PLOTINUS THE ENNEADS

685 Pages·1916·35.673 MB·English

by  STEPHEN McKENNA

PLOTINUS
The Enneads
TRANSLATED BY STEPHEN AL\cKENNA
SECOND EDITION REVISED BY B. S. PAGE
VVIIH A FORI WORD BY PROFESSOR K. R. DODDS
AND AN INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR PAUL HENRY, S J.
FABER AND FABER LIMITED
24 Russell Square London
First published by the Medici Society
Published in this new revised edition nicnilvi
by Faber and Faber Limited
24 Russell Square, London w.c.
Printed in Great Britain
at the University Press, Oxford
by (Charles Batev
Printer to the University
All rights reserved
t)o (Him T)e
*|

CONTENTS
Foreword: by E. R. DODDS xi
Preface to the SecondEdition xv
Extracts from theExplanatoryMatterinthe FirstEdition xix
Introduction: 'Plotinus' Place in the History of Thought': by
PAUL HENRY, S.J. XXXiti
Porphyry's Life of Plotinus i
THE FIRST ENNEAD
i. The Animate and the Man 21
ii. The Virtues 30
in. Dialectic 36
iv. Happiness 40
v. Happiness and ExtensionofTime 52
vi. Beauty 56
vn. The Primal Good and Secondary Forms of Good 64
vin. The Nature and Source ofEvil 66
ix. The ReasonedDismissal' 78
THE SECOND ENNEAD
i. The HeavenlySystem 80
n. The HeavenlyCircuit 88
in. Are the Stars Causes? 91
iv. Matter 105
v. Potentiality and Actuality iitf
vi. Quality 123
vn. 'Complete Transfusion' 127
vm. WhyDistantObjects AppearSmall 130
ix. Againstthe Gnostics; or, AgainstThose thatAffirm the Creator
of the Cosmos and the Cosmos Itself to be Evil ' 132
vii
PLOTINUS
THE THIRD ENNEAD
7
i. Fate 153
ii. Providence (I) 160
in. Providence (II) 178
iv. OurTutelarySpirit ' 185
v. Love 191
Vi. The Impassivityofthe Unembodied 201
S
vn. Timeand ^22'
Eternity
vni. Nature,Contemplation, and the One 239
ix. DetachedConsiderations 251
THE FOURTH ENNEAD
i. OntheEssence oftheSoul (I) 255
ii. OntheEssence oftheSoul (II) 255
in. ProblemsoftheSoul (I) 259
iv. Problems ofthe Soul (II) 288
v. Problems oftheSoul (III); or,OnSight 328
vi. Perceptionand Memory 338
vii. The Immortalityofthe Soul 342
vni. TheSouFsDescentintoBody 357
ix. Are allSoulsOne? 364
THE FIFTH ENNEAD
i. TheThree Initial Hypostases 369
ii. TheOriginandOrder oftheBeingsfollowing ontheFirst 380
in. TheKnowingHypostases andtheTranscendent 382
iv. Howthe SecondariesRise fromtheFirst; and ontheOne 400
v. That the Intellectual Beings are not outside the Intellectual-
Principle; and ontheNature of the Good 403
vi. That the Principle transcending Being has no Intellectual Act.
What being has Intellection primally and what being has it
secondarily 415
viii
CONTENTS
vii. IsthereanIdealArchetypeofParticularBeings? 419
^
On
vni. the IntellectualBeauty 422
ix. The Intellectual-Principle, the Ideas, and the Authentic
Existence 434
THE SIXTH ENNEAD
i. OntheKinds ofBeing (I) 443
ii. OntheKinds ofBeing (II) 471
in. OntheKinds ofBeing (III) 491
iv. Onthe IntegralOmnipresence oftheAuthenticExistent (I) 518
v. OntheIntegral Omnipresence oftheAuthenticExistent (II) 532
vi. OnNumbers 541
vii. How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-Forms came into being;
and on the Good 559
vin. OnFreeWill andtheWilloftheOne """ 595
ix. Onthe Good, orthe One 614
APPENDICES
i. SelectBibliography 626
ii. TheChronologicalOrder 629
in. Sources of Quotations 630
ix

