Week 1: "Enneads" by Plotinus

Plotinus isn't just a weak reverberation of Plato, but a very influential philosopher of the soul and its relationship to the divine. He is a deep thinker who lived in the transitional period (204/5 -270) of the human consciousness, moving from polytheistic thinking to monotheistic thinking. He is one of the last, free writers on god and the soul without the christian dogma.
Yet, still he deeply influenced many christian theologising like St. Augustine of Hippo and Pseudo-Dionysius and had direct influence on Islamic thinkers.
His original writings (written in greek) were lost to the West until renaissance.

We will read "The Enneads"
which is collection of his writings assembled by his student Porphyry of Tyre, in 12 sections approx. 40-50 pages every two weeks.

I'll be reading from abridged penguin's edition. Please be aware you might have different edition and so refer to numbers of chapters instead of page numbers.

Week 1. (p 3- 45) 6/4/26
1.1 The Animate and the Man
1.2 The Virtues
1.3 Dialectic
1.4 Happiness

Week 2 (p. 45-92) 6/18/26
1.6 Beauty
1.7 The Nature of Source of Evil
1.9 The Reasoned Dismissal
2.1 Are the Stars Causes?

Week 3 (p. 92-135) 7/2/26
2.4 Matter
2.9 Against gnostics

Free and complete edition in PDF can be found here as well

If you are interested in studying and discussing highly immaterial, soul based philosophy, you are welcome to join in
Our expectations are that you will do the reading assigned for that session and participate respectfully.

"We are not separated from spirit, we are in it." Plotinus

"The fear must be entirely banished. The purified soul will fear nothing." - Plotinus