پلاتینوس دربارهٔ خود، آزادی و سیاست: دربارهٔ خود، آزادی و سیاست

As the most important philosophical work to emerge in the 700-year period between Aristotle and Augustine, The Enneads has been subject to intense scrutiny for more than 2000 years. But the mystical and abstract nature of these treatises by Plotinus continues to resist easy elucidation. In this volume, the latest in the Aarhus Studies on Mediterranean Antiquity, Asger Ousager grapples with the great neo-Platonist's conception of the individual. Is the individual free or determined? Is the Plotinian God subject to any compulsion Himself, and with what consequences for our inner and outer freedom? And finally, what are the political and ethical implications of Plotinism? Since Plotinus has traditionally been regarded as apolitical, it is the evidence that Ousager marshals for his political philosophy that forms the most intriguing part of this study. According to the author, what distinguishes Plotinus from Plato and Aristotle politically is his emphasis on natural authority, mutual cooperation and the immense potential of all people, even slaves. "What is an individual? Is the self predetermined or free? Plotinus (204-70 CE) answers by considering what distinguishes human souls from one another on each level of their unifications with Soul, Intellect and the One. The latter is the only partless individual, and the particular soul is only an individual in so far as the two coincide." "All evidence for a political philosophy in Plotinus is presented, drawn, e.g., from contemporaneous Roman relations with the Middle East."--BOOK JACKET