## 1. Life and Writings



 Owing to the unusually fulsome biography by Plotinus' disciple
Porphyry, we know more about Plotinus' life than we do about most
ancient philosophers'. The main facts are these.



 Plotinus was born in Lycopolis, Egypt in 204 or 205 C.E. When he was
28, a growing interest in philosophy led him to the feet of one
Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria. After ten or eleven years with this
obscure though evidently dominating figure, Plotinus was moved to
study Persian and Indian philosophy. In order to do so, he attached
himself to the military expedition of Emperor Gordian III to Persia in
243. The expedition was aborted when Gordian was assassinated by his
troops. Plotinus thereupon seems to have abandoned his plans, making
his way to Rome in 245. There he remained until his death in 270 or
271.



 Porphyry informs us that during the first ten years of his time in
Rome, Plotinus lectured exclusively on the philosophy of Ammonius.
During this time he also wrote nothing. Porphyry tells us that when
he himself arrived in Rome in 263, the first 21 of Plotinus' treatises
had already been written. The remainder of the 54 treatises
constituting his *Enneads* were written in the last seven or
eight years of his life.



 Porphyry's biography reveals a man at once otherworldly and deeply
practical. The former is hardly surprising in a philosopher but the
latter deserves to be noted and is impressively indicated by the fact
that a number of Plotinus' acquaintances appointed him as guardian to
their children when they died.



 Plotinus' writings were edited by Porphyry (there was perhaps another
edition by Plotinus' physician, Eustochius, though all traces of it
are lost). It is to Porphyry that we owe the somewhat artificial
division of the writings into six groups of nine (hence the name
*Enneads* from the Greek word for 'nine'). In fact,
there are somewhat fewer than 54 (Porphyry artificially divided some
of them into separately numbered 'treatises'), and the
actual number of these is of no significance. The arrangement of the
treatises is also owing to Porphyry and does evince an ordering
principle. *Ennead* I contains, roughly, ethical discussions;
*Enneads* II-III contain discussions of natural philosophy and
cosmology (though III 4, 5, 7, 8 do not fit into this rubric so
easily); *Ennead* IV is devoted to matters of psychology;
*Ennead* V, to epistemological matters, especially the intellect;
and *Ennead* VI, to numbers, being in general, and the One above
intellect, the first principle of all. It is to be emphasized that
the ordering is Porphyry's. The actual chronological ordering, which
Porphyry also provides for us, does not correspond at all to the
ordering in the edition. For example, *Ennead* I 1 is the
53rd treatise chronologically, one of the last things
Plotinus wrote.



 These works vary in size from a couple of pages to over a hundred.
They seem to be occasional writings in the sense that they constitute
written responses by Plotinus to questions and problems raised in his
regular seminars. Sometimes these questions and problems guide the
entire discussion, so that it is sometimes difficult to tell when
Plotinus is writing in his own voice or expressing the views of
someone else. Typically, Plotinus would at his seminars have read out
passages from Platonic or Aristotelian commentators, it being assumed
that the members of the seminar were already familiar with the primary
texts. Then a discussion of the text along with the problems it
raised occurred.



 One must not suppose that the study of Aristotle at these seminars
belonged to a separate 'course' on the great successor of
Plato. After Plotinus, in fact Aristotle was studied on his own as
preparation for studying Plato. But with Plotinus, Aristotle, it
seems, was assumed to be himself one of the most effective expositors
of Plato. Studying both Aristotle's own philosophy as explained by
commentators such as Alexander of Aphrodisias (2nd -
early 3rd c. C.E.) and his explicit objections to Plato was
a powerful aid in understanding the master's philosophy. In part,
this was owing to the fact that Aristotle was assumed to know Plato's
philosophy at first hand and to have recorded it, including Plato's
'unwritten teachings'. In addition, later Greek
historians of philosophy tell us that Plotinus' teacher, Ammonius
Saccas, was among those Platonists who assumed that in some sense
Aristotle's philosophy was in harmony with Platonism. This harmony
did not preclude disagreements between Aristotle and Plato. Nor did
it serve to prevent misunderstandings of Platonism on Aristotle's
part. Nevertheless, Plotinus' wholesale adoption of many Aristotelian
arguments and distinctions will seem less puzzling when we realize
that he took these both as compatible with Platonism and as useful for
articulating the Platonic position, especially in areas in which Plato
was himself not explicit.


