The International Journal The International

Journal
of the Platonic Tradition 12 (2018) 197-202
of the

Platonic Tradition

brill.com/jpt

Interview with Professor John M. Dillon

John M. Dillon
jmdillon@eircom.net

Suzanne Stern-Gillet
suzanne.stern-gillet@manchester.ac.uk

John Dillon, who belongs to the elite of scholars to have been honoured by
two Festschriften,1 has had the kind of career that most aspiring academics of
today can only dream of. An Irishman largely educated in England, he took
two gap years after graduation. He spent the first one in Ethiopia, where his
father’s cousin, Sir Charles Mathew, was legal advisor to the Emperor Haile
Selassie; there he taught Greek and Latin in a school run under the aegis
of the British Council and enjoyed a life of colonial ease, interacting happily
with the then thriving international community. His time in Africa became the
subject of his one and only novel so far, The Scent of Eucalyptus. An Ethiopian
Tale (2006). Returned to Ireland, he briefly studied for the Bar before realising
that his vocation lay elsewhere, got married and took another gap year, again
teaching Classics in a school, this time in Limerick, before deciding to pursue
research with a view to an academic career. Largely through the good offices
of John O’Meara, with whom he had started work on Calcidius’ commentary
on the Timaeus, he obtained a generous scholarship from the University of
California at Berkeley to embark on a doctoral dissertation on the fragments
of Iamblichus’ commentaries on a number of Platonic dialogues, most notably
the Timaeus. This became the basis of his first book, Iamblichi Chalcidensis
in Platonis dialogos commentariorum fragmenta (1973). Upon successful com-
pletion of his doctorate in 1969, he was invited to join the Faculty at Berkeley
and, for a number of years, taught various courses on Greek literature and
philosophy. In 1980, he successfully applied for the Regius Chair of Greek at

1  The first was edited by the late John Cleary in 1999 under the title Traditions of Platonism:
Essays in Honour of John Dillon. London: Ashgate. The second Festschrift was edited in 2017
by J.F. Finamore and S. Klitenic Wear under the title Defining Platonism: Essays in Honor of
the 75th Birthday of John M. Dillon. Steubenville: Franciscan University Press. It is reviewed
above, pp. 193-195, by José Baracat Jr.

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198 Interview with Professor John M. Dillon

Trinity College, Dublin. Reluctant to let him go, the then Dean of Humanities
at Berkeley offered him a hefty rise in salary. But money and a relatively low
teaching load could not tempt John to remain away from his native Ireland
any longer. As he replied to the Dean, “I am taking a salary cut of one third and
an increase in teaching load of one third. You cannot match that.” Even a sun-
drenched life of ease on one of the most famous campuses in the U.S. would
no longer keep John away from home.

SSG: How did you come to Plotinus?

JMD: Ever since reading Stephen MacKenna’s translation of the Enneads in

my teenage years, I felt drawn to Plotinus. During my undergraduate years at
Oxford I formed the project of integrating a “special subject” course on Plotinus
into my Greats curriculum, but I was discouraged from the idea by both Peter
Brunt, my moral tutor, and Eric Dodds, who had retired by then and knew that
there would be no supervisory support available. Both diplomatically pointed
out to me that the heavy requirements of a “special subject” in Greats as well as
my lack of background in specialised knowledge made it unwise for me to delve
into the intricacies of the Enneads at that time. Although I took their advice, I
did not lose my interest in Plotinus. Dodds, I am happy to say, later encouraged
me to work on Plotinus. So, I did, and in fact my first published article was a
study of Ennead III 5 for our short-lived graduate student journal in Berkeley,
AGON in 19692—which proved a much more demanding job than I had antici-
pated when I agreed to do it! But, in the following years, Plotinus was [again]
put on the back burner since, through a series of happy accidents, whatever
leisure I had after becoming Chair of the Department, was taken up with what
became a largish book on The Middle Platonists (Cornell, 1977, 2nd ed. 1996).
This was followed by further works on other notable figures of the period of
transition between the Old Academy and the new phase of Platonism associ-
ated with Plotinus. I did a translation and commentary of Alcinous’ Handbook
of Platonism and worked on Philo of Alexandria—if, that is, he can be counted
as a Middle Platonist—and Plutarch. Later came works on the direct heirs of
Plato, the Old Academy, Speusippus, Xenocrates and Polemon.

