2022/03/26

Plotinus - Wikipedia

Plotinus - Wikipedia

Plotinus

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Not to be confused with Photinus.
Plotinus
Plotinos.jpg
Head in white marble. The identification as Plotinus is plausible but not proven.
Bornc. 204/5
Asyut or Lycopolis, Egypt, Roman Empire
Died270 (aged 64–65)
Campania, Roman Empire
Notable work
The Enneads[1]
EraAncient philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolNeoplatonism[1][2][3][4]
Main interests
Platonism, metaphysics, mysticism[1][3][4][5]
Notable ideas
Emanation of all things from the One[5]
Three main hypostases: the One, Intellect, and Soul[3][5]
Henosis[5]
Influences
Influenced
Part of a series on
Neoplatonism
Reconstructed bust believed to represent Plotinus
Reconstructed bust believed to represent Plotinus
Concepts
Works
People
Related topics
Socrates.png Philosophy portal

Plotinus (/plɒˈtaɪnəs/; Greek: Πλωτῖνος, Plōtînos; c. 204/5 – 270 CE) was a philosopher in the Hellenistic[7][8] tradition, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism.[1][2][3][4] His teacher was the self-taught philosopher Ammonius Saccas, who belonged to the Platonic tradition.[1][2][3][4] 

Historians of the 19th century invented the term "Neoplatonism"[3] and applied it to refer to Plotinus and his philosophy, which was vastly influential during Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.[3][4] 

Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' most notable literary work, The Enneads.[1] 

In his metaphysical writings, Plotinus described three fundamental principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul.[3][5][9] 


His works have inspired centuries of Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, and Islamic metaphysicians and mystics, including developing precepts that influence mainstream theological concepts within religions, such as his work on duality of the One in two metaphysical states.

Biography[edit]

Porphyry reported that Plotinus was 66 years old when he died in 270, the second year of the reign of the Roman emperor Claudius II, thus giving us the year of his teacher's birth as around 205. Eunapius reported that Plotinus was born in Lyco, which could either refer to the modern Asyut in Upper Egypt or Deltaic Lycopolis, in Lower Egypt.[1][2][3][4] This has led to speculations that he may have been either native Egyptian, Hellenized Egyptian,[10] Greek, or Roman.[11]

Plotinus had an inherent distrust of materiality (an attitude common to Platonism), holding to the view that phenomena were a poor image or mimicry (mimesis) of something "higher and intelligible" (VI.I) which was the "truer part of genuine Being". This distrust extended to the body, including his own; it is reported by Porphyry that at one point he refused to have his portrait painted, presumably for much the same reasons of dislike. Likewise, Plotinus never discussed his ancestry, childhood, or his place or date of birth.[12] From all accounts his personal and social life exhibited the highest moral and spiritual standards.

Plotinus took up the study of philosophy at the age of twenty-eight, around the year 232, and travelled to Alexandria to study.[2][3][4] There he was dissatisfied with every teacher he encountered, until an acquaintance suggested he listen to the ideas of the self-taught Platonist philosopher Ammonius Saccas.[2][3][4] Upon hearing Ammonius' lecture, Plotinus declared to his friend: "this is the man I was looking for",[2] began to study intently under his new instructor, and remained with him as his student for eleven years.[2][3][4] Besides Ammonius, Plotinus was also influenced by the philosophical works of Aristotle,[1] the pre-Socratic philosophers Empedocles and Heraclitus,[6] the Middle Platonist philosophers Alexander of Aphrodisias and Numenius of Apamea, along with various Stoics[1] and Neopythagoreans.[6]

Expedition to Persia and return to Rome[edit]

After having spent eleven years in Alexandria, he then decided, at the age of around 38, to investigate the philosophical teachings of the Persian and Indian philosophers.[2][13] In the pursuit of this endeavor he left Alexandria and joined the army of the Roman emperor Gordian III as it marched on Persia (242-243 C.E.).[2][4] However, the campaign was a failure, and on Gordian's eventual death Plotinus found himself abandoned in a hostile land, and only with difficulty found his way back to safety in Antioch.[2][4]

At the age of forty, during the reign of Emperor Philip the Arab, he came to Rome, where he stayed for most of the remainder of his life.[2][4][12] There he attracted a number of students. His innermost circle included Porphyry, Amelius Gentilianus of Tuscany, the Senator Castricius Firmus, and Eustochius of Alexandria, a doctor who devoted himself to learning from Plotinus and attending to him until his death. Other students included: Zethos, an Arab by ancestry who died before Plotinus, leaving him a legacy and some land; Zoticus, a critic and poet; Paulinus, a doctor of Scythopolis; and Serapion from Alexandria. He had students amongst the Roman Senate beside Castricius, such as Marcellus Orontius, Sabinillus, and Rogantianus. Women were also numbered amongst his students, including Gemina, in whose house he lived during his residence in Rome, and her daughter, also Gemina; and Amphiclea, the wife of Ariston the son of Iamblichus.[14] Finally, Plotinus was a correspondent of the philosopher Cassius Longinus.

Later life[edit]

While in Rome Plotinus also gained the respect of the Emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina. At one point Plotinus attempted to interest Gallienus in rebuilding an abandoned settlement in Campania, known as the 'City of Philosophers', where the inhabitants would live under the constitution set out in Plato's Laws. An Imperial subsidy was never granted, for reasons unknown to Porphyry, who reports the incident.

Plotinus subsequently went to live in Sicily. He spent his final days in seclusion on an estate in Campania which his friend Zethos had bequeathed him. According to the account of Eustochius, who attended him at the end, Plotinus' final words were: "Try to raise the divine in yourselves to the divine in the all."[15] Eustochius records that a snake crept under the bed where Plotinus lay, and slipped away through a hole in the wall; at the same moment the philosopher died.

Plotinus wrote the essays that became the Enneads (from Greek ἐννέα (ennéa), or group of nine) over a period of several years from c. 253 C.E. until a few months before his death seventeen years later. Porphyry makes note that the Enneads, before being compiled and arranged by himself, were merely the enormous collection of notes and essays which Plotinus used in his lectures and debates, rather than a formal book. Plotinus was unable to revise his own work due to his poor eyesight, yet his writings required extensive editing, according to Porphyry: his master's handwriting was atrocious, he did not properly separate his words, and he cared little for niceties of spelling. Plotinus intensely disliked the editorial process, and turned the task to Porphyry, who not only polished them but put them into the arrangement we now have.

Major ideas[edit]

One[edit]

See also: Substance theory

Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction; beyond all categories of being and non-being. His "One" "cannot be any existing thing", nor is it merely the sum of all things (compare the Stoic doctrine of disbelief in non-material existence), but "is prior to all existents". Plotinus identified his "One" with the concept of 'Good' and the principle of 'Beauty'. (I.6.9)

His "One" concept encompassed thinker and object. Even the self-contemplating intelligence (the noesis of the nous) must contain duality. "Once you have uttered 'The Good,' add no further thought: by any addition, and in proportion to that addition, you introduce a deficiency." (III.8.11) Plotinus denies sentience, self-awareness or any other action (ergon) to the One (τὸ Ἕν, to hen; V.6.6). Rather, if we insist on describing it further, we must call the One a sheer potentiality (dynamis) without which nothing could exist. (III.8.10) As Plotinus explains in both places and elsewhere (e.g. V.6.3), it is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-aware Creator God. At (V.6.4), Plotinus compared the One to "light", the Divine Intellect/Nous (Νοῦς, Nous; first will towards Good) to the "Sun", and lastly the Soul (Ψυχή, Psyche) to the "Moon" whose light is merely a "derivative conglomeration of light from the 'Sun'". The first light could exist without any celestial body.

The One, being beyond all attributes including being and non-being, is the source of the world—but not through any act of creation, willful or otherwise, since activity cannot be ascribed to the unchangeable, immutable One. Plotinus argues instead that the multiple cannot exist without the simple. The "less perfect" must, of necessity, "emanate", or issue forth, from the "perfect" or "more perfect". Thus, all of "creation" emanates from the One in succeeding stages of lesser and lesser perfection. These stages are not temporally isolated, but occur throughout time as a constant process.

The One is not just an intellectual concept but something that can be experienced, an experience where one goes beyond all multiplicity.[16] Plotinus writes, "We ought not even to say that he will see, but he will be that which he sees, if indeed it is possible any longer to distinguish between seer and seen, and not boldly to affirm that the two are one."[17]

Emanation by the One[edit]

Superficially considered, Plotinus seems to offer an alternative to the orthodox Christian notion of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing), although Plotinus never mentions Christianity in any of his works. The metaphysics of emanation (ἀπορροή aporrhoe (ΙΙ.3.2) or ἀπόρροια aporrhoia (II.3.11)), however, just like the metaphysics of Creation, confirms the absolute transcendence of the One or of the Divine, as the source of the Being of all things that yet remains transcendent of them in its own nature; the One is in no way affected or diminished by these emanations, just as the Christian God in no way is affected by some sort of exterior "nothingness". Plotinus, using a venerable analogy that would become crucial for the (largely neoplatonic) metaphysics of developed Christian thought, likens the One to the Sun which emanates light indiscriminately without thereby diminishing itself, or reflection in a mirror which in no way diminishes or otherwise alters the object being reflected.[18]

The first emanation is Nous (Divine Mind, Logos, Order, Thought, Reason), identified metaphorically with the Demiurge in Plato's Timaeus. It is the first Will toward Good. From Nous proceeds the World Soul, which Plotinus subdivides into upper and lower, identifying the lower aspect of Soul with nature. From the world soul proceeds individual human souls, and finally, matter, at the lowest level of being and thus the least perfected level of the cosmos. Plotinus asserted the ultimately divine nature of material creation since it ultimately derives from the One, through the mediums of Nous and the world soul. It is by the Good or through beauty that we recognize the One, in material things and then in the Forms. (I.6.6 and I.6.9)

The essentially devotional nature of Plotinus' philosophy may be further illustrated by his concept of attaining ecstatic union with the One (henosis). Porphyry relates that Plotinus attained such a union four times during the years he knew him. This may be related to enlightenment, liberation, and other concepts of mystical union common to many Eastern and Western traditions.[19]

The true human and happiness[edit]

The philosophy of Plotinus has always exerted a peculiar fascination upon those whose discontent with things as they are has led them to seek the realities behind what they took to be merely the appearances of the sense.

