Now I shall endeavor to make that which is divine in me rise up to that which is divine in the universe.
~Plotinus (last words)
I become a Christian on this date 38 years ago August 8 1976.
~Ellis Washington
Biography
Plotinus (c. 205 270) was a foremost philosopher of the ancient world. In his twenties he had an epiphany experience when a friend took him to a lecture of Ammonius Saccas whom he studied philosophy under for nearly 20 years continuing the Platonic tradition. Plotinuss philosophy is based on three general doctrines: the One the Intellect and the Soul. Plotinus says The One cannot be any existing thing and cannot be merely the quantity of all such things. From his philosophy historians beginning in the 19th century derived the term Neoplatonism" which constituted a continuous tradition of philosophers that began with Plotinus until the closing of Platos Academy by Justinian I in 529 AD. Most of the biographical evidence regarding Plotinus originates from Porphyrys preface to his edition of Plotinus Enneads. His metaphysical writings have inspired centuries of Pagan Christian Jewish Islamic and Gnostic metaphysicians and mystics.
Plotinus according to his biographer and disciple Porphyry seemed to be ashamed of being in a body and hence refused to tell anything about his parents his ancestry or his country" which caused him to have had an intrinsic cynicism of materialism (an outlook common to Platonism) holding to the opinion that phenomena were an inferior image or imitation (mimesis) of something higher and intelligible and connected to the truer part of genuine Being. Enneads VI.I This suspicion associated with the body including his own is described by Porphyry that Plotinus in his lifetime rejected having his portrait painted apparently for much the same reasons of aversion. However from every historical record his personal and social life demonstrated the highest moral and spiritual principles.
Plotinus at the age of twenty-seven around the year 232 went to Alexandria to pursue the study of philosophy. However he was dissatisfied with every teacher he encountered until an acquaintance suggested he listen to the ideas of Ammonius Saccas. Skeptical of the ability of any man worthy to teach him once he heard Ammonius lecture he declared to his friend this was the man I was looking for and began to study intently under his new instructor. In addition to Ammonius Plotinus was also inspired by the works of Alexander of Aphrodisias Numenius and various Stoic philosophers. After almost 20 years of study under Ammonius for the next twenty-five years Plotinus was a teacher of philosophy in Rome and was famously known as something akin to a director of conscience." Among his numerous followers besides emperors (Gallienus and his wife Salonina) professional philosophers such as Porphyry there were several physicians senators a poet a former rhetorician who had become a banker and many distinguished women.
The ultimate question: Immortality?
The mortality of man defines by contrast the immortality which some men hope for some men fear some men scoff at but no man ever fails sooner or later to consider" so writes the editors of Great Books of the Western World. Man is a finite being whose heartbeat signals an inevitable march to the grave yet man possesses an eternal soul an immortal spirit. Mans existence on earth comparable to that of other animals progresses through an ordinary duration of years between birth and death. Legend chronicles that heroesHercules Theseus Perseus Achilleswere chosen from antiquity upon whom the gods bestowed immortal life endowing them with attributes of intrinsic divinity.
Jewish and Christian traditions believe that Adam with all his generations to come would never have underwent sin disease or death if he had obeyed Gods commands and forsaken the voice of the enemySatan. However according to the theologians the immortality exists even in the fleshly body of man in a state of grace and is considered a supernatural form. Excluding then for the miraculous or the supernatural death follows birth and life for the Bible says It is appointed on to men once to die and after this the judgment."
Plotinus similar to Christian contemporaries of the second century Rome believed that man dies in the flesh to be reborn in the spirit. Man a combination of soul and body dies as do all living things on this earth; nevertheless the soul itself a natural spiritual element is immortal living into perpetuity once its union with the body is over. The immortal soul is occasionally considered as possessing numerous incarnations dwelling in an unending journey through endless time; and every so often as in the Christian faith every soul has only one incarnation on earth. It is especially fashioned by God to notify the body of a human being. It is intended to be his immortal spirit in a future eternal state that by its nature transcends time space including the natural laws of physics.
