Parmenides Publishing is to be congratulated. Furthermore, while Armstrong tends to translate the same terms in different ways according to context, the team prefers consistency, to the point that the particle , which Plotinus uses to tentatively introduce his solution to an aporia -- and which means roughly "is it not the case that . . The Introduction and the Commentary supply a wealth of information in an economic way and are helpful for the newcomer and the specialist alike.
A pity in some respects, for they provide a comfortable way of reading text and related commentary. A natural translation of this phrase would be "not by taking them into ourselves, but rather by ourselves being in them". The one section of commentary that might have been more nuanced is that on Chapter 12, where Plotinus argues that the Good is prior to the Beautiful. Likewise, the team's choice to render almost always phantasia by "semblance", rather than by the more ordinary "impression" or "representation", occasionally raises a problem. | Contact this seller, Book Description Condition: New. . Many have reported shoddy binding or fading text, to the point where it damages the readability and life of the book. Reviewed by Sara Magrin, University of California, Berkeley. But the discomfort of moving between difficult text and closely-argued commentary is, in this book, worthwhile. For this work, theres a few options to look at. the beauty of the Forms (or the Intellect), and, ultimately, to the transcendent Good (or Beauty), which is the cause of intelligible beauty. The team, at first, seems to just invert the meanings as it renders lupai by "pain" and to algein by "feelings of distress". The big issue Ive seen is the translation is rather dense. 100 Malloy Hall I discuss some details below. These are not just cited as sources, influences, or targets: Plotinus argument is commendably integrated into a wider Greek philosophical narrative, and this is true of the commentary as a whole.
In general, the team's translation is less literal than Armstrong's, and it also aims to be more consistent. Furthermore, while Armstrong tends to translate the same terms in different ways according to context, the team prefers consistency, to the point that the particle , which Plotinus uses to tentatively introduce his solution to an. Gerson translates, he will not see the One. Michael Griffin, Assistant Professor of Classics and Philosophy, The University of British Columbia. [1] Here and in what follows I refer to "the team" or "the team's translation" because, even if different treatises were assigned to different people, all translations are credited to the team rather than to individual members of it. Perhaps this is indeed what Plotinus is trying to say here, but it does not seem obvious to me.
Larson Publications has an edition, penned in 92. Richard Dufour has done the translation and commentary on V.5 [32] in L. Brisson and J.-F. Pradeau (eds. My impression of the translation of the treatises on epistemology and metaphysics is in line with my previous remarks. If one tries to look at the One as a form, says Plotinus, oude touto eisetai. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. In many respects, this book is an ideal introduction to Plotinus' thought." The team renders consistently the Greek word eikn by "image", while it prefers "reflection" for eidlon. 
He is the editor of the Teubner edition of the fragments of Porphyry (1993) and ofPhilosophy and Society in Late Antiquity (2005), as well asseries editor, with John M. Dillon, of the Enneads of Plotinus with Philosophical Commentaries. The team chooses to translate ousia by "substantiality" to make clear that ousia here does not mean "essence", yet the translation that this choice yields might be confusing, for Plotinus' point is just, as Armstrong's puts it, that substance (or being) does not consist in bodies. The problem of how to render technical terms and expressions is particularly acute when one tries to grapple with Plotinus' long treatise On the Genera of Being. The first treatise of the Enneads, Enn., 1.1, is, according to most scholars, crucial for our understanding of Plotinus' psychology, and there are several places here where at least my understanding of the Greek text differs from that of the team. Satisfaction Guaranteed! The comparison will prove useful because there are some important differences between the two translations. [1] First, it is based on a superior Greek text, for it takes into account all the corrections introduced by Henry and Schwyzer in the third volume of their editio minor and in subsequent work. Separated into six separate books with multiple treatises per book, it contains much of Plotinus thoughts on various topics. Book is in NEW condition. Armstrong translates thus: need not be perception of sense-objects, but rather it must be receptive of the impressions produced by sensation on the living being. Within U.S.A. Book Description Condition: New. The team, correctly in my view, rejects one of Armstrong's sometimes problematic emendations of the Greek text (at 5.3.1.17), but then renders the technical expression sunagon kai diairoun (5.3.2.9), which is generally translated as "combining and dividing", by "organizing and distinguishing". The team opts for a different construal, however, and renders the sentence thus: should not be understood as being of sensibles, but rather of the impressions that arise from sense-perception and which are graspable by the living being. The commentator on V.5 has to elucidate the two difficult opening chapters on the Intellect, which are a continuation of the chronologically previous treatise V.8 (31 in Porphyrys chronological list, where V.5 is 32), before turning to the major themes of the treatise, the One or Good, Intellects relation to it, and how we can attain to it or experience it. Armstrong, in the lines immediately preceding the quoted extract, translates apeiros as unlimited with reference to the One, but then translates to apeiron as infinity, thus