Philosopher · Antiquity
Plotinus
c. 204–270 · Neoplatonism
Pagan philosopher; the founder of Neoplatonism, read with profit and correction by Augustine and the Greek Fathers.
Egyptian-born philosopher who taught in Rome. He described reality as flowing from the One beyond being through Intellect and Soul to the sensible world, evil as the privation of good, and the philosophic life as a purifying return of the soul to its source, culminating in a wordless union with the One.
Why he matters: Augustine read “the books of the Platonists” on the road to his conversion, and Plotinus's accounts of divine simplicity, evil as privation and the soul's ascent passed, purified of emanationism, into Christian mystical theology East and West.
Where to be careful
His cosmos emanates necessarily from the One rather than being freely created, and his contempt for the body (he was “ashamed to be in a body”) and account of salvation by philosophy alone are not Christian.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.