The philosophy of Plotinus: representative books from the Enneads, p. vii[20]

Authentic human happiness for Plotinus consists of the true human identifying with that which is the best in the universe. Because happiness is beyond anything physical, Plotinus stresses the point that worldly fortune does not control true human happiness, and thus “… there exists no single human being that does not either potentially or effectively possess this thing we hold to constitute happiness.” (Enneads I.4.4) The issue of happiness is one of Plotinus’ greatest imprints on Western thought, as he is one of the first to introduce the idea that eudaimonia (happiness) is attainable only within consciousness.

The true human is an incorporeal contemplative capacity of the soul, and superior to all things corporeal. It then follows that real human happiness is independent of the physical world. Real happiness is, instead, dependent on the metaphysical and authentic human being found in this highest capacity of Reason. “For man, and especially the Proficient, is not the Couplement of Soul and body: the proof is that man can be disengaged from the body and disdain its nominal goods.” (Enneads I.4.14) The human who has achieved happiness will not be bothered by sickness, discomfort, etc., as his focus is on the greatest things. Authentic human happiness is the utilization of the most authentically human capacity of contemplation. Even in daily, physical action, the flourishing human’s “… Act is determined by the higher phase of the Soul.” (Enneads III.4.6) Even in the most dramatic arguments Plotinus considers (if the Proficient is subject to extreme physical torture, for example), he concludes this only strengthens his claim of true happiness being metaphysical, as the truly happy human being would understand that which is being tortured is merely a body, not the conscious self, and happiness could persist.

Plotinus offers a comprehensive description of his conception of a person who has achieved eudaimonia. “The perfect life” involves a man who commands reason and contemplation. (Enneads I.4.4) A happy person will not sway between happy and sad, as many of Plotinus' contemporaries believed. Stoics, for example, question the ability of someone to be happy (presupposing happiness is contemplation) if they are mentally incapacitated or even asleep. Plotinus disregards this claim, as the soul and true human do not sleep or even exist in time, nor will a living human who has achieved eudaimonia suddenly stop using its greatest, most authentic capacity just because of the body’s discomfort in the physical realm. “… The Proficient’s will is set always and only inward.” (Enneads I.4.11)

Overall, happiness for Plotinus is "... a flight from this world's ways and things." (Theaet. 176) and a focus on the highest, i.e. Forms and the One.

Plotinus regarded happiness as living in an interior way (interiority or self-sufficiency), and this being the obverse of attachment to the objects of embodied desires.[21]

Henosis[edit]

Main article: Henosis

Henosis is the word for mystical "oneness", "union", or "unity" in classical Greek. In Platonism, and especially neoplatonism, the goal of henosis is union with what is fundamental in reality: the One (τὸ Ἕν), the Source, or Monad.[22]

As is specified in the writings of Plotinus on henology, one can reach a state of tabula rasa, a blank state where the individual may grasp or merge with The One.[note 1] This absolute simplicity means that the nous or the person is then dissolved, completely absorbed back into the Monad. Here within the Enneads of Plotinus the Monad can be referred to as the Good above the demiurge.[23][24] The Monad or dunamis (force) is of one singular expression (the will or the one which is the good); all is contained in the Monad and the Monad is all (pantheism). All division is reconciled in the one; the final stage before reaching singularity, called duality (dyad), is completely reconciled in the Monad, Source or One (see monism). As the one source or substance of all things, the Monad is all encompassing. As infinite and indeterminate all is reconciled in the dunamis or one. It is the demiurge or second emanation that is the nous in Plotinus. It is the demiurge (creator, action, energy) or nous that "perceives" and therefore causes the force (potential or One) to manifest as energy, or the dyad called the material world. Nous as being; being and perception (intellect) manifest what is called soul (World Soul).[23]

Henosis for Plotinus was defined in his works as a reversing of the ontological process of consciousness via meditation (in the Western mind to uncontemplate) toward no thought (Nous or demiurge) and no division (dyad) within the individual (being). Plotinus words his teachings to reconcile not only Plato with Aristotle but also various World religions that he had personal contact with during his various travels. Plotinus' works have an ascetic character in that they reject matter as an illusion (non-existent). Matter was strictly treated as immanent, with matter as essential to its being, having no true or transcendential character or essence, substance or ousia (οὐσία). This approach is called philosophical Idealism.[25]

Relation with contemporary philosophy and religion[edit]

Plotinus's Relation to Plato[edit]

See also: Allegorical interpretations of Plato

For several centuries after the Protestant Reformation, neoplatonism was condemned as a decadent and 'oriental' distortion of Platonism. In a famous 1929 essay, E. R. Dodds showed that key conceptions of neoplatonism could be traced from their origin in Plato's dialogues, through his immediate followers (e.g., Speusippus) and the neopythagoreans, to Plotinus and the neoplatonists. Thus Plotinus' philosophy was, he argued, 'not the starting-point of neoplatonism but its intellectual culmination.'[26] Further research reinforced this view and by 1954 Merlan could say 'The present tendency is toward bridging rather than widening the gap separating Platonism from neoplatonism.'[27]

Since the 1950s, the Tübingen School of Plato interpretation has argued that the so-called 'unwritten doctrines' of Plato debated by Aristotle and the Old Academy strongly resemble Plotinus's metaphysics. In this case, the neoplatonic reading of Plato would be, at least in this central area, historically justified. This implies that neoplatonism is less of an innovation than it appears without the recognition of Plato's unwritten doctrines. Advocates of the Tübingen School emphasize this advantage of their interpretation. They see Plotinus as advancing a tradition of thought begun by Plato himself. Plotinus's metaphysics, at least in broad outline, was therefore already familiar to the first generation of Plato's students. This confirms Plotinus' own view, for he considered himself not the inventor of a system but the faithful interpreter of Plato's doctrines.[28]

Plotinus and the Gnostics[edit]

See also: Neoplatonism and Gnosticism

At least two modern conferences within Hellenic philosophy fields of study have been held in order to address what Plotinus stated in his tract Against the Gnostics and to whom he was addressing it, in order to separate and clarify the events and persons involved in the origin of the term "Gnostic". From the dialogue, it appears that the word had an origin in the Platonic and Hellenistic tradition long before the group calling themselves "Gnostics"—or the group covered under the modern term "Gnosticism"—ever appeared. It would seem that this shift from Platonic to Gnostic usage has led many people to confusion. The strategy of sectarians taking Greek terms from philosophical contexts and re-applying them to religious contexts was popular in Christianity, the Cult of Isis and other ancient religious contexts including Hermetic ones (see Alexander of Abonutichus for an example).

According to A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus and the neoplatonists viewed Gnosticism[clarification needed] as a form of heresy or sectarianism to the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy of the Mediterranean and Middle East.[note 2] Also according to Armstrong, Plotinus accused them of using senseless jargon and being overly dramatic and insolent in their distortion of Plato's ontology."[note 3] Armstrong argues that Plotinus attacks his opponents as untraditional, irrational and immoral[note 4][note 5] and arrogant.[note 6] Armstrong believed that Plotinus also attacks them as elitist and blasphemous to Plato for the Gnostics despising the material world and its maker.[note 7]

For decades, Armstrong's was the only translation available of Plotinus. For this reason, his claims were authoritative. However, a modern translation by Lloyd P. Gerson doesn't necessarily support all of Armstrong's views. Unlike Armstrong, Gerson didn't find Plotinus to be so vitriolic against the Gnostics.[29] According to Gerson:

As Plotinus himself tells us, at the time of this treatise’s composition some of his friends were ‘attached’ to Gnostic doctrine, and he believed that this attachment was harmful. So he sets out here a number of objections and corrections. Some of these are directed at very specific tenets of Gnosticism, e.g. the introduction of a ‘new earth’ or a principle of ‘Wisdom’, but the general thrust of this treatise has a much broader scope. The Gnostics are very critical of the sensible universe and its contents, and as a Platonist, Plotinus must share this critical attitude to some extent. But here he makes his case that the proper understanding of the highest principles and emanation forces us to respect the sensible world as the best possible imitation of the intelligible world.

Plotinus seems to direct his attacks at a very specific sect of Gnostics, most notably a sect of Christian Gnostics that held anti-polytheistic and anti-daemon views, and that preached salvation was possible without struggle.[29] At one point, Plotinus makes clear that his major grudge is the way Gnostics 'misused' Plato's teachings, and not their own teachings themselves:

There are no hard feelings if they tell us in which respects they intend to disagree with Plato [...] Rather, whatever strikes them as their own distinct views in comparison with the Greeks’, these views – as well as the views that contradict them – should be forthrightly set out on their own in a considerate and philosophical manner.

The neoplatonic movement (though Plotinus would have simply referred to himself as a philosopher of Plato) seems to be motivated by the desire of Plotinus to revive the pagan philosophical tradition.[note 8] Plotinus was not claiming to innovate with the Enneads, but to clarify aspects of the works of Plato that he considered misrepresented or misunderstood.[3] Plotinus does not claim to be an innovator, but rather a communicator of a tradition.[31] Plotinus referred to tradition as a way to interpret Plato's intentions. Because the teachings of Plato were for members of the academy rather than the general public, it was easy for outsiders to misunderstand Plato's meaning. However, Plotinus attempted to clarify how the philosophers of the academy had not arrived at the same conclusions (such as misotheism or dystheism of the creator God as an answer to the problem of evil) as the targets of his criticism.

Against causal astrology[edit]

Plotinus seems to be one of the first to have argued against the then popular notion of causal astrology. In the late tractate 2.3, "Are the stars causes?", Plotinus makes the argument that specific stars influencing one's fortune (a common Hellenistic theme) attributes irrationality to a perfect universe, and invites moral depravity. He does, however, claim the stars and planets are ensouled, as witnessed by their movement.

Influence[edit]

Ancient world[edit]

The emperor Julian the Apostate was deeply influenced by neoplatonism,[32] as was Hypatia of Alexandria.[33] Neoplatonism influenced many Christians as well, including Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.[34][35] St. Augustine, though often referred to as a "Platonist," acquired his Platonist philosophy through the mediation of the Neoplatonist teachings of Plotinus.[36][37]

Christianity[edit]

Plotinus' philosophy had an influence on the development of Christian theology. In A History of Western Philosophy, philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that:

To the Christian, the Other World was the Kingdom of Heaven, to be enjoyed after death;

to the Platonist, it was the eternal world of ideas, the real world as opposed to that of illusory appearance.

