1. And only three...see Enneads V.1, [10].
3. Enn. V.1, [10], 7; V.5, [32], 1.
4. Enn. V.1, ibid. In point of fact, some modern Neoplatonic scholars have dubbed Plotinus' system as henological (from "to hen," Greek for the One).
11. This is also true for each of the other two hypostasis below the One.
12. Stephen Makenna says, "The system of Plotinus is a system of necessary EMANATION, PROCESSION, or IRRADIATION accompanied by necessary ASPIRATION or REVERSION-TO-SOURCE: all forms and phases of Existence flow from the Divinity and all strive to return THITHER and to remain THERE...," from the Extracts from the Explanatory Matter In The First Edition in his translation of the Enneads, Penguin (1991), p. xxxi.
13. "There is no deliberate action on the part of the One, and no willing or planning or choice or care for what is produced." Armstrong, The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, p. 240.
14. For a thorough account of the history of this idea in Western thought, see Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge: 1933).
16. At the end of Enn. V.1, [5], Plotinus says, ..."only separated by otherness," a classic example of this dialectical interplay between transcendence and immanence replete throughout the Enneads. Perhaps the paradox can be partially resolved by saying the world is in the One but the One not in the world.
17. See Enn. VI.7, [12]. Throughout the Enneads wherever Plotinus discusses the nature of the One, apophatic markers such as "as it were" or "so to speak" always follow. For a valuable discussion of Plotinian apophasis, see Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying (Chicago: 1991), chapter 1.
20. Cited in Armstrong, p. 245.
26. The World-Soul's nearness to Intellect is closer than that of nous to the One.
28. Immanent form of living body.
33. This idea of the unfolding seed was to later play a very important role in St. Augustine's "seminal reasons."
36. See Toshihiko Izutusu, The Concept and Reality of Existence, Keio Institute (Tokyo: 1971), passim.
38. Plotinus says that it is due to the indeterminate dyad and tolma that Matter causes delusional vices in the soul, Enn. I.8, [4].
40. Plotinus' position on this point of descent is ostensibly paradoxical. On the one hand, the decline of the soul is contemptible, as it is a manifestation of tolma; on the other, it is a necessary fulfillment of the order of creation. In a sense, our soul is sent here by the Divinity to perfect the physical world in the image of nous, but the choices we make determine how this fulfillment will play itself out. We can either exploit the body for lofty ends or be enslaved by it, Enn. IV.8, [5]. Which is to say, the body is nonessential in the pursiut of eudaimonia but not blameworthy either; it is somehow neutral, Enn. I.4, [16].
41. Freedom is nothing other than to do what one ought, rather than what is desired (Enn. VI.8, 1-4). The imposition of order and measure upon the lower soul constitutes moral freedom (Enn. I.8, [4]).
42. I use this word here as a loose analogy. The Western confessional notion of salvation, with all its doctrinal ramifications, is quite alien to Plotinus' world-view.
43. Under the direction of Hunein ibn Ishaq they were responsible for producing a veritable translation industry in Gundeshapur overnight.
44. He also translated all of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
45. The commentary in question is other than Isagoge which is on Aristotle's Categories. For an English translation of the Theology of Aristotle, see Henry-Schwyzer, Plotini Opera II (Maior), passim.
46. As Majid Fakhry points out, this had a lot do with the attempt at "...harmonizing...Greek philosophy..." with "...Islámic dogma...," History of Islámic Philosophy (New York: 1983), p. 20; and since many of the ideas of the Stagirite sage were seen by the more orthodox elements of society as bordering on the heretical and incompatible with the Qur'nic creed, what better strategy to introduce the Theologia by attributing to Aristotle in order to placate the conservative literalists of the time.
47. Fakhry, ibid., cites the fihrist (table of contents) of Badawi's edition of the The Theology of Aristotle and al-Qifti's Tarikh al-Hukama. On the origins of the Theologia see F.W. Zimmerman, The Origins of the So-Called Theology of Aristotle in Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts, (ed.) J. Kraye, W.F. Ryan and C.B. Schmitt; see also Franz Rosenthal, Ash-Shaykh al-Yunani and the Arabic Plotinus Source, Orientalia vol. 21 (1952), pp. 461-529 and vol. 22 (1953), pp. 370-400.
