An Essay on the Beautiful: From The Greek of Plotinus Paperback – January 16, 2017

Plotinus was a 3rd Century c.e. philosopher whose work was an attempt at bringing new life to the ideas of Plato. He would later be described as an early founder of the Neoplatonist philosophic movement. This is a later category used by 19th century historians, but he himself would have only identified himself as a Platonist philosopher an nothing more.Thus the ideas found within, An Essay on the Beautiful is very much in line with the idea of finding beauty by looking for it's purest essence. This idea was derived from Plato's theory of forms. The most prominent idea put emphasized by Plotinus is that in order to understand beauty you need to search for it's underlying form or essence. He also identifies "pure" beauty with the "pure" good and to understand it you need to be a good or virtuous person otherwise your judgement is not clear and you will not be able to discern what is truly beautiful, because you are not truly good.The ideas are strait forward and you can see certain "Neoplatonic" ideas showing up in early Christian theology with Saint Augustine being a prime example.The text was clearly translated, but often times uses an incredibly complex words where much simpler ones would work.The only downside of this version is the lengthy introduction that tells us absolutely nothing about what's in the text or anything about Plotinus. It is just a bunch of flowery words praising the ideas within without telling you anything about them or the person who wrote it.This book is not for everyone. It would enjoyed most by students of philosophy, history, or ancient religion. Otherwise if you want to read it go knock yourself out because though it's philosophic in nature, it is short and the ideas are strait forward.

This is a treatise that should be read and re-read. It is illuminating when you realize the influence of Plato's ideas realized by Plotinus and how it affects so many of our visionary poets.

Unbelievably great

Good stuff

This is a book about the mysticism and philosophy of the 3rd century mystic, Plotinus. Although this book was somewhat informative and there were some interesting points made, most of this book was very difficult to understand. This may be due to the complicated nature of this topic and the possible shortcomings of the reader. Perhaps further understanding can be garnered through additional reading and further study; however, I would not recommend this book.