Christian theologians combined these points of view, and embodied much of the philosophy of Plotinus. [...] Plotinus, accordingly, is historically important as an influence in moulding the Christianity of the Middle Ages and of theology.[38]

The Eastern Orthodox position on energy, for example, is often contrasted with the position of the Roman Catholic Church, and in part this is attributed to varying interpretations of Aristotle and Plotinus, either through Thomas Aquinas for the Roman Catholics or Gregory Palamas for the Orthodox Christians.[citation needed]

Islam[edit]

Neoplatonism and the ideas of Plotinus influenced medieval Islam as well, since the Mutazilite Abbasids fused Greek concepts into sponsored state texts, and found great influence amongst the Ismaili Shia[39] and Persian philosophers as well, such as Muhammad al-Nasafi and Abu Yaqub Sijistani. By the 11th century, neoplatonism was adopted by the Fatimid state of Egypt, and taught by their da'i.[39] Neoplatonism was brought to the Fatimid court by Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, although his teachings differed from Nasafi and Sijistani, who were more aligned with the original teachings of Plotinus.[40] The teachings of Kirmani in turn influenced philosophers such as Nasir Khusraw of Persia.[40]

Judaism[edit]

As with Islam and Christianity, neoplatonism in general and Plotinus in particular influenced speculative thought. Notable thinkers expressing neoplatonist themes are Solomon ibn Gabirol (Latin: Avicebron) and Moses ben Maimon (Latin: Maimonides). As with Islam and Christianity, apophatic theology and the privative nature of evil are two prominent themes that such thinkers picked up from either Plotinus or his successors.

Renaissance[edit]

In the Renaissance the philosopher Marsilio Ficino set up an Academy under the patronage of Cosimo de Medici in Florence, mirroring that of Plato. His work was of great importance in reconciling the philosophy of Plato directly with Christianity. One of his most distinguished pupils was Pico della Mirandola, author of An Oration On the Dignity of Man.

Great Britain[edit]

In Great Britain, Plotinus was the cardinal influence on the 17th-century school of the Cambridge Platonists, and on numerous writers from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to W. B. Yeats and Kathleen Raine.[41][42][43][44]

India[edit]

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Ananda Coomaraswamy used the writing of Plotinus in their own texts as a superlative elaboration upon Indian monism, specifically Upanishadic and Advaita Vedantic thought.[citation needed] Coomaraswamy has compared Plotinus' teachings to the Hindu school of Advaita Vedanta (advaita meaning "not two" or "non-dual").[45] M. Vasudevacharya says “Though Plotinus never managed to reach India, his method shows an affinity to the “method of negation” as taught in some of the Upanishads, such as the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, and also to the practice of yoga.[46]

Advaita Vedanta and neoplatonism have been compared by J. F. Staal,[47] Frederick Copleston,[48] Aldo Magris and Mario Piantelli,[49] Radhakrishnan,[50] Gwen Griffith-Dickson,[51] and John Y. Fenton.[52]

The joint influence of Advaitin and neoplatonic ideas on Ralph Waldo Emerson was considered by Dale Riepe in 1967.[53]

