a death-grip struggle over power. When the persecutions were called off soon
after Constantine’s victory ending civil war in 311, it was only a short step to
the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the empire, which had
transpired by the time of his death in 337.
The transition brought one more major burst of creativity. Plotinus put
together an all-encompassing system based on Platonism, which served simul-
taneously as a religion. Plotinus had been educated in the circles in Alexandria
which produced Origen, and he was in the entourage of the emperor Gordian
in Mesopotamia when the latter was murdered in 243 by adherents of Philip,
the emperor rumored to be a secret Christian (CHLG, 1967: 201).^32 The
politics of this period were volatile, and it was not yet so clear that Christianity
was to be the dominant religious force. But occultist movements were ex-
tremely prominent, and Plotinus threw his energies into capturing their essence
for a rationalistic philosophy while purging their particularistic and “lower”
forms. He attacked the blasphemous silliness of astrology, and he and his
followers were especially hostile to Gnostic magic, which competed directly
for the interest of his own circle (CHLG, 1967: 205–210).
The metaphysical elements of Plotinus’ system were already long in exist-
ence. The hierarchy of ontological levels based on the Pythagorean doctrine of
numbers goes back to Speusippus and Xenocrates, before the Academy turned
Skeptic. Aristotle’s analysis of levels of generality in logic provided another
version of a hierarchy which could be bent to this purpose; and the syncretizing
Middle Platonists and neo-Pythagoreans had elaborated various versions of the
ontological scheme. In Plotinus’ version there are three hypostases: the One,
which is beyond number and name, and can be spoken of only metaphorically;
the Intelligence (nous), made up of Ideas in something like the Platonic sense,
which are models of particular things but also their substance and true Being;
and the Soul, the maker of the Cosmos, and which refracted through matter
is Nature, the realm of sense and multiplicity, with lower and vegetative souls
as well as individual human souls. The lower hypostases emanate from the
higher, which also provide a path upward to the One as the goal of everything
below.
Most of these elements can be found somewhere among Plotinus’ prede-
cessors, but the package is different. Many of the Middle Platonists placed
emphasis on the intellect as the supreme principle of reality, whereas Plotinus
stressed the distinctive level of transcendence beyond intellect and being.
Plotinus was most original in arguing that the level of the intellect is not
separate either from mind (after the fashion of the Platonic Ideas) or from
particular objects. Instead the world, mind, being, and thought are unified; the
acts and objects of thought are identical. Plotinus’ system is a more thorough-
going idealism than any other ancient philosophy.
Partitioning Attention Space: Ancient Greece^ •^125