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Plotinus

Πλωτῖνος

c. 205 – 270Historically documented person

Greek philosopher born in Egypt (c. 205–270), regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism. A pupil of Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria, he taught in Rome from 244 and began writing at fifty. His fifty-four treatises, arranged by his pupil Porphyry in six groups of nine, the Enneads, set out a universe that proceeds from the One through Intellect and Soul, and to which the soul can return through contemplation. His influence on pagan, Christian and Islamic mysticism was immense.

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Cabeza de mármol identificada con Plotino (Ostia, inv. 436)

Cabeza de mármol identificada con Plotino (Ostia, inv. 436) · Public domain

In their words

«Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland.»

Enéadas I 6 [1], 8 (citando la Ilíada). Griego: Wikisource; inglés: Stephen MacKenna; español: traducción propia.

Enneads — Plotinus

To begin, one work

Enneads
Read the full text

Their central idea

The One (the Good): Plotinus' first principle is the One, which he also calls the Good.

See in context

Biography

5 min read

A philosopher ashamed of having a body

"Plotinus, the philosopher of our times, seemed ashamed of being in the body." With this sentence Porphyry opens the Life of Plotinus, written thirty years after his teacher's death as a preface to the edition of his works. Almost everything we know about the man comes from it: Porphyry spent six years with him in Rome and supplemented his memories with those of other pupils, above all the physician Eustochius. It is an admiring portrait, at times hagiographic, but rich in precise detail, all the more valuable because Plotinus never spoke of his family, his homeland or his date of birth. He refused to sit for any painter: "Is it not enough to carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us? Must I also consent to leave behind an image of the image?"

Alexandria

Porphyry calculates that he was born around 205, since he died in 270 at the age of sixty-six; the historian Eunapius, a century later, says he came from Lycopolis in Upper Egypt, a report that cannot be verified. His language and education were Greek. At twenty-eight he turned to philosophy in Alexandria, but he came away from the lectures of the most celebrated teachers sad and discouraged, until a friend took him to hear Ammonius Saccas, a Platonist thinker who wrote nothing. "This is the man I was looking for," he said as he left. He stayed with him eleven years.

Moved by the wish to know the philosophy of the Persians and the Indians, he joined the emperor Gordian III's expedition against Persia in 242. Gordian died in Mesopotamia in 244 and Plotinus barely escaped to Antioch. That same year, under the emperor Philip the Arab, at the age of forty, he settled in Rome, where he would live for the rest of his life.

The school in Rome

For ten years he taught only by word of mouth, faithful to a pact with two other pupils of Ammonius, Herennius and Origen, not to divulge their master's doctrines; when the others broke it, he too felt free. His classes were open conversations: commentaries by Platonists and Aristotelians—Severus, Cronius, Numenius, Alexander of Aphrodisias—were read and Plotinus took the floor to develop his own thought, allowing questions to the point of disorder. Senators came to hear him, such as Rogatianus, who renounced the praetorship and his property; physicians such as Eustochius; women such as Gemina, in whose house he lived, and her daughter. Many families entrusted him with the guardianship of their orphaned children, and he checked their accounts scrupulously. The emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina honoured him, and Plotinus asked them to restore a ruined city in Campania to found Platonopolis there, governed by Plato's laws; court intrigue thwarted the plan.

Fifty-four treatises

He began writing around 253, at the age of fifty, in the first year of Gallienus. When Porphyry arrived in Rome in 263 he had written twenty-one treatises; during the following six years, spurred by the questions of Porphyry and Amelius, he wrote twenty-four more, among them the great cycle against the Gnostics; and afterwards, already ill and with Porphyry in Sicily, a final nine. He wrote in one go, as if copying from a book what he had already thought out, without rereading because of his poor eyesight and without minding his spelling; hence he entrusted the revision to Porphyry. Around 301 Porphyry published the fifty-four treatises arranged not by date but by subject, in six groups of nine—the Enneads—from ethics to the One; in the Life he also preserved the chronological list, thanks to which the development of Plotinus' thought can be followed.

A universe that proceeds from the One

Plotinus regarded himself as an interpreter of Plato, but his reading gave rise to something new. At the summit of reality he places the One or the Good, absolutely simple, beyond being and thought, of which nothing can properly be said. From its fullness, without the One losing anything or willing it, proceeds Intellect, which contains all the Forms and thinks itself; from Intellect proceeds Soul, which gives life and order to the sensible world. Matter, at the lowest extreme, is pure indeterminacy, and Plotinus identifies it with evil. Every reality proceeds from its principle and tends to return to it by contemplating it: the return is possible for the human soul because a part of it, Plotinus holds, never fully descended and remains in the intelligible.

The experience of union

The treatise on the descent of the soul begins with a confession exceptional in Greek philosophy: "Many times, waking up to myself out of the body…", the author says he has seen a marvellous beauty and become one with the divine. Porphyry states that, during the six years he spent with him, Plotinus four times attained union with the god who is above Intellect. Pierre Hadot saw this experience as the centre of his work: philosophy as a conversion of the gaze, an inner simplification culminating in the "flight of the alone to the Alone" with which the treatise On the Good or the One ends.

