Unity and the many › Reading the Enneads as an inquiry

The Enneads are a collection of treatises, rather than a single book written in its present order. Porphyry, Plotinus's student and editor, explains in his Life of Plotinus 24 that he arranged fifty-four treatises into six groups of nine. He grouped related subjects instead of following the order of composition. A reader can therefore begin with a particular problem and move between treatises, rather than expect every necessary premise to appear in the preceding chapter.

Plotinus understands his project as an interpretation of Plato. In V.1.8, he presents the central teaching as an explanation of earlier philosophy, not a discovery without predecessors. Calling his philosophy Neoplatonism is useful for locating it within the Platonic tradition, but it should not obscure this self-understanding. His arguments repeatedly ask how intelligible order, living activity, and bodily things depend on one another.

Three selections provide a workable entrance. I.6 investigates beauty and the cultivation of the person who perceives it. V.1 distinguishes the One, Intellect, and Soul. VI.9 examines unity and describes the soul's approach to its source. These discussions belong together because the subject doing the investigating is itself part of the reality being investigated. Plotinus thinks that understanding our own activity can help us understand its conditions.