Plotinus

Plotinus was born in Egypt in 204 or 205 CE. He died in the  270 CE in Campania, Italy. Plotinus was a Greek philosopher.
 
Being an adherent of Plato, Plotinus’ primary aim was to provide a coherent interpretation and defence of Plato’s philosophy. For centuries most of Plato´s works were predominantly apprehended and understood through Plotinus’ reading and explication of the great philosopher. Yet while he is considered to be an essential commentator and interpreter of Plato, and consequently, the founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus was also a truly original thinker who was influenced not only by Plato but also by the Stoics and Neo-Pythagoreans (and, of course, he was very familiar with Aristotle as well).
 
The early life of Plotinus is not well known. However, in his mid-to-late twenties, Plotinus went to Alexandria to undertake studies in philosophy. After attending various lectures from the most influential philosophers of the day, he finally found his teacher and mentor in Ammonius Saccas, with whom he studied until 242. Plotinus pursued further studies in Persian and Indian philosophy and consequently accompanied Emperor Gordian III on a military expedition. After the latter’s assassination in 244, the excursion was thus canceled in Mesopotamia. Via Antioch, Plotinus then went to Rome to establish a school of philosophy, where he remained as a teacher for twenty years.
 
Plotinus spawned many students-cum-followers; among them were the philosophers Amelius and Eustochius, the emperor Gallienus and his wife, Salonina, and the critical Porphyry. It was Porphyry who truly documented Plotinus and not only urged Plotinus to collect his lectures but also edited them into the Enneads (Gr. “ennea”: nine), which Porphyry published roughly thirty years after the philosopher’s death.
 
It is due to Porphyry that we owe most of our knowledge about Plotinus’ life, and it is because of him, almost all of Plotinus’ work has survived, unlike the works of most other ancient philosophers. Porphyry divided Plotinus’ collected lectures into six books of nine treatises each. They do not follow the order in which they were actually written and also tend to vary greatly in length.
 
After their initial publication, the Enneads were first published and translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino in 1492. They soon gained great importance for generations of thinkers, especially those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
 
In the first, Ennead Plotinus writes about ethics and virtue, beauty and happiness. The second and third are primarily concerned with cosmology, covering topics such as Matter, time, and love. The fourth concentrates on the soul, while the fifth focuses on the intellect and knowing or know-ability. The sixth and final text addresses being numbers and the “one.”
 
Plotinus’ metaphysics is based on three critical concepts that form one reality. These are "The One", The soul and the Intellect. Existence is formed from the unit of these three concepts.  Through dialectics, this hierarchy is maintained, and thus reality, as the eternal return to the origin, the One, is understood.
 
Arguably the last great Greek philosopher, Plotinus, did not only have a great influence on Porphyry, Proclus, and Saint Augustine (as well as early medieval philosophy in general), but also on Erasmus of Rotterdam, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Henri-Louis Bergson, among others. He continued to teach in Rome until approximately 268. Plotinus then retired to an estate in Campania, where he died in 270. His famous last words are said to read as follows: “Try to bring back the God in yourself to the God in the All.”

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