Death in Campania

In his last years he suffered a serious illness that made his voice hoarse, dimmed his sight and covered his hands and feet with ulcers; Porphyry describes it in detail, and Stephen MacKenna rendered its name as "malign diphtheria". His friends stopped visiting him and he withdrew to the estate of his late friend Zethus in Campania. Eustochius, who arrived late from Puteoli, told Porphyry that Plotinus said he had still been waiting for him and that he was striving to lead the divine in us back to the divine in the All; at that moment a snake slid under the bed and vanished into a hole in the wall, and Plotinus breathed his last. The year was 270.

Afterlife

His pupils and their pupils—Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Damascius—made Neoplatonism the last great pagan philosophical school. Augustine of Hippo read in Milan "books of the Platonists", translated into Latin by Marius Victorinus, which he acknowledged as decisive in his conversion and which were in all likelihood treatises of Plotinus and Porphyry. An Arabic paraphrase of Enneads IV–VI, attributed to Aristotle under the title Theology, carried his thought into Islamic philosophy. In 1492 Marsilio Ficino published in Florence the complete Latin translation, which opened him to modern Europe.

Sources: Porfirio. Vida de Plotino y orden de sus libros (Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ). Texto griego en la ed. de R. Volkmann (Teubner, 1883), en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (1917), en Wikisource en inglés. · Plotino. Enéadas. Texto griego en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (vols. 1–4, 1917–1926) y de MacKenna y B. S. Page (vol. 5, 1930), en Wikisource en inglés. · Hadot, Pierre. Plotin ou la simplicité du regard. París: Plon, 1963. Trad. inglesa: Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision, University of Chicago Press, 1993. · Igal, Jesús. «Introducción general», en Porfirio, Vida de Plotino; Plotino, Enéadas I–II. Biblioteca Clásica Gredos, 57. Madrid: Gredos, 1982. · Gerson, Lloyd P. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. c. 205 · age 0

    Birth

    Porphyry infers the year (the thirteenth of Septimius Severus) from his age at death; Plotinus never revealed the day or month. Eunapius gives Lycopolis as his homeland.

    Probable

  2. c. 232 · age 28

    Meeting Ammonius Saccas

    At twenty-eight, dissatisfied with the teachers of Alexandria, he hears Ammonius and exclaims: "This is the man I was looking for." He studies with him for eleven years.

    Documented

  3. c. 242 – 244 · age 38

    Gordian III's expedition

    He joins Gordian III's army against Persia to learn the philosophy of the Persians and Indians. After the emperor's death (244) he flees to Antioch.

    Documented

  4. c. 244 · age 40

    Arrival in Rome

    Under Philip the Arab he settles in Rome, where he teaches orally for ten years without writing, because of a pact with Herennius and Origen.

    Documented

  5. c. 246 · age 42

    Amelius arrives

    Amelius Gentilianus joins the school, where he will remain for twenty-four years; he compiles nearly a hundred books of notes from the lectures.

    Documented

  6. c. 253 · age 49

    He begins writing

    In the first year of Gallienus' reign he begins writing treatises; the first, according to Porphyry, is "On Beauty" (I.6).

    Documented

  7. 263 – 268 · age 59

    Porphyry arrives

    Porphyry of Tyre joins the school in the tenth year of Gallienus, when Plotinus has written twenty-one treatises. In the following six years he will write twenty-four more (22–45), including the cycle against the Gnostics (30–33).

    Documented

  8. c. 265 · age 61

    The Platonopolis project

    He asks Gallienus and Salonina to restore a ruined city in Campania to found Platonopolis, governed by Plato's Laws. Opposition at court prevents it.

    Documented

  9. c. 268 · age 64

    Porphyry to Sicily

    Plotinus notices that Porphyry is tempted by suicide and advises him to travel; Porphyry leaves for Sicily. Plotinus sends him there the last nine treatises (46–54).

    Documented

  10. 270 · age 66

    Death

    Dies on Zethus' estate in Campania at the end of the second year of Claudius II, attended by Eustochius.

    Documented

  11. c. 301

    Porphyry publishes the Enneads

    Porphyry edits the fifty-four treatises in six Enneads, prefaced by the Life of Plotinus and the chronological list.

    Probable

  12. 386

    Augustine reads the Platonists

    Augustine reads in Milan the "books of the Platonists" translated by Marius Victorinus, decisive for his conversion (Confessions VII.9).

    Probable

  13. c. 840

    The "Theology of Aristotle"

    In al-Kindi's circle an Arabic paraphrase of Enneads IV–VI attributed to Aristotle is produced, transmitting Neoplatonism to Islamic philosophy.

    Probable

  14. 1492

    Ficino's Latin translation

    Marsilio Ficino publishes the complete Latin translation of the Enneads, dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici.

    Documented

  15. 1580

    Greek editio princeps

    Pietro Perna prints in Basel the first Greek text of the Enneads, together with Ficino's version.

    Documented

  16. 1917 – 1930

    First complete English translation

    Stephen MacKenna publishes the first volume of his translation, completed in 1930 with the collaboration of B. S. Page.

    Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Enneads — Plotinus

Later compilation · c. 301

Enneads

Ἐννεάδες

The complete works of Plotinus. Porphyry arranged them from the simplest subject to the most exalted: Ennead I deals with ethics and man; II with the physical world; III with providence, fate, time and love; IV with the soul; V with Intellect; VI with the kinds of being and the One. Each treatise carries in brackets its number in the chronological order that Porphyry himself preserved in the Life (4–6), which allows three periods to be distinguished: treatises 1–21 (up to 263), 22–45 (263–268) and 46–54 (268–270). It is the source of ancient Neoplatonism and one of the foundational texts of Western mysticism.

