| Plotinus | |
|---|---|
| Room | Thinkers |
| Born | c. 204/5 CE, Lycopolis, Egypt |
| Died | 270 CE, Campania (c. 65) |
| School | Neoplatonism |
| Known for | The Three Hypostases, henosis |
| Key work | The Enneads (compiled by Porphyry) |
Plotinus (c. 204/5–270 CE) — Founder of Neoplatonism
The most influential philosopher of Late Antiquity. Founded Neoplatonism, the dominant school of Greco-Roman philosophy from the 3rd to 6th centuries CE. His collected works, the Enneads (six groups of nine treatises), were compiled and arranged by his student Porphyry (~300 CE).
Plotinus's metaphysics is structured around three levels of reality (hypostases):
THE ONE (to Hen)
— Absolutely simple, beyond being and thought
— The source of all reality, cannot be named or described
— Not a being — "beyond being"
— Known only through union (henosis)
↓
INTELLECT (Nous)
— The second hypostasis
— Contains all Forms/Ideas (Plato's Forms internalized)
— Knower and Known are identical here
— The realm of true Being
↓
SOUL (Psyche)
— The third hypostasis
— Lower aspect: Nature, the physical world
— Higher aspect: World Soul, individual souls
— Mediates between Intellect and the material world
↓
MATTER (Hyle)
— The lowest level, privation of form
— Source of evil (as absence of Good)
The absolute first principle — utterly simple, beyond all predication, beyond being itself. Plato had hinted at this in the Parmenides. Plotinus radicalized it: the One is not a being among beings but the transcendent source from which everything flows. We cannot say what it IS — only what it is NOT (via negativa / apophaticism).
Reality is produced through a necessary overflow from the One — not by choice or creation, but as light emanates from the sun. Each lower level is a diminished image of the higher. The process is eternal, not temporal.
The soul's journey is to reverse the direction of emanation — to turn inward, ascend through Intellect, and eventually achieve union with the One. This is the philosophical life: purification, contemplation, henosis.
| Ennead | Subject | Key treatises |
|---|
|--------|---------|--------------|
| I | Ethics, human life | On Virtue, On Beauty, On Happiness |
|---|---|---|
| II | Natural philosophy | On the Kosmos, On Matter, Against the Gnostics |
| III | Providence, fate, love | On Fate, On Providence, On Love, Time and Eternity |
| IV | Soul | On the Essence of the Soul, Problems of the Soul, Immortality |
| V | Intellect (Nous) | On the Three Hypostases, On Intellect |
| VI | The One, Being | On the One, On Numbers, On Free Will |