## 2. The Three Fundamental Principles of Plotinus' Metaphysics



 The three basic principles of Plotinus' metaphysics are called by him
'the One' (or, equivalently, 'the Good'),
Intellect, and Soul (see V 1; V 9.). These principles are both
ultimate ontological realities and explanatory principles. Plotinus
believed that they were recognized by Plato as such, as well as by the
entire subsequent Platonic tradition.



 The One is the absolutely simple first principle of all. It is both
'self-caused' and the cause of being for everything else
in the universe. There are, according to Plotinus, various ways of
showing the necessity of positing such a principle. These are all
rooted in the Pre-Socratic philosophical/scientific tradition. A
central axiom of that tradition was the connecting of explanation with
reductionism or the derivation of the complex from the simple. That
is, ultimate explanations of phenomena and of contingent entities can
only rest in what itself requires no explanation. If what is actually
sought is the explanation for something that is in one way or another
complex, what grounds the explanation will be simple relative to the
observed complexity. Thus, what grounds an explanation must be
different from the sorts of things explained by it. According to this
line of reasoning, *explanantia* that are themselves complex,
perhaps in some way different from the sort of complexity of the
*explananda*, will be in need of other types of explanation. In
addition, a plethora of explanatory principles will themselves be in
need of explanation. Taken to its logical conclusion, the explanatory
path must finally lead to that which is unique and absolutely
uncomplex.



 The One is such a principle. Plotinus found it in Plato's
*Republic* where it is named 'the Idea of the Good'
and in his *Parmenides* where it is the subject of a series of
deductions (137c ff.). The One or the Good, owing to its simplicity,
is indescribable directly. We can only grasp it indirectly by
deducing what it is not (see V 3. 14; VI 8; VI 9. 3). Even the names
'One' and 'Good' are *fautes de mieux*.
Therefore, it is wrong to see the One as a principle of oneness or
goodness, in the sense in which these are intelligible attributes.
The name 'One' is least inappropriate because it best
suggests absolute simplicity.



 If the One is absolutely simple, how can it be the cause of the being
of anything much less the cause of everything? The One is such a
cause in the sense that it is virtually everything else (see III 8. 1;
V 1. 7, 9; V 3. 15, 33; VI 9. 5, 36). This means that it stands to
everything else as, for example, white light stands to the colors of
the rainbow, or the way in which a properly functioning calculator may
be said to contain all the answers to the questions that can be
legitimately put to it. Similarly, an omniscient simple deity may be
said to know virtually all that is knowable. In general, if A is
virtually B, then A is both simpler in its existence than B and able
to produce B. 



 The causality of the One was frequently explained in antiquity as an
answer to the question, 'How do we derive a many from the
One?' Although the answer provided by Plotinus and by other
Neoplatonists is sometimes expressed in the language of
'emanation', it is very easy to mistake this for what it
is not. It is not intended to indicate either a temporal process or
the unpacking or separating of a potentially complex unity. Rather,
the derivation was understood in terms of atemporal ontological
dependence.



 The first derivation from the One is Intellect. Intellect is the
locus of the full array of Platonic Forms, those eternal and immutable
entities that account for or explain the possibility of intelligible
predication. Plotinus assumes that without such Forms, there would be
no non-arbitrary justification for saying that anything had one
property rather than another. Whatever properties things have, they
have owing to there being Forms whose instances these properties are.
But that still leaves us with the very good question of why an eternal
and immutable Intellect is necessarily postulated along with these
Forms.