Other philosophical views on immortality
German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in his book Critique of Practical Reason (1788) asserts that immortality along with the reality of God and the freedom of the will as essential material elementsnecessary conditions of the moral life. The perfect accordance of the will with the moral law" Kant writes is holiness a perfection of which no rational being of the sensible world is capable at any moment of his existence . . . It can only be found in a progress as the real object of our will." The realization of happiness or the summum bonum Kant concludes is only possible practically on the supposition of the immortality of the soul."
The contrary opinion appears to be followed in Aristotles Ethics and Mills Utilitarianism. In these works the summum bonum is a temporary happiness a condition achievable on earth and by purely secular means. When Aristotle writes about happiness he defines happiness as a reflective activity he also declares it as a godlike state of being and therefore one which has a semblance of immortality. Man is capable to live such a life he writes only insofar as something divine is present in him." To live the life of reason which is godly in contrast with any other manner of human life we must he says so far as we can make ourselves immortal" and strive with all our power to live in accord with the greatest entity in us.
Then to be immortal in this manner appears to mean the possession of a divine value in this life instead of the promise of eternal life in the afterlife Aristotle argues only a complete term of life" as a necessary condition for the complete happiness of man." Aristotle next proceeds to the question whether the dead share in any good or evil." To this point as he deliberates a sanctity which the gods can increase to human happiness it is not the domain of an afterlife but demands to this extent the good fortune which the gods award to some men and which grows and secures their happiness beyond that which is achievable by virtue only.
Plotinus: Gnosticism vs. Christianity
Plotinus declared in his work Against the Gnostics was directed to whom he was speaking it to in order to distinguish and clarify the actions and persons involved in the source of the term Gnostica collection of ancient religions whose adherents shunned the material world created by the Platonic/Neo-Platonic and embraced the spiritual. From the dialogue it appears that the word had an origin in the Platonic and Hellenistic tradition long before the group calling themselves Gnostics. Plotinus however cautions against the approach of devout partisans using Greek terms from philosophical contexts and re-applying them to religious contexts as many writers have done with Christianity most famously Augustine and later Aquinas and in the pagan arena the Cult of Isis and other Hermetic ancient religions.
Plotinus and the Neoplatonists regarded Gnosticism as a system of heresy or sectarianism to the Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy. He condemned Gnostics of using illogical words and being excessively dramatic and disrespectful in their perversion of Platos ontology. Plotinus argued against his Gnosticism as untraditional irrational and immoral and arrogant. He also condemned Gnostics as rude and blasphemous to Plato for their diatribes against the material world and its creator God.
The Neoplatonic movement or those like Plotinus who modeled his philosophical worldview after the ideas of Plato seems to be inspired by the aspiration of Plotinus to revive the moral and metaphysical philosophical convention from antiquity. Plotinus was not declaring to originate a new philosophy with his work the Enneads but to explain features of the works of Plato that he believed were misrepresented or misinterpreted. In this sense the work of Plotinus is one of an interpreter not an innovator but rather a communicator of an established philosophical tradition. Plotinus understood tradition and morality as a method of deducing Platos teachings. Since the teachings of Plato were for students of the academy and not for the public at large it was predicable that strangers to the ideas and philosophy of Plato would misinterpret his meaning and original intent. Conversely Plotinus endeavored to explain how the philosophers of the academy had not reached the same conclusions as the objects of his condemnation (e.g. misotheism or dystheism hatred of God or the godsas an answer to the paradox of evil).
Although not a Christian Plotinus philosophy has had an enduring and significant contribution on the expansion and progress Christian theology and Christian throughout Medieval Europe and the world. English philosopher and outspoken atheist Bertrand Russell in his famous book A History of Western Philosophy (1945) wrote that:
| To the Christian the Other World was the Kingdom of Heaven to be enjoyed after death; to the Platonist it was the eternal world of ideas the real world as opposed to that of illusory appearance. Christian theologians combined these points of view and embodied much of the philosophy of Plotinus. ... Plotinus accordingly is historically important as an influence in moulding sic the Christianity of the Middle Ages and of theology. |