Plotini Opera Omnia cum Ficini commentariis

p. 3, 2. BUT ITSELF HAVING NOTHING FROM ANOTHER] Understand having from what follows. Whoever consults Wyttenbach in his annotation on Plato’s Phaedo p. 281 ff. will miss nothing regarding the meaning. Cf. also Tiedemann’s book titled: Spirit of Speculative Philosophy (i.e., on the causes of contemplative philosophy), III, p. 343 ff.

— 6. THAT THE TERRIFYING THINGS SHOULD NOT BE PRESENT.] Apply to these points what Aristotle argues about courage and cowardice, and likewise about things that inspire confidence in Nicomachean Ethics III. 7, p. 47 ff. (Sylb.), p. 137 ff. (Zell). Cf. Eudemian Ethics p. 116 (Sylb.). Add Andronicus of Rhodes On Passions p. 753 (ed. Hoeschel, Leiden 1617): "Confidence is a science by which we know that we will not fall into danger."

— 9. HOW, THEN, OF A MIXTURE] Sc. does it desire, from the preceding desires. This method of Ficinus is more convenient than that which pleases Engelhardt, who wants to supply it would be capable of receiving from the remote incapable of receiving.

p. 4, 1. [THE ANIMAL IS THE WHOLE] Regarding the concept of animal living being according to the mind of Plato, see Phaedrus § 251 and Ast’s note there, p. 294. Cf. also Hermias on that place, p. 131. Some things also pertain here that the so-called Hermes Trismegistus has in Poemander ch. X and XI, p. 26 ff. (ed. Flussat-Candalla, Cologne 1630). Cf. also Sallust On the Gods and the World ch. VIII and Holstenius and Jo. Conr. Orelli on him, p. 122 f.

— 5. PASSIONS FROM OUTSIDE] Compare below III. Enn. VI. 3, 4, p. 305 ff., where I have added Proclus’s passage on Fate on p. 307, in which this opinion of Plotinus is referred to. This also concerns Michael Psellus On All-Various Doctrine § 28, p. 90 ff. (Fabricius), where, after having said that by Plato and Aristotle the soul is posited as using the body as an instrument, but by the Peripatetics it is mixed with the body, he brings forward these very words of Plotinus. Aristotle had already used the comparison, who in Eudemian Ethics VII. 8, p. 201 (Sylburg) says: "Since the soul is in the same relation to the body as the craftsman is to the tool, etc."

— 8. SO THAT DESIRES ALSO] These are more obscure in Ficinus’s translation. The meaning, however, is this: Desires are also of the soul (i.e., they are not alien to the soul), when indeed it requires the service (i.e., ministry) of an instrument, i.e., of the body. For it is understood from the preceding that the body is an instrument. Therefore, this very requirement for the service of the body, as its own instrument, is desire. Or, the soul desires when it wishes to use the body as its own instrument.

— 15. OR A MIXTURE—AS IF INTERWOVEN] i.e., as they speak today, either chemically or mechanically. The following: "or the one in such a way of its own, etc." contain a new question, specifically this: Whether the soul is partly separated, i.e., using the body, but partly mixed with it in whatever way, and consequently bearing its burdens, in order to use it (i.e., the burdens of the body), whence this business exists for philosophy: that it should turn that very thing which bears the burdens of the body toward that which is using it (i.e., the separated part), and turn this same thing away from that place (from the body) as far as it can possibly be done (i.e., as far as the soul can be without the body). Cf. Ficinus’s Commentary on this chapter. In the final part, perhaps there is a lacuna, and several of our books have a comma after always, so that you might fill and correct it as follows: "so that it is not always separated nor always using it," so that the soul is neither always severed from the body nor always using it.— The following "or as an inseparable form" pertain to the opinion of Alexander of Aphrodisias, who, after having contended that the soul is a form inseparable from the body, explodes that other opinion which is about a form touching the body, and says that this very example of the pilot and the ship is of no account. See Alexander of Aphrodisias, Narration on the Soul, from the translation of Hieron. Donatus. Paris 1528, fol. 133—135.

p. 5, 6. IF PERCEPTION SHOULD RECEIVE AN ADDITION] Cf. p. 609a above: addition of substance. One must hold to the force of the word addition, which Wyttenbach brilliantly declared on Plutarch’s Moralia p. 218 f., so that it means: an addition, whatever is added superfluously to just parts, by which, as if by its own numbers, the thing is already absolute complete/perfect.

— 14. HAVING PERMEATED] Diafoitan to pass through/permeate is omitted in the old edition of Stephanus’s Thesaurus in this place; it signifies the soul actively permeating the body, which had previously been declared passively through interwoven. That word is used of messengers, rumors, and is then transferred to various uses. See Herodotus I. 60. Plutarch On Talkativeness p. 505, where it is joined with is diffused. Lucian Pseudomantis X, p. 217 (Amst). Add Sturz, Xenophon Lexicon in the entry, and Irmisch, Herodian Index p. 626 f.—Next, on account of this is because of these things, just as on account of what is for what reason, on account of which is therefore. See Stephanus’s Thesaurus p. 7200 f. (London ed.), Fischer’s Index in Aeschines Axiochus to III. 4, Viger On Idioms IX. 6. 5, p. 645 with annotation. Cf. ibid. Hermann no. 412, p. 862. Add Proclus in Elements of Theology ch. 142, p. 210 (Frankfurt ed.).