See also[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Plotinus:
    * "Our thought cannot grasp the One as long as any other image remains active in the soul. To this end, you must set free your soul from all outward things and turn wholly within yourself, with no more leaning to what lies outside, and lay your mind bare of ideal forms, as before of the objects of sense, and forget even yourself, and so come within sight of that One. (6.9.7)
    * "If he remembers who he became when he merged with the One, he will bear its image in himself. He was himself one, with no diversity in himself or his outward relations; for no movement was in him, no passion, no desire for another, once the ascent was accomplished. Nor indeed was there any reason or though, nor, if we dare say it, any trace of himself." (6.9.11)
  2. ^ From Introduction to Against the Gnostics in Plotinus' Enneads as translated by A. H. Armstrong, pp. 220–222:
    The treatise as it stands in the Enneads is a most powerful protest on behalf of Hellenic philosophy against the un-Hellenic heresy (as it was from the Platonist as well as the orthodox Christian point of view) of Gnosticism. There were Gnostics among Plotinus's own friends, whom he had not succeeded in converting (Enneads ch.10 of this treatise) and he and his pupils devoted considerable time and energy to anti-Gnostic controversy (Life of Plotinus ch.16). He obviously considered Gnosticism an extremely dangerous influence, likely to pervert the minds even of members of his own circle. It is impossible to attempt to give an account of Gnosticism here. By far the best discussion of what the particular group of Gnostics Plotinus knew believed is M. Puech's admirable contribution to Entretiens Hardt V (Les Sourcesde Plotin). But it is important for the understanding of this treatise to be clear about the reasons why Plotinus disliked them so intensely and thought their influence so harmful.
  3. ^ From Introduction to Against the Gnostics in Plotinus' Enneads as translated by A. H. Armstrong, pp. 220–222:
    Short statement of the doctrine of the three hypostasis, the One, Intellect and Soul; there cannot be more or fewer than these three.
    1. Criticism of the attempts to multiply the hypostasis, and especially of the idea of two intellects, one which thinks and that other which thinks that it thinks. (Against the Gnostics, Enneads ch. 1). The true doctrine of Soul (ch. 2).
    2. The law of necessary procession and the eternity of the universe (ch. 3).
    - Attack on the Gnostic doctrine of the making of the universe by a fallen soul, and on their despising of the universe and the heavenly bodies (chs. 4–5).
    - The sense-less jargon of the Gnostics, their plagiarism from and perversion of Plato, and their insolent arrogance (ch. 6).
    3. The true doctrine about Universal Soul and the goodness of the universe which it forms and rules (chs. 7–8).
    4. Refutation of objections from the inequalities and injustices of human life (ch. 9).
    5. Ridiculous arrogance of the Gnostics who refuse to acknowledge the hierarchy of created gods and spirits and say that they alone are sons of God and superior to the heavens (ch. 9).
    6. The absurdities of the Gnostic doctrine of the fall of "Wisdom" (Sophia) and of the generation and activities of the Demiurge, maker of the visible universe (chs. 10–12).
    7. False and melodramatic Gnostic teaching about the cosmic spheres and their influence (ch. 13).
    8. The blasphemous falsity of the Gnostic claim to control the higher powers by magic and the absurdity of their claim to cure diseases by casting out demons (ch. 14).
    9. The false other-worldliness of the Gnostics leads to immorality (ch. 15).
    10. The true Platonic other-worldliness, which loves and venerates the material universe in all its goodness and beauty as the most perfect possible image of the intelligible, contracted at length with the false, Gnostic, other-worldliness which hates and despises the material universe and its beauties (chs. 16–18).
    A. H. Lawrence, Introduction to Against the Gnostics in Plotinus' Enneads, pages 220–222
  4. ^ From Introduction to Against the Gnostics in Plotinus' Enneads as translated by A. H. Armstrong, pp. 220–222:
    The teaching of the Gnostics seems to him untraditional, irrational and immoral. They despise and revile the ancient Platonic teaching and claim to have a new and superior wisdom of their own: but in fact anything that is true in their teaching comes from Plato, and all they have done themselves is to add senseless complications and pervert the true traditional doctrine into a melodramatic, superstitious fantasy designed to feed their own delusions of grandeur. They reject the only true way of salvation through wisdom and virtue, the slow patient study of truth and pursuit of perfection by men who respect the wisdom of the ancients and that know their place in the universe. Pages 220–222
  5. ^ Introduction to Against the Gnostics in Plotinus' Enneads as translated by A. H. Armstrong, pp. 220–222:
    9. The false other-worldliness of the Gnostics leads to immorality (Enneads ch. 15).
  6. ^ Introduction to Against the Gnostics in Plotinus' Enneads as translated by A. H. Armstrong, pp. 220–222:
    Ridiculous arrogance of the Gnostics who refuse to acknowledge the hierarchy of created gods and spirits and say that they alone are sons of God and superior to the heavens (Enneads ch. 9)
  7. ^ They claim to be a privileged caste of beings, in whom alone God is interested, and who are saved not by their own efforts but by some dramatic and arbitrary divine proceeding; and this, Plotinus says, leads to immorality. Worst of all, they despise and hate the material universe and deny its goodness and the goodness of its maker. This for a Platonist is utter blasphemy, and all the worse because it obviously derives to some extent from the sharply other-worldly side of Plato's own teaching (e.g. in the Phaedo). At this point in his attack Plotinus comes very close in some ways to the orthodox Christian opponents of Gnosticism, who also insist that this world is the good work of God in his goodness. But, here as on the question of salvation, the doctrine which Plotinus is defending is as sharply opposed on other ways to orthodox Christianity as to Gnosticism: for he maintains not only the goodness of the material universe but also its eternity and its divinity. The idea that the universe could have a beginning and end is inseparably connected in his mind with the idea that the divine action in making it is arbitrary and irrational. And to deny the divinity (though a subordinate and dependent divinity) of the World-Soul, and of those noblest of embodied living beings the heavenly bodies, seems to him both blasphemous and unreasonable. Pages 220–222
  8. ^ "... as Plotinus had endeavored to revive the religious spirit of paganism".[30]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m Gerson, Lloyd P. (2017). "Plotinus and Platonism". In Tarrant, Harold; Renaud, François; Baltzly, Dirk; Layne, Danielle A. (eds.). Brill's Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity. Brill's Companions to Classical Reception. Vol. 13. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers. pp. 316–335. doi:10.1163/9789004355385_018. ISBN 978-90-04-27069-5. ISSN 2213-1426.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Armstrong, A. Hilary; Duignan, Brian; Lotha, Gloria; Rodriguez, Emily (1 January 2021) [20 July 1998]. "Plotinus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Edinburgh: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Archived from the original on 17 April 2021. Retrieved 5 August 2021. Plotinus (born 205 CE, Lyco, or Lycopolis, Egypt?—died 270, Campania), ancient philosopher, the centre of an influential circle of intellectuals and men of letters in 3rd-century Rome, who is regarded by modern scholars as the founder of the Neoplatonic school of philosophy. [...] In his 28th year—he seems to have been rather a late developer—Plotinus felt an impulse to study philosophy and thus went to Alexandria. He attended the lectures of the most eminent professors in Alexandria at the time, which reduced him to a state of complete depression. In the end, a friend who understood what he wanted took him to hear the self-taught philosopher Ammonius Saccas. When he had heard Ammonius speak, Plotinus said, “This is the man I was looking for,” and stayed with him for 11 years. [...] At the end of his time with Ammonius, Plotinus joined the expedition of the Roman emperor Gordian III against Persia (242–243), with the intention of trying to learn something at first hand about the philosophies of the Persians and Indians. The expedition came to a disastrous end in Mesopotamia, however, when Gordian was murdered by the soldiers and Philip the Arabian was proclaimed emperor. Plotinus escaped with difficulty and made his way back to Antioch. From there he went to Rome, where he settled at the age of 40. [...] Plotinus's own thought shows some striking similarities to Indian philosophy, but he never actually made contact with Eastern sages because of the failure of the expedition. Though direct or indirect contact with Indians educated in their own religious-philosophical traditions may not have been impossible in 3rd-century Alexandria, the resemblances of the philosophy of Plotinus to Indian thought were more likely a natural development of the Greek tradition that he inherited.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Gerson, Lloyd P. (Fall 2018). "Plotinus". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Metaphysics Research Lab, Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University. ISSN 1095-5054. OCLC 643092515. Archived from the original on 26 November 2018. Retrieved 5 August 2021. Plotinus (204/5 – 270 C.E.), is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism. He is one of the most influential philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle. The term ‘Neoplatonism’ is an invention of early 19th century European scholarship and indicates the penchant of historians for dividing ‘periods’ in history. In this case, the term was intended to indicate that Plotinus initiated a new phase in the development of the Platonic tradition. What this ‘newness’ amounted to, if anything, is controversial, largely because one's assessment of it depends upon one's assessment of what Platonism is. In fact, Plotinus (like all his successors) regarded himself simply as a Platonist, that is, as an expositor and defender of the philosophical position whose greatest exponent was Plato himself. [...] The three basic principles of Plotinus' metaphysics are called by him ‘the One’ (or, equivalently, ‘the Good’), Intellect, and Soul. These principles are both ultimate ontological realities and explanatory principles. Plotinus believed that they were recognized by Plato as such, as well as by the entire subsequent Platonic tradition. [...] Porphyry informs us that during the first ten years of his time in Rome, Plotinus lectured exclusively on the philosophy of Ammonius. During this time he also wrote nothing. Porphyry tells us that when he himself arrived in Rome in 263, the first 21 of Plotinus' treatises had already been written. The remainder of the 54 treatises constituting his Enneads were written in the last seven or eight years of his life.
  4. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Siorvanes, Lucas (2018). "Plotinus and Neoplatonism: The Creation of a New Synthesis". In Keyser, Paul T.; Scarborough, John (eds.). Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 847–868. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199734146.013.78. ISBN 9780199734146. LCCN 2017049555.
  5. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Halfwassen, Jens (2014). "The Metaphysics of the One". In Remes, Pauliina; Slaveva-Griffin, Svetla (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Neoplatonism. Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy. Abingdon, Oxfordshire and New York: Routledge. pp. 182–199. ISBN 9781138573963.
  6. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Stamatellos, Giannis (2007). "Matter and Soul". Plotinus and the Presocratics: A Philosophical Study of Presocratic Influences on Plotinus' Enneads. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. pp. 161–172. ISBN 978-0-7914-7061-9. LCCN 2006017562.
  7. ^ Gerson, Lloyd P. (1999). Plotinus. Taylor & Francis. pp. XII (12). ISBN 978-0-415-20352-4.
  8. ^ Rist, John M.; Rist (1967). Plotinus: Road to Reality. CUP Archive. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-521-06085-1.
  9. ^ "Who was Plotinus?". 2011-06-07.
  10. ^ Bilolo, M.: La notion de « l’Un » dans les Ennéades de Plotin et dans les Hymnes thébains. Contribution à l’étude des sources égyptiennes du néo-platonisme. In: D. Kessler, R. Schulz (Eds.), "Gedenkschrift für Winfried Barta ḥtp dj n ḥzj" (Münchner Ägyptologische Untersuchungen, Bd. 4), Frankfurt; Berlin; Bern; New York; Paris; Wien: Peter Lang, 1995, pp. 67–91.
  11. ^ "Plotinus." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press, 2003.
  12. ^ Jump up to:a b Leete, Helen, 1938- (23 December 2016). Beauty and the mystic : Plotinus and Hawkins. Epping, N.S.W. ISBN 9780987524836. OCLC 967937243.
  13. ^ Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus and the Order of His Books, Ch. 3 (in Armstrong's Loeb translation, "he became eager to make acquaintance with the Persian philosophical discipline and that prevailing among the Indians").
  14. ^ Porphyry, Vita Plotini, 9. See also Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell (1999), Iamblichus on The Mysteries, page xix. SBL. who say that "to gain some credible chronology, one assumes that Ariston married Amphicleia some time after Plotinus's death"
  15. ^ Mark Edwards, Neoplatonic Saints: The Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by Their Students, Liverpool University Press, 2000, p. 4 n. 20.
  16. ^ Stace, W. T. (1960) The Teachings of the Mystics, New York, Signet, pp. 110–123
  17. ^ Stace, W. T. (1960) The Teachings of the Mystics, New York, Signet, p. 122
  18. ^ Plotinus (204—270 C.E.)
  19. ^ Lander, Janis (2013). Spiritual Art and Art Education. Routledge. p. 76. ISBN 9781134667895.
  20. ^ Plotinus (1950). The philosophy of Plotinus: representative books from the Enneads. Appleton-Century-Crofts. p. vii. Retrieved 1 February 2012.
  21. ^ "Plotinus". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2018.
  22. ^ Stamatellos, Giannis. Plotinus and the Presocratics: A Philosophical Study of Presocratic Influences in Plotinus' Enneads. SUNY Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy. SUNY Press, 2007, p. 37 ISBN 0791470628
  23. ^ Jump up to:a b Neoplatonism and Gnosticism by Richard T. Wallis, Jay Bregman, International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, p. 55
  24. ^ Richard T. Wallis; Jay Bregman (1992). "Pleroma and Noetic Cosmos: A Comparative Study". Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. SUNY Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-0-7914-1337-1.
  25. ^ Schopenhauer wrote of this neoplatonist philosopher: "With Plotinus there even appears, probably for the first time in Western philosophy, idealism that had long been current in the East even at that time, for it taught (Enneads, iii, lib. vii, c.10) that the soul has made the world by stepping from eternity into time, with the explanation: 'For there is for this universe no other place than the soul or mind' (neque est alter hujus universi locus quam anima), indeed the ideality of time is expressed in the words: 'We should not accept time outside the soul or mind' (oportet autem nequaquam extra animam tempus accipere)." (Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume I, "Fragments for the History of Philosophy," § 7)
  26. ^ E. R. Dodds, 'The Parmenides of Plato and the Origin of the neoplatonic One,' The Classical Quarterly, v. 22, No. 3/4, 1928, pp. 129-142, esp. 140.
  27. ^ Philip Merlan, From Platonism to Neoplatonism (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1954, 1968), p. 3.
  28. ^ Detlef Thiel: Die Philosophie des Xenokrates im Kontext der Alten Akademie, München 2006, pp. 197ff. and note 64; Jens Halfwassen: Der Aufstieg zum Einen.
  29. ^ Jump up to:a b Plotinus: The Enneads. Cambridge University Press. 2017. ISBN 9781107001770.
  30. ^ A Biographical History of Philosophy, by George Henry Lewes Published 1892, G. Routledge & Sons, LTD, p. 294
  31. ^ Pseudo-Dionysius in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  32. ^ Dingeldein, Laura B. (2016). "Julian's Philosophy and His Religious Program". In DesRosiers, Nathaniel P.; Vuong, Lily C. (eds.). Religious Competition in the Greco-Roman World. Atlanta: SBL Press. pp. 119–129. ISBN 978-0884141587.
  33. ^ Michael A. B. Deakin (2018-02-22). "Hypatia". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 2018-03-26.
  34. ^ W. R. Inge (April 1900). "The Permanent Influence of Neoplatonism upon Christianity". The American Journal of Theology. 4 (2): 328–344. doi:10.1086/477376. JSTOR 3153114.
  35. ^ Rhodes, Michael Craig (2014). "Pseudo-Dionysius' concept of God". International Journal of Philosophy and Theology. 75 (4): 306–318. doi:10.1080/21692327.2015.1011683. S2CID 170105090.
  36. ^ Mendelson, Michael (2016). "Saint Augustine". In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 ed.). Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  37. ^ Gersh, Stephen (2012). "The First Principles of Latin Neoplatonism: Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius". Vivarium. 50 (2): 113–117, 120–125, 130–132, 134–138. doi:10.1163/15685349-12341236. JSTOR 41963885.
  38. ^ "A History of Western Philosophy." Bertrand Russell. Simon and Schuster, INC. 1945. pp. 284–285
  39. ^ Jump up to:a b Heinz Halm, Shi'ism, Columbia University Press, 2004, p. 176.
  40. ^ Jump up to:a b Heinz Halm, Shi'ism, Columbia University Press, 2004, p. 177.
  41. ^ Michaud, Derek (2017). Reason Turned into Sense: John Smith on Spiritual Sensation. Peeters. pp. 102–105, 114, 115, 129, 137, 146, 153, 154, 155, 172, 174, 175, 177–178, 180, 181, 181, 184, 185, 188, 195.
  42. ^ "W. B. Yeats and "A Vision": Plotinus and the Principles".
  43. ^ Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2019). The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 4: 1819-1826: Notes. Princeton University Press. p. 453. ISBN 978-0-691-65599-4.
  44. ^ Anna Baldwin; Sarah Hutton; Senior Lecturer School of Humanities Sarah Hutton (24 March 1994). Platonism and the English Imagination. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-40308-5.
  45. ^ Swami-krishnananda.org
  46. ^ Vasudevacharya, M. (2017). The Maker and the Material. Milton Keynes, UK. p. 84. ISBN 978-1-925666-82-3.
  47. ^ J. F. Staal (1961), Advaita and Neoplatonism: A critical study in comparative philosophy, Madras: University of Madras
  48. ^ Frederick Charles Copleston. "Religion and the One 1979–1981". Giffordlectures.org. Archived from the original on 2010-04-09. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
  49. ^ Special section "Fra Oriente e Occidente" in Annuario filosofico No. 6 (1990), including the articles "Plotino e l'India" by Aldo Magris and "L'India e Plotino" by Mario Piantelli
  50. ^ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (ed.)(1952), History of Philosophy Eastern and Western, Vol.2. London: George Allen & Unwin. p. 114
  51. ^ "Creator (or not?)". Gresham.ac.uk. Retrieved 2010-01-08.
  52. ^ John Y. Fenton (1981), "Mystical Experience as a Bridge for Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion: A Critique", Journal of the American Academy of Religion, p. 55
  53. ^ Dale Riepe (1967), "Emerson and Indian Philosophy", Journal of the History of Ideas 28(1):115 (1967)
Library resources about
Plotinus
By Plotinus

