To Interpret Plotinus: from a Fragment to the Whole

Philosophy

Abstract

This article presents a kind of exegesis concentrating on a passage from the Enneads. The reasoning undertaken here supports the hypothesis of ontological priority of relations in Plotinus’ philosophical system. The hypostases in the hierarchy of beings are considered as constituted by those relations — above all by an absolutly simple self-relation of the One — and therefore are regarded, as such, as having only a secondary status.