Overview
Plotinus (204/5–270 CE) was the founder of Neoplatonism, teaching in Rome after studying in Alexandria under Ammonius Saccas. His student Porphyry edited the Enneads and wrote a Life of Plotinus. He sought mystical union with the One beyond being while organizing a hierarchical metaphysics. Handbook dates: mid-third century. Late antique pagan philosophy’s spiritual peak is often identified with him.
Main ideas
Reality emanates from the One through Intellect (Nous) and Soul to the material world without depleting the source. Ascent returns by virtue, dialectic, and contemplation toward unification. Matter is a principle of privation and scattering; evil is deficiency rather than a rival substance. Beauty in sensibles awakens eros for intelligible form. The true self is intellective; civic virtues prepare but do not exhaust philosophical life. Providence permeates levels of being in a graded way.
Major works
- Enneads
- Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus
- Treatises on beauty and the One
Legacy
Neoplatonism shaped late pagan, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish metaphysics for centuries. Renaissance Platonists rediscovered the Enneads avidly. Mystical philosophy still speaks Plotinian language of ascent.