Bibliography[edit]

Critical editions of the Greek text
  • Émile Bréhier, Plotin: Ennéades (with French translation), Collection Budé, 1924–1938.
  • Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer (eds.), Editio maior (3 volumes), Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1951–1973.
  • Paul Henry and Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer (eds.), Editio minor, Oxford, Oxford Classical Text, 1964–1982.
Complete English translation
  • Thomas Taylor, Collected Writings of Plotinus, Frome, Prometheus Trust, 1994. ISBN 1-898910-02-2 (contains approximately half of the Enneads)
  • Plotinus. The Enneads (translated by Stephen MacKenna), London, Medici Society, 1917–1930 (an online version is available at Sacred Texts); 2nd edition, B. S. Page (ed.), 1956.
  • A. H. Armstrong, Plotinus. Enneads (with Greek text), Loeb Classical Library, 7 vol., 1966–1988.
  • Lloyd P. Gerson (ed.), George Boys-Stones, John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R.A. King, Andrew Smith and James Wilberding (trs.). The Enneads. Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Lexica
  • J. H. Sleeman and G. Pollet, Lexicon Plotinianum, Leiden, 1980.
  • Roberto Radice (ed.), Lexicon II: Plotinus, Milan, Biblia, 2004. (Electronic edition by Roberto Bombacigno)
The Life of Plotinus by Porphyry
  • Porphyry, "On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of his Works" in Mark Edwards (ed.), Neoplatonic Saints: The Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by their Students, Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2000.
Anthologies of texts in translation, with annotations
  • Kevin Corrigan, Reading Plotinus: A Practical Introduction to Neoplatonism, West Lafayette, Purdue University Press, 2005.
  • John M. Dillon and Lloyd P. Gerson, Neoplatonic Philosophy: Introductory Readings, Hackett, 2004.
Introductory works
  • Erik Emilsson, Plotinus, New York: Routledge, 2017.
  • Kevin Corrigan, Reading Plotinus. A Practical Introduction to Neoplatonism, Purdue University Press, 1995.
  • Lloyd P. Gerson, Plotinus, New York, Routledge, 1994.
  • Lloyd P. Gerson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, Cambridge, 1996.
  • Dominic J. O'Meara, Plotinus. An Introduction to the Enneads, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993. (Reprinted 2005)
  • John M. Rist, Plotinus. The Road to Reality, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Major commentaries in English
  • Cinzia Arruzza, Plotinus: Ennead II.5, On What Is Potentially and What Actually, The Enneads of Plotinus Series edited by John M. Dillon and Andrew Smith, Parmenides Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1-930972-63-6
  • Michael Atkinson, Plotinus: Ennead V.1, On the Three Principal Hypostases, Oxford, 1983.
  • Kevin Corrigan, Plotinus' Theory of Matter-Evil: Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander of Aphrodisias (II.4, II.5, III.6, I.8), Leiden, 1996.
  • John N. Deck, Nature, Contemplation and the One: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus, University of Toronto Press, 1967; Paul Brunton Philosophical Foundation, 1991.
  • John M. Dillon, H.J. Blumenthal, Plotinus: Ennead IV.3-4.29, "Problems Concerning the Soul", The Enneads of Plotinus Series edited by John M. Dillon and Andrew Smith, Parmenides Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1-930972-89-6
  • Eyjólfur K. Emilsson, Steven K. Strange, Plotinus: Ennead VI.4 & VI.5: On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole, The Enneads of Plotinus Series edited by John M. Dillon and Andrew Smith, Parmenides Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1-930972-34-6
  • Barrie Fleet, Plotinus: Ennead III.6, On the Impassivity of the Bodiless, Oxford, 1995.
  • Barrie Fleet, Plotinus: Ennead IV.8, On the Descent of the Soul into Bodies, The Enneads of Plotinus Series edited by John M. Dillon and Andrew Smith, Parmenides Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-1-930972-77-3
  • Lloyd P. Gerson, Plotinus: Ennead V.5, That the Intelligibles are not External to the Intellect, and on the Good, The Enneads of Plotinus Series edited by John M. Dillon and Andrew Smith, Parmenides Publishing, 2013, ISBN 978-1-930972-85-8
  • Sebastian R. P. Gertz, Plotinus: Ennead II.9, Against the Gnostics, The Enneads of Plotinus Series edited by John M. Dillon and Andrew Smith, Parmenides Publishing, 2017, ISBN 978-1-930972-37-7
  • Gary M. Gurtler, SJ, Plotinus: Ennead IV.4.30-45 & IV.5, "Problems Concerning the Soul", The Enneads of Plotinus Series edited by John M. Dillon and Andrew Smith, Parmenides Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-1-930972-69-8
  • W. Helleman-Elgersma, Soul-Sisters. A Commentary on Enneads IV, 3 (27), 1–8 of Plotinus, Amsterdam, 1980.
  • James Luchte, Early Greek Thought: Before the Dawn. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011. ISBN 978-0567353313.
  • Kieran McGroarty, Plotinus on Eudaimonia: A Commentary on Ennead I.4, Oxford, 2006.
  • P. A. Meijer, Plotinus on the Good or the One (VI.9), Amsterdam, 1992.
  • H. Oosthout, Modes of Knowledge and the Transcendental: An Introduction to Plotinus Ennead V.3, Amsterdam, 1991.
  • J. Wilberding, Plotinus' Cosmology. A study of Ennead II. 1 (40), Oxford, 2006.
  • A. M. Wolters, Plotinus on Eros: A Detailed Exegetical Study of Enneads III, 5, Amsterdam, 1972.
General works on Neoplatonism
  • Robert M. Berchman, From Philo to Origen: Middle Platonism in Transition, Chico, Scholars Press, 1984.
  • Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Vol. 1, Part 2. ISBN 0-385-00210-6
  • P. Merlan, "Greek Philosophy from Plato to Plotinus" in A. H. Armstrong (ed.), The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, Cambridge, 1967. ISBN 0-521-04054-X
  • Pauliina Remes, Neoplatonism (Ancient Philosophies), University of California Press, 2008.
  • Thomas Taylor, The fragments that remain of the lost writings of Proclus, surnamed the Platonic successor, London, 1825. (Selene Books reprint edition, 1987. ISBN 0-933601-11-5)
  • Richard T. Wallis, Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, University of Oklahoma, 1984. ISBN 0-7914-1337-3 and ISBN 0-7914-1338-1
Studies on some aspects of Plotinus' work
  • R. B. Harris (ed.), Neoplatonism and Indian Thought, Albany, 1982.
  • Giannis Stamatellos, Plotinus and the Presocratics. A Philosophical Study of Presocratic Influences in Plotinus' Enneads, Albany, 2008.
  • N. Joseph Torchia, Plotinus, Tolma, and the Descent of Being, New York, Peter Lang, 1993. ISBN 0-8204-1768-8
  • Antonia Tripolitis, The Doctrine of the Soul in the thought of Plotinus and Origen, Libra Publishers, 1978.
  • M. F. Wagner (ed.), Neoplatonism and Nature. Studies in Plotinus' Enneads, Albany, 2002.

External links[edit]

Text of the Enneads
Online English translations
Encyclopedias
Bibliographies
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플로티노스 - 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전

플로티노스 - 위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전

플로티노스

위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전.
플로티노스
신플라톤주의
Reconstructed bust believed to represent Plotinus
개념
작품
사람
관련 화제
Portal icon 철학 포털

플로티노스(그리스어: Πλωτῖνος, 205년-270년)는 고대 그리스의 후기 철학자이다. 플로티노스는 그리스어로 음독한 이름이고, 그 밖에 라틴어로 플로티누스(영어 포함), 독일어로 플로틴 등으로 읽는다. 그의 가족과 성장에 관한 이야기는 전해오는 것이 없으나, 그의 제자 포르피리오스가 작품 54편을 보존해서 전한다. 포르피리오스는 스승의 전 작품을 9권씩 묶어서 총 6집으로 편집했다.

플로티노스의 생애[편집]

북아프리카 리코폴리스(Likopolis)에서 태어났고, 비교적 늦은 나이(28살)에 본격적으로 철학에 몰두했다고 전한다. 처음 암모니우스 삭카스에게서 플라톤의 가르침을 전해듣다가 플라톤의 사상에 크게 감동하였고, 이후 '플라톤 철학의 해석자'로서의 길을 걸었다.

플라톤 사상에 몰두해서 가르쳤기에 사람들은 그를 ‘신플라톤주의의 창시자’라고 평한다. 북아프리카의 리코폴리스에서 태어나 로마 제국의 영향력 있는 사상가로 활동했다. 예컨대 고르디아누스 3세의 페르시아 원정에 참여했고, 나중에 갈리에누스 황제와 그의 부인 솔로니나의 신임을 받아 플라톤 왕국의 건설을 제안받기까지 했다. 몸소 네 번이나 신적 체험을 했다는 그는 만 마흔아홉 살의 나이가 되어 비로소 자신의 생각을 글로 남기기 시작했다고 한다. 비록 지병으로 풍을 앓아 시력이 좋지 않았지만, 언제든 토론을 즐겼던 성격의 소유자라 때로는 며칠씩 식음을 전폐하고서라도 몰입하는 열정을 자주 보였다고 한다. 부드러우면서 공정한 인품 때문에 그를 찾는 사람들이 많았고, 그를 후원해 주는 사람도 많았다고 한다. 플라톤의 사상에 심취했던 만큼 육체에 비해 영혼에 더욱더 관심을 기울였으니, 그의 가족 및 성장에 관한 이야기는 전해오는 것이 없다

비록 그의 중심개념 '하나(Hen)'가 플라톤의 사상과 차별화된 것이라고도 연구자들이 지적하지만, 그럼에도 이미 그 개념조차 플라톤이 알고 활용했던 개념이다(특히 《티마이오스》 안에서). 

신플라톤주의의 창시자로 불리는 이유는 무엇보다도 "어찌 '하나'에서 다수가 흘러나왔는지?" 하는 당시 새롭게 제기된 물음에 집중하여 사상을 펼쳤다는 사실에 있다. 소위 영원한 것이 그대로 완전한 채로 머물러 있지 않고, 이 세상의 불완전한 다수로(다양한 것들로) 존재하게 되었는지? 하는 '난해한 물음'에 대해 답변하고자 하였던 것이다.

