Gerson Lloyd P. - Plotinus: The Enneads

This translation into English of the Enneads of Plotinus is a successor to two great monuments to scholarship, the translations by Stephen MacKenna (19171930) and A. H. Armstrong (19661988).volumes. Although textual problems hampered MacKenna much more than they did Armstrong, neither work has been rendered obsolete by the results of the critical work of Henry and Schwyzer, which, incidentally, continues to be advanced by a number of other scholars up to the present, for example, the late Jsus Igal and Paul Kalligas.

The rationale for the present translation is twofold. First, there was the desire to produce a translation that would take account not only of the textual work that has been done since Armstrong, but also of the enormous proliferation of scholarship on Plotinus generally, many facets of which have had an inevitably anonymous influence on the present work. Second, it was thought beneficial to provide a translation in one volume to facilitate the study of Plotinus, something which necessarily requires the comparison of many disparate texts. There are very few of the so-called treatises in the Enneads that exhaust Plotinus treatment of a particular question or topic. Consequently, one usually has to read several passages in different treatises together in order to get a more or less clear picture of Plotinus position. It is hoped that with one volume, and numerous cross-references, this will at least be made easier to do for the reader. In this regard, the English glossary of key terms, containing many references, should also provide assistance.

The default text used in this translation is that of the editio minor of Henry and Schwyzer, conventionally designated as HS2. Unless otherwise noted, this is the text that the authors of this work have translated. We note all deviations from that text in the notes, citing, for example, the reading of HS4 over that of HS2. In a separate table, we list all the changes to the text we have followed, although space precludes a discussion of the reasons for the changes. Those who can benefit from the side-by-side Greek text of Armstrongs Loeb edition, can do the same with the editio minor ( OCT ) and our translation.

The work of translating the Enneads (along with Porphyrys Life of Plotinus , here included) has been an intensely collaborative effort. Although the work of translating individual Enneads was originally apportioned out to the individual members of the team, each draft was read and critically discussed with at least two other members. The final product is genuinely collaborative, with the inevitable proviso that each member of the team would like to reserve a minority dissenting position on this or that issue. Compromise was the price paid for achieving the desired result of publication. Strenuous efforts were made to attain a uniformity of vocabulary where appropriate, although the authors could only reflect with awe on the Septuagint as an unattainable ideal of perfect unanimity that, as legend has it, was attained by the 70 translators of the Torah into Greek.