The story
Plotinus (c. 204 to 270 CE) was born in Egypt and studied in Alexandria for eleven years under the teacher Ammonius Saccas. In 243 he joined the emperor Gordian III's expedition against Persia, hoping to study Persian and Indian wisdom. The campaign failed, and in 244 he settled in Rome, where he taught for the rest of his life and began to write about 253. His pupil Porphyry later edited the 54 treatises into six groups of nine, the Enneads, and wrote a short life of the master.
Plotinus's system takes Plato's theory of Forms and arranges reality in a descending order. At the top is the One, beyond being and thought, which is the source of everything. From the One overflows Intellect (Nous), which contains the Forms, and from Intellect comes Soul, which animates the world. Matter lies at the far end, where the light fades. Humans are souls that have forgotten their origin, and philosophy is the way back: turning inward and upward in contemplation, a path that can end in union with the One.
Porphyry says Plotinus reached this state four times. Plotinus borrowed from Aristotle and the Stoics as well, but Neoplatonism, as it later became known, took its form from him. His ideas shaped Augustine, who read Plotinus in Latin translation, and also Jewish, Islamic and Christian mystics, and Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation of the Enneads in 1492 gave the Renaissance direct access to him.
Why it mattered
- Neoplatonism became the main philosophy of late antiquity and the dominant frame for Christian, Jewish and Islamic mysticism.
- Augustine's encounter with Platonist books pulled his thought away from materialism and toward the inner life.
- Ficino's translation helped build Renaissance Platonism and Italian humanist culture.
Sources
- Plotinus Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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