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The Neoplatonists: Plotinus
Plotinus believed in a trio of divinities, these being the One, the Intellect and the Soul orn in Egypt and educated almost entirely in the Greek tradition, Plotinus eventually settled in Rome after an expedition to the Orient with the Emperor Gordian was abandoned when Gordian was assassinated by the Roman army. The times of Plotinus were the beginning of troubled times that would soon spell the end of the old Roman Empire, and its division into Eastern and Western Empires. Indeed, Plotinus is regarded as the last great thinker of the Roman age. Plotinus’ fame lies in his reworking and development of the philosophy of Plato, work that would give rise to what later became known as ‘Neoplatonism’, although his philosophy is also influenced by Aristotle and the Roman Stoics. His many works were collected and edited by his student Porphyry under the title Enneads. The title derives from the Greek word for ‘nine’, reflecting the fact that there are nine chapters or treatises to each of the six books in the collection. Plotinus’ philosophy combines the mystical with the practical, and was to have a great influence on Christian theology. His philosophy is aimed at helping the student to return, in union or communion, to the One or ultimate Being by means of contemplation. As in Christian theology, Plotinus believed in a tripartite of divinities, these being the One, the Intellect and the Soul. However, unlike the Christian trinity, these are not on an equal footing but are rather successive ‘stages’ or emanations of contemplative being. The One, which Plotinus – following Plato – sometimes referred to as ‘the Good’, is beyond description. Language can only point to the One, and even the many names of the One are not its true names. Rather, it is the ineffable, mystical A618C90F-C2C6-4FD6-BDDB-9D35FE504CB3
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source of reality. After the One comes the Intellect or ‘Nous’, which corresponds to intuitive knowledge. The Intellect is also difficult to describe in language, but Plotinus offers us various analogies. The Intellect is like the light of the Sun, it illuminates the One, and is the means by which the One contemplates itself. The Intellect is the source and ground of the archetypes, or Platonic Forms (see Plato), of material things. Thought and the objects of thought are united in the Intellect, there is no division between subject and object, perceiver and perceived. The next level of reality is Soul, which corresponds to rational or discursive thinking. There is a higher and lower division, between the higher and inward-facing Soul, looking towards the divine by means of the Intellect, and the lower and outward-facing Soul. Plotinus calls this lower part Nature. It is this, lower, outer-facing Nature, that is responsible for the material world. As human beings, both levels of the Soul are present in us, and it is up to us to choose between being concerned with the lower level concerns of the body, or to look inward and contemplate the higher realities of the Intellect. The key to understanding Plotinus’ cosmogony lies in understanding that the three levels of reality, the One, the Intellect and the Soul, are logical progressions, or levels of contemplation, of a singular eternal reality, rather than temporal successions of coming-intobeing. Time is only created by the inadequate ability of Nature to contemplate the divine. According to Plotinus, it comes about in the lower order of material existence because Soul, unlike the Intellect, is unable to contemplate the Forms immediately, but instead must contemplate them as fragmented objects perceived in moments of succession.
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