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DOUGLAS BURTON-CHRISTIE
The Pagan Philosopher's Quest for Holiness: Plotinus and his Circle
From Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert, Oxford University Press 1993, pp. 49-54
Page 4
Reading and interpreting the texts of Plato could help one cultivate this simple regard. Plotinus considered his own approach to these texts essentially traditional: "These teachings are therefore, no novelties, no inventions of today but long since stated if not stressed; our doctrine here is the explanation of an earlier one and we can show the antiquity of these opinions on the testimony of Plato himself."[22] He saw himself as defending the thought of the "ancient Greek school,"[23] and his contemporaries regarded him as "amongst the Platonists."[24] Plotinus appears as a creative exegete of Plato, bringing questions and concerns of his own day to the texts, both to allow Plato to shed new light on the questions and to rethink Plato in the light of these questions. As Hadot suggests, with Plotinus, "philosophy becomes exegesis."[25]
The hermeneutical key to Plotinus's interpretation of the Platonic tradition was his radical interiorization of Plato's world of forms. Plotinus claims that "each of us is an intellectual cosmos,"[26] that the journey of the soul is "a voyage of self-discovery ... [I]f we wish to know the Real, we have only to look within ourselves."[27] Such self-exploration teaches one to distinguish between a lower self-consciousness - the ego's awareness of its own activity[28] - and a higher consciousness - the secret inner person who is "continually in the intellectual realm."[29] Because the hidden center of this inner self coincides with the center of all things, the self may hope at times to achieve total unification, that is, "become God" or, as Plotinus says, to be God.[30]
Cf. Plotinus,
The soul's movement
will be about its source,
Music leads to the absolute beauty
Plato, Books
can be your worst enemies |||
Plato
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