Plotinus’ Ennead V.8, originally part of a single work (with III.8, V.5, and II.9), provides the foundation for a positive view of the universe as an image of divine beauty against the Gnostic rejection of the world. Although it emphasizes the cosmic dimension of beauty, it is, as are most treatises of Plotinus, concerned with the individual soul. The notion that the artist has within him an idea of beauty that derives directly from the intelligible world in fact coincides with his theory that each one of us has access to Intellect through his or her own intellect. It is the exploitation of this theme that forms the central dynamic of the treatise, with its stress on our ability to "see" and be one with the intelligible world and its beauty.

Andrew Smith is Emeritus Professor at University College Dublin where he was Professor of Classics from 1992–2010. He had also lectured at the University of Liverpool and University College Galway after undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Hull and Bern. He is the author of numerous articles on Neoplatonism (some of which are reprinted in Plotinus, Porphyry and Iamblichus: Philosophy and Religion in Neoplatonism, 2012) and edited the Teubner edition of the fragments of Porphyry. He has contributed Ennead I.6 to this series, of which he is the co-editor with John Dillon.