losing continuity of vocabulary and the close allusion to Platos Parmenides 137d. 5. While the non-specialist will probably prefer to use this new translation, specialists and graduate students will welcome it as a much-needed alternative to that of Armstrong, and they will, I think, greatly benefit from a close comparison with the latter. It is far from clear what Plotinus means by an anepikritos phantasia, but, roughly, he seems to use the term phantasia to mean a sensory impression or a sensory representation, just as Aristotle and the Stoics did before him. Gersons translation is painstakingly accurate, achieving fluency and clarity without simplifying Plotinus often hyper-concentrated style. Analogous remarks can be made about Enn., 3.6.1-5. While defending this thesis, Plotinus engages in what seems to be a sustained criticism of Aristotle's conception of the soul as the actuality of a certain kind of body, that is, an organic body having life potentially (Aristot. Theirs has much more in the terms of notation and reference which is great for this piece. It seems evident to me that the team's translation conveys Plotinus' remarks more clearly and more accurately. Armstrong translates: But he has infinity in the sense of power: for he will never be otherwise, or fail, since the things which do not fail exist through him. Gersons version runs: No, it is insofar as it is power that it possesses unlimitedness, for it will never be otherwise or lack anything, whereas it is because of it that there are things which are not lacking as well. Use of the impersonal it rather than personalized he here and elsewhere gives in Gersons translation a less distracting sense of the Ones nature. As for the treatises on physics, since two topics in Plotinus' physics have received a great deal of attention recently, namely his account of matter, and his account of eternity and time, I will deal primarily with the team's translation of Enn., 2.4, his treatise on matter, and Enn., 3.7, his treatise on time and eternity. We find another case where the team opts for a translation which is substantially different from that of Armstrong in chapter 7. 2. Enn., 5.3.1-4 is also a place where one can see a problem with the team's decision to translate the particle by "in fact" in order to signal that Plotinus is introducing the solution of an aporia. Even if the verb apolamban from which the participle apolabontes derives can indeed mean, in some contexts, "to separate off", this does not seem to be one of those contexts, since here the verb seems to be used to introduce a contrast between receiving intelligible objects from Nous, and thus knowing them via impressions (or "imprints"), and becoming Nous by sharing directly in its knowledge. This is an interesting book for anyone interested in ancient philosophy and thought. [4] The team, however, following Armstrong, renders the phrase by "without separating them off in ourselves, since, on the contrary, we are in them".
It might indeed be odd in English to speak of the soul as something that may or may not "admit" or "receive" emotions, but the team's choice of rendering dechesthai by "being the subject of" might obscure the distinction between the topic of chapter 1 and that of chapter 2; Armstrong's translation of chapter 2 does not raise this issue. In Enn., 1.1 Plotinus tries to defend one of his most controversial theses, namely that our soul never entirely "descends" into our body -- as a "superficial" interpretation of Plato's middle dialogues might suggest -- but rather animates it through a "trace" or "shadow" of itself. Thus, in Enn., 3.6.1.1 Plotinus claims that aisthseis are not passive affections but rather activities of the soul, and then goes on to justify this claim. This is, to my mind, a faithful translation which rests on a natural construal of the Greek text, even if the adjective antilptikn does not mean "receptive", but rather "capable of apprehending". Seller Inventory # 1930972938-2-1, PLOTINUS: Ennead I.6: On Beauty: Translation, with an Introduction and Commentary (The Enneads of Plotinus), PLOTINUS: Ennead I.6: On Beauty Format: Paperback. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); 101 N. Merion Ave., 1. The commentary presupposes no knowledge of Greek, but key terms and phrases are included in transliteration, and there are some discussions of, or references to, individual readings (the Oxford editio minor of Henry and Schwyzer is Gersons reference text), as well as other translations in English, French, and German. When it takes the term aisthsis to mean an actual perception as opposed to the capacity of perception, the team tends to render it by "act of perception". A+ Customer service! To turn to details of the translation. ), George Boys-Stones, John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R. A. H. King, Andrew Smith, and James Wilberding (trs. Consider, for instance, Enn., 5.3.1-4, one of the loci classici for the reconstruction of Plotinus' epistemology. There Plotinus examines Plato's account of the creation of the soul at Timaeus, 35a 1-3, and he asks how one is to interpret Plato's claim that the soul is made of both "divisible" and "indivisible" constituents. Department of Philosophy -- is almost always rendered by "in fact", rather than left, for the most part, untranslated, as is Armstrong's practice. Thus, when at Enn., 1.1.7.12 Plotinus claims that the perception of external objects is an eidlon of the inner perception of forms which takes place within the soul itself, the team writes that the perception of external objects is "a reflection" of the soul's inner perception. ), Cambridge University Press, 2018, 931pp., $150.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781107001770. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie has the option I would recommend. Similarly, when we look at Enn., 3.7, Plotinus' treatise on eternity and time, we find at least one substantial improvement over Armstrong's translation, which is crucial for a correct understanding of the text.
