In the Enneads Plotinus writes: " Our thought cannot grasp the One as long as any other image remains active in the soul … To this end, you must set free your soul from all outward things and turn wholly within yourself, with no more leaning to what lies outside, and lay your mind bare of ideal forms, as before of the objects of sense, and forget even yourself, and so come within sight of that One.

The Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus taught that above the gods of traditional belief was " The One " and polytheist grammarian Maximus of Madauros even stated that only a mad person would deny the existence of the supreme God.

With the neoplatonist Plotinus, wrote Nathaniel Alfred Boll ; " there even appears, probably for the first time in Western philosophy, idealism that had long been current in the East even at that time, for it taught … that the soul has made the world by stepping from eternity into time …".

540 ), on the Dionysian Corpus constitutes the first defense of its apostolic dating, wherein he specifically argues that the work is neither Apollinarian nor a forgery, probably in response both to monophysites and Hypatius — although even he, given his unattributed citations of Plotinus in interpreting Dionysius, might have known better.

Plotinus disregards this claim, as the soul and true human do not sleep or even exist in time, nor will a living human who has achieved eudaimonia suddenly stop using its greatest, most authentic capacity just because of the body ’ s discomfort in the physical realm.

Plotinus accused Gnosticism of vilifing the Demiurge or craftsman that crafted the material world, even thinking of the material world as evil or a prison.

He is the immediate ancestor in a long line that stretches back through Freud, Dilthey, Coleridge, Schelling, Vico, Ficino, Plotinus, and Plato to Heraclitus-and with even more branches yet to be traced ” ( p. xvii ).

He is the immediate ancestor in a long line that stretches back through Freud, Dilthey, Coleridge, Schelling, Vico, Ficino, Plotinus, and Plato to Heraclitus — and with even more branches yet to be traced ( p. xvii ).

At, Plotinus compared the One to " light ", the Divine Nous ( first will towards Good ) to the " Sun ", and lastly the Soul to the " Moon " whose light is merely a " derivative conglomeration of light from the ' Sun '".

Plotinus offers an alternative to the orthodox Christian notion of creation ex nihilo ( out of nothing ), which attributes to God the deliberation of mind and action of a will, although Plotinus never mentions Christianity in any of his works.

( Enneads I. 4. 4 ) A happy person will not sway between happy and sad, as many of Plotinus ’ contemporaries believed.

Two of Ammonius's students-Origen the Pagan, and Longinus-seem to have held philosophical positions which were closer to Middle Platonism than Neoplatonism, which perhaps suggests that Ammonius's doctrines were also closer to those of Middle Platonism than the Neoplatonism developed by Plotinus ( see the Enneads ), but Plotinus does not seem to have thought that he was departing in any significant way from that of his master.

To Plotinus, the second emanation represents an uncreated second cause ( see Pythagoras ' Dyad ).

Plotinus marks his arguments with the disconnect or great barrier that is created between the nous or mind's noumenon ( see Heraclitus ) and the material world ( phenomenon ) by believing the material world is evil.

The essentially devotional nature of Plotinus ' philosophy may be further illustrated by his concept of attaining ecstatic union with the One ( henosis see Iamblichus ).

Solovyov compiled a philosophy based on Hellenistic philosophy ( see Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus ) and early Christian tradition with Buddhism and Hebrew Kabbalistic elements ( Philo of Alexandria ).

Pythagorean and Platonic philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry condemned " Gnosis " that would later characterize Gnosticism ( see Neoplatonism and Gnosticism ) for their treatment of the monad or one.

His works were highly esteemed by the Neoplatonists, and Plotinus ' student Amelius ( who was critical of Gnosticism, see Neoplatonism and Gnosticism ) is said to have composed nearly two books of commentaries upon them.

Hence the title of Plotinus ' refutation " Enneads ", The Second Ennead, Ninth Tractate-Against Those That Affirm the Creator of the Kosmos and the Kosmos Itself to be Evil: quoted as " Against the Gnostics ".

However, Christos Evangeliou has contended that Plotinus ’ opponents might be better described as simply “ Christian Gnostics ”, arguing that several of Plotinus ’ criticisms are as applicable to orthodox Christian doctrine as well.

Similarly, in regard to passages from the Enneads, " The only space or place of the world is the soul " and " Time must not be assumed to exist outside the soul ", Ludwig Noiré wrote: " For the first time in Western philosophy we find idealism proper in Plotinus, However, Plotinus does not address whether we know external objects, unlike Schopenhauer and other modern philosophers.

Like Plotinus and the Cappadocian Fathers before him, Dionysius does not claim to be an innovator, but rather a communicator of a tradition.

As Plotinus explains in both places and elsewhere V. 6. 3, it is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-aware Creator God.

Plotinus seems to be one of the first to argue against the still popular notion of causal astrology.

The Neoplatonic movement ( though Plotinus would have simply referred to himself as a philosopher of Plato ) seems to be motivated by the desire of Plotinus to revive the pagan philosophical tradition.

