Plotinus

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Plotinus

Plotinus
Full name Plotinus
205
Born
Lycopolis
270 (aged 64–65)
Died
Campania
Era Ancient philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Neo-Platonism
Main interests Platonism, Metaphysics, Mysticism
The One, Emanationism, Henosis,
Notable ideas
Nous
Influenced by[show]
Influence on[show]
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Plotinus (Greek: Πλωτῖνος) (ca. CE 204/5–270) was a major Greek philosopher of the ancient
world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul.[1]
His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition.[2] Historians of the 19th
century invented the term Neoplatonism[citation needed] and applied it to him and his philosophy which
was influential in Late Antiquity. Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes
from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' Enneads. His metaphysical writings have
inspired centuries of Pagan, Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Gnostic metaphysicians and mystics.

Contents
 [hide] 
 1 Biography
o 1.1 Expedition to Persia and return to Rome
o 1.2 Later life
 2 Major ideas
o 2.1 One
o 2.2 Emanation by the One
o 2.3 The True Human and Happiness
o 2.4 Against causal astrology
o 2.5 Plotinus and the Gnostics
 3 Influence
o 3.1 Ancient world
o 3.2 Christianity
 o 3.3 Islam
o 3.4 Renaissance
o 3.5 England
o 3.6 India
 4 See also
 5 Notes
 6 Further reading

 7 External links

[edit] Biography
Porphyry reported that Plotinus was 66 years old when he died in 270, the second year of the
reign of the emperor Claudius II, thus giving us the year of his teacher's birth as around 205.
Eunapius reported that Plotinus was born in the Deltaic Lycopolis; Lyco from the Greek meaning
"wolf". It is the same root that gave rise to Aristotle's Lyceum (place of the wolf) (Greek: Λύκος)
in Egypt, which has led to speculations that he may have been a native Egyptian of Roman,[3]
Greek,[4] or Hellenized Egyptian[5] descent.

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. 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-seven, around the year 232, and
travelled to Alexandria to study. There he was dissatisfied with every teacher he encountered
until an acquaintance suggested he listen to the ideas of Ammonius Saccas. Upon hearing
Ammonius lecture, he declared to his friend, "this was the man I was looking for," and began to
study intently under his new instructor. Besides Ammonius, Plotinus was also influenced by the
works of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Numenius, and various Stoics.

[edit] Expedition to Persia and return to Rome

After spending the next eleven years in Alexandria, he then decided to investigate the
philosophical teachings of the Persian philosophers and the Indian philosophers around the age of
38.[6] In the pursuit of this endeavor he left Alexandria and joined the army of Gordian III as it
marched on Persia. 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.

At the age of forty, during the reign of Philip the Arab, he came to Rome, where he stayed for
most of the remainder of his life. 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.[7]
Finally, Plotinus was a correspondent of the philosopher Cassius Longinus.

[edit] Later life

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.

Porphyry subsequently went to live in Sicily, where word reached him that his former teacher had
died. The philosopher 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: "Strive to give back the Divine in yourselves to the Divine in the
All."[citation needed] 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 over a period of several years from ca. 253
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.

[edit] Major ideas

[edit] One

See also: Substance theory

One is like a light source that spreads in the darkness

Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division,
multiplicity or distinction; likewise it is beyond all categories of being and non-being. The
concept of "being" is derived by us from the objects of human experience called the dyad,[citation
needed]
and is an attribute of such objects, but the infinite, transcendent One is beyond all such
objects, and therefore is beyond the concepts that we derive from them. The One "cannot be any
existing thing", and cannot be merely the sum of all such things (compare the Stoic doctrine of
disbelief in non-material existence), but "is prior to all existents". Thus, no attributes can be
assigned to the One. We can only identify it with the Good and the principle of Beauty. [I.6.9]

For example, thought cannot be attributed to the One because thought implies distinction between
a thinker and an object of thought (again a dyad). 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 [V.6.6].
Rather, if we insist on describing it further, we must call the One a sheer Dynamis or potentiality
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 Nous (first will towards Good) to the "Sun", and
lastly the Soul 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. Plotinus here resolves the issues between Plato's ontology and Aristotle's Actus
et potentia. The issue being that Aristotle, through resolving Parmenides' Third Man argument
against Plato's forms and ontology created a second philosophical school of thought. Plotinus
here then reconciles the "Good over the Demiurge" from Plato's Timaeus with Aristotle's static
"unmoved mover" of Actus et potentia. Plotinus does this by making the potential or force
(dunamis) the Monad or One and making the demiurge or dyad, the action or energy component
in philosophical cognitive ontology. Later Neoplatonic philosophers, especially Iamblichus,
added hundreds of intermediate beings as emanations between the One and humanity; but
Plotinus' system was much simpler in comparison.

The One is not just an intellectual conception but something that can be experienced, an
experience where one goes beyond all multiplicity.[8] 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."[9]

[edit] Emanation by the One

Plotinus offers an alternative to the orthodox Christian notion of creation ex nihilo (out of
nothing), which attributes to God the deliberation of mind and action of a will, although Plotinus
never mentions Christianity in any of his works. Emanation ex deo (out of God), confirms the
absolute transcendence of the One, making the unfolding of the cosmos purely a consequence of
its existence; the One is in no way affected or diminished by these emanations. Plotinus uses the
analogy of 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.

