How was the universe created, and what is our place within it? These are the questions at the heart of Plotinus’ Against the Gnostics. For the Gnostics, the universe came into being as a result of the soul’s fall from intelligible reality—it is the evil outcome of a botched creation. Plotinus challenges this, and insists that the soul’s creation of the world is the necessary consequence of its contemplation of the ideal forms. While the Gnostics claim to despise the visible universe, Plotinus argues that such contempt displays their ignorance of the higher realities of which the cosmos is a beautiful image.

Against the Gnostics is a polemical text. It aims to show the superiority of Plotinus’ philosophy over that of his Gnostic rivals, and poses unique challenges: Plotinus nowhere identifies his opponents by name, he does not set out their doctrines in any great detail, and his arguments are frequently elliptical. The detailed commentary provides a guide through these difficulties, making Plotinus’ meandering train of thought in this important treatise accessible to the reader.

Sebastian Gertz is Supernumerary Teaching Fellow in Philosophy at St John’s College, Oxford. He has worked as Assistant Editor with the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle project at King’s College London, and completed his PhD thesis on the ancient commentaries on Plato’s Phaedo at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 2010. It was published under the title Death and Immortality in Late Neoplatonism by Brill in 2011. His main area of research is Ancient Philosophy, and particularly Neoplatonism.