Adam Mickiewicz University
The presence of Plotinus
The self, contemplation, and spiritual exercise in the Enneads
Description and organization
In the center of “The School of Athens”, a famous fresco by Raphael, we can see Plato and Aristotle, the two philosophers who may have been indeed the greatest thinkers of antiquity. However, the scholarly endeavor of the last century has demonstrated with increasing consistency that Plotinus – although his name and legacy is not so popular – could well stand next to them, especially so, because he attempted to synthetize the views of those great masters of the past. His presence in the Western philosophy was, perhaps, a more silent one, but also very influential. Since Late Antiquity, Christian, Jewish and Muslim philosophers were inspired by him as well as Renaissance Platonists and German Idealists. In year 2020, 1750 years had passed by since Plotinus died in a Campanian villa during what seemed to be the last wave of an ancient pandemic, usually called the “Cyprian plague”. Or, as he saw it, since his final ascent from “the divine in us to the divine in the All”. The conference was planned for the year 2020 to celebrate Plotinus’ presence in the Western tradition, but had to be postponed for obvious reasons.
One of the topics which has recently attracted a lot of scholarly attention is Plotinus’ view of the self. It seems original, interesting and refreshing in the midst of our “culture of narcissism”, where we tend to be preoccupied more than ever by concepts such as the self, self-realization, identity, and individualism. What we would like to discuss, however, is not only Plotinus’ philosophical view of the self, but the connections between his concept of the self and the practical dimension of his philosophy, famously described by Pierre Hadot as “spiritual exercise” and “the way of life”. During the three days of our online meeting, we will explore the connections between Plotinus’ view of the self, its contemplative knowledge of the divine realities, which is the goal of philosophical life, and the practical methods of arriving at this knowledge and at the transformation of the self.
Programme
Day 1: The self Wednesday, 16 June 2021
Session Chair: Mateusz Stróżyński
Opening of the conference
Keynote lecture
The demiurgic Intellect and individual intellects in Plotinus
Lloyd Gerson (University of Toronto)
Break
Plotinus: the self as the logos of the particularized soul
Siobhan Doyle (University College Dublin)
The self as potential for self-consciousness and independence
Yady Oren (University of Jerusalem)
Day 2 : Contemplation Thursday, 17 June 2021
Session Chair: Maria Marcinkowska-Rosół
Keynote lecture
Beginning to resemble the ground on which you walk: Ennead V.8.10.30 Sara Ahbel-Rappe (University of Michigan)
Break
The dimmest intellection: Nature’s creation and awareness in Plotinus
Ágoston Guba (Eötvös Loránd University)
Beauty and spiritual exercises in the ascent towards God in Plotinus
Luciana Gabriela Santoprete (Laboratoire d’Études sur les Monothéismes, CNRS)
Keynote lecture
Rhetoric, philosophy, and spiritual exercise in Plotinus
Christian Tornau (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg) Break
Everywhere and nowhere: the textual indeterminacy of the undescended soul in Plotinus as performative anagogic writing
Nicholas Banner (Independent)
Imagination and spiritual exercise in Plotinus
Mateusz Stróżyński (Adam Mickiewicz University) Closing remarks
Contact
Those interested in attending the conference remotely, please, contact Mateusz Stróżyński for further details (email address: monosautos@gmail.com).
(Text by the organisers)
Link
https://classicalstudies.org/scs-news/cfp-self-contemplation-and-spiritual-exercise-enneads