Plotinus

Plotinus (c. 205-270) was a philosopher of late antiquity, widely regarded by modern scholars as the founder of Neoplatonism, a movement that reinterpreted Plato for centuries and shaped medieval and Renaissance thought. Although he was born in Egypt, probably in Lycopolis, he wrote in Greek and received an Alexandrian education. His thought revolves around three principles: the One, the Intellect and the Soul.

According to his disciple Porphyry, Plotinus was born around 205 and died at the age of sixty-six, in 270. In Alexandria he studied with Ammonius Saccas, a self-taught teacher who sought to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. Plotinus stayed with him for about eleven years and wrote nothing, since the students had agreed not to commit the teaching to writing. Around the age of thirty-eight, according to tradition, he joined the army of Emperor Gordian III on its expedition to Persia. The campaign failed, and he returned with difficulty to Antioch. Around forty he arrived in Rome, where he spent most of his life and gathered a circle of pupils that included senators, doctors and women.

His writings were never meant to form a book. Plotinus composed treatises for his lectures and debates, from around 253 until a few months before his death. Porphyry arranged them into six groups of nine, which gave the collection its name, the Enneads, from the Greek for nine. Because his eyesight was poor and his handwriting hard to read, Plotinus disliked the work of editing and left it to Porphyry.

His doctrine starts from the One, an utterly simple principle that precedes all distinction and every category of being. Since it cannot be described positively, Plotinus relies on the negative way: the One is not being, thought or will. From it proceeds the Intellect, in which a duality between thinker and thought already appears, and where the Platonic forms are found. The Intellect in turn gives rise to the Soul, which lies between the intelligible and the sensible and gives shape to the material world. This procession is not a deliberate act of creation. It is an overflowing that grows weaker the farther it moves from its source. To illustrate it he uses the image of the sun and its light, while admitting that this is only a metaphor, and he also favours the image of a circle unfolding from its centre.

As for the human soul, he considered it immortal, yet trapped in a body that he saw almost as a prison. Its purpose is to return to the One through virtue, wisdom and a contemplation that transcends multiplicity. He lived austerely: he avoided meat, fasted often and, according to Porphyry, refused to have his portrait painted, since he regarded bodily appearance as an inferior image.

His influence was far-reaching. Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus developed his legacy, while Augustine of Hippo and Boethius absorbed parts of it into Christian thought. His ideas about unity and emanation later inspired Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Gnostic mystics, and they remain a subject of study in academic philosophy.