Neoplatonism is the name modern scholars give to the last great school of Greek philosophy, founded by Plotinus (c. 204–270 CE). Building on Plato, it saw all of reality flowing from a single source, the One, and the purpose of life as the soul’s return to it. It became one of the most influential philosophies ever, flowing into Christianity, Islam and the Renaissance.
Born in Egypt, Plotinus studied in Alexandria with the teacher Ammonius Saccas, then taught in Rome. His pupil Porphyry collected his writings into six sets of nine treatises, the Enneads (“nines”), and wrote his life, which opens memorably:
“Plotinos the philosopher, who lived recently, seemed ashamed of having a body.”Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 1 (tr. K. S. Guthrie, 1918)
Porphyry also reports that during the years he knew him, Plotinus reached union with the One four times.
Illustration: the ascent of the soul
The One — beyond being and beyond words, the source of everything, like the sun giving light without losing anything
Intellect (Nous) — the realm of Plato’s Forms, the One’s first overflowing
Soul — which gives life to the world and to each body
Matter — the furthest point from the source, where the light grows dimmest
The soul has wandered from its source, Plotinus taught, and longs to go home. In the last treatise of the Enneads he pictures it as a daughter who has left her father’s house:
“Ultimately, however, she grows ashamed of these disorders; she purifies herself, she returns to her father, and finds true happiness with Him.”Plotinus, Enneads VI.9.9 (tr. K. S. Guthrie, 1918)
Neoplatonism was taught by Hypatia in Alexandria. Augustine says “the books of the Platonists” opened his way to Christianity; the mystical writer known as Pseudo-Dionysius carried its ideas into the medieval church and to Meister Eckhart. A paraphrase of the Enneads, circulating in Arabic as the “Theology of Aristotle”, shaped Avicenna and Islamic philosophy. In 1492 Marsilio Ficino translated Plotinus into Latin, feeding the Renaissance. Readers have long noticed its kinship with Vedanta.
Main text: the Enneads, six groups of nine treatises
Related: Plato, Hermeticism, Kabbalah
His student Porphyry, who wrote his biography, says Plotinus seemed ashamed of being in a body and would not talk about his parents or birthplace. He was also gentle and practical, a guardian to orphans left in his care. Porphyry says that while he was with him, Plotinus four times reached union with the One. His fifty-four treatises were arranged by Porphyry into six groups of nine, the Enneads.
In the 9th century an Arabic paraphrase of parts of the Enneads circulated as the “Theology of Aristotle”, shaping Islamic philosophy under the wrong author’s name. In 1492 Marsilio Ficino published a Latin translation of Plotinus in Florence that fired the Renaissance. Christian mysticism absorbed his ideas through a writer known as Pseudo-Dionysius. The Platonic Academy in Athens, a centre of late Neoplatonism, lost its funding under Emperor Justinian in 529.
Where to start: Plotinus’s short treatise On Beauty, free online.
Neoplatonism on Wikipedia · Stanford Encyclopedia: Plotinus · Plotinos, Complete Works (Project Gutenberg) · Plato