 The historical answer to this question is in part that Plotinus
assumed that he was following Plato who, in *Timaeus* (30c;
cf. *Philebus* 22c), claimed that the Form of Intelligible Animal
was eternally contemplated by an intellect called 'the
Demiurge'. This contemplation Plotinus interpreted as cognitive
identity, since if the Demiurge were contemplating something outside
of itself, what would be inside of itself would be only an image or
representation of eternal reality (see V 5) - and so, it would not
actually know what it contemplates, as that is in itself.
'Cognitive identity' then means that when Intellect is
thinking, it is thinking itself. Further, Plotinus believed that
Aristotle, in book 12 of his *Metaphysics* and in book 3 of his
*De Anima* supported both the eternality of Intellect (in
Aristotle represented as the Unmoved Mover) and the idea that
cognitive identity characterized its operation.



 Philosophically, Plotinus argued that postulating Forms without a
superordinate principle, the One, which is virtually what all the
Forms are, would leave the Forms in eternal disunity. If this were
the case, then there could be no necessary truth, for all necessary
truths, e.g., 3 + 5 = 8, express a virtual identity, as indicated here
by the '=' sign. Consider the analogy of
three-dimensionality and solidity. Why are these necessarily
connected in a body such that there could not be a body that had one
without the other? The answer is that body is virtually
three-dimensionality and virtually solidity. Both
three-dimensionality and solidity express in different ways what a
body is.



 The role of Intellect is to account for the real distinctness of the
plethora of Forms, virtually united in the One. Thus, in the above
mathematical example, the fact that numbers are virtually united does
not gainsay the fact that each has an identity. The way that identity
is maintained is by each and every Form being thought by an eternal
Intellect. And in this thinking, Intellect 'attains' the
One in the only way it possibly can. It attains all that can be
thought; hence, all that can be thought 'about' the
One.



 Intellect is the principle of essence or whatness or intelligibility
as the One is the principle of being. Intellect is an eternal
instrument of the One's causality (see V 4. 1, 1-4; VI 7. 42, 21-23).
The dependence of anything 'below' Intellect is owing to
the One's ultimate causality along with Intellect, which explains, via
the Forms, why that being is the kind of thing it is. Intellect needs
the One as cause of its being in order for Intellect to be a
paradigmatic cause and the One needs Intellect in order for there to
be anything with an intelligible structure. Intellect could not
suffice as a first principle of all because the complexity of thinking
(thinker and object of thought and multiplicity of objects of thought)
requires as an explanation something that is absolutely simple. In
addition, the One may even be said to need Intellect to produce
Intellect. This is so because Plotinus distinguishes two logical
'phases' of Intellect's production from the One (see V
1. 7). The first phase indicates the fundamental activity of
intellection or thinking; the second, the actualization of thinking
which constitutes the being of the Forms. This thinking is the way
Intellect 'returns' to the One.



 The third fundamental principle is Soul. Soul is *not* the
principle of life, for the activity of Intellect is the highest
activity of life. Plotinus associates life with desire. But in the
highest life, the life of Intellect, where we find the highest form of
desire, that desire is eternally satisfied by contemplation of the One
through the entire array of Forms that are *internal* to it.
Soul is the principle of desire for objects that are *external*
to the agent of desire. Everything with a soul, from human beings to
the most insignificant plant, acts to satisfy desire. This desire
requires it to seek things that are external to it, such as food.
Even a desire for sleep, for example, is a desire for a state other
than the state which the living thing currently is in. Cognitive
desires, for example, the desire to know, are desires for that which
is currently not present to the agent. A desire to procreate is, as
Plato pointed out, a desire for immortality. Soul explains, as
unchangeable Intellect could not, the deficiency that is implicit in
the fact of desiring.



