46 Facts About Plotinus

Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism.

Plotinus's teacher was the self-taught philosopher Ammonius Saccas, who belonged to the Platonic tradition.

Much of the biographical information about Plotinus comes from Porphyry's preface to his edition of Plotinus' most notable literary work, The Enneads.

Plotinus's works have inspired centuries of Pagan, Jewish, Christian, Gnostic, and early Islamic metaphysicians and mystics, including developing precepts that influence mainstream theological concepts within religions, such as his work on duality of the One in two metaphysical states.

Porphyry reported that Plotinus was sixty-six years old when he died in 270 CE, the second year of the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius II, thus giving us the year of his teacher's birth as around 205 Eunapius reported that Plotinus was born in Lyco, which could either refer to the modern Asyut in Upper Egypt or Deltaic Lycopolis, in Lower Egypt.

Historian Lloyd P Gerson states that Plotinus was "almost certainly" a Greek.

Armstrong, one of the foremost authorities on the philosophical teachings of Plotinus, writes that: "All that can be said with reasonable certainty is that Greek was his normal language and that he had a Greek education".

Plotinus himself was said to have had little interest in his ancestry, birthplace, or that of anyone else for that matter.

Likewise, Plotinus never discussed his ancestry, childhood, or his place or date of birth.

Plotinus took up the study of philosophy at the age of twenty-eight, around the year 232 and travelled to Alexandria to study.

Besides Ammonius, Plotinus was influenced by the philosophical works of Aristotle, the pre-Socratic philosophers Empedocles and Heraclitus, the Middle Platonist philosophers Alexander of Aphrodisias and Numenius of Apamea, along with various Stoics and Neopythagoreans.

However, the campaign was a failure, and on Gordian's eventual death Plotinus found himself abandoned in a hostile land, and only with difficulty found his way back to safety in Antioch.

Plotinus had students amongst the Roman Senate beside Castricius, such as Marcellus Orontius, Sabinillus, and Rogantianus.

Finally, Plotinus was a correspondent of the philosopher Cassius Longinus.

Plotinus spent his final days in seclusion on an estate in Campania which his friend Zethos had bequeathed him.

Plotinus wrote the essays that became the Enneads over a period of several years from c 253 until a few months before his death seventeen years later.

Porphyry makes note that the Enneads, before being compiled and arranged by himself, were merely the enormous collection of notes and essays which Plotinus used in his lectures and debates, rather than a formal book.

Plotinus was unable to revise his own work due to his poor eyesight, yet his writings required extensive editing, according to Porphyry: his master's handwriting was atrocious, he did not properly separate his words, and he cared little for niceties of spelling.

Plotinus intensely disliked the editorial process, and turned the task to Porphyry, who polished and edited them into their modern form.

Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity, or distinction; beyond all categories of being and non-being.

Plotinus identified his "One" with the concept of 'Good' and the principle of 'Beauty'.

Plotinus argues instead that the multiple cannot exist without the simple.

Superficially considered, Plotinus seems to offer an alternative to the orthodox Christian notion of creation ex nihilo, although Plotinus never mentions Christianity in any of his works.

Plotinus, using a venerable analogy that would become crucial for the metaphysics of developed Christian thought, likens the One to the Sun which emanates light indiscriminately without thereby diminishing itself, or reflection in a mirror which in no way diminishes or otherwise alters the object being reflected.

Plotinus asserted the ultimately divine nature of material creation since it ultimately derives from the One, through the mediums of Nous and the world soul.

Porphyry relates that Plotinus attained such a union four times during the years he knew him.

The philosophy of Plotinus has always exerted a peculiar fascination upon those whose discontent with things as they are has led them to seek the realities behind what they took to be merely the appearances of the sense.

Plotinus offers a comprehensive description of his conception of a person who has achieved eudaimonia.

Plotinus disregards this claim, as the soul and true human do not sleep or even exist in time, nor will a living human who has achieved eudaimonia suddenly stop using its greatest, most authentic capacity just because of the body's discomfort in the physical realm.

Plotinus regarded happiness as living in an interior way, and this being the obverse of attachment to the objects of embodied desires.

Henosis for Plotinus was defined in his works as a reversing of the ontological process of consciousness via meditation toward no thought and no division within the individual.

Plotinus' works have an ascetic character in that they reject matter as an illusion.

At least two modern conferences within Hellenic philosophy fields of study have been held in order to address what Plotinus stated in his tract Against the Gnostics and to whom he was addressing it, in order to separate and clarify the events and persons involved in the origin of the term "Gnostic".

Also according to Armstrong, Plotinus accused them of using senseless jargon and being overly dramatic and insolent in their distortion of Plato's ontology.

Unlike Armstrong, Gerson didn't find Plotinus to be so vitriolic against the Gnostics.

Plotinus seems to direct his attacks at a very specific sect of Gnostics, most notably a sect of Christian Gnostics that held anti-polytheistic and anti-daemon views, and that preached salvation was possible without struggle.

At one point, Plotinus makes clear that his major grudge is the way Gnostics 'misused' Plato's teachings, and not their own teachings themselves:.

The neoplatonic movement seems to be motivated by the desire of Plotinus to revive the pagan philosophical tradition.

Plotinus was not claiming to innovate with the Enneads, but to clarify aspects of the works of Plato that he considered misrepresented or misunderstood.

Plotinus referred to tradition as a way to interpret Plato's intentions.

However, Plotinus attempted to clarify how the philosophers of the academy had not arrived at the same conclusions as the targets of his criticism.

Plotinus seems to be one of the first to have argued against the then popular notion of causal astrology.

Plotinus' philosophy had an influence on the development of Christian theology.

Neoplatonism and the ideas of Plotinus influenced medieval Islam as well, since the Mutazilite Abbasids fused Greek concepts into sponsored state texts, and found great influence amongst the Ismaili Shia and Persian philosophers as well, such as Muhammad al-Nasafi and Abu Yaqub Sijistani.

Plotinus's work was of great importance in reconciling the philosophy of Plato directly with Christianity.

In Great Britain, Plotinus was the cardinal influence on the 17th-century school of the Cambridge Platonists, and on numerous writers from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to W B Yeats and Kathleen Raine.