Criticism > Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism > Plotinus - Sara Rappe (essay date 2000)

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Sara Rappe (essay date 2000)

SOURCE: “The Symbolism of the Enneads,” in Reading Neoplatonism: Non-Discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 91-114.

[In the following excerpt, Rappe contends that Plotinus used metaphorical language in the Enneads to help readers to understand difficult concepts.]

The significance of imagery or symbolism in the Enneads has long been a source of scholary contention.¹ In 1961 Beierwaltes published his well-known article, “Plotins Metaphysik des Lichtes,”² in which he studied Plotinus' extensive employment of the image of light. Beierwaltes starts out with an assumption that governs the way he looks at the metaphors in the Enneads. He assumes that figures of speech can be more or less adequate to the task of representation, and that representational adequacy depends upon the ontological...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. E. R. Dodds (essay date 1928)
   2. A. Hilary Armstrong (lecture date 1956)
   3. E. R. Dodds (lecture date 1959)
   4. John M. Rist (essay date 1961)
   5. A. H. Armstrong (essay date 1966)
   6. John M. Rist (essay date 1967)
   7. A. H. Armstrong (lecture date 1979)
   8. A. P. Bos (lecture date 1984)
   9. R. Ferwada (lecture date 1984)
   10. Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson (essay date 1988)
   11. Frederic M. Schroeder (essay date 1992)
   12. Steven K. Strange (essay date 1994)
   13. Georges Leroux (essay date 1996)
   14. Frederic M. Schroeder (essay date 1996)
   15. Th. G. Sinnige (essay date 1999)
   16. Sara Rappe (essay date 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Ancient Greece