Thus, while Armstrong tends to translate word by word, often leaving it to the reader to sort out the exact meaning of a sentence, the team tends to disambiguate and to opt for a precise reading. Here Plotinus wonders whether the Peripatetics speak of "ten genera (gen)" or of "ten katgoriai". Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA As Steven Strange has shown in an influential study, in that chapter, Plotinus, like Alexander of Aphrodisias before him, wonders as to whether the number Aristotle mentions in his definition of time is to be identified with the number of the objects counted (e.g., ten as in "ten horses") or with a "numbering" number corresponding to some abstract unit. Plotinus accepts Alexander's interpretation, and, on the grounds of it, raises an objection against Aristotle's definition of time. We ask that comments be substantive in content and civil in tone and those that do not adhere to these guidelines will not be published. Enn. Start by marking PLOTINUS: Ennead I.6: On Beauty: Translation, with an Introduction and Commentary as Want to Read: Error rating book. The focus is where it should be, on the elucidation of the argument. Your email address will not be published. Lloyd Gerson brings impressive credentials and specific Plotinian expertise to the task.2 After a concise and helpful introduction to Plotinus life and thought by the general editors, Gerson briefly introduces the treatise, provides a valuable analytical synopsis of its argument, a translation, 138 pages of commentary, a select bibliography, and indexes. The book is elegantly produced: compact and durable, it can be puzzled over comfortably in the train or in the air. This objection, in the team's translation is rendered as follows: "But then the number that measures in terms of before and after (all' oun kata to proteron kai hysteron metrn), whether it does so by a point or by anything else, will in any case be measuring according to time" (3.7.9.57-59). ; Harvard University Press, 1966-1988). For it quickly becomes apparent that Plotinus main interest is in transcendent beauty, which he identifies with the Good, the goal of all philosophical endeavor in the Platonists search to assimilate himself with the divine. This question may be resolved by grasping clearly what we mean by each of these terms. Finally, Gersons version of the last phrase brings out more clearly the link between the completeness of the One and the lack of defects in the second and third principles, Intellect and Soul. In Enn., 6.1 Plotinus criticizes both the Aristotelian and the Stoic accounts of the categories. Here "which are graspable" translates antilptikn, but while the latter (an accusative feminine) refers to the perceptual power of the soul, the team seems to take it to refer to the impressions arising from perception (typn, a genitive masculine). If time is the number of motion in respect to before and after, in the sense that it is the "numbering" number of this motion, then, he wonders, why is this number supposed to produce a specifically temporal sequence, rather than any sort of sequence? For "in fact" at 5.3.1.5 seems at first to translate , and thus seems to introduce the solution of an aporia, whereas it actually translates gar, and is meant to introduce a reason for the statement which precedes it in the text. Perhaps the team chose to render ouk apolabontes by "without separating off" so as to avoid committing Plotinus to an apparent inconsistency, but maybe the reader should be the ultimate judge on this matter. Bryn Mawr PA 19010. I actually find this choice preferable, not least because it conveys the open-endedness of Plotinus' inquiries, and the tentative nature of his solutions to philosophical aporiai, but this choice here comes as a surprise, and, in my view at least, it would have been more appropriate in other contexts (see, esp., Enn., 4.4.2).
In general, the team's translation is less literal than Armstrong's, and it also aims to be more consistent. Many readers have reported having to really focus in to understand the thoughts of the language used. However, in light of what we read in 6.1.3.1-12 and 6.1.9.25-32, it does not seem to be a distinction between genera and predicates, as the team's translation by "ten predicates" suggests, but seems, rather, to be a distinction between two ways of classifying beings or things that are, one of which rests on genera, while the other rests on what Plotinus views as a "looser" kind of class, which he calls "category". Enn., 1.1.7 is also a place where the team's choice to translate single words more or less consistently throughout the treatises might, perhaps, be called into question.