PLOTINUS: Ennead IV.7: On the Immortality of the Soul

Ennead IV.7 is a very early treatise (second according to Porphyrys chronological table), and unlike the many treatises devoted to attempts at untangling various issues Plotinus found problematic in Platos thinking, this one presents the teachings of the other main schools current in Plotinus day: the Stoics, Epicureans, Pythagoreans, and Peripatetics, all of whom presented soul as something material or as contingent upon material soul, and so as being neither truly immortal nor imperishable. It includes observations on many mainly Stoic doctrines on perception, memory, sensation, thought, virtue, powers of material bodies, mixture and reproduction (Chapters 183); on Pythagorean attunement (84); and on Peripatetic entelechy (85). In Chapters 910 Plotinus presents, in broad terms, Platos doctrines on souls immortalitymainly that of the individual soul, but a fortiori that of the soul of the cosmos. These chapters offer some of Plotinus most powerful prose. He is not concerned to prove the souls immortalitythat was an uncontroversial tenet of Platonism, to be taken for granted. In this treatise Plotinus is laying down the indisputable foundations for his later writings.