The book under review is the eighth instalment in the series The Enneads of Plotinus with Philosophical Commentaries, edited by J.M. Dillon and A. Smith (other volumes in the series by E.D. Perl, B. Fleet and G.M. Gurtler are reviewed in CR 67.1). The inaugural volume in the series came out in 2012 with the translation of Ennead IV.8, On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies by B. Fleet. Barring the logistics of shepherding a 54-volume series, as determined by the number of Plotinus’ treatises in the Enneads, the appearance of Ennead IV.8 as the first instalment in the series was not a coincidence. The treatise is one of the most widely known in the collection, and its opening paragraph is one of the most frequently cited passages in Plotinus. The reason for this is the subject matter of the tract: the crucial, for any Neoplatonist, question of how the soul descends in the body. The opening paragraph contains Plotinus’ unique account of one of his extra-corporeal experiences in which he was united with the divine (Enn. IV.8.1–11; cf. VP 23.16–18).

I am indulging in this elongated introduction of the series because it bears direct significance for understanding the importance of the current volume for the series and for Neoplatonic scholarship in general. As anyone who has some familiarity with Neoplatonism and Plotinus in particular would know, we are fortunate to have all his written output which Porphyry thematically organised in six groups of nine treatises, with the latter number giving the name to the collection as a whole. In this thematic organisation, On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies is the second to last in the fourth group of nine treatises. As explained in his Life of Plotinus (VP 24–6), Porphyry arranged the treatises as to chart a path of ascent from the physical world to the higher echelons of reality and to the ultimate source of all, the One. The Fourth Ennead, as illustrated by the subject of Enn. IV.8, deals with topics of psychology. True to his own anthropological project, Porphyry placed the treatises dealing with man – that is, a living being – in the first group of nine treatises, among which is the volume under review, to serve as the starting point of Plotinus’ philosophy.

By now half of the titles in print in the series belong to the Fourth Ennead and thus representing Plotinus’ psychology, as understood by Porphyry, almost completely, save Enn. IV.6 and IV.9, while Enn. I.6 On Beauty is the first representative of the First Ennead. The pronounced presence of the Fourth Ennead in the series is a natural reflection of the predominant interest of Neoplatonic scholarship in ethics, psychology and metaphysics. The publication of seven of the treatises in this Ennead has made a major contribution to rethinking afresh Plotinus’ complex, to say the least, views on the soul and its relation to the intelligible and the sensible. The appearance of Enn. I.6 in the series opens the door for the less studied aspect of Plotinus’ psychology, concerning matters of the physical existence of the living being and practical ethics. This fact itself reflects the recent advancement of the study of physics to the forefront of Neoplatonic scholarship as one of the fastest growing areas of research in late ancient philosophy. I am pleased to note that, according to the publisher's website, five more treatises from the First Ennead have been assigned to scholars and are scheduled to appear in the near future.

The subject of Enn. I.6, as adumbrated by the title Porphyry assigned to it (VP 26.32–5), presents Plotinus’ view on the concept of beauty. The scope of the treatise is not, however, as S. rightly warns us (p. 15), limited to aesthetics. But it expands, in a typically Plotinian manner, to trace the presence of beauty at every level of reality: as an attribute to physical objects, as an essential element of intelligible beings and as an underlying cause of beauty, emanating from the One. In S.’s description, ‘the treatise is at once a philosophical search for the nature of the divine and at the same time an encouragement to the individual to aspire to this goal by taking his start from the beauty that is experienced in this world’ (p. 15). S.’s approach to Plotinus is sophisticated and shows sensitivity to the dynamic nature of his thought.

S. channels his lifetime experience of editing and reading Neoplatonic texts in an appealing way which does not force preconceived notions, well worn out in the scholarship, about what Plotinus, as a Platonist, says and does not say, and why. Instead, he lets Plotinus’ ‘living’ thought, to borrow Bréhier's famous expression, come alive, in its systematic up-and-down movement along the ontological axis of the universe. As a result, his translation is accessible and has something to offer to readers at all levels of familiarity. The experts will appreciate the elegant simplicity of S.’s translation of Plotinus’ complex parallel – and not to forget his elliptic Greek – between the cultivation of temperance, aiming to free the soul from the bonds with which the body weighs it down, and the mystery rites in Enn. I.6.6.1–24. The beginners will be enticed to taste more of Plotinus after reading S.’s translation of the last chapter of the treatise in which Plotinus explains the innate presence of beauty in us as a set of three nested statues: outer, inner and the core pedestal on which temperance stands (Enn. I.6.9.1–15).

In his commentary, S. addresses the major philosophical and philological difficulties of the text, when appropriate, but does not force his opinion about the issue as the only right opinion on the matter. The more we read Plotinus, the better we understand that his language has such a flexibility that more often than not there is no single correct translation but a range of interpretations, depending on the angle from which the text is read. In such cases, as the ambiguous phrase to de mē kratoun in Enn. I.6.3.26 (pp. 81–3), for instance, S. lays out the difficulties with the phrase, the different ways in which it has been previously interpreted, and invites the readers to make up their mind about the polysemantic nuances of the expression. This approach is not only truthful to Plotinus’ style of philosophising, but also to the modern way of understanding Neoplatonism as an evolved philosophical system which does not simply deny, in black-and-white terms, any value to the physical world, as it has been the case in the scholarship from the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. S. is acutely aware of the dangers of oversimplifying Plotinus and shows us how to move forward towards a more nuanced and thus ‘living’ understanding of his thought: ‘Yet even though the endpoint of this philosophical journey lies in a transcendent world, it is important to recognize that Plotinus sees our activities as rooted in the reality of the physical world’ (p. 17).

S.’s translation and commentary is among the avant-garde of Neoplatonic studies, elucidating one of the darker corners of our understanding of Neoplatonism. The appearance of Enn. I.6 in the series of Plotinus’ philosophical commentaries for Parmenides Publishing is twice propitious: first, because it successfully defends the subject of Plotinus’ holistic understanding of the physical world as a philosophically integral part of his system; and second, because On Beauty is, in fact, the first treatise Plotinus ever wrote according to Porphyry's chronological chart at VP 4.22–3. For Plotinus, as for the rest of us, the search of the higher truth of reality begins here, in this plane of existence.