Plotinus: biography of this Hellenistic philosopher.

A summary of the life of Plotinus, philosopher and promoter of Neoplatonism.

Plotinus was a Greek philosopher author of the Enneads and founder of Neoplatonism, a current that exerted great influence not only in his time but also in medieval Europe, Islam and Judaism.

Born in Egypt and educated in Alexandria, he was a student of Saccas, a thinker who tried to combine the thought of Aristotle with that of Plato. It is thanks to this thinker that Plotinus would know very well how to combine the best of both classical philosophers.

As a recognized Neoplatonist, Plotinus is seen as the one who knew how to comment on Plato's works and would end up developing his philosophy around him, incorporating certain Christian elements. Here we will learn about his life and work through a biography of Plotinus.in which you will find the most relevant information about his trajectory.

Brief biography of Plotinus

It is not known with certainty where Plotinus was born. The Greek sophist Eunapius of Sardis maintains that he was born in Lycon, while the lexicographer Suidas says that it was in Lycopolis (present-day Asyut). What is known is that he was a native of the province of Egypt under Roman domination, born in 203 or 204 A.D. Little is known of his childhood, as is often the case with many great classical Greek thinkers. It is known that, as an adult, in 232 he entered the circle of the philosopher Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. This great personage was also mentor of Origen, Longinus and Erenius.

In 242 Plotinus embarked on a war expedition commanded by the emperor Gordian III to Persia.. The purpose of this was to have a greater knowledge of the philosophical thought of the Middle East but, unfortunately, the expedition was a failure, the emperor was eventually assassinated and Plotinus was forced to take refuge in Antioch.

Shortly afterwards he managed to reach the capital of the empire, opening a school in Rome around the year 246. There he soon enjoyed the favor of the Roman nobility, including the emperor Gallienus himself and his wife Cornelia Salonina.

Plotinus tried to lead as ascetic a lifestyle as possible and, for this reason, he had neither great wealth nor many luxuries. Nevertheless, he was a very generous and disinterested personality, as well as charitable. It is said that he used to take orphaned children into his home and act as their guardian. He was a vegetarian, never married and never allowed himself to be portrayed, for fear that this representation would be simply "a shadow of another shadow".

But although he did not want to be represented or to write an autobiography or anything of the sort, his disciple Porphyry could not help but capture his experiences in "Life of Plotinus". his disciple Porphyry could not avoid capturing his experiences in "The Life of Plotinus".. It would be this pupil who would be in charge of systematizing and publishing Plotinus' main work, his "Enneads". During the six years he was at Plotinus' side, Porphyry assured that he saw that his master had contacts with an omnitrascendent God a total of four times.

It is from 254 onwards that Plotinus began to write down his works. In total, he wrote 54 treatises arranged in six books of nine chapters that make up his main work "Enneads". This book is considered one of the most important treatises of Classical Antiquity, next to those of Plato and Aristotle. Plotinus died around 270 AD. as a result of complications from a painful leprosy, at the age of 66 in the Italian region of Campania.

Philosophical doctrine

Plotinus' main work is the "Enneads", a compilation of treatises that he began to write from the year 253 until a few months before his death. As we have already mentioned, the task of compiling the treatises and organizing them into books was done by his disciple Porphyry, grouping them into six groups of nine, giving a total of 54 treatises. These Enneads collect the lessons that Plotinus taught in his school in Rome.

Plotinus elaborated a theological structure in which he saw the the universe as the result of a series of emanations or consequences of an ultimate reality, which is eternal and immortal.which is eternal and immaterial. This reality he would call "the One". From this reality emerges another divine principle, below the One: the Nous.

In turn, from the Nous emanates the Soul, another divine entity that is below the two previous ones. Plotinus agreed with Plato that the body is a prison for the soul and that the soul tries to return to the creative origin, to the One.to the One.

Next we will see more in depth these realities of Plotinus' doctrine, realities that his disciple Porphyry would call hypostasis. This term does not appear as such in the texts of the Enneads, written in the handwriting of Plotinus, but is a term introduced by Porphyry to better organize the whole theoretical corpus of his master.

The One

The idea of "the One" in Plotinus' theory is somewhat difficult to describe. It has been understood as a concept that refers to unity, to the greatest, and even an idea close to that of God as a unique and infinite entity.. Coupled with his personality and his properly mystical figure, Plotinus, far from specifying what exactly he means by One, prefers to keep it with a certain air of mystery.

The One is the beginning and, at the same time, the end. It is the unity that founds the existence of all things. The One is beyond Being and, because of this, it is not possible to define it specifically since it cannot be known at first hand to begin with.

Plotinus' conceptualization of "the One" is religious, and he himself promoted a kind of monotheism around this idea. However, it differs from Christianity since the One would be rather a sort of personal God, an entity far removed from that of God as an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent entity.

