ABSTRACT
Two provisos need to be registered at the start. First, Plotinus’ style is notoriously obscure: he wrote for a live audience of disciples and associates, did not rework what he had fi rst written, relied on metaphors to express what discursive language cannot express and favoured a dialectical manner of exposition that refl ected his close engagement with the views of his predecessors. 2 The large body of work that he left at his death was edited by his disciple Porphyry, who organised it thematically into six sets of nine ( ennea ) tractates, the Enneads , and gave them the individual titles under which we know them today. 3 The highly complex metaphysical system developed in that work constitutes the framework outside which no aspect of Plotinus’ philosophy can be understood. The outline of the system given below, although minimal, will, it is hoped, provide su cient information to make sense of his diversifi ed concept of consciousness. Second, Plotinus’ self-perception as a Platonist, whose task was to expound as faithfully as he could the philosophy of the master, is so modest as to be inaccurate. Not only had the six centuries elapsed since Plato’s death seen very considerable philosophical activity, all of which is refl ected in the Enneads , but Plotinus was also a highly original philosopher who, by re-thinking and systematising the views expounded in the dialogues, transformed Platonism and prepared it for revival at the Renaissance.