The first emanation is Nous (Divine Mind, logos or 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. Despite this
relatively pedestrian assessment of the material world, 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.[10]

The essentially devotional nature of Plotinus' philosophy may be further illustrated by his concept
of attaining ecstatic union with the One (henosis see Iamblichus). 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.

[edit] The True Human and Happiness

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." (Theat 176AB)
and a focus on the highest, i.e. Forms and The One.

[edit] Against causal astrology

Plotinus seems to be one of the first to argue against the still 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 turpitude.[clarification needed] He does, however, claim the stars and planets
are ensouled, as witnessed by their movement.

[edit] Plotinus and the Gnostics

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 who he was addressing
it to, 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).

In the case of gnosticism it is important to understand that Plotinus and the Neoplatonists viewed
it as a form of heresy or sectarianism to the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy of the
Mediterranean and Middle East.[11] He accused them of using senseless jargon and being overly
dramatic and insolent in their distortion of Plato's ontology.[12] Plotinus attacks his opponents as
untraditional, irrational and immoral[13][14] and arrogant.[15] He also attacks them as elitist and
blasphemous to Plato for the Gnostics despising the material world and its maker.[16]

Plotinus, for example, attacked the Gnostics for vilifying Plato's ontology of the universe
contained in Timaeus, and the universes' creation by the demiurge.[17] In this view the Demiurge
is an artist or craftsman, in that he creates through mixing or amalgamating what already is.
Plotinus accused Gnosticism of vilifing the Demiurge or craftsman that crafted the material
world, even thinking of the material world as evil or a prison.

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.[18] Plotinus was not claiming to innovate with the Enneads, but to clarify
aspects of the works of Plato that he considered misrepresented or misunderstood.[19] 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.

[edit] Influence
[edit] Ancient world

Many Christians were also influenced by Neoplatonism, most notably Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite. St. Augustine, though often referred to as a "Platonist," acquired his Platonist
philosophy through the mediation of Plotinus' teachings.

[edit] Christianity

Plotinus's theology has had great influence on Christian theology. 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 of Nyssa for the Orthodox.

[edit] Islam

Neo-Platonism and the ideas of Plotinus influenced medieval Islam as well, since the Sunni
Abbasids fused Greek concepts into sponsored state texts, and found great influence amongst the
Ismaili Shia.[20] Persian philosophers as well, such as Muhammad al-Nasafi and Abu Yaqub
Sijistani. By the 11th century, Neo-Platonism was adopted by the Fatimid state of Egypt, and
taught by their da'i.[20] Neo-Platonism was brought to the Fatimid court by Iraqi Hamid al-Din al-
Kirmani, although his teachings differed from Nasafi and Sijistani, who were more aligned with
original teachings of Plotinus.[21] The teachings of Kirmani in turn influenced philosophers such
as Nasir Khusraw of Persia.[21]

[edit] Renaissance

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. Our term 'Neo
Platonist' has its origins in the Renaissance.

[edit] England

In England, 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.

[edit] India

Many renown Indian philosophers such as Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Ananda Coomaraswamy

and others[who?] used the writing of Plotinus in their own texts as a superlative elaboration upon
Indian monism, specifically Upanishadic and Advaita Vedantic thought. Some have compared
Plotinus' teachings to the Hindu school of Advaita Vedanta (advaita meaning "not two" or "non-
dual"),[22] and has been elaborated upon in J. F. Staal, Advaita and Neoplatonism: A critical study
in comparative philosophy, Madras: University of Madras, 1961. More recently, see Frederick
Copleston,[23] Religion and the One: Philosophies East and West (University of Aberdeen Gifford
Lectures 1979-1980) and the 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. The connection is also mentioned in Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (ed.), History of
Philosophy Eastern and Western (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952), vol. 2, p. 114; in a
lecture by Professor Gwen Griffith-Dickson;[24] and in John Y. Fenton, "Mystical Experience as a
Bridge for Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion: A Critique," Journal of the American Academy
of Religion 1981, p. 55. The joint influence of Advaitin and Neoplatonic ideas on Ralph Waldo
Emerson is considered in Dale Riepe, "Emerson and Indian Philosophy," Journal of the History
of Ideas, 1967.

Plotinus
First published Mon Jun 30, 2003; substantive revision Fri Sep 5, 2008

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

 2. The Three Fundamental Principles of Plotinus' Metaphysics
 3. Human Psychology and Ethics
 4. Beauty
 5. Influence
 Bibliography
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries

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 phrase 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. 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, 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.

B. Secondary Literature

 Blumenthal, H.J., 1971, Plotinus' Psychology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff

 Emilsson, E., 1988, Plotinus on Sense-Perception, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press
 Emilsson, E., 2007, Plotinus on Intellect, Oxford: Oxford University Press
 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
 O'Meara, Dominic, 1993, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads, Oxford: Oxford
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
 The International Society for Neoplatonic Studies.
 Neoplatonism at Yahoo.
 International Plato Society.

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