, to recognize how Plotinus intervenes in prior Greek discourse, and to appreciate the novel insights to which Plotinus comes.” (Full review) |
Ryan M. Brown
Villanova University |
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“Getting matter right is at least as important for a credible Platonist system as a robust account of the forms; indeed, for Plotinus, it is required for that as well. Yet, as his discussion quickly shows, nothing is harder to talk about—and that is what makes this volume so welcome. Long’s commentary, accompanying his excellent translation, finds remarkable clarity of purpose in Plotinus’ account of the subject, not least through a careful delineation of the wider debates that Plotinus had in view. Ennead II.4 is essential reading: Long offers powerful help in making it readable.” |
| —George Boys-Stones, Professor of Classics and Philosophy, University of Toronto |
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“The concept of this series is unique in English: there is no other treatise-by-treatise annotated translation series of Plotinus’ writings accessible to nonspecialists. [. . .] The editors have judged well the balance between readability and the need for serious exegesis.” |
—Bryn Mawr Classical Review |
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