Pressure on my time grew worse after I returned to Ireland: an increased teach-

ing load was added to the need to devise an entirely new curriculum in ancient
philosophy. As a result, Plotinus had to remain on the back burner for a while
longer.

2  “Ennead III 5: Plotinus’ Exegesis of the Symposium Myth”, AGON III, pp. 24-44.

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Interview with Professor John M. Dillon 199

SSG: You are on record writing that in doing research on various Middle
Platonists you had come to understand that in order “to appreciate adequately
a philosophical tradition such as Platonism, one must pay due attention to the
(relatively) minor figures in the tradition, not just the big stars, as it is with
them that the small changes and modifications and systematizations occur
that enable larger developments to take place.”3 This strikes me as a profound
judgment on the way to proceed when writing on past philosophers who be-
long to long-evolving traditions. Would you care to elaborate?

JMD: Well, yes. I mean, if we think of such second-century philosophers as

Atticus, or Numenius, or Severus, or “Alcinous,” they didn’t know they were
minor figures. They probably thought they were quite important! And they re-
formulated Platonism in various ways, which helped to prepare the way for
Plotinus—though they would not thank you for putting things that way. He
took serious account of them, anyhow, even if only to take opposed positions to
them. For one thing, Plotinus’ monism seems to me a significant reaction to the
dualism of much of second-century Platonism, particularly that of Numenius,
but also Plutarch. Also, I think the idea of a first principle above Intellect may
be stimulated by Numenius’ First God, who is an Intellect “at rest.” Now what,
Plotinus might have asked, is the point of an intellect at rest? If you’re an intel-
lect at all, you should be in (intellectual) motion. So Numenius’ First God is
not really an Intellect at all. And then there’s the question of the relation of the
Forms to Intellect, provoked by Atticus, and later Longinus. So everyone has
their bit to contribute.

SSG: You have experience of teaching both Classics and Philosophy under-
graduates. Are there significant differences between them other than that the
ones have (some) knowledge of Greek while the others generally have none?
Do budding philosophers, for instance, tend to be impervious to the historical
dimensions of the text? Has the analytic tradition made them even more so?
Are they beholden to current theories on the mind (or soul)-body problem, for
instance, while their Classics colleagues are inclined to treat the philosophical
import of the text as an optional extra to the philological and exegetical prob-
lems that it raises?

JMD: Yes, it seems to me an abiding problem in the area of Ancient Philosophy

that neither of the two classes of person who aspire to study it are likely to be
well prepared to do so. At least it was a positive feature of “Greats” at Oxford—in

3  Dillon in Finamore and Klitenic Wear: XVI.

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200 Interview with Professor John M. Dillon

former times, at least—that we, as Classicists, were introduced to a fair degree

of modern philosophy (everything except Symbolic Logic, in fact—we were
spared that!) as part of the overall mix. Philosophy students had no compa-
rable chance to learn Greek, or to study ancient society in general, nor do they
now—and an analytically-trained frame of mind is hardly a good preparation
for Neoplatonism. Conversely, other Classics programmes of my acquaintance
do not give aspiring students of ancient philosophy much chance to engage
with modern philosophy, or to formulate ancient problems in modern terms.
So there is inevitably something of a chasm between the two disciplines.

I have always found, though, that a seminar on Plotinus goes down surpris-
ingly well in Philosophy departments. When asked to give one to our own
Philosophy third-year students, I would always begin (in order to focus their
attention!) by announcing, “Now I realise that my good friend Professor Lyons
(the then Chairman, William Lyons, was a disciple of Gilbert Ryle) does not be-
lieve in the mind. I am here to tell you that I don’t believe in the body.” And we
would carry on from there. A major problem, I think, though, for philosophy
students, apart from not knowing the languages very well, if at all, is ignorance
of the history and culture which forms the background to the philosophy. But I
would not wish to sound too negative. We all get along pretty well in the Trinity
Plato Centre!

SSG: The issue of a possible influence of the Gnostics upon Plotinus’ writings
at some point(s) of his writing life (or possibly throughout it) is currently di-
viding the world of Plotinian scholarship. How do you stand on the issue?