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16 editions

Life of Plotinus (by Porphyry) — Plotinus

Academic study · c. 301

Life of Plotinus (by Porphyry)

Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ

"On the life of Plotinus and the arrangement of his books", written around 301, when Porphyry was sixty-eight. It narrates the Alexandrian youth, the Persian expedition, the school in Rome, the circle of pupils, the Platonopolis project, the mystical unions and the death in Campania; it transcribes Apollo's oracle on Plotinus' soul and gives the chronological list of the treatises with their distribution into enneads. It is one of the richest biographies of philosophers from antiquity.

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5 editions

Ennead I.6 [1]: On beauty — Plotinus

Written work · c. 253

Ennead I.6 [1]: On beauty

Περὶ τοῦ καλοῦ

The first treatise he wrote and one of the most widely read. It refutes the view that beauty consists in symmetry: the beautiful is the presence of form in matter. It rises from beautiful bodies to beautiful pursuits, to the beauty of the soul and to intelligible Beauty, and invites the reader to "chisel his own statue", since no eye ever saw the sun without becoming sunlike. It contains the exhortation "let us flee to the beloved fatherland".

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3 editions

Ennead IV.8 [6]: On the descent of the soul into bodies — Plotinus

Written work · c. 253

Ennead IV.8 [6]: On the descent of the soul into bodies

Περὶ τῆς εἰς τὰ σώματα καθόδου τῆς ψυχῆς

It opens with the famous autobiographical confession: "Many times, waking up to myself out of the body…". It reconciles Plato's apparently contradictory texts on the soul's descent—a fault in the Phaedo and the Phaedrus, a cosmic mission in the Timaeus—and argues that a part of our soul does not descend but remains in the intelligible.

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3 editions

Ennead V.1 [10]: On the three primary hypostases — Plotinus

Written work · c. 253

Ennead V.1 [10]: On the three primary hypostases

Περὶ τῶν τριῶν ἀρχικῶν ὑποστάσεων

A programmatic exposition of his system. It opens with the question why souls have forgotten their father, God, and answers with their audacity (tolma) and their desire to belong to themselves. It invites the reader to recall the soul's dignity and presents the One, Intellect and Soul, relying on Plato's Parmenides and Second Letter and on earlier philosophers.

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3 editions

Ennead VI.9 [9]: On the Good or the One — Plotinus

Written work · c. 253

Ennead VI.9 [9]: On the Good or the One

Περὶ τἀγαθοῦ ἢ τοῦ ἑνός

Every being is what it is by being one. After ascending through soul and Intellect, Plotinus shows that the One is none of the things and is reached only by a presence superior to knowledge, when the soul strips itself of all form. He describes union as the meeting of centre with centre and ends with the formula that sums up Plotinian mysticism: the flight of the alone to the Alone. Porphyry placed it at the end of the Enneads.

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3 editions

Complete works (59)

See all 59 works in the library

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland.

Φεύγωμεν δὴ φίλην ἐς πατρίδα.

VerifiedEnéadas I 6 [1], 8 (citando la Ilíada). Griego: Wikisource; inglés: Stephen MacKenna; español: traducción propia.

1 / 9
Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (1)

  • «Beauty is the light that plays over the symmetry of things, rather than the symmetry itself.»

    A free and widely circulated paraphrase of Enneads VI.7 [38].22, where Plotinus says that beauty is rather what shines upon the symmetry than the symmetry itself. It circulates as a literal quotation, but it is not one; the original passage should be quoted.

Last words

Later account by witnesses

«"I have still been waiting for you." And he said he was striving to bring back the divine in us to the divine in the All.»

σὲ ἔτι περιμένω […] πειρᾶσθαι τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν θεῖον ἀνάγειν πρὸς τὸ ἐν τῷ παντὶ θεῖον.

Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 2. Porphyry was not present—he was at Lilybaeum in Sicily—; he tells it from the account of the physician Eustochius, who arrived late from Puteoli and was the only pupil present at the death. The second sentence is in indirect speech, so it is not certain that it reproduces literal words. Some editors read "the divine in you" (hymin) instead of "in us" (hēmin), in which case the sentence would be an exhortation to the disciples; MacKenna's translation reads "the Divine in myself". Porphyry adds that at that moment a snake passed under the bed and hid in a hole in the wall, and Plotinus breathed his last.

Source: Porfirio. Vida de Plotino y orden de sus libros (Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ). Texto griego en la ed. de R. Volkmann (Teubner, 1883), en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (1917), en Wikisource en inglés.

Ask

What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    The One, beyond being and thought, can only be spoken of by negation

    The unnameableStated explicitly

    For Plotinus the principle of all is the One, or the Good, from which Intellect and Soul proceed without it being diminished. Precisely because it is the principle of all things it is none of them: it is beyond being, form and thought, and does not even think itself. Hence the name “One” describes nothing: it is a negation of multiplicity, and Plotinus warns that we do not say what it is but what it is not. We speak of it from what comes after it, and only union, when the soul is alone with it, reaches it. The last sentence of treatise V 3 sums up the method: take away everything.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    A part of the soul never descended: we remain above, in Intellect

