Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Plato on aporia and self-knowledge
- 2 Cross-examining happiness: reason and community in Plato's Socratic dialogues
- 3 Inspiration, recollection, and mimēsis in Plato's Phaedrus
- 4 Plato's Theaetetus as an ethical dialogue
- 5 Contemplating divine mind
- 6 Aristotle and the history of skepticism
- 7 Stoic selection: objects, actions, and agents
- 8 Beauty and its relation to goodness in Stoicism
- 9 How dialectical was Stoic dialectic?
- 10 Socrates speaks in Seneca, De vita beata 24–28
- 11 Seneca's Platonism: the soul and its divine origin
- 12 The status of the individual in Plotinus
- A. A. Long: publications 1963–2009
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - The status of the individual in Plotinus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 December 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Plato on aporia and self-knowledge
- 2 Cross-examining happiness: reason and community in Plato's Socratic dialogues
- 3 Inspiration, recollection, and mimēsis in Plato's Phaedrus
- 4 Plato's Theaetetus as an ethical dialogue
- 5 Contemplating divine mind
- 6 Aristotle and the history of skepticism
- 7 Stoic selection: objects, actions, and agents
- 8 Beauty and its relation to goodness in Stoicism
- 9 How dialectical was Stoic dialectic?
- 10 Socrates speaks in Seneca, De vita beata 24–28
- 11 Seneca's Platonism: the soul and its divine origin
- 12 The status of the individual in Plotinus
- A. A. Long: publications 1963–2009
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In honor of A. A. Long, optimus magister
“Know thyself,” one of the two famous inscriptions at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, seems to ask what the place of human beings is in the cosmos. One interpretation of the oracle would relate it to that other saying, “Nothing too much,” and would go, “Know that you, being human, are mortal. Know your limits. Do not strive after divine wisdom or immortality. Do not tempt the gods.” Another possible interpretation is: “Know that you, being human, have a divine element – reason – within you. Strive to perfect that element and become as divine as is possible for a human being.” The former interpretation may be the more traditionally religious response and is perhaps one of the lessons of Oedipus Rex. The philosophers, whether Plato, Aristotle, or the Stoics, favor the latter interpretation. Plotinus is without doubt in this group, but what is quite striking about him is that he takes “know thyself” to refer not only to knowing ourselves as human beings in general but even as human individuals, and that he believes that ultimately we are divine. So when I seek to know myself I am to ask not only what it is to be human but also what it is for me to be the particular human being that I am. Moreover, I am to seek not merely to be the perfect human being, but to be the perfect me, and in fact, the divine me.
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- Information
- Ancient Models of MindStudies in Human and Divine Rationality, pp. 216 - 224Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010