Plotinus

Plotinus was born in AD 204, probably in Lycopolis in Upper Egypt. Almost everything we know about his life comes from the biography written by his student Porphyry, who tells us that Plotinus was so indifferent to his physical existence that he refused to sit for a portrait ("Is it not enough to carry around the image in which nature has encased me?"). He studied philosophy in Alexandria under the mysterious Ammonius Saccas for eleven years, then joined the emperor Gordian III's expedition against Persia in 243, hoping to encounter Persian and Indian philosophy. Gordian was murdered, and Plotinus barely escaped to Antioch.

He settled in Rome in 244 and taught there for the rest of his life, gathering a circle of students that included senators, a physician, and several women. He did not begin writing until he was fifty. His works were collected by Porphyry into six groups of nine — the Enneads — covering metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, ethics, and aesthetics. The system they describe is the most complete statement of Neoplatonism: reality emanates from the One (beyond being and thought), through Intellect (Nous), to Soul, and finally to the material world. The philosopher's task is to ascend back through these levels to mystical union with the One.

Plotinus shaped Augustine, the Cappadocian Fathers, the Islamic Neoplatonists, the Renaissance Platonists, and the German Idealists. He died in 270 in Campania, his last words reportedly: "Try to bring back the god in you to the divine in the All."