    The Self is the AbsoluteStated explicitly

    For Plotinus what we call “we” is stretched between two levels. The compound of body and lower soul feels, suffers and desires; but the true human being is the reasoning soul and, higher, the Intellect in which it shares. In the treatise on the soul's descent he holds, against the common Platonist view, that not all of our soul has come down: a part always remains in the intelligible. He himself recounts that he often woke to himself out of the body and saw a marvellous beauty. To know oneself is to climb back from the scattered self to that undescended part and, from there, to union with the One.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    Souls forgot their father through the audacity of wanting to belong to themselves

    Separation from GodStated explicitly

    Treatise V 1 opens by asking what has made souls forget their father, God, and be ignorant of themselves and of him. The answer is audacity: the wish to belong to themselves, the pleasure in moving on their own account, which took them so far from their origin that they ended up admiring things here and despising themselves. Elsewhere Plotinus places the origin of evil in matter, the absolute privation of good, towards which the soul inclines in descending. Suffering is thus distance: that of a soul that has turned outward and forgotten itself. The remedy is return, and the image summing it up is Odysseus going back to his beloved homeland.

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  • What happens after death?

    The soul is immortal, and what we truly are never left the intelligible

    What I am is never born and never diesStated explicitly

    One of Plotinus' earliest treatises argues against Stoics and Epicureans that the soul is neither a body nor the harmony of a body, and therefore cannot perish: it belongs to the nature of the divine and eternal. What dies is the compound, the living being that feels and suffers. Since a part of the soul has never descended, death does not affect what we truly are. Plotinus also admits, following Plato, that souls that have identified with the lower are reborn in human or animal bodies according to their life. Porphyry relates that his last words were an effort to raise the divine in us to the divine in the all.

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    Return to oneself, be purified and ascend to union with the One

    Through direct knowledgeStated explicitly

    Plotinus describes an ascent in several stages. The civic virtues order life; the purificatory virtues separate the soul from the body's passions; dialectic raises it to Intellect, where it knows itself as part of the intelligible. In the treatise on beauty, the watchword is to turn inward and carve one's own statue until the radiance of virtue shines, because the eye does not see the sun without becoming like it. But the final step exceeds knowledge: union with the One is not seeing an object but coinciding with it, and Plotinus compares it to two centres touching. Porphyry states that he attained it four times while Porphyry was with him.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    Teaching only shows the road; the vision belongs to whoever wants to see

    The teacher is withinStated explicitly

    Porphyry relates that Plotinus, at twenty-eight, searched in vain among the schools of Alexandria until, on hearing Ammonius Saccas, he exclaimed that this was the man he was looking for, and stayed with him eleven years. The teacher was thus decisive in his life. But in the Enneads teaching has a precise limit: we speak and write to point towards the One and to wake from reasonings to vision, like someone showing the road to one who wishes to travel; the contemplation itself is the task of whoever wishes to see. What is sought is not outside: the One is present to all, and whoever turns inward finds it. The teacher points; the true guide is the divine in the soul.

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  • Is the world real?

    The visible world is the last level of a procession from the One

    Planes of existenceStated explicitly

    Plotinus conceives reality as a hierarchy. From the One proceeds Intellect, where the intelligible forms are; from Intellect, Soul, which animates the cosmos; and at the extreme, matter, which in itself is nothing and receives forms like a mirror. The sensible world is real as image and work of Soul: in the treatise against the Gnostics he defends its beauty and order against those who despise it, and calls it the best possible image of the intelligible. But authentic being lies above, and each lower level is a weaker contemplation of the higher. The visible is one plane of a graded reality, upheld in its entirety by the One.

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  • What is love?

    The soul loves the Good as a lover; in union, two become one

    Longing and unionStated explicitly

    For Plotinus everything that proceeds from the One keeps the desire to return to it, and in the soul that desire is love. The treatise on love interprets Plato's Eros as the activity of the soul tending towards the good. In the treatise on the Good or the One he compares the soul to a maiden who, separated from her father by earthly marriages, returns to him and knows true love; when she reaches him, nothing stands between them, and they are no longer two but one. Treatise VI 7 describes the soul receiving an outflow from the Good and seized by burning love. Love is the movement of return to the origin.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    We are free when we act from intellect, not from passions

    Real free willStated explicitly

    Plotinus rejects astrological and Stoic determinism in his treatise on fate: if everything were fixed by external causes, it would not be we who act. But his notion of freedom is demanding. In treatise VI 8 he asks what depends on us and answers that it is not enough to do what we want: whoever acts carried away by passions or ignorance is not free. Only the soul acting from intellect and towards the good is, because it then acts according to its own nature. And freedom in the full sense belongs to the One, which is what it wills to be. In the treatises on providence he also admits a justice fulfilled across several lives.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    Return to yourself and look: prayer is reaching out alone to the Alone

    Returning to the source of the IStated explicitly

    For Plotinus the way to the divine is a return inward. In the treatise on beauty the watchword is to return to oneself and look, and to keep carving one's own statue until it shines. In V 1 he explains that the soul must gather itself, turn its gaze from the external and listen to the voices from above, like someone awaiting a beloved voice. Before speaking of the supreme principle he invokes God, not with spoken words, but stretching the soul in prayer towards him, alone to the Alone. The goal is to find the source: the centre of the soul coincides with the centre of all, and whoever sees himself in his purity meets the One.