 Soul is related to Intellect analogously to the way Intellect is
related to the One. As the One is virtually what Intellect is, so
Intellect is paradigmatically what Soul is. The activity of
Intellect, or its cognitive identity with all Forms, is the paradigm
for all embodied cognitive states of any soul as well as any of its
affective states. In the first case, a mode of cognition, such as
belief, images Intellect's eternal state by being a
representational state. It represents the cognitive identity of
Intellect with Forms because the embodied believer is cognitively
identical with a concept which itself represents or images Forms. In
the second case, an affective state such as feeling tired represents
or images Intellect (in a derived way) owing to the cognitive
component of that state which consists in the recognition of its own
presence. Here, *x*'s being-in-the-state is the
intentional object of *x*'s cognition. Where the affective
state is that of a non-cognitive agent, the imitation is even more
remote, though present nevertheless. It is, says Plotinus, like the
state of being asleep in comparison with the state of being awake (see
III 8. 4). In other words, it is a state that produces desire that is
in potency a state that recognizes the presence of the desire, a state
which represents the state of Intellect. In reply to the possible
objection that a potency is not an image of actuality, Plotinus will
want to insist that potencies are functionally related to actualities,
not the other way around, and that therefore the affective states of
non-cognitive agents can only be understood as derived versions of the
affective and cognitive states of souls closer to the ideal of both,
namely, the state of Intellect.



 There is another way in which Soul is related to Intellect as
Intellect is related to the One. Plotinus distinguishes between
something's internal and external activity (see V 4. 2, 27-33). The
(indescribable) internal activity of the One is its own
hyper-intellectual existence. Its external activity is just
Intellect. Similarly, Intellect's internal activity is its
contemplation of the Forms, and its external activity is found in
every possible representation of the activity of being eternally
identical with all that is intelligible (i.e., the Forms). It is also
found in the activity of soul, which as a principle of
'external' desire images the paradigmatic desire of
Intellect. Anything that is understandable is an external activity of
Intellect; and any form of cognition of that is also an external
activity of it. The internal activity of Soul includes the plethora
of psychical activities of all embodied living things. The external
activity of Soul is nature, which is just the intelligible structure
of all that is other than soul in the sensible world, including both
the bodies of things with soul and things without soul (see III 8. 2).
The end of this process of diminishing activities is matter which is
entirely bereft of form and so of intelligibility, but whose existence
is ultimately owing to the One, via the instrumentality of Intellect
and Soul. 



 According to Plotinus, matter is to be identified with evil and
privation of all form or intelligibility (see II 4). Plotinus holds
this in conscious opposition to Aristotle, who distinguished matter
from privation (see II 4. 16, 3-8). Matter is what accounts for the
diminished reality of the sensible world, for all natural things are
composed of forms in matter. The fact that matter is in principle
deprived of all intelligibility and is still ultimately dependent on
the One is an important clue as to how the causality of the latter
operates. 



 If matter or evil is ultimately caused by the One, then is not the
One, as the Good, the cause of evil? In one sense, the answer is
definitely yes. As Plotinus reasons, if anything besides the One is
going to exist, then there must be a conclusion of the process of
production from the One. The beginning of evil is the act of
separation from the One by Intellect, an act which the One itself
ultimately causes. The end of the process of production from the One
defines a limit, like the end of a river going out from its sources.
Beyond the limit is matter or evil.



 We may still ask why the limitless is held to be evil. According to
Plotinus, matter is the condition for the possibility of there being
images of Forms in the sensible world. From this perspective, matter
is identified with the receptacle or space in Plato's *Timaeus*and the phenomenal properties in the receptacle prior to the
imposition of order by the Demiurge. The very possibility of a
sensible world, which is impressively confirmed by the fact that there
is one, guarantees that the production from the One, which must
include all that is possible (else the One would be self-limiting),
also include the sensible world (see I 8. 7). But the sensible world
consists of images of the intelligible world and these images could
not exist without matter.



