Introduction

The epithet ‘Fiction’s Plotinus’, expresses a much more intimate and complex relationship than the one implied by Marsilio Ficino’s authorship of the Latin version and interpretation of Plotinus’s text. Plotinus’s relation to the philosophy of his successors was discussed by E. R. Dodds in several works, especially his ‘Theurgy and Its Relationship with Neoplatonism’, published in 1947, and The Greeks and the Irrational, of 1951. An exploration of the influence of Ficino’s Plotinus before the 1580 publication of the editio princeps of the Enneads in the original Greek will certainly contribute to the study of an important chapter in the history of Western philosophy. To modern eyes Ficino’s Plotinus may appear to have a biform nature: zealously loyal to both the letter and the spirit of the Greek text in the translation and intertextual, yet eclectic, and syncretistic in the commentary. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.