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    The One is beyond thought: it is reached by presence, not by science

    The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

    Plotinus grants reason enormous reach: Intellect knows all that is intelligible, and the reasoning soul can rise to it. But the supreme principle lies beyond: the One is not an object of thought, because all thinking implies a duality between the thinker and the thought. Hence, he says in VI 9, the apprehension of the One comes not through science or intellection, like that of other intelligibles, but through a presence superior to science. We speak of it to orient, but we do not state it; dialectic and virtue prepare, and the last step is to leave even thought behind. The watchword closing V 3 sums it up: take away everything.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    Present at once to himself and to others, without slackening contemplation

    Contemplation in actionStated explicitly

    Plotinus' doctrine places contemplation above everything: action is a weakened contemplation, a detour for those unable to contemplate directly. But his life, as Porphyry tells it, was that of a man in the world. He taught in Rome, acted as arbiter in disputes, was guardian to orphans whose property he managed scrupulously, and even asked the emperor Gallienus for a city in Campania to govern by Plato's laws. Porphyry stresses that, while attending to others, he never interrupted his inner attention: he was present at once to himself and to others. The heart turned to the essential does not exclude service.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Testimonyc. 232

"This is the man I was looking for"

At twenty-eight Plotinus felt the urge to devote himself to philosophy and went the rounds of the most renowned teachers in Alexandria, but came away from them all dejected and full of sadness. He told a friend, who understood what he was looking for and took him to hear Ammonius, a teacher he had not yet tried. Plotinus went in, listened, and on leaving said to his companion: "This is the man I was looking for." From that day he did not leave Ammonius for eleven years. Of this Ammonius, called Saccas, no writing survives, and his doctrine remains one of the great enigmas of ancient philosophy.

Origin of the story: Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 3, who says he heard it from Plotinus himself in conversation.

Source: Porfirio. Vida de Plotino y orden de sus libros (Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ). Texto griego en la ed. de R. Volkmann (Teubner, 1883), en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (1917), en Wikisource en inglés.

Testimonyc. 250–265

The image of the image

Plotinus refused to sit for painters and sculptors. When his pupil Amelius asked him to allow a portrait to be made, he replied: "Is it not enough to carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us? Must I also consent to leave to posterity an image of the image, as though it were something worth seeing?" Amelius did not give up: he brought to the classes, which were open, the best painter of the day, Carterius, to study the master attentively; the painter then drew him from memory, and Amelius corrected the sketch until the likeness was achieved, without Plotinus knowing. The portrait has not survived.

Origin of the story: Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 1. The heads from Ostia sometimes identified as Plotinus have no proven connection with this portrait.

Source: Porfirio. Vida de Plotino y orden de sus libros (Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ). Texto griego en la ed. de R. Volkmann (Teubner, 1883), en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (1917), en Wikisource en inglés.

Testimonyc. 260–268

Platonopolis

The emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina held Plotinus in high esteem. He wished to make use of that favour: in Campania there was a city of philosophers, so it was said, now in ruins, and he asked the emperor to rebuild it and grant him the surrounding territory. Its inhabitants would live by Plato's Laws, the city would be called Platonopolis and Plotinus would retire there with his pupils. The plan, says Porphyry, would easily have been carried out had not some members of the court prevented it out of envy, spite or some other petty motive. The idea shows a Plotinus less detached from politics than is usually believed.

Origin of the story: Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 12. There is no other source; the ruined "city of philosophers" has not been identified.

Source: Porfirio. Vida de Plotino y orden de sus libros (Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ). Texto griego en la ed. de R. Volkmann (Teubner, 1883), en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (1917), en Wikisource en inglés.

Hagiographic accountc. 255–268

The god in the Iseum

An Egyptian priest passing through Rome, an acquaintance of a friend of Plotinus, wished to show his learning and offered to evoke the daimon that accompanied him. Plotinus agreed, and the evocation took place in the temple of Isis, the only pure place in Rome according to the Egyptian. When the daimon was summoned, a god appeared, and not a being of daimonic rank. "Blessed are you," exclaimed the priest, "who have a god as your daimon and not a being of lower rank." They could neither question it nor see it any longer, because a friend who was watching over the sacrificial birds strangled them, out of jealousy or fear. Porphyry links the episode with Plotinus' treatise on our allotted guardian spirit.

Origin of the story: Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 10, in the same section in which he tells how the spells of Olympius of Alexandria rebounded on their caster. It is a marvellous tale that Porphyry transmits as proof of his master's superiority.

Source: Porfirio. Vida de Plotino y orden de sus libros (Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ). Texto griego en la ed. de R. Volkmann (Teubner, 1883), en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (1917), en Wikisource en inglés.

Testimonyc. 268

The advice to Porphyry

Around 268 Porphyry, who had spent six years with Plotinus, began to think of taking his own life. Plotinus guessed it: he turned up unexpectedly at his house while he was turning the idea over, and told him that this desire did not spring from a rational decision but from a melancholic disorder, and advised him to go away travelling. Porphyry obeyed, went to Sicily to hear a certain Probus at Lilybaeum, and so was freed of the wish to die; but this prevented him from being with his master until the end. In Sicily he received the last nine treatises.

Origin of the story: Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 11, in the first person.

Source: Porfirio. Vida de Plotino y orden de sus libros (Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ). Texto griego en la ed. de R. Volkmann (Teubner, 1883), en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (1917), en Wikisource en inglés.

