Ennead IV.7 is a very early treatise (second according to Porphyry's chronological table), and unlike the many treatises devoted to attempts at untangling various issues Plotinus found problematic in Plato's thinking, this one presents the teachings of the other main schools current in Plotinus' day: the Stoics, Epicureans, Pythagoreans, and Peripatetics, all of whom presented soul as something material or as contingent upon material soul, and so as being neither truly immortal nor imperishable. It includes observations on many mainly Stoic doctrines on perception, memory, sensation, thought, virtue, powers of material bodies, mixture and reproduction (Chapters 1-83); on Pythagorean attunement (84); and on Peripatetic entelechy (85). In Chapters 9-10 Plotinus presents, in broad terms, Plato's doctrines on soul's immortality-mainly that of the individual soul, but a fortiori that of the soul of the cosmos. These chapters offer some of Plotinus' most powerful prose. He is not concerned to prove the soul's immortality-that was an uncontroversial tenet of Platonism, to be taken for granted. In this treatise Plotinus is laying down the indisputable foundations for his later writings.

Ennead IV.4.30-45 and IV.5 retrieves the unity in this last section of Plotinus' treatise on Problems concerning the Soul. Combining translation with commentary, Gurtler enhances both the accuracy of the translation and the recovery of Plotinus' often unsuspected originality. This is especially true for IV.5, where previous translations fail to convey the concise nature of his argument against both the Aristotelian and Platonic theories of vision. Plato and Aristotle each claim that vision depends on the light between the eye and the object, but Plotinus presents evidence that this is not the case and develops a novel theory of light as a second activity that moves from source to object directly, even arguing that color is in the light itself rather than merely a quality of the object. This theory of vision, in turn, depends on the nature of sympathy developed especially in IV.4.30-45, where Plotinus shows how action at a distance is both possible and necessary for the proper unity in diversity of the sensible cosmos.

Plotinus was much exercised by Plato's doctrines of the soul. In this treatise, at chapter 1 line 27, he talks of "e;the divine Plato, who has said in many places in his works many noble things about the soul and its arrival here, so that we can hope for some clarity from him. So what does the philosopher say? It is clear that he does not always speak with sufficient consistency for us to make out his intentions with any ease."e; The issue in this treatise is one that has puzzled students of Plato from ancient to modern times-and is indeed a popular topic for undergraduate essays even today: Why should the philosopher, who has ascended through a long and painful process of dialectic to "e;assimilation to the divine,"e; ever descend back into the body? Plotinus himself is said by Porphyry to have attained such a state of other-worldly transcendence on at least four occasions during his lifetime, so this was a very real and personal issue for him. In this treatise we see him grappling with it.

For Plotinus, the nature and status of the human soul is one of the central problems of philosophy. Ennead IV.3-4.29 constitutes his most penetrating enquiry into this topic, addressing the issues of the relation of the individual soul to the World Soul, the descent of the soul into body, its relations with that body, problems of personal identity and the nature of memory, sense perception, and the true seat of the emotions -many of which still have a resonance today. The treatise is an excellent example of Plotinus' distinctive method of enquiry: not dogmatic (though he is no sceptic), but worrying away at questions until he has uncovered their complexities to the best of his ability. Such a work requires detailed commentary, such as is provided here, to tease out fully the fascinating convolutions of his thought.

On Our Allotted Guardian Spirit is a lively and at times perplexing text combining general reflections on the nature of the soul with a discussion of the phenomenon of a personal guardian spirit. Plotinus wants to interpret Plato, and aims to integrate Plato's various statements about daimones into one comprehensive theory. This leads to some views that are, if not exotic, then at least strange on first encounter. However, a closer reading reveals that Plotinus is not interested in demonology per se. Instead, the central concern of the treatise are ideas about the soul, the self, and self-consciousness. Plotinus' explorations produce a theory of the mind as the agent and activity responsible for a person’s ethical choices and conduct of life. The demon emerges as a philosophical tool passed down from Plato, but adapted and rationalized to try to explain motivation to action, the impulse toward the ethical life, and even the various differences in human ethical and psychological constitution. This innovative theory is a response to a strong and ongoing current of thought in the philosophical tradition. The introduction offers an overview of ancient demonologies, starting with Homer and the Presocratics, and is followed by an in-depth examination of Plato, the Stoics, Plotinus, and later Neoplatonic developments. As such the book presents Plotinus’ specific rationalizing response to the idea of a guardian spirit in the context of ancient philosophical demonologies.