JMD: Well, I am not inclined to suspect a Gnostic to be lurking under every

bed, I must say, but I would concede that engagement with Gnostically-minded
persons, both in and out of the seminar, was something that Plotinus had to
reckon with, and which he discerned as a threat to rational discourse—and
I doubt that he distinguished very clearly between them and what we might
think of as “orthodox” Christians. They are just an aspect, though, of the back-
ground of metaphysical dualism in the previous century or so from which he
is concerned to emancipate himself. But I am inclined to think that even the
three other segments of the so-called “anti-Gnostic Großschrift” are not much
concerned with combating Gnosticism, and it needs considerable ingenuity to
discern them elsewhere.

SSG: Another issue discussed in Plotinian circles is whether one can be con-
tent to read the tractates in the Porphyrian/Enneadic order or whether it is

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Interview with Professor John M. Dillon 201

sounder to take them in the chronological order of composition. The question

is not as innocuous as it may seem since the choice of the Enneadic versus the
chronological order presupposes that one has taken a position on the much
larger and more controversial issue as to whether Plotinus’ thinking did evolve
in the course of the seventeen years or so that he spent writing the texts that
came down to us as the Enneads. The translations and commentaries of the
Enneads that you are currently editing with Andrew Smith follow the Enneadic
order. Was the decision motivated exclusively by your view that Plotinus’ writ-
ings show no significant doctrinal evolution?

JMD: Yes, Andrew and I felt on the whole that, in the case of a man who only
began to set his thoughts down in writing at around the age of 50, not much
development in philosophical positions need be postulated. And indeed all
I would tentatively discern is some refinements of terminology in certain
areas—certainly not major doctrinal developments. What one does need to
bear in mind, of course, is the contiguity of certain treatises that Porphyry places
far apart, such as the four components of the Großschrift, since sequences of
thought and subject-matter can be observed and are important—but one can
bear that in mind, I think, while sticking to the thematic order of Porphyry
who, in any case, has given us clues to enable us to check his editorial judg-
ment. So we decided not to follow the French on this!

SSG: Plotinus’ reputation as a mystic has cast a long shadow on his philosophy.
Perhaps, for this reason, some scholars have recently argued that he was not
really a mystic. Is this going too far the other way? How, if at all, would you
characterise his so-called mysticism?

JMD: To cast Plotinus as a mystic, as was been prevalent for a very long time, is
to do him a disservice in a philosophical context still dominated by the analyt-
ic tradition. Furthermore, for many, “mystic” conjures up beliefs and attitudes
associated with Christian sacramental theology, Sufism and Indian mysticism
such as that of Ramakrishna. Plotinus’ mysticism, which I would recognise as
genuine mysticism, is driven by the desire to comprehend the structure of the
cosmos as a whole, and in particular to give a rational account of his personal
experiences of union with the realm of Intellect—and even, on rare but plainly
very memorable occasions, of the One. It is a little unnerving, indeed, to be
faced with a man who has plainly “been There”, so to speak, but one must grant
that he is making a valiant effort to formulate his experiences in rational terms.

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202 Interview with Professor John M. Dillon

SSG: What do you think of the current state of Plotinian Studies? Are there
any topics or facets of his philosophy and literary style that have not been ad-
dressed so far, but should be? Any advice for young scholars entering the field?

JMD: It seems to me that Plotinian studies are in a very lively state at present,
and that really makes it a little discouraging for young scholars trying to find a
new angle for a thesis. I actually think that the most rewarding line to pursue at
the moment is the detailed commentary on an individual tractate, teasing out
Plotinus’ thought-processes in a given context—and indeed we have engaged
a number of young scholars, along with a fine line-up of distinguished authori-
ties, to produce such commentaries in our series, on tractates which they have
worked on for their theses.

SSG: What are you working on at the moment? Any plans for the near future?

JMD: Well, I think I am actually getting a bit past it! Much of my time at the
moment is spent being a general editor of our Plotinus series. My three current
chief undertakings are (1) a translation and commentary, with Ellen Birnbaum,
of Philo’s Life of Abraham, for the SBL Philo series; (2) a little book, arising
from my recent (October 2016) set of lectures in Beijing, entitled The Roots of
Platonism, concerning the question of the stages by which Plato’s originally
rather open-ended philosophizing gradually became a system, to be published
by CUP; and (3) a translation, with commentary, of Iamblichus’ De Communi
Mathematica Scientia, with Sebastian Gertz (who did Enn. II 9 for our Plotinus
series), for Richard Sorabji’s Ancient Commentaries on Aristotle series. But after
that, I think I will pack it in!

The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 12 (2018) 197-202

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