Testimony263–268

Union four times

The last chapter of the Life deals with the goal to which Plotinus directed his whole existence: to be united with the god who is above Intellect and everything intelligible, the one who, says Porphyry, has neither form nor shape. "During the time I was with him he attained that goal four times, not potentially but in an ineffable act." Porphyry adds that he himself, at sixty-eight, achieved it once. He accompanies this with the oracle Amelius obtained from Apollo after Plotinus' death, which describes his soul welcomed among the blessed alongside Minos, Rhadamanthys, Pythagoras and Plato.

Origin of the story: Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 22–23. It is the direct testimony of a pupil, but about an experience that by definition only Plotinus himself knew.

Source: Porfirio. Vida de Plotino y orden de sus libros (Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ). Texto griego en la ed. de R. Volkmann (Teubner, 1883), en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (1917), en Wikisource en inglés.

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

The One (the Good)el-uno
Plotinus' first principle is the One, which he also calls the Good. It is absolutely simple: if it had parts, qualities or even thought, there would be duality in it and it would in turn need a principle to unify it. Hence it is "beyond being" (Republic 509b) and beyond Intellect, and cannot be an object of knowledge or definition: to say it is one is merely to deny multiplicity in it. Plotinus describes it with negations and images—the spring that is not exhausted in the rivers, the sun that gives light without losing it—always warning that we speak "as if". Every being is what it is by participating in unity, and everything aspires to the Good. It is not, however, a cold principle: in VI.8 Plotinus presents it as cause of itself, whose being coincides with its will.

It unites the Good of the Republic, beyond essence, with the One of the first hypothesis of the Parmenides. It is the root of the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius and of medieval mysticism.

Source: Kalligas, Paul. «Plotinus». Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2024).

The three hypostasestres-hipostasis
Plotinus organises intelligible reality into three levels or hypostases—"subsistent realities"—set out programmatically in V.1: the One, Intellect (nous) and Soul (psychē). Intellect is the first multiplicity: a thought that thinks itself and is identical with its content, the totality of the Platonic Forms, which are at once beings and acts of thinking; in it there is no time or discourse, but simultaneous vision. Soul proceeds from Intellect and is its image: it thinks discursively, moving from one object to another, and so with it time is born; the World Soul gives life and order to the sensible cosmos, and individual souls to bodies. Plotinus insists that there are no hypostases beyond these three and criticises the Gnostics for multiplying them.

The term "hypostasis" for the three principles comes from the title Porphyry gave to V.1; the doctrine influenced Greek Trinitarian theology, though with essential differences (in Plotinus there is hierarchy).

Source: Kalligas, Paul. «Plotinus». Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2024).

Procession and reversionprocesion-y-conversion
Plotinus explains how the many come from the One without its changing or losing anything. Every perfect being produces something other than itself, as fire gives off heat or snow cold: this is the theory of double activity (V.4), one internal, which is the being itself, and one external, derived from it. What is produced is always inferior to its principle. But generation is not complete with the going-forth (proodos): what is generated turns back towards its source to contemplate it (epistrophē), and in that turning receives its form. Thus Intellect is constituted by looking at the One, and Soul by looking at Intellect. The image of "emanation", which has become customary, is only a metaphor: Plotinus denies that the One produces either by mechanical necessity or by deliberation.

The scheme of remaining, procession and reversion was systematised by Proclus and transmitted to the Middle Ages by Pseudo-Dionysius and the Book of Causes.

Source: Kalligas, Paul. «Plotinus». Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2024).

All things are contemplationcontemplacion
In III.8 Plotinus formulates, "in play", a serious thesis: all things aspire to contemplation (theōria). Not only rational beings but animals, plants and the earth that produces them: nature, in giving form to bodies, contemplates the forming principles it carries within and produces in silence, as the geometer draws figures as he thinks. Action is a weakened contemplation, a detour for those who cannot contemplate directly and need to see outside what they do not see within. The hierarchy of beings is thus a hierarchy of degrees of contemplation, culminating in Intellect, where contemplating and being coincide, and opening onto the One, which lies beyond even contemplation.

It opens the great treatise against the Gnostics (III.8, V.8, V.5, II.9): against the idea of an evil demiurge, Plotinus presents a cosmos produced by contemplation.

Source: Plotino. Enéadas. Texto griego en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (vols. 1–4, 1917–1926) y de MacKenna y B. S. Page (vol. 5, 1930), en Wikisource en inglés.

The undescended soulalma-no-descendida
One of Plotinus' most personal theses is that the human soul does not descend entirely into the body: a part of it always remains in the intelligible world, contemplating, though we do not know it. "If one must dare to say something against the opinion of others", he writes in IV.8.8. The empirical self, absorbed in sensations and cares, is unaware of this higher activity; the task of philosophy is to turn attention inward so as to become conscious of what we already are. This thesis explains why return to the principle is possible without an external saviour and grounds the Plotinian ethics of purification. His successors, from Iamblichus on, rejected it and held that the soul descends completely, which gave rites a necessary role.

It contrasts with the Phaedo and the Phaedrus, which speak of a fall, and reconciles those texts with the Timaeus; it is central in IV.8 and IV.3–4.

Source: Kalligas, Paul. «Plotinus». Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2024).

Beautybelleza
In his first treatise (I.6) Plotinus rejects the Stoic definition of beauty as symmetry of parts with good colour: simple things too are beautiful—a colour, light, gold, lightning—and what is symmetrical may not be, like a dead face. Beauty is the presence of form, which comes from the intelligible world, in a matter; that is why the soul, akin to the intelligible, recognises it and rejoices in it. There is a ladder from beautiful bodies to pursuits and sciences, to virtue and to intelligible Beauty, whose principle is the Good. To see it the soul must itself become beautiful, like the sculptor working on his statue. In V.8 he adds that art does not copy nature but goes back to its forming principles.

