Armstrong, A. H.
Plotinus, Enneads II (1966)
From this point to the end of ch. 12 Plotinus is attacking a Gnostic myth known to us best at present in the form it took in the system of Valentinus. The Mother, Sophia Achamoth,…
From this point to the end of ch. 12 Plotinus is attacking a Gnostic myth known to us best at present in the form it took in the system of Valentinus. The Mother, Sophia Achamoth,…
This and similar ideas are common to most kinds of Gnosticism : cp. Irenaeus Adv. Haer. I. 29 (a non-Valentinian system) and Clement of Alexandria, Strom. IV ch. 13, 89) (Valentinus).
The cosmic spheres and the Archons who ruled them were for the Gnostics formidable barriers which tho soul had to pass on its journey upwards to its true home. To do so it was necessary…
On the question of how far the charges of immorality brought against the Gnostics by their opponents were justified, see the discussion in Entretiens Hardt V, pp. 186-189.
The object of Plotinus is to explain how belief in the existence and goodness of divine providence can be justified in the face of all the apparent evils in the world: the opponents he has…
The Gnostics: cp. II. 9 [33], of which the title is given by Porphyry in Life, ch. 24, 56-57, as “Against those who say that the maker of the universe is evil, and the universe…
This treatise (No. 30 in the chronological order) is in fact the first part of a major work of Plotinus, including also Nos. 31–33 (V 8, V 5 and II 9), the four sections of…
This odd little collection of notes (No. 13 in Porphyry’s chronological order, but the numbering must be quite arbitrary: the notes are unlikely all to have been written at about the same time), which Porphyry…
Here there appears the “cosmic religiosity” which Plotinus shared with other philosophers of late antiquity: the belief, that is, that the celestial regions and the heavenly bodies are divine and far closer to any higher,…
The spontaneous, unreasoning (though supremely intelligent) character of the creative activity of Intellect and higher soul is something on which Plotinus several times insists, against Jews, Christians and simple minded Platonists who supposed that God…