Plotinus

Plotinus (ad 205-270), Roman philosopher, the founder of Neoplatonism. Plotinus was born in Asyūţ, Egypt. He studied with the philosopher Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria for ten years and around the year 244 went to Rome, where he established a school. Plotinus spoke on Pythagorean and Platonic wisdom and on asceticism; such was the impression made upon his hearers that some of them gave their fortunes to the poor, set their slaves free, and devoted themselves to lives of study and ascetic piety. At the age of 60, with the permission of the Roman emperor Gallienus, Plotinus planned to establish a communistic commonwealth based on the model of The Republic by Plato, but the project failed because of the opposition of Gallienus's counsellors. Plotinus continued to teach and write until his death. His works comprise 54 treatises in Greek, called the Enneads, 6 groups of 9 books each, an arrangement probably made by his student Porphyry, who edited his writings.

Plotinus's system was based chiefly on Plato's theory of ideas, but whereas Plato assumed archetypal ideas to be the link between the supreme deity and the world of matter, Plotinus accepted a doctrine of emanation. This doctrine supposes the constant transmission of powers from the Absolute Being, or the One, to the creation through several agencies, the first of which is nous, or pure intelligence, from which flows the soul of the world; from this, in turn, flow the souls of humans and animals, and finally matter. Human beings thus belong to two worlds, that of the senses and that of pure intelligence. Inasmuch as matter is the cause of all evil, the object of life should be to escape the material world of the senses, and hence people should abandon all earthly interests for those of intellectual meditation; by purification and by the exercise of thought people can gradually lift themselves to an intuition of the nous, and ultimately to a complete and ecstatic union with the One—that is, God. Plotinus claimed to have experienced this divine ecstasy on several occasions during his life.