This book represents the first ever systematic philosophical study of Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on Plotinus’ ‘Enneads’ (first published in Florence, 1492), this work of Ficino being arguably as definitive for the Florentine thinker’s later work as the Platonic Theology was for his earlier. Publication of the present study uniquely illuminates the extent to which Plotinus had always been the crucial influence over Ficino’s revolutionary projects of introducing Platonic thought based on original Greek sources to western Europe, correcting certain features of late medieval and Renaissance Aristotelianism, and laying the foundations of a new Christian Platonism. The study can be read both as an independent introduction to Ficino’s later philosophy and as the complement to the first modern edition and translation of the Commentary on the 'Enneads' itself also by Stephen Gersh (I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2017-).

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Citations of the Plotinus Commentary Preface General Introduction: The Commentary on Plotinus’ Enneads  1 Religious Philosophy or Philosophical Religion  2 Plotinus’ Disclosure of Plato’s Mysteries  3 The Correction of Peripateticism  4 The Exegetical Approach to the Enneads  5 The Place of the Plotinus Commentary in Ficino’s Work  6 The Place of the Commentary in the Earlier “Plotinian” Tradition Excursus 0: The Problem of Ficino’s exhortatio Part 1: Analogy and Trinity 1 Plotinus and Christianity  1.1 The Christian Context  1.2 The Three Primary Substances: Terminology  1.3 The Heretical Errors 2 Ficino’s Logic of Analogy  2.1 The Platonic Genera and Their Mysteries  2.2 The Analogy between Platonic Genera and Peripatetic Categories  2.3 Ficino and Analogy  2.4 Ratio and Analogy Excursus 2: Substance and Quality  x2.1 Substance  x2.2 Quality 3 The Trinitarian Analogue  3.1 Ficino, Plotinus, and Aquinas on the Trinity  3.2 The “Plotinian” Trinity Part 2: From Ontology to Agathology 4 The Structure of Soul  4.1 Importance of the Commentary on Ennead I  4.2 Soul and Animate Being  4.3 From Microcosm to Macrocosm 5 The Unembodied Soul  5.1 The Higher Soul in the Commentary on Ennead I  5.2 Summary of Ficino’s Doctrine of Soul  5.3 The Higher Soul in the Commentary on Ennead IV 6 The Embodied Soul  6.1 The Embodied Soul in the Commentary on Ennead IV 7 Transmigration and Embodiment  7.1 Ficino against Transmigration  7.2 Ficino and Origen 8 Sensation  8.1 General Theory of Sensation  8.2 Ficino’s Innovations  8.3 Vision 9 Intellect and Ideas  9.1 Intellect and Intellectual Soul  9.2 Analogies of Light  9.3 The Divine “Splendour” and “Figure”  9.4 Intellect’s Relation to the Ideas  9.5 The Relation of Ideas to One Another  9.6 The Range of Ideas  9.7 The Distinction between Intellect and the Intelligible  9.8 Agent and Possible Intellect  9.9 The Distinction between Discursive and Non-discursive Thinking  9.10 Ideas, Formulae, and Seminal Reason-Principles  9.11 The Temporalization of the Ideas  9.12 Intellect’s Relation to Number 10 Soul’s Choice between Good and Evil  10.1 The Good  10.2 The Multiplicity of Goods  10.3 The (Sub-) Contrariety of Good and Evil  10.4 The Soul’s Choice: Ficino between Plotinus and Augustine 11 The Threefold Reversion  11.1 Return and Triplicity  11.2 The Triadic Preamble to Ennead I. 3  11.3 The Commentary Proper 12 Ascent to Beauty  12.1 Irradiation of Beauty: lumen and color  12.2 The Divine Nature of Beauty: lumen  12.3 Reception of Beauty: splendor 13 Ascent to the One and the Good  13.1 Presence  13.2 Futurity  13.3 Ascent by Will Excursus II: Daemons and Soul  xII.1 Internal and External Daemons  xII.2 Plotinus’ Daemon PART 3: Matter, Reason, Spirit 14 Matter  14.1 Negative and Affirmative Approaches  14.2 The Structure of the Commentary on Ennead II. 4  14.3 Quantity  14.4 Dimensionality  14.5 Privation  14.6 Infinity Excursus 14: Potency and Act  x14.1 The Structure of the Commentary on Ennead II. 5  x14.2 Potency and Act  x14.3 The Metaphysical Continuum of Potency and Act  x14.4 The Intelligible World  x14.5 Potency and Act in Relation to Soul  x14.6 The Sensible World  x14.7 The Relation of Primal Matter to Being-in-Potency and Being-in-Act 15 Ratio  15.1 The Primal Ratio in Christianity  15.2 The Primal Ratio in Plotinus Excursus 15: Non-formal Ratio  x15.1 Ratio as Principle of Form  x15.2 Ratio between the Real and the Nominal  x15.3 Ratio above and below Form 16 Spirit  16.1 Heaven, Fire, and Spirit  16.2 Heaven as Macrocosm  16.3 Fire as Macrocosm  16.4 Spirit as Macrocosm and Microcosm  16.5 Conspiration Conclusion Bibliography