Plotinus on Intellect

Plotinus (205-269 AD) is considered the founder of Neoplatonism, the dominant philosophical movement of late antiquity, and a rich seam of current scholarly interest. Whilst Plotinus' influence on the subsequent philosophical tradition was enormous, his ideas can also be seen as the culmination of some implicit trends in the Greek tradition from Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. Emilsson's in-depth study focuses on Plotinus' notion of Intellect, which comes second in his hierarchical model of reality, after the One, unknowable first cause of everything. As opposed to ordinary human discursive thinking, Intellect's thought is all-at-once, timeless, truthful and a direct intuition into 'things themselves'; it is presumably not even propositional. Emilsson discusses and explains this strong notion of non-discursive thought and explores Plotinus' insistence that this must be the primary form of thought. Plotinus' doctrine of Intellect raises a host of questions that Emilsson addresses. First, Intellect's thought is described as an attempt to grasp the One and at the same time as self-thought. How are these two claims related? How are they compatible? What lies in Plotinus' insistence that Intellect's thought is a thought of itself? Second, Plotinus gives two minimum requirements of thought: that it must involve a distinction between thinker and object of thought, and that the object itself must be varied. How are these two pluralist claims related? Third, what is the relation between Intellect as a thinker and Intellect as an object of thought? Plotinus' position here seems to amount to a form of idealism, and this is explored.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1: Emanation and activity 2: The genesis of Intellect 3: Intellect and Being 4: Discursive and non-discursive thought

Review :
`Emilsson always keeps close to the text and fully appreciates the intellectual context of Plontinus' concepts and style of philosophising, whilst at the same time he can deepen our understanding of the text by posing questions inspired by modern philosophical concerns...It is difficult to do justice to the abundance of interpretive ideas in this book...This is a book that has as much to teach us about methods of interpretation as it does to help us to understand some essential issues in the Enneads. Not the least contribution to the utility and readability of the volume is the generous citation of all passages discussed together with the Greek text in the footnotes. This format makes it easy to use as a monograph, but its index of passages will also provide those reading Plotinus ready access to a wealth of intelligent and stimulating interpretations of many difficult sections of the Enneads.' Andrew Smith, Bryn Mawr Classical Reviews