The session will be a presentation and guided discussion of Husserl’s manuscript on Plotinus (c. 1913). In the first part, I will introduce the text, discuss its historical and philosophical background, and suggest the reasons why it could be important. Beginning with the broader issue of the relationship between the thought of Plotinus and phenomenological philosophy, the general thesis will be defended that for all the three major phenomenologists – Brentano, Husserl, and Heidegger – Plotinus represents, though in very different ways, a radical counterpoint to their own philosophical views. I will then narrow down to a consideration of Husserl in order to illustrate this thesis. In alternative to the existing literature on the topic, which privileges external comparisons between Husserl’s and Plotinus’s doctrines, a different path will be proposed that, through the collection and analysis of the pertinent testimonies and documents, focuses on what Husserl himself said and wrote about Plotinus. Thus, in the second part of the session, we will be able to work together on what is certainly the most important of these documents: a manuscript by Husserl containing reading notes of the Enneads. A translation and commentary of that manuscript will be presented for discussion. Against what has been suggested, I will show that the notes do not constitute an inconsequent engagement with Plotinus and that they are rather the result of a deeply personal and highly philosophical, but also technically informed reading of those texts – a reading in which we can hear the echoes of some of the most fundamental philosophical decisions Husserl was facing at the time. In particular, and in support of our general thesis, it will be argued that Plotinus’s commitment to the idea of an absolute. One appears precisely as a road not taken in the development of transcendental phenomenology. This being in part a practical session, questions will also be raised regarding how a historian of philosophy should approach this kind of document, what kind of instruments can be used to explore it, and what some indicators could be, in such a text, from which he or she is allowed to draw relevant philosophical conclusions.

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