중기 플라톤주의자들에게는 아직 제기되지 않았던 이 같은 물음이 플로티노스로 하여금 신플라톤주의자들의 관심사인 "유출(Emanation)" 개념에 몰두하도록 이끈 셈이다.

엔네아데스[편집]

<nowiki /> 이 부분의 본문은 엔네아데스입니다.

플라톤의 사상에 심취했던 만큼 육체에 비해 영혼에 더욱더 관심을 기울였으니, 그의 가족 및 성장에 관한 이야기는 전해오는 것이 없다(포르피리오스의 『플로티노스의 생애』 중에서). 다행히 그의 제자 포르피리오스에 의해 그의 작품 54편이 지금까지 잘 보존되어 전해져 온다. 포르피리오스는 스승의 전 작품을 9권씩 묶어서 총 6집으로 편집했다. 이때 그는 나름대로 스승의 뜻을 숙고했던 것으로 보인다.

숫자 9(enneas)는 ‘완성’의 의미를 띠었기에, 그렇게 스승의 가르침이 완전한 것임을 말하고 싶었던 것 같다. 그래서 오늘날 그의 작품을 가리켜 《엔네아데스(Enneades)》라고 칭한다. 6집으로 배치된 작품들의 내용 및 주제를 보더라도 포르피리오스가 막연하게 편집하지 않았음을 엿볼 수 있다. 제1집은 일상적이 주제, 제2집은 대자연, 제3집은 인간의 삶, 제4집은 영혼, 제5집은 정신, 제6집은 하나(궁극적인 선이자 존재)에 관하여 다룬 작품들로 구성했다.

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Plotinus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Plotinus (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Plotinus

First published Mon Jun 30, 2003; substantive revision Thu Jun 28, 2018

Plotinus (204/5 – 270 C.E.), is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism. He is one of the most influential philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle. The term ‘Neoplatonism’ is an invention of early 19th century European scholarship and indicates the penchant of historians for dividing ‘periods’ in history. In this case, the term was intended to indicate that Plotinus initiated a new phase in the development of the Platonic tradition.

What this ‘newness’ amounted to, if anything, is controversial, largely because one’s assessment of it depends upon one’s assessment of what Platonism is. In fact, Plotinus (like all his successors) regarded himself simply as a Platonist, that is, as an expositor and defender of the philosophical position whose greatest exponent was Plato himself. 

Originality was thus not held as a premium by Plotinus. Nevertheless, Plotinus realized that Plato needed to be interpreted. In addition, between Plato and himself, Plotinus found roughly 600 years of philosophical writing, much of it reflecting engagement with Plato and the tradition of philosophy he initiated. Consequently, there were at least two avenues for originality open to Plotinus, even if it was not his intention to say fundamentally new things. 

The first was in trying to say what Plato meant on the basis of what he wrote or said or what others reported him to have said. This was the task of exploring the philosophical position that we happen to call ‘Platonism’. 

The second was in defending Plato against those who, Plotinus thought, had misunderstood him and therefore unfairly criticized him. Plotinus found himself, especially as a teacher, taking up these two avenues. His originality must be sought for by following his path.

1. Life and Writings

Owing to the unusually fulsome biography by Plotinus’ disciple Porphyry, we know more about Plotinus’ life than we do about most ancient philosophers’. The main facts are these.

Plotinus was born in Lycopolis, Egypt in 204 or 205 C.E. When he was 28, a growing interest in philosophy led him to the feet of one Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. After ten or eleven years with this obscure though evidently dominating figure, Plotinus was moved to study Persian and Indian philosophy. In order to do so, he attached himself to the military expedition of Emperor Gordian III to Persia in 243. The expedition was aborted when Gordian was assassinated by his troops. Plotinus thereupon seems to have abandoned his plans, making his way to Rome in 245. There he remained until his death in 270 or 271.

Porphyry informs us that during the first ten years of his time in Rome, Plotinus lectured exclusively on the philosophy of Ammonius. During this time he also wrote nothing. Porphyry tells us that when he himself arrived in Rome in 263, the first 21 of Plotinus’ treatises had already been written. The remainder of the 54 treatises constituting his Enneads were written in the last seven or eight years of his life.

Porphyry’s biography reveals a man at once otherworldly and deeply practical. The former is hardly surprising in a philosopher but the latter deserves to be noted and is impressively indicated by the fact that a number of Plotinus’ acquaintances appointed him as guardian to their children when they died.

Plotinus’ writings were edited by Porphyry (there was perhaps another edition by Plotinus’ physician, Eustochius, though all traces of it are lost). It is to Porphyry that we owe the somewhat artificial division of the writings into six groups of nine (hence the name Enneads from the Greek word for ‘nine’). In fact, there are somewhat fewer than 54 (Porphyry artificially divided some of them into separately numbered ‘treatises’), and the actual number of these is of no significance. The arrangement of the treatises is also owing to Porphyry and does evince an ordering principle. Ennead I contains, roughly, ethical discussions; Enneads II–III contain discussions of natural philosophy and cosmology (though III 4, 5, 7, 8 do not fit into this rubric so easily); Ennead IV is devoted to matters of psychology; Ennead V, to epistemological matters, especially the intellect; and Ennead VI, to numbers, being in general, and the One above intellect, the first principle of all. It is to be emphasized that the ordering is Porphyry’s. The actual chronological ordering, which Porphyry also provides for us, does not correspond at all to the ordering in the edition. For example, Ennead I 1 is the 53rd treatise chronologically, one of the last things Plotinus wrote.

These works vary in size from a couple of pages to over a hundred. They seem to be occasional writings in the sense that they constitute written responses by Plotinus to questions and problems raised in his regular seminars. Sometimes these questions and problems guide the entire discussion, so that it is sometimes difficult to tell when Plotinus is writing in his own voice or expressing the views of someone else. Typically, Plotinus would at his seminars have read out passages from Platonic or Aristotelian commentators, it being assumed that the members of the seminar were already familiar with the primary texts. Then a discussion of the text along with the problems it raised occurred.

One must not suppose that the study of Aristotle at these seminars belonged to a separate ‘course’ on the great successor of Plato. After Plotinus, in fact Aristotle was studied on his own as preparation for studying Plato. But with Plotinus, Aristotle, it seems, was assumed to be himself one of the most effective expositors of Plato. Studying both Aristotle’s own philosophy as explained by commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias (2nd – early 3rd c. C.E.) and his explicit objections to Plato was a powerful aid in understanding the master’s philosophy. In part, this was owing to the fact that Aristotle was assumed to know Plato’s philosophy at first hand and to have recorded it, including Plato’s ‘unwritten teachings’. In addition, later Greek historians of philosophy tell us that Plotinus’ teacher, Ammonius Saccas, was among those Platonists who assumed that in some sense Aristotle’s philosophy was in harmony with Platonism. This harmony did not preclude disagreements between Aristotle and Plato. Nor did it serve to prevent misunderstandings of Platonism on Aristotle’s part. Nevertheless, Plotinus’ wholesale adoption of many Aristotelian arguments and distinctions will seem less puzzling when we realize that he took these both as compatible with Platonism and as useful for articulating the Platonic position, especially in areas in which Plato was himself not explicit.

2. The Three Fundamental Principles of Plotinus’ Metaphysics

The three basic principles of Plotinus’ metaphysics are called by him ‘the One’ (or, equivalently, ‘the Good’), Intellect, and Soul (see V 1; V 9.). These principles are both ultimate ontological realities and explanatory principles. Plotinus believed that they were recognized by Plato as such, as well as by the entire subsequent Platonic tradition.

The One is the absolutely simple first principle of all. It is both ‘self-caused’ and the cause of being for everything else in the universe. There are, according to Plotinus, various ways of showing the necessity of positing such a principle. These are all rooted in the Pre-Socratic philosophical/scientific tradition. A central axiom of that tradition was the connecting of explanation with reductionism or the derivation of the complex from the simple. That is, ultimate explanations of phenomena and of contingent entities can only rest in what itself requires no explanation. If what is actually sought is the explanation for something that is in one way or another complex, what grounds the explanation will be simple relative to the observed complexity. Thus, what grounds an explanation must be different from the sorts of things explained by it. According to this line of reasoning, explanantia that are themselves complex, perhaps in some way different from the sort of complexity of the explananda, will be in need of other types of explanation. In addition, a plethora of explanatory principles will themselves be in need of explanation. Taken to its logical conclusion, the explanatory path must finally lead to that which is unique and absolutely uncomplex.

The One is such a principle. Plotinus found it in Plato’s Republic where it is named ‘the Idea of the Good’ and in his Parmenides where it is the subject of a series of deductions (137c ff.). The One or the Good, owing to its simplicity, is indescribable directly. We can only grasp it indirectly by deducing what it is not (see V 3. 14; VI 8; VI 9. 3). Even the names ‘One’ and ‘Good’ are fautes de mieux. Therefore, it is wrong to see the One as a principle of oneness or goodness, in the sense in which these are intelligible attributes. The name ‘One’ is least inappropriate because it best suggests absolute simplicity.

If the One is absolutely simple, how can it be the cause of the being of anything much less the cause of everything? The One is such a cause in the sense that it is virtually everything else (see III 8. 1; V 1. 7, 9; V 3. 15, 33; VI 9. 5, 36). This means that it stands to everything else as, for example, white light stands to the colors of the rainbow, or the way in which a properly functioning calculator may be said to contain all the answers to the questions that can be legitimately put to it. Similarly, an omniscient simple deity may be said to know virtually all that is knowable. In general, if A is virtually B, then A is both simpler in its existence than B and able to produce B.

The causality of the One was frequently explained in antiquity as an answer to the question, ‘How do we derive a many from the One?’ Although the answer provided by Plotinus and by other Neoplatonists is sometimes expressed in the language of ‘emanation’, it is very easy to mistake this for what it is not. It is not intended to indicate either a temporal process or the unpacking or separating of a potentially complex unity. Rather, the derivation was understood in terms of atemporal ontological dependence.

The first derivation from the One is Intellect. Intellect is the locus of the full array of Platonic Forms, those eternal and immutable entities that account for or explain the possibility of intelligible predication. Plotinus assumes that without such Forms, there would be no non-arbitrary justification for saying that anything had one property rather than another. Whatever properties things have, they have owing to there being Forms whose instances these properties are. But that still leaves us with the very good question of why an eternal and immutable Intellect is necessarily postulated along with these Forms.

