Time plays a huge role in everyday life. In fact, without it, life would be impossible.

No
matter what man does time is always with him. At the basic level of every understanding time
rests on human awareness of changes that occur in everyday life. The ancient times present a
rich field of philosophic account to the exploration of time. In the early western tradition,
philosophers have been engaging themselves in philosophizing with regard to the subject of
time. Dominant thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine have firmly established a view
of time that is apparent in their own times.

Plotinus a very important thinker in the history of philosophy gave a great deal of
thought to the subject of time. Rau says that Plotinus intended to develop Platos conception
of time and eternity(or at least, what he took that conception to be) and to refute Aristotles
account of time.1 Even Porphyry, his student who arranged the Enneads and his biographer,
noticed that his interpretation of Plato was hardly orthodox.2 Some even critizes him that they
accused him of Plagiarism. 3

The Enneads, though not arranged by Plotinus himself, is still considered to be his
brillant work. Containing 54 treatisses compilled into 6 sets of 9 tractates each, this book offers
a great line of thought of Plotinus. The book might not have been a step by step sequence but it
develops tha whole Plotinian doctrine that demonstrates some significant point in his main
doctrine. The Seventh tractate of the Third Ennead is his account of time and eternity. This part
of the book present a great and admittedly a philosophic account of his treatise of time. The
tractate stands out, among the rest of the Enneads as the only one with a conjoint genesis.4

1
Catherine Rau, The Theories of Time in Ancient Philosophy, The Philosophical Review 62, no. 4 (October 1953):
514-525, accessed November 14, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2182458.

2
Dominic J. OMeara, Plotinus; An Introduction to the Enneads, (New York, USA, Oxford University Press, 1993) 7.
3
Ibid.
4
Deepa Majumdar, Plotinus on the Apperance of time and the World of Sense(USA,Ashgate Publishing Company:
2007), 141.