It develops the ladder of Plato's Symposium; through Ficino, I.6 and V.8 decisively influenced Renaissance art theory.

Source: Plotino. Enéadas. Texto griego en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (vols. 1–4, 1917–1926) y de MacKenna y B. S. Page (vol. 5, 1930), en Wikisource en inglés.

Union with the Oneunion-mistica
The goal of Plotinian philosophy is not a knowledge but an experience: union (henōsis) with the One. It is not reached by reasoning, because all knowledge implies duality, but by a "presence superior to knowledge" (VI.9.4), when the soul strips itself of every form, even that of thought. Plotinus describes it with images: the centre coinciding with the centre, the lover united with the beloved, the one who enters the sanctuary and leaves the statues behind. There is then no vision of an object: seer and seen are one. The experience is brief, and the soul falls back into reasoning, but it can be repeated. Plotinus lived it, according to Porphyry, four times in six years, and evokes it in the first person at the beginning of IV.8.

Pierre Hadot considered it the centre of his thought; it shaped Christian (Pseudo-Dionysius, Eckhart) and Sufi mysticism, although in Plotinus no grace or revelation intervenes.

Source: Hadot, Pierre. Plotin ou la simplicité du regard. París: Plon, 1963. Trad. inglesa: Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision, University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • La filosofía helenística (IV): El neoplatonismo · La March

    Lecture· ES· 2022· 59 min

    Fundación Juan MarchOfficial channel

  • 9. Plotino y el Neoplatonismo

    Lecture· ES· 2022· 203 min

    Fundación Universitaria EspañolaOfficial channel

  • John Cooper: Platonist Philosophy as a Way of Life: Plotinus

    Lecture· EN· 2013· 61 min

    McCoy Family Center for Ethics in SocietyOfficial channel

  • Ep. 18 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Plotinus and Neoplatonism

    Lecture· EN· 2019· 54 min

    John Vervaeke’s Lectern

  • What is Neoplatonism?

    Analysis· EN· 2022· 56 min

    Let's Talk Religion

  • Antonio Gargano - Plotino

    Lecture· IT· 2020· 83 min

    IISF • Istituto Italiano per gli Studi FilosoficiOfficial channel

  • Giovanni Reale | Enneadi di Plotino | festivalfilosofia 2011

    Lecture· IT· 2011· 50 min

    FestivalfilosofiaOfficial channel

  • Fuga dal mondo ed estasi nel pensiero di Plotino - Franco Ferrari

    Lecture· IT· 2023· 58 min

    Fondazione Collegio San CarloOfficial channel

  • Relire Plotin avec Michel Cazenave, Luc Brisson et Jean-François Pradeau

    Interview· FR· 2013· 60 min

    Résonance[s]

  • Plotin - Begründer des Neoplatinismus

    Lecture· DE· 2023· 48 min

    Akademisches Forum Albertus MagnusOfficial channel

  • Fabian Völker - Einführung in den Neuplatonismus - Plotin - I/II

    Lecture· DE· 2022· 90 min

    Fabian Völker

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

  • GRC · Minúscula griega · Tratados de 253–270; copia de c. 1460

    Πλωτίνου Ἐννεάδες

    Surviving witness
    Ejemplar de trabajo de Marsilio Ficino para su traducción latina, con sus anotaciones marginales
    Custodian
    Bibliothèque nationale de France · Grec 1816

  • LA · Humanística · Traducción terminada en 1486; copia de finales del s. XV

    Plotini Enneades, interprete Marsilio Ficino

    Surviving witness
    Manuscrito iluminado por Attavante degli Attavanti para Lorenzo de Médici
    Custodian
    Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florencia · Plut. 82.10
Manuscripts →

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Influenced by

    Socrates

    He celebrated Socrates' traditional birthday, like Plato's, with a sacrifice and a banquet (Life 2).

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Plato

    He regarded himself as an interpreter of Plato, whom he calls "the divine Plato" (IV.8.1); nearly all his treatises start from a Platonic passage (Republic, Parmenides, Timaeus, Symposium, Phaedrus). He celebrated Plato's traditional birthday with a sacrifice (Life 2).

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Aristotle

    Porphyry says Aristotle's Metaphysics is condensed in his writings and that the Peripatetic commentators were read in class (Life 14). Plotinus adopts the Aristotelian noetics of the intellect thinking itself and criticises his categories (VI.1–3).

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Parmenides

    In V.1.8 he presents Parmenides as a forerunner for identifying being and thinking, and reads the first hypothesis of Plato's Parmenides as a doctrine of the One.

    Documented relation

  • Disagreed with

    Zeno of Citium

    He criticises the theses of the school Zeno founded: the corporeal soul (IV.7), total blending (II.7) and the Stoic categories (VI.1). Porphyry notes, however, that his writings are full of latent Stoic doctrines (Life 14).

    Documented relation

  • Disagreed with

    Epicurus

    He rejects atomism and the denial of providence: in II.9.15 he reproaches Epicurus for abolishing providence and the Gnostics for being even worse.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Augustine of Hippo

    Augustine read in Milan "books of the Platonists" in Marius Victorinus' translation (Confessions VII.9; VIII.2) and expressly quotes Plotinus in The City of God (IX.17; X.14).

