The Enneads

Описание

General Introduction to the Translations
the edition
This volume presents a new annotated translation of the Enneads of
Plotinus (204/5–270 ce). We include as well the Life of Plotinus written
by Porphyry of Tyre (223/4–c.305 ce), who was also the first editor of
the Enneads. Most of what we know about the life of Plotinus and the
circumstances surrounding the composition of his treatises comes from
Porphyry’s biography and so there is no need to repeat the details here.
We follow Porphyry’s idiosyncratic arrangement of these treatises, an
arrangement which does not correspond to the chronological order of
their composition, as Porphyry himself tells us. A table comparing
Porphyry’s ordering with the chronological ordering follows this
introduction.
the translation
This translation into English of the Enneads of Plotinus is a ‘successor’
to two great monuments to scholarship, the translations by Stephen
MacKenna (1917–1930) and A. H. Armstrong (1966–1988).1 It is not a
replacement for those works, which can still be consulted with considerable profit. In the case of MacKenna, he was impeded by the absence
of a critical edition of the Greek text. That did not appear until the
publication of the editio maior of the Enneads, Plotini Opera by Paul
Henry and Hans-Rudolph Schwyzer (1951–1973). In the case of
Armstrong, the first three volumes of his seven-volume work (Enneads
1–3) appeared prior to the publication of the third volume of the editio
minor of the Enneads by Henry and Schwyzer (1964–1982) containing
several hundred corrections to the text of Enneads 1–5 in the first two
1 A number of excellent complete translations in European languages now exist. Special
mention should be made of the Spanish translation of Igal (1982 1985), the French
translation edited by Brisson and Pradeau (2002 2010), the German translation of
Harder, continued by Beutler and Theiler (1956 1971), the Italian translation by
Faggin (1992), and the modern Greek translation by Kalligas (1994 ), with Ennead 6
yet to appear.

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