48. This work later played an important role in the systematic re-assembly of early Neoplatonism by the Latin Scholastics in the Catholic West and was dubbed the Liber de Causis.
49. See Richard C. Taylor, A Critical Analysis of the Kalam fi'l mahd al-khair in Neoplatonism and Islámic Thought, (ed.) Parviz Morewedge (New York: 1992), pp. 11-40.
50. Translated by Fakhry, ibid., p. 21. "In this movement of desire, the author finds the clue not only to the nature of the Soul, which acts as the link between the sensible and the intelligible worlds, but also emanation of all things from the One (the First). Thus the Soul, which is none other than Reason in the guise of desire, performs one of two functions: it orders or governs either the world of forms or that of particulars, depending upon whether it is moved by desire for the universal or for the particular. When it desires the particular, owing to its yearning to reveal its active nature, it moves downward, dominated and directed by Reason, and dwells in animals, plants, or humans, in the form of an indivisible, incorporeal substance which, upon the distintegration of the body, will rejoin the realm of separate substances (or forms), after passing through a series of progressive purifications. In support of this view, the author invokes the authority of Heraclitus, Empedocles, Pythagoras and Plato, who are all said to have held that the Soul descends into the body from the intelligible world and will rejoin it upon its release from the bondage. This body Plato has described as a dungeon to which the Soul is temporarily consigned, whereas Empedocles has described it as the rust which attacks it..." ibid.
51. "Those two Neoplatonic compilations contain virtually all the germinal elements that went into Islámic Neo-platonism: the utter transcendence of the First Principle or God; the procession or emanation of things from Him; the role of reason as the instrument of God in his creation, and the locus of the forms of things, as well as the source of the illumination of the human mind; the position of the Soul at the periphery of the intelligible world and the link or "horizon" between the intelligible and sensible worlds; and finally the contempt in which matter was held, as the basest creation or emanation from the One and the lowest rung in the cosmic scale." ibid., p. 31.
52. "Accident" (arad) for Ibn Sina does not mean chance - this point cannot be over-emphasized enough since it became it a constant cause of controversy, confusion, misinterpretation and misrepresentation by his detractors, noteably Averroes and Thomas Aquinas. For the Shaykh ar-Ra'is "accident" denotes a very special kind of accident vis-a-vis the contingent possibilities and is only such due to the inherent bipolarity of the possible. Being/existence for Avicenna is a primary category and cannot be divided into the five predicables (genus, specie, differentiae, substance and accident).
53. See al-Ghazzali's Tahafut al-falsifa.
54. Henri Corbin, The History of Islámic Philosophy, p. 171.
56. Avicenna's "floating-man" argument presupposes Descartes' cogito ergo sum by almost six centuries.
57. He is not to be confused with the Sufis Abu Najib and Shihab ad-Din Omar al-Suhrawardi.
58. One of the accusations leveled against the Master of Illumination was that he disbelieved in Muhammad's "seal of prophecy" and espoused the possibility of continued revelation after him. See Hossein Ziai, The Source and Nature of Authority: A Study of Suhrawardi's Illuminationist Political Doctrine in The Political Aspects of Islámic Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Muhsin S. Mahdi, (ed.) Charles E. Butterworth (Cambridge: 1992), pp. 304-344.
59. Corbin, Sohravardi in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7, (ed.) Paul Edwards, p. 486. See also the first chapter of his Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth...(New Jersey: 1977).
62. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Three Muslim Sages, p. 69.
63. Translated by Margaret Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islám, p. 53.
64. This layout harks back to Plotinus' indefinite dyad and the generation of psuche from nous. For a very valuable, lengthy expose, see John Walbridge, The Science of Mystic Lights: Qutb al-Din Shirazi and the Illuminationist Tradition in Islámic Philosophy, (Cambridge: 1992), pp. 55-73.
67. While there are certain features in Avicenna's mystical recitals (Salman va Absal, Tayr, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, Ishq, etc.) which seems to strongly suggest this point of view, Suhrawardi was really the first to develop it in any systematic fashion. Other Sufis, Ibn `Arabi and his school especially, were to expand upon this doctrine, although there is virtually no evidence whatsoever that the Great Shaykh was influenced by Ishraqi thought, ever came into contact with Suhrawardi's works or even knew of him for that matter.
68. See Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, part ii.
70. Annemarie Schimmel, The Mystical Dimensions of Islám, p. 223.