Platonists beginning in the Old Academy itself and up to and including Plotinus struggled to understand and articulate the relation between Plato's Demiurge and the Living Animal which served as the model for creation. The central question is whether "e;contents"e; of the Living Animal, the Forms, are internal to the mind of the Demiurge or external and independent. For Plotinus, the solution depends heavily on how the Intellect that is the Demiurge and the Forms or intelligibles are to be understood in relation to the first principle of all, the One or the Good. The treatise V.5 [32] sets out the case for the internality of Forms and argues for the necessary existence of an absolutely simple and transcendent first principle of all, the One or the Good. Not only Intellect and the Forms, but everything else depends on this principle for their being.

This early treatise is placed by Plotinus’ editor at the very end of the Enneads, as the culmination of his thought, matching Plotinus’ own last recorded instruction, “to bring the god in you back to the god in the all.” It is a cosmological sketch, arguing that the being of anything depends on its being unified by its orientation to its own good, and so also the being of Everything, the All. The One, or the Good, is at once the goal of all things both individually and collectively, and also the transcendent source of all that we experience, mediated through an intelligible order. But it is also, and perhaps more importantly, intended as a guide to the proper education and discipline of our own motives and experience. We are encouraged to put aside immediate sensory data, egoistic prejudice and sensual impulse, first to grasp at least a little of the intelligible order within which we all live, and at last to purge even those last intellectual attachments and experience what cannot be adequately described: the unity of being.

Aristotle and Plotinus set the horizon of inquiry--thinking is thinking on thinking. Discussion of mind, meaning, and subjectivity begins with the question, How is thinking on thinking different from the kind of thinking with which we are familiar? The answer is that 'thinking on thinking' is about the presuppositions, concepts, and problems that generate questions in ancient and modern metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. Topics examined include the nature of intentionality and meaning, identity and relation, mind and consciousness, self-identity and subjectivity--which lead into discussions concerning other minds, the limits of thought and language, and the emergence of aesthetics of the self. The effects of 'thinking on thinking' are mapped, particularly in parsing problems in ancient, modern analytic, and phenomenological thought, with advocacy of its importance in the present age.

Ennead VI.4-5, originally written as a single treatise, contains Plotinus' most general and sustained exposition of the relationship between the intelligible and the sensible realms, addressing and coalescing two central issues in Platonism: the nature of the soul-body relationship and the nature of participation. Its main question is, How can soul animate bodies without sharing their extension? The treatise seems to have had considerable impact: it is much reflected in Porphyry's important work, Sententiae, and the doctrine of reception according to the capacity of the recipient, for which this treatise is the main source, resonated in medieval thinkers.

Ennead VI.8 gives us access to the living mind of a long dead sage as he tries to answer some of the most fundamental questions we in the modern world continue to ask: are we really free when most of the time we are overwhelmed by compulsions, addictions, and necessities, and how can we know that we are free? Can we trace this freedom through our own agency to the gods, to the Soul, Intellect, and the Good? How do we know that the world is meaningful and not simply the result of chance or randomness? Plotinus' On the Voluntary and on the Free Will of the One is a groundbreaking work that provides a new understanding of the importance and nature of free human agency. It articulates a creative idea of agency and radical freedom by showing how such terms as desire, will, self-dependence, and freedom in the human ethical sphere can be genuinely applied to Intellect and the One while preserving the radical inability of all metaphysical language to express anything about God or gods.