Plotinus

Plotinus (in Greek Πλωτινος, plotinos) (205-270 CE), the last of the great philosophers of Classical Antiquity, was the founder of the philosophical school or movement known as Neoplatonism. In English his name has the stress on the second syllable, which is pronounced to rhyme with 'pie' and 'by' - plo-TIE-ners, IPA: /plɒ'taɪnəs/. The adjective from 'Plotinus' is 'Plotinian', also with the stress on the second syllable, which is pronounced with a short vowel - plo-TI-ni-ern, IPA: /plɒ'tɪnɪən/.

Plotinus was born of Greek-speaking parents in the Egyptian city of Lycopolis in the Nile Delta. He became interested in philosophical issues in his late twenties and studied under Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria, where he remained for eleven years. In 242, perhaps hoping to learn about Persian and Indian philosophy, he joined the expedition which the young emperor Gordian III (reigned 238-244) and Timesitheus led against the Persians, but when Gordian was assassinated in 244, he returned by himself to Antioch in Syria and from there travelled to Rome. For the next twenty five years Plotinus taught philosophy in Rome, becoming the centre of an influential intellectual circle and counting amongst his acquaintances the emperor Gallienus (reigned 253-268) and his wife Salonina. Plotinus was also interested in social issues and, amonst other things, tried to persuade Gallienus to finance the establishment in Campania (the region south of Rome) of a community modelled on the state described in Plato's Laws. He remained in Rome until the final months of his life when, already terminally ill, he retired to Campania to live out his days on an estate bequeathed to him by a friend.

Plotinus claimed to be no more than an interpreter of Plato and maintained that those parts of his philosophical system that were not obviously Platonic merely made explicit and elaborated points which were implicit in Plato's dialogues. This claim is universally agreed to be an exaggeration: it ignores the Stoic and Aristotelian elements in Plotinus' system as well as Plotinus' own original contributions. Nonetheless, there are certain clear similarities between the views of Plato and Plotinus. Central to both is a contrast between the material or physical world accessible to the senses and an immaterial or intelligible world accessible to the mind, the latter being regarded as in some way more basic or fundamental than the former. Again, both philosophers offer a dualist account of human nature, believing that human beings are a composite of a material body and an immaterial soul which will survive the death of the body and is immortal. And, finally, both advocate an ascetic morality whose primary concern is the 'care of the soul' (θεραπεία τῆς ψυχῆς, therapeia tes psuches).

The most obvious differences between Plato and Plotinus lie in their accounts of the intelligible world. Plato takes the intelligible world to be the world of Forms (or Ideas), about the relations between which he speculates in the Republic and some of his later dialogues, but Plotinus focusses on three intelligible entities:

• the One (τὸ ἕν, to hen), the supreme or most fundamental entity, utterly transcendant, and beyond human comprehension, but in some sense the ultimate source of everything else in the universe. The One generates by a process of emanation or irradiation
• the Universal Intelligence or the Intellectual Principle (ὁ νοῦς, ho nous), which 'contains' the Platonic Forms, and which in its turn generates by emanation
• the Universal Soul or World Soul (ἡ ψυχή, he psuche), which not only generates individual souls, but is also responsible, again by a process of emanation, for the existence of matter and the physical world.

Human beings, as the product of a series of emanations from higher entities, are thus assigned a relatively lowly status within Plotinus' hierarchical system - Plotinus is fiercely opposed to anthropocentric accounts of the universe such as those of his Gnostic and Christian contemporaries. However, he also holds that human beings, like all the lesser beings within his system from the Universal Intelligence downwards, have a desire to return to their source and aspire to union with the One - an aspiration which he believes can be fulfilled, at least to some extent, in the case of human beings by meditation and mystical practices.

Plotinus' three intelligible entities - the One, the Universal Intelligence, and the Universal Soul - are often referred to as hypostases (singular 'hypostasis'). The word 'hypostasis' is a transliteration of the Greek ὑπόστασις, hupostasis, which is a noun from the verb ὑφίσταμαι, huphistamai ('I stand under or support') and means 'foundation' or 'substance'.

Plotinus' thought has been powerfully influential in many spheres - in philosophy, in Christian theology, and in Christian and Islamic mysticism.