Plotini Opera Omnia cum Ficini commentariis

And after these things, again descending to reasonings from intellectual hymnody, and putting forward the unrefuted science of Dialectic (having proposed it), following the contemplation of the first causes, let us contemplate how that first God is exempted from all these. Nor indeed must it be held that the younger Platonists, who, when they speak using the custom of their own discipline, follow the example of their master and use Logic and Metaphysics by the name of Dialectic, do not sometimes use this latter name in such a way that they understand the Peripatetic meaning, and thus [do so] even with a certain sort of contempt. A witness is the same Proclus in the same work I. 4, p. 18: "For such a kind of speech does not befit the hypothesis concerning things that are truly beings, nor does the notion of obscure and separate causes harmonize with dialectical exercises." Where, however, in the added exercises, there is also some force. The same Proclus on the Cratylus §. 4, p. 2 sq., Boissonade: "And again Plato rejects Aristotle's dialectic as contentious, but loves that dialectic which sees the principles of beings as a part of philosophy." Yet the same author treats the same argument much more accurately in his Commentary on the Parmenides in a longer passage than can be transferred here; nor is this necessary, since Thom. Taylor in Select Works of Plotinus on this book of ours, p. 18 sq. and again p. 577 ff., has applied this disputation of Proclus to Plotinus. However, it is read on p. 46 ff. of the fourth tome of Proclus’s Works, ed. Cousin, Paris 1821. And just as that interpreter of Plato mentions places occurring in the Phaedrus and Sophist, those indeed which we praised above, so on p. 9 sq. he sets these: "Parmenides advises Socrates before the whole contemplation to be exercised in Dialectic, if indeed he is a lover of the truth of beings, calling that Dialectic about which Socrates himself also taught us in other places, as in the Republic (see above), as in the Sophist, as in the Philebus." To the same effect, Proclus argues at the beginning of his Commentary on the first Alcibiades, ch. 10, p. 27 ff., ed. ours, where he commemorates the three disciplines of Socrates: midwifery, the erotic, and the dialectical—"and he leads one up through the erotic, through midwifery he stirs up into recollection the eternal reasons of the soul, and through the dialectical method he leads [one] around into the contemplation of beings," where you should note leads around as proper to Dialectic, which has its turnings and windings. Then he reminds us of the passages in the Republic and in the Phaedrus, which we touched upon above. And from all these things, which we have explained somewhat more fully, one may judge to what extent Ficino correctly pronounced above on page 16, when he says: they would have more correctly inscribed this book On the return of souls to the Divine, which title he himself also placed before this book, no doubt so that he might aid the understanding of more recent readers.