    Documented relation

  • Ideas akin to

    Marcus Aurelius

    He does not mention him. Both conceive philosophy as an exercise of inner conversion: Marcus' "retire into yourself" and Plotinus' "withdraw into yourself and look" (I.6.9).

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Epictetus

    He does not mention him. They agree in locating freedom in what is up to us, a theme Plotinus carries up to the One in VI.8; Simplicius, a Neoplatonist, later commented on Epictetus' Handbook.

    Similarity identified by analysis

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. Wikidata, entidad Q134189 «Plotinus» (103 enlaces entre wikis; P31=Q5). Registra nacimiento hacia el 205 (Licópolis o Asiut) y muerte en el 270 en Campania.
  2. Porfirio. Vida de Plotino y orden de sus libros (Περὶ τοῦ Πλωτίνου βίου καὶ τῆς τάξεως τῶν βιβλίων αὐτοῦ). Texto griego en la ed. de R. Volkmann (Teubner, 1883), en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (1917), en Wikisource en inglés.
  3. Plotino. Enéadas. Texto griego en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de Stephen MacKenna (vols. 1–4, 1917–1926) y de MacKenna y B. S. Page (vol. 5, 1930), en Wikisource en inglés.
  4. Kalligas, Paul. «Plotinus». Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (2024).
  5. Hadot, Pierre. Plotin ou la simplicité du regard. París: Plon, 1963. Trad. inglesa: Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision, University of Chicago Press, 1993.
  6. Igal, Jesús. «Introducción general», en Porfirio, Vida de Plotino; Plotino, Enéadas I–II. Biblioteca Clásica Gredos, 57. Madrid: Gredos, 1982.
  7. Gerson, Lloyd P. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  8. Armstrong, A. H. (trad.). Plotinus, 7 vols. Loeb Classical Library 440–445 y 468. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1966–1988.
  9. Eunapio. Vidas de los filósofos y sofistas, «Plotino». Trad. inglesa de W. C. Wright, Loeb Classical Library 134. Londres: Heinemann, 1921.
  10. «Plotinus» y «Enneads», Wikipedia en inglés; «Plotino», Wikipedia en español (consultadas para hechos verificables, la tabla cronológica y bibliografía; texto propio).
  11. Edwards, Mark (trad.). Neoplatonic Saints: The Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by their Students. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000.
  12. Agustín de Hipona. Confesiones, VII 9 y VIII 2; La ciudad de Dios, IX–X. Trad. inglesa de J. G. Pilkington y Marcus Dods, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, serie I, vols. I–II, 1886–1887.
  13. Adamson, Peter. The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophical Study of the «Theology of Aristotle». Londres: Duckworth, 2002.
  14. Ficino, Marsilio (trad.). Plotini Platonicorum facile coryphaei Opera. Florencia: Antonio Miscomini, 1492.
  15. Moore, Edward. «Plotinus (204/5–270 C.E.)». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  16. Henry, Paul, y Hans-Rudolf Schwyzer (eds.). Plotini Opera, 3 vols. Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964–1982.
  17. Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan (trad.). Plotinos: Complete Works, in Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods, 4 vols. Alpine (Nueva Jersey): Platonist Press, 1918 (texto en Project Gutenberg).
  18. Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. Grec 1816 (Enéadas, copiado en Florencia hacia 1460 por Juan Escutariotes, con notas de Marsilio Ficino); reproducción en Wikimedia Commons.
  19. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Plut. 82.10 (traducción latina de Ficino, ejemplar de dedicatoria a Lorenzo de Médici, iluminado por Attavante); reproducción en Wikimedia Commons.
Rights holder
Textos antiguos en dominio público; cada traducción y edición moderna pertenece a su traductor o editorial

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • MacKenna, vol. 5 (Enéada VI, 1930, con B. S. Page, m. 1993): dominio público solo en EE. UU.; para la UE se ofrece Guthrie (1918). Antes de publicar el texto de la Enéada VI en la sala de lectura, decidir según la jurisdicción de la plataforma.
  • Títulos griegos de los tratados: se siguen las cabeceras de Wikisource (edición transcrita); los títulos varían entre la lista de Porfirio y los manuscritos. Cotejar con Henry–Schwyzer.
  • Loeb vol. IV (ISBN 9780674994881): Open Library no indica el número de volumen; confirmar LCL 443. Años de primera edición de los vols. Loeb tomados de la bibliografía general.
  • Losada, «Enéadas» (2006, ISBN 9789500393911): falta el nombre del traductor.
  • Edwards, «Neoplatonic Saints» (2000) y Adamson, «The Arabic Plotinus» (2002): ISBN no verificados.
  • Manuscritos: falta registrar los principales testimonios griegos (familias de los códices Laurentianus 87, 3, Parisinus gr. 1976, Marcianus gr. 209, etc.) y verificar las digitalizaciones de BnF Grec 1816 (Gallica) y Laurenziana Plut. 82.10.
  • Ediciones en alemán (Harder, Meiner) e italiano (Faggin, Bompiani; Reale) con ISBN no registradas.
  • Últimas palabras: confirmar en Henry–Schwyzer la lectura ἡμῖν/ὑμῖν de Vida 2, 26.
  • Sin programa de afiliación verificado ni titular de derechos: autor antiguo; las editoriales citadas no se han comprobado como programas de afiliados.

Researched on 2026-10-25