The historical answer to this question is in part that Plotinus assumed that he was following Plato who, in Timaeus (30c; cf. Philebus 22c), claimed that the Form of Intelligible Animal was eternally contemplated by an intellect called ‘the Demiurge’. This contemplation Plotinus interpreted as cognitive identity, since if the Demiurge were contemplating something outside of itself, what would be inside of itself would be only an image or representation of eternal reality (see V 5) – and so, it would not actually know what it contemplates, as that is in itself. ‘Cognitive identity’ then means that when Intellect is thinking, it is thinking itself. Further, Plotinus believed that Aristotle, in book 12 of his Metaphysics and in book 3 of his De Anima supported both the eternality of Intellect (in Aristotle represented as the Unmoved Mover) and the idea that cognitive identity characterized its operation.

Philosophically, Plotinus argued that postulating Forms without a superordinate principle, the One, which is virtually what all the Forms are, would leave the Forms in eternal disunity. If this were the case, then there could be no necessary truth, for all necessary truths, e.g., 3 + 5 = 8, express a virtual identity, as indicated here by the ‘=’ sign. Consider the analogy of three-dimensionality and solidity. Why are these necessarily connected in a body such that there could not be a body that had one without the other? The answer is that body is virtually three-dimensionality and virtually solidity. Both three-dimensionality and solidity express in different ways what a body is.

The role of Intellect is to account for the real distinctness of the plethora of Forms, virtually united in the One. Thus, in the above mathematical example, the fact that numbers are virtually united does not gainsay the fact that each has an identity. The way that identity is maintained is by each and every Form being thought by an eternal Intellect. And in this thinking, Intellect ‘attains’ the One in the only way it possibly can. It attains all that can be thought; hence, all that can be thought ‘about’ the One.

Intellect is the principle of essence or whatness or intelligibility as the One is the principle of being. Intellect is an eternal instrument of the One’s causality (see V 4. 1, 1–4; VI 7. 42, 21–23). The dependence of anything ‘below’ Intellect is owing to the One’s ultimate causality along with Intellect, which explains, via the Forms, why that being is the kind of thing it is. Intellect needs the One as cause of its being in order for Intellect to be a paradigmatic cause and the One needs Intellect in order for there to be anything with an intelligible structure. Intellect could not suffice as a first principle of all because the complexity of thinking (thinker and object of thought and multiplicity of objects of thought) requires as an explanation something that is absolutely simple. In addition, the One may even be said to need Intellect to produce Intellect. This is so because Plotinus distinguishes two logical ‘phases’ of Intellect’s production from the One (see V 1. 7). The first phase indicates the fundamental activity of intellection or thinking; the second, the actualization of thinking which constitutes the being of the Forms. This thinking is the way Intellect ‘returns’ to the One.

The third fundamental principle is Soul. Soul is not the principle of life, for the activity of Intellect is the highest activity of life. Plotinus associates life with desire. But in the highest life, the life of Intellect, where we find the highest form of desire, that desire is eternally satisfied by contemplation of the One through the entire array of Forms that are internal to it. Soul is the principle of desire for objects that are external to the agent of desire. Everything with a soul, from human beings to the most insignificant plant, acts to satisfy desire. This desire requires it to seek things that are external to it, such as food. Even a desire for sleep, for example, is a desire for a state other than the state which the living thing currently is in. Cognitive desires, for example, the desire to know, are desires for that which is currently not present to the agent. A desire to procreate is, as Plato pointed out, a desire for immortality. Soul explains, as unchangeable Intellect could not, the deficiency that is implicit in the fact of desiring.

Soul is related to Intellect analogously to the way Intellect is related to the One. As the One is virtually what Intellect is, so Intellect is paradigmatically what Soul is. The activity of Intellect, or its cognitive identity with all Forms, is the paradigm for all embodied cognitive states of any soul as well as any of its affective states. In the first case, a mode of cognition, such as belief, images Intellect’s eternal state by being a representational state. It represents the cognitive identity of Intellect with Forms because the embodied believer is cognitively identical with a concept which itself represents or images Forms. In the second case, an affective state such as feeling tired represents or images Intellect (in a derived way) owing to the cognitive component of that state which consists in the recognition of its own presence. Here, x’s being-in-the-state is the intentional object of x’s cognition. Where the affective state is that of a non-cognitive agent, the imitation is even more remote, though present nevertheless. It is, says Plotinus, like the state of being asleep in comparison with the state of being awake (see III 8. 4). In other words, it is a state that produces desire that is in potency a state that recognizes the presence of the desire, a state which represents the state of Intellect. In reply to the possible objection that a potency is not an image of actuality, Plotinus will want to insist that potencies are functionally related to actualities, not the other way around, and that therefore the affective states of non-cognitive agents can only be understood as derived versions of the affective and cognitive states of souls closer to the ideal of both, namely, the state of Intellect.

There is another way in which Soul is related to Intellect as Intellect is related to the One. Plotinus distinguishes between something’s internal and external activity (see V 4. 2, 27–33). The (indescribable) internal activity of the One is its own hyper-intellectual existence. Its external activity is just Intellect. Similarly, Intellect’s internal activity is its contemplation of the Forms, and its external activity is found in every possible representation of the activity of being eternally identical with all that is intelligible (i.e., the Forms). It is also found in the activity of soul, which as a principle of ‘external’ desire images the paradigmatic desire of Intellect. Anything that is understandable is an external activity of Intellect; and any form of cognition of that is also an external activity of it. The internal activity of Soul includes the plethora of psychical activities of all embodied living things. The external activity of Soul is nature, which is just the intelligible structure of all that is other than soul in the sensible world, including both the bodies of things with soul and things without soul (see III 8. 2). The end of this process of diminishing activities is matter which is entirely bereft of form and so of intelligibility, but whose existence is ultimately owing to the One, via the instrumentality of Intellect and Soul.

According to Plotinus, matter is to be identified with evil and privation of all form or intelligibility (see II 4). Plotinus holds this in conscious opposition to Aristotle, who distinguished matter from privation (see II 4. 16, 3–8). Matter is what accounts for the diminished reality of the sensible world, for all natural things are composed of forms in matter. The fact that matter is in principle deprived of all intelligibility and is still ultimately dependent on the One is an important clue as to how the causality of the latter operates.

If matter or evil is ultimately caused by the One, then is not the One, as the Good, the cause of evil? In one sense, the answer is definitely yes. As Plotinus reasons, if anything besides the One is going to exist, then there must be a conclusion of the process of production from the One. The beginning of evil is the act of separation from the One by Intellect, an act which the One itself ultimately causes. The end of the process of production from the One defines a limit, like the end of a river going out from its sources. Beyond the limit is matter or evil.

We may still ask why the limitless is held to be evil. According to Plotinus, matter is the condition for the possibility of there being images of Forms in the sensible world. From this perspective, matter is identified with the receptacle or space in Plato’s Timaeus and the phenomenal properties in the receptacle prior to the imposition of order by the Demiurge. The very possibility of a sensible world, which is impressively confirmed by the fact that there is one, guarantees that the production from the One, which must include all that is possible (else the One would be self-limiting), also include the sensible world (see I 8. 7). But the sensible world consists of images of the intelligible world and these images could not exist without matter.

Matter is only evil in other than a purely metaphysical sense when it becomes an impediment to return to the One. It is evil when considered as a goal or end that is a polar opposite to the Good. To deny the necessity of evil is to deny the necessity of the Good (I 8. 15). Matter is only evil for entities that can consider it as a goal of desire. These are, finally, only entities that can be self-conscious of their goals. Specifically, human beings, by opting for attachments to the bodily, orient themselves in the direction of evil. This is not because body itself is evil. The evil in bodies is the element in them that is not dominated by form. One may be desirous of that form, but in that case what one truly desires is that form’s ultimate intelligible source in Intellect. More typically, attachment to the body represents a desire not for form but a corrupt desire for the non-intelligible or limitless.

3. Human Psychology and Ethics

The drama of human life is viewed by Plotinus against the axis of Good and evil outlined above. The human person is essentially a soul employing a body as an instrument of its temporary embodied life (see I 1). Thus, Plotinus distinguishes between the person and the composite of soul and body. That person is identical with a cognitive agent or subject of cognitive states (see I 1. 7). An embodied person is, therefore, a conflicted entity, capable both of thought and of being the subject of the composite’s non-cognitive states, such as appetites and emotions.

This conflicted state or duality of personhood is explained by the nature of cognition, including rational desire. Rational agents are capable of being in embodied states, including states of desire, and of being cognitively aware that they are in these states. So, a person can be hungry or tired and be cognitively aware that he is in this state, where cognitive awareness includes being able to conceptualize that state. But Plotinus holds that the state of cognitive awareness more closely identifies the person than does the non-cognitive state. He does so on the grounds that all embodied or enmattered intelligible reality is an image of its eternal paradigm in Intellect. In fact, the highest part of the person, one’s own intellect, the faculty in virtue of which persons can engage in non-discursive thinking, is eternally ‘undescended’. It is eternally doing what Intellect is doing. And the reason for holding this is, based on Plotinus’ interpretation of Plato’s Recollection Argument in Phaedo (72e-78b), that our ability to engage successfully in embodied cognition depends on our having access to Forms. But the only access to Forms is eternal access by cognitive identification with them. Otherwise, we would have only images or representations of the Forms. So, we must now be cognitively identical with them if we are going also to use these Forms as a way of classifying and judging things in the sensible world.

A person in a body can choose to take on the role of a non-cognitive agent by acting solely on appetite or emotion. In doing so, that person manifests a corrupted desire, a desire for what is evil, the material aspect of the bodily. Alternatively, a person can distance himself from these desires and identify himself with his rational self. The very fact that this is possible supplies Plotinus with another argument for the supersensible identity of the person.

Owing to the conflicted states of embodied persons, they are subject to self-contempt and yet, paradoxically, ‘want to belong to themselves’. Persons have contempt for themselves because one has contempt for what is inferior to oneself. Insofar as persons desire things other than what Intellect desires, they desire things that are external to themselves. But the subject of such desires is inferior to what is desired, even if this be a state of fulfilled desire. In other words, if someone wants to be in state B when he is in state A, he must regard being in state A as worse than being in state B. But all states of embodied desire are like this. Hence, the self-contempt.

Persons want to belong to themselves insofar as they identify themselves as subjects of their idiosyncratic desires. They do this because they have forgotten or are unaware of their true identity as disembodied intellects. If persons recognize their true identity, they would not be oriented to the objects of their embodied desire but to the objects of intellect. They would be able to look upon the subject of those embodied desires as alien to their true selves.

