Annotation
The seminar is concerned with the reading and interpretation of Plotinus’s Ennead I, 8 [51]. This treatise is one of the last works that Plotinus wrote at the end of his life.
In the treatise, Plotinus seeks an answer to the question of the origin and essence of evil, which was one of the key questions of religion and philosophy of the imperial period and late antiquity. Plotinus elaborates on his original answer within the Neoplatonic metaphysical system: It is the relation of the human soul to the extreme polarities of the Plotinus’s universe, i.e. to the Good and matter, that provides the key to solving the central question of the work.
Treatise I, 8 also contains Plotinus’s interesting interpretation of Plato's Theaetetus 176a and a discussion with some contemporary views on the question of the origin of evil. The significance of this work also lies in the fact that it influenced later Christian authors, especially St.
Augustine and his own conception of evil.