Plotinus

(c. 205-70 ce)

   The traditional founder of Neoplatonism, Plotinus wrote many wide-ranging essays, which were posthumously collected and published in groups of nine as the Enneads by his disciple Porphyry. According to Plotinus, the One (God) transcends every human category, even number and being, preventing any cognition or speech about him. All reality proceeds from the One as a series of timeless emanations of descending order of being beginning with the highest emanation of Mind (Nous), the realm of Plato's Forms. Next is the level of soul, and then bodies, and finally primary matter, which is so low that it verges on the edge of non-being. Plotinus' ethics is focused on the Platonic desire for the human soul to escape embodiment and multiplicity and return to the unity of the One. Plotinus' system presents a number of deep conceptual difficulties including the challenge of explaining how derivative levels of being originate from the higher levels (for example, how matter derives from mind). Moreover, the transcendence of the One over all properties/concepts is not only difficult to grasp, but by definition it cannot be grasped, a fact that places the system out of the area of rational discourse and into the realm of mysticism. Plotinus' theory contradicts numerous Christian doctrines including the personal and triune nature of God. Nevertheless, Plotinus has exercised an enormous influence over much Christian philosophy.

   See Neoplatonism; Plato

   Further reading: Dufour 2002; Gerson 1994; O'Meara 1993; Plotinus 1956; Rist 1967