On one occasion he writes that being is 'not a corpse, and not not-life and not not-thinking.'
The second feature of importance in Plotinus' system is that it is experienced rather than argued for. It was his own acute awareness of the One gained as
the fruit of intense concentration that helped him to formulate the system above outlined. His biographer tells us two important things about him. He was
strongly opposed to all forms of ritualistic religion and observed on one occasion that 'the gods must come to me, not I to the gods'. Towards the end of
his biography Porphyry also says that during the time during which he knew him Plotinus experienced ecstasy. This state, which is described in great
detail at the end of the last Ennead, entailed for him 'a simplification and surrender of the self, an aspiration towards contact, which is at once a stillness
and a mental effort of adaptation'. Union of this type is experienced only briefly and is the climax of a process of moral purification, introversion and
contemplation of 'the vision that makes happy'. The culminating state of union, in which any awareness of distinction is for the time abolished, seems to
have led Plotinus to postulate the One at the summit of the hierarchy of reality, as the only possible explanation for the variety we normally experience
and for the state of exalted unification which he underwent on at least four occasions.
It is hard to exaggerate the importance of Plotinus. His system was the outcome both of the philosophical syncretism that preceded him and of his own
personal mystical experience. He is also significant because of his attempt to break down the layered vision of his immediate predecessors in favour of a
dynamic, spiritual monism, in which as Dean Inge notes 'there are no straight lines drawn across the map of the universe'. The tensions in his own vision
result almost entirely from his effort to break through the more static, dualistic presuppositions of his ancestors. Finally, it would be unfitting not to
mention the extraordinary influence he exercised directly or indirectly on later Platonists, like Porphyry and Proclus, and on Christian writers of the
stature of Denis the Areopagite and St Augustine.
Stoicism
Epictetus (c.55-135 A.D.) was a rough contemporary of Plutarch, but whereas Plutarch was a Boeotian aristocrat, Epictetus was by birth a slave. He
belonged to Epaphroditus, the freedman and secretary of Nero, who later served Domitian until his murder in 95 A.D. Epictetus was allowed to attend
the lectures of the celebrated Stoic Musonius Rufus, and in 89, together with all other philosophers, he was banished from Rome and took up residence at
Nicopolis in Epirus. There he spent the rest of his life expounding the precepts of Chrysippus (above, Ch. 15) and making his own comments on them.
These comments were collected and organized by one of his hearers, Flavius Arrian, consul for 130, into eight books, four of which still survive. His
work has a wider appeal than that of his predecessors; it was addressed to the humble and the poor rather than to the few and the self-reliant, and the
main tenet of his teaching was the need to cultivate inner peace as the way to true freedom.
'With Posidonius the Stoa opened itself to Platonic influence.' The principal question to be asked about the philosophy of Epictetus is whether he
continued in the direction mapped out by Posidonius, or whether he reverted to the pure doctrine of Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, the founders of the
school. On this central point opinions differ. Some scholars believe that in Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, the Platonizing of the Stoa continues.
Others, however, take the opposite line, at least for the central figure, and see in him a reversion to origins.
It cannot be doubted that a good deal of the language of Epictetus' Discourses, if taken literally, suggests a departure from the monistic position of
Chrysippus. In some places, for example, God is described, not as a world process, as nature, but rather as the Other or Another. On the same point it is
worth noting also that on many occasions reference is made to 'the God', 'the gods', and to 'Zeus'. It is not clear how far the use of such religious language
implies belief in a god, or gods, existing separately from nature. Another arguably Platonizing element is the treatment of the soul. In Discourse 1.9. 11
Epictetus speaks about our natural kinship to the gods, which we will be able to realize once we have dispensed with the fetters that bind us; that is, the
body and its possessions. Such language is more akin to the 'body a prison' idea of Plato's Phaedo than to the doctrines of most of the Stoics, who denied