Ebook: Plotinus in Dialogue with the Gnostics

Narbonne (philosophy, Laval U., Quebec) works in a milieu of ancient studies where a French edition is being prepared of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, whence comes the new knowledge about Gnosticism. Six studies, two of them not previously published, explore the third-century quarrel between Gnostics and Neoplatonists in the Roman world, as manifested in the work of Neoplatonist champion Plotinus. They cover the controversy of the generation of matter in Plotinus, the riddle of the partly undescended soul in Plotinus, the weakness of the soul in its relation to evil, two modes of reascent as a new sign of the impact of the quarrel on Plotinus' thought, Plotinian contemplative demiurgy, and God as CAUSA SUI in Plotinus and its possible Gnostic sources. The underlying argument is that Plotinus engaged the Gnostics throughout his career, rather than just in treatises 30-33.