FOREWORD
by E. R. DODDS
ITisrightthatthereadershouldbetold somethingofthe author of this
translation, and of the circumstances in which it was conceived and
produced. Stephen MacKenna (1872-1934) is still remembered by a
few people as an impassioned and quixotic Irish patriot, and by many
as the most enchanting talker both of sense and of nonsense whom
they have ever known. But he was also one of that great line of un-
scholars whose labours have enriched our literature men
professional
who worked with no eye to academic preferment or financial reward,
but because they thought the work important.
He came to Greek scholarship by a very unusual route. His father, a
soldier of fortune and unsuccessful man of letters, died when Stephen
wastwelve,leavingabroodofyoungchildrenandawidowinstraitened
circumstances. The boy received something of a classical education at
RatcliffeCollegeinLeicestershire;thenhewasplacedinaDublinbank.
After a few years he left this uncongenial security to seek a precarious
livelihood as a journalist in Paris and to fight as a volunteer with the
Greek army in the Greco-Turkish war of 1897. At thirty-five he had
madea considerable namein journalism, firstasaspecial correspondent
of the New York World and later as its European representative and
head of its Paris office. But he had long been conscious that his true
vocation lay elsewhere. While still a bank clerk he had published an
English version of the bmtatio. Christi, and in 1902 he began to work
on a translation of Marcus Aurelius. The latter was never completed;
but in 1905, when he wasreporting on the abortive 'first revolution' in
Russia, he bought in St. Petersburg Creuzer's Oxford text of Plotinus,
and in Moscow the Didot edition. And on his thirty-sixth birthday he
confided to his private journal that to translate and interpret Plotinus
A
seemedtohim'reallyworthalife'. fewmonthsearlierhehadresigned
his lucrative Paris appointment; now he settled in Dublin and en-
deavoured, while earning his living as a leader-writer, to fit himself for
hisself-imposedtasknotonlybyhardworkontheGreeklanguageand
on Greek philosophy but by long and patient study of the masters of
English prose style.
For MacKenna believed the translation of a great work of literature
or philosophy to be a sacred responsibility which demanded, and
deserved, a man's utmost effort. The translator, in his view, must not
rest until he had transferred every nuance of his author's meaning,
emotional as well as logical, into the idiom of another language
an idiom which must be rich, flexible, dignified, and, above all,
XI
PLOTINUS
contemporary. The finished version would necessarily be 'free', but
with a freedom which must be based, as he expressed it, on a rigorous
^re-servitude', and must be justified by the achievement of a cl6ser
fidelity to the spirit of the original than any literal rendering could
hope to attain.
To translate any of the bulkier Greek writers in this fashion might
wellbealifework.ButtheobstaclesinthewayofsotranslatingPlotinus
were,andare, peculiarlygreat.Notonlyarehisthoughtandexpression
exceptionally difficult, but the usual aids to understanding, on which
the translator of a major classical author can normally rely, are in this
case almost completely lacking. There is still no index verborwn to
Plotinus,nosubstantialstudyofhisstyleorsyntax,andnophilosophical
commentary worthy of the name in any language. More serious still,
theestablishmentofa trustworthyGreektext has only recentlybegun,
withthepublicationofthefirstvolumeofMM. HenryandSchwyzer's
monumental edition. And while translations of a sort had been
attemptedbeforeMacKennabyvariousunqualifiedand partiallyquali-
fied persons, there was none among his predecessors from whom he
could hope to get any real light on obscure passages.1 Nor could he
expectmuchmore fromcontemporary professionalscholars. The lead-
ing German authority on Plotinus was probably not far out in his
estimate when he observed in 1930 that 'there are to-day perhaps only
twenty or thirty men alive who can read this author after a fashion'.2
If the last quarter of a century can show some increase in the size of
this curious elite, that is largely due so far, at least, as this country is
concerned totheinterestarousedbyMacKenna'spioneeringachieve-
ment.
Behind his translation lies the patient and often agonized labour of
more than twenty years. Ile soon discovered that he could not effec-
tively serve two masters, Plotinus and daily journalism; and from 1912
onwards the adventurous generosity of the late Sir Ernest Debenham
made it just possible for him to choose Plotinus. But in the years that
followed he had to struggle not only with increasing poverty but with
almost continuous ill health and with moods of deep intellectual dis-
couragement: 'I doubt if there are agonies', he wrote once, 'this side
crime or perhaps cancer, more cruel than that of literary and intellec-
tualeffortthatwillnotwork outto achievement.' I have told this story
in full elsewhere, and will not repeat it here.3 When the final volume
appeared in 1930 MacKenna was a worn-out man; he had judged the
undertaking 'worth a life', and the price had been paid.
1 The EnglishversionsofThomas Taylor (1787-1834, incomplete) and K. S. Guthrie
(1918) arc worthless for this purpose. Probably MacKenna's only considerable debt is
totheGermanofH.F.Mueller(1878-80),apainstakingliteralrendering,butonewhich
too often merelyreproduces the obscurity of the original.
2 Richard Harder, in the preface to the first volume of his German translation.
3 Journal and Letters ofStephen MacKenna, edited with a Memoirby E. R. Dodds
(Constable, 1936).
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