 Matter is only evil in other than a purely metaphysical sense when it
becomes an impediment to return to the One. It is evil when
considered as a goal or end that is a polar opposite to the Good. To
deny the necessity of evil is to deny the necessity of the Good (I 8.
15). Matter is only evil for entities that can consider it as a goal
of desire. These are, finally, only entities that can be
self-conscious of their goals. Specifically, human beings, by opting
for attachments to the bodily, orient themselves in the direction of
evil. This is not because body itself is evil. The evil in bodies is
the element in them that is not dominated by form. One may be
desirous of that form, but in that case what one truly desires is that
form's ultimate intelligible source in Intellect. More typically,
attachment to the body represents a desire not for form but a corrupt
desire for the non-intelligible or limitless. 


## 3. Human Psychology and Ethics



 The drama of human life is viewed by Plotinus against the axis of
Good and evil outlined above. The human person is essentially a soul
employing a body as an instrument of its temporary embodied life (see
I 1). Thus, Plotinus distinguishes between the person and the
composite of soul and body. That person is identical with a cognitive
agent or subject of cognitive states (see I 1. 7). An embodied person
is, therefore, a conflicted entity, capable both of thought and of
being the subject of the composite's non-cognitive states, such as
appetites and emotions.



 This conflicted state or duality of personhood is explained by the
nature of cognition, including rational desire. Rational agents are
capable of being in embodied states, including states of desire, and
of being cognitively aware that they are in these states. So, a
person can be hungry or tired and be cognitively aware that he is in
this state, where cognitive awareness includes being able to
conceptualize that state. But Plotinus holds that the state of
cognitive awareness more closely identifies the person than does the
non-cognitive state. He does so on the grounds that all embodied or
enmattered intelligible reality is an image of its eternal paradigm in
Intellect. In fact, the highest part of the person, one's own
intellect, the faculty in virtue of which persons can engage in
non-discursive thinking, is eternally 'undescended'. It
is eternally doing what Intellect is doing. And the reason for
holding this is, based on Plotinus' interpretation of Plato's
Recollection Argument in *Phaedo* (72e-78b), that our ability to
engage successfully in embodied cognition depends on our having access
to Forms. But the only access to Forms is eternal access by cognitive
identification with them. Otherwise, we would have only images or
representations of the Forms. So, we must now be cognitively
identical with them if we are going also to use these Forms as a way
of classifying and judging things in the sensible world.



 A person in a body can choose to take on the role of a non-cognitive
agent by acting solely on appetite or emotion. In doing so, that
person manifests a corrupted desire, a desire for what is evil, the
material aspect of the bodily. Alternatively, a person can distance
himself from these desires and identify himself with his rational
self. The very fact that this is possible supplies Plotinus with
another argument for the supersensible identity of the person.



 Owing to the conflicted states of embodied persons, they are subject
to self-contempt and yet, paradoxically, 'want to belong to
themselves'. Persons have contempt for themselves because one
has contempt for what is inferior to oneself. Insofar as persons
desire things other than what Intellect desires, they desire things
that are external to themselves. But the subject of such desires is
inferior to what is desired, even if this be a state of fulfilled
desire. In other words, if someone wants to be in state B when he is
in state A, he must regard being in state A as worse than being in
state B. But all states of embodied desire are like this. Hence, the
self-contempt.



 Persons want to belong to themselves insofar as they identify
themselves as subjects of their idiosyncratic desires. They do this
because they have forgotten or are unaware of their true identity as
disembodied intellects. If persons recognize their true identity,
they would not be oriented to the objects of their embodied desire but
to the objects of intellect. They would be able to look upon the
subject of those embodied desires as alien to their true selves.



 Plotinus views ethics according to the criterion of what
contributes to our identification with our higher selves and what
contributes to our separation from that identification. All virtuous
practices make a positive contribution to this goal. But virtues can
be graded according to how they do this (see I 2). The lowest form of
virtues, what Plotinus, following Plato, calls 'civic' or
'popular', are the practices that serve to control the
appetites (see I 2. 2). By contrast, higher
'purificatory' virtues are those that separate the person
from the embodied human being (I 2. 3). One who practices
purificatory virtue is no longer subject to the incontinent desires
whose restraint constitutes mere civic or popular virtue. Such a
person achieves a kind of 'likeness to God' recommended by
Plato at *Theaetetus* 176a-b. Both of these types of virtue are
inferior to intellectual virtue which consists in the activity of the
philosopher (see I 2. 6). One who is purified in embodied practices
can turn unimpeded to one's true self-identity as a thinker.




