Node · PLO-CE204
Plotinus
204 CE – 270 CE · Egypt / Rome · Neoplatonist
«All things flow from the One, and yearn back to it.»
Plotinus is Plato gone mystical. Six centuries after the Academy, he gathered Plato's scattered hints into a single cosmic vision: from a transcendent One — beyond being, beyond description — emanates Intellect (the realm of Forms), and from Intellect emanates Soul, and from Soul flow individual souls and the material world. The whole universe is a descending cascade of light from a single inexpressible source, and the soul's task is to climb back up.
His prose is dense and ecstatic. His student Porphyry organized his treatises into six groups of nine — hence Enneads ("nines"). Through Augustine, Plotinus reshaped Christian theology; through pseudo-Dionysius, he reshaped mysticism East and West; through the Renaissance Platonists, he shaped Western art's vocabulary of the divine.
Neoplatonism is the bridge from pagan philosophy to Christianity, and from Christianity to mysticism in any form.
Lectures featuring Plotinus
LECTURE 05 · THE LAST PEAK OF PAGANISM · 20 min read
Plotinus and the Ascent. How the Pagan Mind Climbed, Alone, Without Help
LECTURE 06 · THE INNER REVOLUTION · 28 min read
Augustine and the Restless Heart. How One North African Invented the Inner Self
LECTURE 07 · THE RADICAL NEWS · 30 min read
The Cross and the End of Sacred Violence. Why Christianity Was the Greatest Rupture in the History of Human Thought
// If you read one thing
Enneads I.6, 'On Beauty'
The most lyrical thing in late antiquity. Twelve pages.