SOURCE: “The Symbolism of the Enneads,” in Reading Neoplatonism: Non-Discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 91-114.

In the following excerpt, Rappe contends that Plotinus used metaphorical language in the Enneads to help readers to understand difficult concepts.

The significance of imagery or symbolism in the Enneads has long been a source of scholary contention.¹ In 1961 Beierwaltes published his well-known article, “Plotins Metaphysik des Lichtes,”² in which he studied Plotinus' extensive employment of the image of light. Beierwaltes starts out with an assumption that governs the way he looks at the metaphors in the Enneads. He assumes that figures of speech can be more or less adequate to the task of representation, and that representational adequacy depends upon the ontological approximation of image and archetype. Since it is incorporeal, light turns out to be the most appropriate image for the task...