Varieties of the doctrine may be found in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophical theologians, especially during the heyday of scholasticism, though the doctrine's origins may be traced back to ancient Greek thought, finding apotheosis in Plotinus ' Enneads as the Simplex.

The foundations of this theory can be traced to Neoplatonism and the philosopher Plotinus in particular.

Evola refers to Plotinus, who deemed homosexual loves to be shameful and abnormal, like diseases of degenerate persons " which do not arise from the essence of being and are not the outcome of the development thereof " ( Enneads, III ).

Neoplatonist philosophers such as Plotinus ( 204 / 5 – 270 AD ) used the term " Logos " in ways that drew on Plato and the Stoics, but the term Logos was interpreted in different ways throughout Neoplatonism, and similarities to Philo's concept of Logos appear to be accidental.

Plotinus relied heavily on the concept of Logos, but no explicit references to Christian thought can be found in his works, although there are significant traces of them in his doctrine.

After correcting and naming each treatise, Porphyry wrote a biography of his master, Life of Plotinus, intended to be an Introduction to the Enneads.

As another example of history duplicates, according to Fomenko, Plato, Plotinus and Gemistus Pletho are one and the same person-according to him, some texts by or about Pletho were mis-dated and today believed to be texts by or about Plotinus or Plato.

This ultimate reality can be called " Spirit " ( Sri Aurobindo ), " Brahman " ( Shankara ), " God ", " Shunyata " ( Emptiness ), " The One " ( Plotinus ), " The Self " ( Ramana Maharshi ), " The Dao " ( Lao Zi ), " The Absolute " ( Schelling ) or simply " The Nondual " ( F. H. Bradley ).

Michaelson ( 2009: p. 130 ) identifies what he perceives to be the origins of nondualism proper founded in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus within Ancient Greece and employs the ambiguous binary construction of " the West " different to ' the East ', refer Edward Said | Saïd's utilization of the discourse of ' Other | The Other ' in Orientalism ( book ) | Orientalism ( 1978 ):

For Schuon, the quintessence of pure metaphysics can be summarized by the following vedantic statement, although the Advaita Vedanta's perspective finds its equivalent in the teachings of Ibn Arabi, Meister Eckhart or Plotinus: Brahma satyam jagan mithya jivo brahmaiva na ' parah ( Brahman is real, the world is illusory, the self is not different from Brahman ).

Plotinus, after reading his treatise On First Principles, remarked that Longinus might be a scholar, but that he was no philosopher.

Plotinus sought to reconcile Aristotle's energeia with Plato's Demiurge, which, as Demiurge and mind ( nous ), is a critical component in the ontological construct of human consciousness used to explain and clarify substance theory within Platonic realism ( also called idealism ).

Plotinus also elucidates the equation of matter with nothing or non-being in his Enneads which more correctly is to express the concept of idealism or that there is not anything or anywhere outside of the " mind " or nous ( c. f.

Plotinus ' form of Platonic idealism is to treat the Demiurge, nous as the contemplative faculty ( ergon ) within man which orders the force ( dynamis ) into conscious reality.

Plotinus criticizes his opponents for “ all the novelties through which they seek to establish a philosophy of their own ” which, he declares, “ have been picked up outside of the truth ”; they attempt to conceal rather than admit their indebtedness to ancient philosophy, which they have corrupted by their extraneous and misguided embellishments.

John D. Turner, professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska and famed translator and editor of the Nag Hammadi library, stated that the text Plotinus and his students read was Sethian gnosticism which predates Christianity.

Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent god, ' The One ,' of which subsequent realities were emanations.

Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent " God " ( The One ) of which subsequent realities were emanations.

For example he uses Plotinus ' well-known analogy of a sculptor cutting away that which does not enhance the desired image.

Plotinus speaks about the generation of Intellect from the One, and Intellect's attempt to return to the One in a thinking which is also a desiring.

Gregory does not refer to any neoplatonist philosophers in his work, and there is only one disputed passage which may directly quote Plotinus.

However, some significant differences between neoplatonism and Gregory's thought exist, such as Gregory's statement that beauty and goodness are equivalent, which contrasts with Plotinus ' view that they are two different qualities.

As a Neoplatonist philosopher, she belonged to the mathematic tradition of the Academy of Athens, as represented by Eudoxus of Cnidus ; she was of the intellectual school of the 3rd century thinker Plotinus, which encouraged logic and mathematical study in place of empirical enquiry and strongly encouraged law in place of nature.

Plotinus had an inherent distrust of materiality ( an attitude common to Platonism ), holding to the view that phenomena were a poor image or mimicry ( mimesis ) of something " higher and intelligible " which was the " truer part of genuine Being ".

Porphyry makes note that the Enneads, before being compiled and arranged by himself, were merely the enormous collection of notes and essays which Plotinus used in his lectures and debates, rather than a formal book.

Plotinus uses the analogy of the Sun which emanates light indiscriminately without thereby diminishing itself, or reflection in a mirror which in no way diminishes or otherwise alters the object being reflected.