Plotinus, however, while acknowledging the necessity of virtuous
living for happiness, refuses to identify them. Like Aristotle,
Plotinus maintains that a property of the happy life is its
self-sufficiency (see I.1.4-5). But Plotinus does not agree that a
life focused on the practice of virtue is self-sufficient. Even
Aristotle concedes that such a life is not self-sufficient in the
sense that it is immune to misfortune. Plotinus, insisting that the
best life is one that is in fact blessed owing precisely to its
immunity to misfortune, alters the meaning of
'self-sufficient' in order to identify it with the
interior life of the excellent person. This interiority or
self-sufficiency is the obverse of attachment to the objects of
embodied desires. Interiority is happiness because the longing for
the Good, for one who is ideally an intellect, is satisfied by
cognitive identification with all that is intelligible. If this is
not unqualifiedly possible for the embodied human being, it does at
least seem possible that one should have a second order desire,
deriving from this longing for the Good, that amounts to a profound
indifference to the satisfaction of first order desires.
Understanding that the good for an intellect is contemplation of all
that the One is means that the will is oriented to one thing only,
whatever transient desires may turn up.


## 4. Beauty



Plotinus' chronologically first treatise, 'On Beauty' (I
6), can be seen as parallel to his treatise on virtue (I 2). In it,
he tries to fit the experience of beauty into the drama of ascent to
the first principle of all. In this respect, Plotinus' aesthetics is
inseparable from his metaphysics, psychology, and ethics.



As in the case of virtue, Plotinus recognizes a hierarchy of beauty.
But what all types of beauty have in common is that they consist in
form or images of the Forms eternally present in Intellect (I 6. 2).
The lowest type of beauty is physical beauty where the splendor of the
paradigm is of necessity most occluded. If the beauty of a body is
inseparable from that body, then it is only a remote image of the
non-bodily Forms. Still, our ability to experience such beauty serves
as another indication of our own intellects' undescended character. We
respond to physical beauty because we dimly recognize its paradigm.
To call this paradigm 'the Form of Beauty' would be
somewhat misleading unless it were understood to include all the Forms
cognized by Intellect. Following Plato in *Symposium*, Plotinus
traces a hierarchy of beautiful objects above the physical,
culminating in the Forms themselves. And their source, the Good, is
also the source of their beauty (I 6. 7). The beauty of the Good
consists in the virtual unity of all the Forms. As it is the ultimate
cause of the complexity of intelligible reality, it is the cause of
the delight we experience in form (see V 5. 12).


## 5. Principal Opponents



Plotinus regarded himself as a loyal Platonist, an accurate exegete of
the Platonic revelation. By the middle of the 3rd century CE, the
philosophical world was populated with a diverse array of
anti-Platonists. In the *Enneads*, we find Plotinus engaged
with many of these opponents of Platonism. In his creative response to
these we find many of his original ideas.



Although Plotinus was glad to mine Aristotle's works for distinctions
and arguments that he viewed as helpful for explicating the Platonic
position, there were a number of issues on which Plotinus thought that
Aristotle was simply and importantly mistaken. Perhaps the major issue
concerned the nature of a first principle of all. Plotinus recognized
that Aristotle agreed with Plato that (1) there must be a first
principle of all; (2) that it must be unique; and (3) that it must be
absolutely simple. But Aristotle erred in identifying that first
principle with the Unmoved Mover, fully actual self-reflexive
intellection. Plotinus did not disagree that there must be an eternal
principle like the Unmoved Mover; this is what the hypostasis
Intellect is. But he denied that the first principle of all could be
an intellect or intellection of any sort, since intellection requires
a real distinction between the thinking and the object of thinking,
even if that object is the thinker itself. A real distinction indicates some sort of complexity or compositeness in the thing (a real minor distinction) or among things (a real major distinction); by contrast, in a conceptual distinction, one thing is considered from different perspectives or aspects. In the absolutely simple first principle of all, there can be no distinct elements or parts at all. In fact, the first
principle of all, the Good or the One, must be beyond thinking if it
is to be absolutely simple. The misguided consequence of holding this
view, according to Plotinus, is that Aristotle then misconceives being
such that he identifies it with substance or ousia. But for the first
principle of all actually to be such a principle, it must be unlimited
in the way that ousia is not. As a result, Aristotle makes many
mistakes, especially in metaphysics or ontology.