Plotinus views ethics according to the criterion of what contributes to our identification with our higher selves and what contributes to our separation from that identification. All virtuous practices make a positive contribution to this goal. But virtues can be graded according to how they do this (see I 2). The lowest form of virtues, what Plotinus, following Plato, calls ‘civic’ or ‘popular’, are the practices that serve to control the appetites (see I 2. 2). By contrast, higher ‘purificatory’ virtues are those that separate the person from the embodied human being (I 2. 3). One who practices purificatory virtue is no longer subject to the incontinent desires whose restraint constitutes mere civic or popular virtue. Such a person achieves a kind of ‘likeness to God’ recommended by Plato at Theaetetus 176a-b. Both of these types of virtue are inferior to intellectual virtue which consists in the activity of the philosopher (see I 2. 6). One who is purified in embodied practices can turn unimpeded to one’s true self-identity as a thinker.

Plotinus, however, while acknowledging the necessity of virtuous living for happiness, refuses to identify them. Like Aristotle, Plotinus maintains that a property of the happy life is its self-sufficiency (see I.1.4–5). But Plotinus does not agree that a life focused on the practice of virtue is self-sufficient. Even Aristotle concedes that such a life is not self-sufficient in the sense that it is immune to misfortune. Plotinus, insisting that the best life is one that is in fact blessed owing precisely to its immunity to misfortune, alters the meaning of ‘self-sufficient’ in order to identify it with the interior life of the excellent person. This interiority or self-sufficiency is the obverse of attachment to the objects of embodied desires. Interiority is happiness because the longing for the Good, for one who is ideally an intellect, is satisfied by cognitive identification with all that is intelligible. If this is not unqualifiedly possible for the embodied human being, it does at least seem possible that one should have a second order desire, deriving from this longing for the Good, that amounts to a profound indifference to the satisfaction of first order desires. Understanding that the good for an intellect is contemplation of all that the One is means that the will is oriented to one thing only, whatever transient desires may turn up.

4. Beauty

Plotinus’ chronologically first treatise, ‘On Beauty’ (I 6), can be seen as parallel to his treatise on virtue (I 2). In it, he tries to fit the experience of beauty into the drama of ascent to the first principle of all. In this respect, Plotinus’ aesthetics is inseparable from his metaphysics, psychology, and ethics.

As in the case of virtue, Plotinus recognizes a hierarchy of beauty. But what all types of beauty have in common is that they consist in form or images of the Forms eternally present in Intellect (I 6. 2). The lowest type of beauty is physical beauty where the splendor of the paradigm is of necessity most occluded. If the beauty of a body is inseparable from that body, then it is only a remote image of the non-bodily Forms. Still, our ability to experience such beauty serves as another indication of our own intellects’ undescended character. We respond to physical beauty because we dimly recognize its paradigm. To call this paradigm ‘the Form of Beauty’ would be somewhat misleading unless it were understood to include all the Forms cognized by Intellect. Following Plato in Symposium, Plotinus traces a hierarchy of beautiful objects above the physical, culminating in the Forms themselves. And their source, the Good, is also the source of their beauty (I 6. 7). The beauty of the Good consists in the virtual unity of all the Forms. As it is the ultimate cause of the complexity of intelligible reality, it is the cause of the delight we experience in form (see V 5. 12).

5. Principal Opponents

Plotinus regarded himself as a loyal Platonist, an accurate exegete of the Platonic revelation. By the middle of the 3rd century CE, the philosophical world was populated with a diverse array of anti-Platonists. In the Enneads, we find Plotinus engaged with many of these opponents of Platonism. In his creative response to these we find many of his original ideas.

Although Plotinus was glad to mine Aristotle’s works for distinctions and arguments that he viewed as helpful for explicating the Platonic position, there were a number of issues on which Plotinus thought that Aristotle was simply and importantly mistaken. Perhaps the major issue concerned the nature of a first principle of all. Plotinus recognized that Aristotle agreed with Plato that (1) there must be a first principle of all; (2) that it must be unique; and (3) that it must be absolutely simple. But Aristotle erred in identifying that first principle with the Unmoved Mover, fully actual self-reflexive intellection. Plotinus did not disagree that there must be an eternal principle like the Unmoved Mover; this is what the hypostasis Intellect is. But he denied that the first principle of all could be an intellect or intellection of any sort, since intellection requires a real distinction between the thinking and the object of thinking, even if that object is the thinker itself. A real distinction indicates some sort of complexity or compositeness in the thing (a real minor distinction) or among things (a real major distinction); by contrast, in a conceptual distinction, one thing is considered from different perspectives or aspects. In the absolutely simple first principle of all, there can be no distinct elements or parts at all. In fact, the first principle of all, the Good or the One, must be beyond thinking if it is to be absolutely simple. The misguided consequence of holding this view, according to Plotinus, is that Aristotle then misconceives being such that he identifies it with substance or ousia. But for the first principle of all actually to be such a principle, it must be unlimited in the way that ousia is not. As a result, Aristotle makes many mistakes, especially in metaphysics or ontology.

The second group of major opponents of Platonism were the Stoics. The Enneads are filled with anti-Stoic polemics. These polemics focus principally on Stoic materialism, which Plotinus finds to be incapable of articulating an ontology which includes everything in the universe. More important, Stoic materialism is unable to provide explanatory adequacy even in the realm in which the Stoics felt most confident, namely, the physical universe. For example, the Stoics, owing to their materialism, could not explain consciousness or intentionality, neither of which are plausibly accounted for in materialistic terms. According to Plotinus, the Stoics were also unable to give a justification for their ethical position – not in itself too far distant from Plato’s – since their exhortations to the rational life could not coherently explain how one body (the empirical self) was supposed to identify with another body (the ideal rational agent).

With regard to Plotinus’ contemporaries, he was sufficiently exercised by the self-proclaimed Gnostics to write a separate treatise, II 9, attacking their views. These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians, whose voluminous and obscure writings, were only partially unearthed at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and translated in the last two decades, were sufficiently close to Platonism, but, in Plotinus’ view, so profoundly perverse in their interpretation of it, that they merited special attention. The central mistake of Gnosticism, according to Plotinus, is in thinking that Soul is ‘fallen’ and is the source of cosmic evil. As we have seen, Plotinus, although he believes that matter is evil, vociferously denies that the physical world is evil. It is only the matter that underlies the images of the eternal world that is isolated from all intelligible reality. The Gnostics ignore the structure of Platonic metaphysics and, as a result, wrongly despise this world. For Plotinus, a hallmark of ignorance of metaphysics is arrogance, the arrogance of believing that the elite or chosen possess special knowledge of the world and of human destiny. The idea of a secret elect, alone destined for salvation – which was what the Gnostics declared themselves to be – was deeply at odds with Plotinus’ rational universalism.

6. Influence

Porphyry’s edition of Plotinus’ Enneads preserved for posterity the works of the leading Platonic interpreter of antiquity. Through these works as well as through the writings of Porphyry himself (234 – c. 305 C.E.) and Iamblichus (c. 245–325 C.E.), Plotinus shaped the entire subsequent history of philosophy. Until well into the 19th century, Platonism was in large part understood, appropriated or rejected based on its Plotinian expression and in adumbrations of this.

The theological traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all, in their formative periods, looked to ancient Greek philosophy for the language and arguments with which to articulate their religious visions. For all of these, Platonism expressed the philosophy that seemed closest to their own theologies. Plotinus was the principal source for their understanding of Platonism.

Through the Latin translation of Plotinus by Marsilio Ficino published in 1492, Plotinus became available to the West. The first English translation, by Thomas Taylor, appeared in the late 18th century. Plotinus was, once again, recognized as the most authoritative interpreter of Platonism. In the writings of the Italian Renaissance philosophers, the 15th and 16th century humanists John Colet, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and Thomas More, the 17th century Cambridge Platonists, and German idealists, especially Hegel, Plotinus’ thought was the (sometimes unacknowledged) basis for opposition to the competing and increasingly influential tradition of scientific philosophy. This influence continued in the 20th century flowering of Christian imaginative literature in England, including the works of C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams.

Bibliography

A. Primary Literature

  • Plotinus, 7 volumes, Greek text with English translation by A.H. Armstrong, Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1968–88.
  • Plotinus. The Enneads, edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, and translated by George Boys-Stones, John M. Dillon, Lloyd P. Gerson, R.A. King, Andrew Smith and James Wilberding, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
  • Plotinus. The Enneads, translated by Stephen MacKenna, abridged and edited by John Dillon, London: Penguin Books, 1991.
  • Neoplatonic Philosophy. Introductory Readings, translations of portions of the works of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus by John Dillon and Lloyd P. Gerson, Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004.
  • Plotin. Traites, 9 volumes, French translation with commentaries by Luc Brisson and J.-F. Pradéau, et al., Paris: Flammarion, 2002–2010.

B. Secondary Literature

  • Blumenthal, H.J., 1971, Plotinus’ Psychology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
  • Bussanich, J., 1988, The One and its Relation to Intellect in Plotinus, Leiden: Brill.
  • Caluori, D., 2015, Plotinus on the Soul, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Emilsson, E., 1988, Plotinus on Sense-Perception, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • –––, 2007, Plotinus on Intellect, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • –––, 2017, Plotinus, London: Routledge.
  • Gerson, Lloyd P., 1994, Plotinus (Series: Arguments of the Philosophers), London: Routledge.
  • Gerson, Lloyd P. (ed.), 1996, The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • ––– (ed.), 2010, The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, 2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Gurtler, G.M., 1988, Plotinus: The Experience of Unity, New York: Peter Lang.
  • Kalligas, P, 2014, The Enneads of Plotinus: A Commentary (Volume 1: Enneads I–III), Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • O’Brien, D., 1991, Plotinus on the Origin of Matter, Naples: Bibliopolis.
  • O’Meara, Dominic, 1993, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Rappe, S., 2000, Reading Neoplatonism: Non-discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Remes, Pauliina, 2007, Plotinus on Self. The Philosophy of the ‘We’, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Rist, J., 1967, Plotinus: The Road to Reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

C. Reference

  • Dufour, Richard, 2002, Plotinus: A Bibliography 1950–2000, Leiden: E.J. Brill. See in particular the references to the numerous commentaries on particular treatises in the Enneads, some of which are in English.

Other Internet Resources

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