Plotinus, the greatest Roman neoplatonist, lived from approximately 205 to 270 c.e. He studied in Alexandria, Egypt, one of the centers of learning that preserved classical astrology, magic, and medicine (Alexandrian neoplatonists were responsible for the survival of astrological science in the West). Plotinus accepted astrology but was opposed to a deterministic view of planetary influence. Like Plato (from whom the term neoplatonism is derived), Plotinus is not important for any direct contribution to astrology but for the elaboration and propagation of the Pythagorean view that the individual human being is linked to the greater cosmos through a system of correlations—a view that is a foundation stone of ancient astrological theory.
Born circa A.D. 204, in Lycopolis, Egypt; died 269 or 270, in Minturno, Italy. Classical idealist philosopher; founder of Neoplatonism.
Plotinus studied philosophy in Alexandria at the school of Ammonius Saccas, under whose influence he began his efforts to reconcile the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. In 243–244 he began to teach in Rome. After Plotinus’ death, his fragmentary notes were issued by his pupil Porphyry, who divided the notes into six parts and each part into nine sections. Thus, Plotinus’ 54 treatises are known as the Enneads, or “books of nine.”
Plotinus’ philosophy centers on the dialectics of the three ontological substances (hypostases): the One, the Intelligence (nous), and the Soul. Plotinus presented the first clear, systematic analysis of the triad, of which Plato had provided only a fragmentary outline. The most original part of Plotinus’ teaching is the doctrine of the One as a transcendent first principle, surpassing and preceding all that exists and all that is conceivable. Every thing as such is, above all, distinguishable from every other thing as a certain “one.” Therefore, according to Plotinus, the One is inalienably inherent in all that exists, and the One is all that exists, taken in absolute singularity, even though the One lacks nothing and is inaccessible to any calculation. Everything “flows from” and “grows out” of the One, without loss to the One and without conscious exertion of its will (it is impersonal), but solely from the necessity of its nature (emanation). An intermediate level between the first and second hypostases is number, the principle of every material and immaterial thing. The undifferentiated One, approaching differentiation by means of number, attains qualitative and meaningful differentiation in the Intelligence. Filled to overflowing with itself, the One must make a transition into something else, but inasmuch as the One remains constant and undiminished, the something else merely reflects it, appearing as an “aspect,” an intelligence, and “intelligible cosmos,” or a mirror of the cosmos.
Among Plotinus’ most noteworthy ideas are those concerning the identity of subject and object in the Intelligence and the synthesis of the individual and the general in the Intelligence and in the Soul. For Plotinus, the Soul is unitary and indivisible, an incorporeal substance that cannot be affected. Disagreeing with the Stoics, he argued that the Soul should not be thought of atomistically, as the mere plurality of psychic states. The Soul is a meaningful behavior of the Intelligence beyond the limits of the Intelligence. It is the “logos of the Intelligence.” Plotinus did not modify Plato’s teachings on the immortality of the soul, its descent from heaven to earth and its return to heaven, and the rootedness of all individual souls in a single World Soul. He also accepted Plato’s teaching that knowledge is remembrance. Plotinus criticized the Pythagorean teaching that the soul is the harmony of the body, and he rejected the Aristotelian conception of the entelechy and the Stoics’ naturalistic doctrine of the pneuma.
Related to the doctrine of the One is the concept of the ascent of the soul from an emotional state to suprarational ecstasy. This is the foundation for Plotinus’ mysticism.
Plotinus systematized the Platonic theory of the embodiment of the triad in nature and the cosmos. For Plotinus, matter is merely the “receptacle” of the eternal ideas, the eide. Devoid of quality, quantity, mass, and so forth, matter represents, in pure form, only a substrate of changes, infinite indeterminateness, and nonbeing. Because it is the principle of the destruction of the eternally existing eide, matter is evil.
In the works of Plotinus the sensory universe has a hierarchical structure: the farther from the highest heaven and the closer to earth, the less perfect the embodiment of the eide. The sensory universe is also characterized by the identity of self-consciousness and independent activity at all levels. Time, as the process of becoming, is preceded by nonbecoming eternity, which, in comparison with a pure eidos, is an eternal process of becoming —living eternity, or eternal life. Time is neither motion, number, measure of motion, nor any other attribute of motion. It is the other-being of eternity, the mobile image of eternity, or the eternal energy of the World Soul.
Plotinus’ systematization of Platonic philosophy became the basis for the tradition of Neoplatonism, which spanned many centuries.
Plotinus exerted considerable influence on medieval philosophers, including Augustine. He had an even greater influence on Renaissance thinkers (M. Ficino and Pico della Mirandola) and on the representatives of English idealism (A. Shaftesbury, G. Berkeley) and German idealism (F. W. von Schelling, Hegel), as well as on Goethe and the Jena romantic movement.
A. F. Losev