To begin with, Plotinus considers that "the One" cannot be defined, no attribute can be predicated about it.. Trying to define it implies making a vulgar imitation of this entity, imperfect and limited, something very far from what it really is.

The One is an entity that creates, but it does not do so by its own will, but by emanation. The One, inasmuch as it is like God, is the cause of everything else, and in creating, it loses not a drop of its own substance. The creations that arise from its emanation are structured hierarchically, in successive degrees of imperfection: Nous, soul and matter. Matter is the antithesis of the idea of the One.

But despite being its antithesis, matter reflects "the One", since the latter does not cease to be its source, and tries to return to it. The human being also feels the need to return to the One, but according to Plotinus he must avoid the self-deception into which he has fallen by indulging in the plurality of objects and actions, and must seek the truth in himself.He must seek the truth in himself and deny all objects and mediation.

The Nous

Nous is the second level of reality or hypostasis. This idea is difficult to translate, although some refer to it as "spirit" and others as "intelligence". Plotinus explains the "nous" starting from the similarity between the Sun and the Light. The One would be the equivalent of the Sun, while the nous would be the equivalent of the Light.

The function of the nous as light is that the One can see itself, but since the nous is the image of the One, it is the door through which we can contemplate the One. Plotinus states that the "nous" can be observed simply by having our minds concentrate by looking in the opposite direction to that of our senses. To understand it better, the nous is that intelligence that would allow us to approach Plotinus' particular idea of God, in this case the One.

The soul

The third reality exposed in Plotinus's proposal is the soul, which is of nature the soul, which is of a double nature. At one extreme, it is linked to the nous, i.e. pure intelligence, which pulls it. At the other extreme, on the other hand, the soul is associated with the world of the senses, of which it is the creator and also the shaper.

Movement of the cosmos

As we commented, according to Plotinus' vision of reality or hypostasis, we have three levels: the One, the Nous and the soul. These are hierarchical, making the cosmos an ordered structure. In fact, Plotinus considers that the cosmos is a living, eternal, organic, perfect and beautiful reality and that, insofar as it has life, it must of necessity have movement.

The movement that can be found in the cosmos is made through two phases. One would be that of development, which proceeds from unity and makes the multiplicity of things appear through the emanation of the One. The other phase is the withdrawal, which is the moment in which the multiple created things, of lower levels since they are matter, try to return to unity, to the One.

Form of knowledge and virtue

According to Plotinus, knowledge can only be authentic if it is linked to the mystical contemplation of the One.. The problem here is that human beings, insofar as we are not the One, cannot comprehend it. The One is such a perfect and complete idea that our soul and material bodies cannot harbor a reliable representation of it, since any representation of it is only an imperfect imitation.

It is here that we enter into a contradiction: how can we have pure knowledge, represented in the idea of the One, if we cannot even comprehend that concept? For Plotinus the only way to overcome this apparent contradiction is not to lose the knowledge that, really, the One is unknowable. Understanding that it is not possible to know this idea but to approach it is the true acquisition of knowledge.

Idea of happiness

The idea of happiness is one of the most interesting aspects of Plotinus' philosophy and it is considered to be the vision that has inspired our western concept of happiness. He was among the first to introduce the idea that "eudaimonia" (happiness) can only be achieved within consciousness.

According to him, an individual has a happy life when reason and contemplation rule in his life.He was the first to believe that happiness was rather the absence of sadness or a state of mind somewhere between normal joy and sadness.

Later influence of his thought

Plotinus may not have become one of the figures of Greek philosophy as renowned as Socrates, Aristotle or Plato, but his Enneads greatly influenced the thought of all cultures settled around the Mediterranean. his Enneads greatly influenced the thought of all the cultures settled around the Mediterranean, reaching up to the present day.and has reached up to the present day. Already in his time he influenced figures such as the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, who was deeply marked by Neoplatonism, and Plotinus also inspired Hypatia of Alexandria.

It also influenced later Christian thoughtPlotinus also influenced later Christian thought, and Neoplatonic tints coming from Plotinus can be noted in the philosophy of Dionysius Areopagina and Augustine of Hippo. In the Muslim world it did not go unnoticed, being especially studied in Egypt under the Fatimid regime in the eleventh century, being many Da'i who adopted Neoplatonism. As for Judaism we find Avicebron and the famous Maimonides who could not avoid consulting the doctrine of Plotinus, very intrigued by his way of seeing God with the idea of the One.

Bibliographical references:

• García-Bazán, F. (2011). Plotinus and the mysticism of the three hypostases. Sophia Collection. 536 pp. Editorial El hilo de Ariadna: Malba & Fundación Costantini. ISBN 978-987-23546-2-6.
• Ponsatí-Murlá, O. (2015). Plotinus. The One is the beginning of all things, that from which everything starts and to which everything returns. RBA. ISBN 978-84-473-8731-1.