Philosophic Classics From Plato to Derrida

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Plotinus was the most influential of the Neoplatonists. Born in Lykopolis, Egypt,

in A.D. 204, he moved in his late twenties to Alexandria. There he studied with

Ammonius Saccas, an unknown figure who was also the teacher of Origen. After

eleven years with Ammonius, Plotinus joined an expedition to Persia to gain

knowledge of Persian and Indian wisdom. The trek proved unsuccessful, and

Plotinus moved on to Rome. There he established a school of philosophy and

became friends with the emperor Gallenius. At one point, he sought permission to

found a city based on Plato’s Republic,but the plan came to naught. He stayed in

Rome, teaching and writing, until the death of the emperor in A.D. 268. He then

moved to the home of a friend where he died in A.D. 270, apparently from leprosy.

Developing Plato’s dualistic understanding of reality, Plotinus taught that true

reality lies “beyond” the physical world. This “reality beyond reality” has no

limits and so cannot be described by words since words invariably have limits.

Plotinus, again borrowing from Plato, calls it the “Good” or the “One.” The

One/Good has no limits and is so supremely rich that it overflows or “emanates”

to produce “Intellectual-Principle” or “Divine Mind”Nous. This Intellectual-

Principle, in turn, overflows and “Divine-Soul” emanates from it. This process

continues as Divine-Soul generates the material world. The lowest level of

emanation, at the furthest extreme from the One/Good, is the utter formlessness

and unreality of matter.

The goal of philosophy is to awaken individuals to recognize reality beyond

the material world. But philosophy alone cannot take a person to the highest

reality of the One/Good. Only in a mystical experience can an individual unite

with the One/Good. Plotinus himself claimed to have achieved such a union, a

“flight of the Alone to the Alone” to cite his famous words, four times during his

PLOTINUS

ca. A.D. 204–270