Plotinus
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Plotinus ( Greek: Πλωτίνος)(ca. 205–270 CE) is widely considered the father of Neoplatonism. Much of our biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' Enneads.
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Biography
Porphyry believed Plotinus was sixty-six 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. Plotinus had an inherent distrust of materiality (an attitude common to Platonism). 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. Eunapius however reports that he was born in Lyco or Lycopolis in Egypt, as he may have been a Hellenized Egyptian. 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 CE, and travelled to Alexandria to study. There Plotinus 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 and Numenius.
Expedition to Persia and return to Rome
He spent the next eleven years in Alexandria when, by now 38, he decided to investigate the philosophical teachings of the Persians and the Indians. In the pursuit of this endeavour 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, Gentilianus Amelius of Tuscany, the Senator Castricius Firmus, and Eustochius of Alexandria, a doctor who devoted himself to learning from Plotinus and attended 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. Finally, Plotinus was a correspondent of the philosopher Cassius Longinus.
Later life
While in Rome Plotinus also gained the respect of the Emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonica. 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." 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. Plotinus was unable to revise his own work due to his poor eyesight, yet his writings required extensively 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.
Plotinus' theory
The One
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, 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.
For example, thought cannot be attributed to the One because thought implies distinction between a thinker and an object of thought. Likewise, neither will nor activity can be ascribed to the One, since doing so would logically require distinction between an "agent" of will or act, and its object.
The One, being beyond all attributes including being and non-being, is the source of the world not through any act of creation, willful or otherwise, since activity cannot be ascribed to the unchangeable, immutable One. Plotinus resorts to a logical principle that 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. 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.
Emanation by the One
Plotinus offers an alternative to the orthodox Christian notion of creation ex nihilo ('out of nothing'), which would make God suffer the deliberations of a mind and actions of a will. 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 "lessening" itself, or reflection in a mirror which in no way diminishes or otherwise alters the object being reflected.
The first emanation is Nous ('Thought'), identified with the "demiurge" in Plato's Timaeus. 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 proceed individual human souls, and finally, matter, at the lowest level of being and thus the least perfected level of the cosmos. Despite this relatively negative 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.
The essentially devotional nature of Plotinus' philosophy may be further illustrated by his concept of attaining "ecstatic" union with the One. Porphyry relates that Plotinus attained such a union several times during the years he knew him. This may be related, of course, with " enlightenment", "liberation", and other concepts of mystical union common to many Eastern and Western traditions. Many scholars have compared Plotinus' teachings to the Hindu school of Advaita Vedanta, (advaita "not two", or "non-dual").
Neoplatonism was sometimes used as a philosophical foundation for paganism, and as a means of defending the theoretic of paganism against Christianity. However, many Christians were also influenced by Neoplatonism, most notably St. Augustine who, though often referred to as a "Platonist," acquired his Platonist philosophy through the mediation of Plotinus' teachings. Indeed, Plotinus' philosophy still exerts influence today: in the 20th century, American philosopher Ken Wilber has drawn heavily upon the Enneads in his cosmology, reaching some metaphysical conclusions comparable to Plotinus' own.
Notes
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References
- Berchman, Robert M., From Philo to Origen: Middle Platonism in Transition (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984).
- Frederick Copleston, S.J. A History of Philosophy: Vol. 1, Part 2. ISBN 0385002106
- Template:Cite book (526 pages).
- Plotinus. "Enneads," 7 vols., translated by A.H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library. (The only scholarly edition and translation of Plotinus in English, a large improvement over MacKenna).
- Plotinus. The Enneads, translated by Stephen MacKenna and John Dillon. London: Penguin, 1991. ISBN 014044520X
- Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of his Works in Neoplatonic Saints: The Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by their Students, Mark Edwards (ed.), (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000).
- Neoplatonism and Gnosticism by Richard T Wallis Of the International Conference on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism (1984: University of Oklahoma) ISBN 0-7914-1337-3 ISBN 0-7914-1338-1.
- Plotinus' "The Enneads" Translation by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page Encyclopedia Britannica Edition Editor in Chief Robert Maynard Hutchins.
- Torchia, N. Joseph (1993). Plotinus, Tolma and the Desent of Being. ISBN 0-8204-1765-b, ISBN 0739-6392.
- "Kabbalah" Gershom Scholem (1974 Keter Publishing House Jerusalem LTD)
- The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy. by P. Merlan edited by A. H. Lawrence ISBN 0521 04054 x.
- Tripolitis, Antonia. The Doctrine of the Soul in the thought of Plonitus and Origen (1978 Libra Publishers) Library of Congress Catalog No. 76-1616321.
- Taylor, Thomas. (1825). The Fragments that remain of the Lost Writings of Proclus surnamed the platonic successor. ISBN 0-933601-11-5.
- Taylor, Thomas. Collected Works of Plotinus. Published by the Promethues Trust 1994 revised 2000 ISBN 1-898910 02 2.
External links
- Plotinus chapter from the book Occultists and Mystics of All Ages, published in the early 1900s.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
- Plotinus's work: the Enneadsbg:Плотин
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