The second group of major opponents of Platonism were the Stoics. The
*Enneads* are filled with anti-Stoic polemics. These polemics
focus principally on Stoic materialism, which Plotinus finds to be
incapable of articulating an ontology which includes everything in the
universe. More important, Stoic materialism is unable to provide
explanatory adequacy even in the realm in which the Stoics felt most
confident, namely, the physical universe. For example, the Stoics,
owing to their materialism, could not explain consciousness or
intentionality, neither of which are plausibly accounted for in
materialistic terms. According to Plotinus, the Stoics were also
unable to give a justification for their ethical position - not
in itself too far distant from Plato's - since their
exhortations to the rational life could not coherently explain how one
body (the empirical self) was supposed to identify with another body
(the ideal rational agent).


 With regard to Plotinus' contemporaries, he was sufficiently
exercised by the self-proclaimed Gnostics to write a separate
treatise, II 9, attacking their views. These Gnostics, mostly heretic
Christians, whose voluminous and obscure writings, were only partially
unearthed at Nag Hammadi in 1945 and translated in the last two
decades, were sufficiently close to Platonism, but, in Plotinus'
view, so profoundly perverse in their interpretation of it, that they
merited special attention. The central mistake of Gnosticism,
according to Plotinus, is in thinking that Soul is
'fallen' and is the source of cosmic evil. As we have
seen, Plotinus, although he believes that matter is evil, vociferously
denies that the physical world is evil. It is only the matter that
underlies the images of the eternal world that is isolated from all
intelligible reality. The Gnostics ignore the structure of Platonic
metaphysics and, as a result, wrongly despise this world. For
Plotinus, a hallmark of ignorance of metaphysics is arrogance, the
arrogance of believing that the elite or chosen possess special
knowledge of the world and of human destiny. The idea of a secret
elect, alone destined for salvation - which was what the
Gnostics declared themselves to be - was deeply at odds with
Plotinus' rational universalism.


## 6. Influence



 Porphyry's edition of Plotinus' *Enneads* preserved for
posterity the works of the leading Platonic interpreter of antiquity.
Through these works as well as through the writings of Porphyry
himself (234 - c. 305 C.E.) and Iamblichus (c. 245-325
C.E.), Plotinus shaped the entire subsequent history of philosophy.
Until well into the 19th century, Platonism was in large
part understood, appropriated or rejected based on its Plotinian
expression and in adumbrations of this.



 The theological traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism all,
in their formative periods, looked to ancient Greek philosophy for the
language and arguments with which to articulate their religious
visions. For all of these, Platonism expressed the philosophy that
seemed closest to their own theologies. Plotinus was the principal
source for their understanding of Platonism.



 Through the Latin translation of Plotinus by Marsilio Ficino
published in 1492, Plotinus became available to the West. The first
English translation, by Thomas Taylor, appeared in the late
18th century. Plotinus was, once again, recognized as the
most authoritative interpreter of Platonism. In the writings of the
Italian Renaissance philosophers, the 15th and
16th century humanists John Colet, Erasmus of Rotterdam,
and Thomas More, the 17th century Cambridge Platonists, and
German idealists, especially Hegel, Plotinus' thought was the
(sometimes unacknowledged) basis for opposition to the competing and
increasingly influential tradition of scientific philosophy. This
influence continued in the 20th century flowering of
Christian imaginative literature in England, including the works of
C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams.