Plotinus: biography of this Hellenistic philosopher

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 the 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 how to combine the best of both classical philosophers.

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

• Released article: "Plato's Theory of Ideas"

Brief biography of Plotinus

It is not known with certainty where Plotinus was born. The Greek sophist Eunapius of Sardes maintains that he was born in Lycon, while the lexicographer Suidas says that he was in Lycopolis.

(current Asyut). What is known is that he was a native of the province of Egypt under Roman rule, being born in 203 or 204 AD. C. Rather little is known about his childhood, as he often does 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 character was also a mentor to Origen, Longinus and Erenius.

In 242 Plotinus embarked on a war expedition commanded by 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 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 a lifestyle as ascetic as possible and, for this reason, he had neither great wealth nor many luxuries. Despite this, he was a very generous and selfless personality, as well as charitable. It is said that he used to take orphan children into his house and act as their guardian. He was a vegetarian, he did not get married and he never allowed himself to be portrayed, for fear that this representation was simply "a shadow of another shadow"

But despite not wanting to be represented or write an autobiography or anything like that his disciple Porfirio could not avoid capturing his experiences in "Life of Plotinus". It would be this student who would be in charge of systematizing and publishing Plotinus's main work, his “Enneads”. During the six years that he was with Plotinus, Porfirio assured that he saw that his teacher had contacts with an omnitrascendent God a total of four times.

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

Philosophical doctrine

Plotino's 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 commented, the task of compiling the treatises and organizing them into books was done by his disciple Porfirio, 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 developed a theological framework in which saw the universe as the result of a series of emanations or consequences of an ultimate reality, which is eternal and immaterial. I would call this reality "the One". From this same principle arises another divine principle, below the One: the Nous.

In turn, the Soul emanates from the Nous, another divine entity that is below the previous two. 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.

Next we will see in more depth these realities of Plotinus's doctrine, realities that his disciple Porphyry would call hypostasis. This term does not appear in such a way that in the texts of the Enneads, written in Plotinus's handwriting, rather, they are a term introduced by Porfirio to better organize the entire theoretical corpus of his master of him.

The one

The idea of ​​"the One" in Plotinus's theory is somewhat difficult to describe. It has been understood as a concept that refers to unity, the greatest and even an idea close to that of God as a unique and infinite entity. United with his personality and his properly mystical figure, Plotinus, far from specifying what exactly One refers to, 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, to begin with, it cannot be known first-hand.

Plotinus's 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 kind of personal God, an entity far removed from that of God as an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent entity.

To get started, Plotinus considers that "the One" cannot be defined, no attribute can be predicated on 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 does not do so by its own will, but by emanation. The One, insofar as it is like God, is the cause of all 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 the antithesis of it, matter reflects "the One", since the latter continues to be the source of it, 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 surrendering to the plurality of objects and actions., and must seek the truth in himself and deny all object and mediation.

The Nous

Nous is the second level of reality or hypostasis. This idea is difficult to translate, although there are those who 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 to the Sun, while the Nous would be for 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 affirms that the "nous" can be observed simply by making 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 get closer to Plotinus' particular idea of ​​God, in this case the One.

The soul

The third reality exposed in Plotino's proposal is the soul, which is double in nature. At one extreme, it is linked to the nous, that is, pure intelligence, which pulls on 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.

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Movement of the cosmos

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

The movement that can be found in the cosmos is done through two phases. One would be that of development, which comes 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 mystical contemplation of the One. The problem here is that human beings, insofar as we are not the One, cannot understand it. The One is such a perfect and complete idea that our soul and material bodies cannot harbor one. reliable representation of the same since any representation of him is still an imitation imperfect.

This is where we enter into a contradiction: How can we have pure knowledge, represented in the idea of ​​the One, if we cannot even understand 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 that idea but to get closer to it is the true acquisition of knowledge.

Idea of ​​happiness

The idea of ​​happiness is one of the most interesting aspects of Plotinus's philosophy and it is considered that this is 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 his life, unlike what the rest of the philosophers of his time thought, who believed that happiness was rather an absence of sadness or a state of mind between normal happiness and sadness.

Later influence of your thinking

Plotinus may not have become one of the figures of Greek philosophy as renowned as Socrates, Aristotle or Plato were, however his Enneads greatly influenced the thinking of all the cultures settled around the Mediterranean, reaching today. Already in his time he influenced figures such as the Roman Emperor Julian, the Apostate, who was deeply marked by Neoplatonism, and also Plotinus inspired Hypatia of Alexandria.

He also influenced later Christian thought, being able to notice neoplatonic dyes coming from Plotino in the philosophy Dionisio Areopagina and Agustín de Hipona. In the Muslim world it did not go unnoticed either, being especially studied in Egypt under the Fatimid regime in the eleventh century, with many Da'i who adopted Neoplatonism. Regarding Judaism we find Avicebrón 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.

Bibliographic references:

• García-Bazán, F. (2011). Plotinus and the mystique of the three hypostases. Sophia Collection. 536 pp. Editorial The thread of 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.