Plotinus

Plotinus (205–270 CE), the Alexandrian-Roman founder of Neoplatonism, occupies a distinctive and recurring position in the depth-psychology corpus. His presence is neither incidental nor merely historical; he functions as a philosophical ancestor whose conceptual architecture — the procession from the One through Nous and Soul to Matter, the doctrine of return, and the unity of souls — anticipates and substantiates several key structures in analytical and archetypal psychology. Edinger reads Plotinus most systematically, treating the Enneads as a proto-psychological document in which the One prefigures the Jungian Self, the triadic hypostases shadow an implicit quaternity, and the soul’s alienation from its source maps onto individuation dynamics. Hillman recruits Plotinus alongside Ficino and Vico as a founding voice of the Southern, imaginal tradition in archetypal psychology, stressing the mobile, multiple, and imagination-grounded character of consciousness in Plotinus’s work. Sharpe and Ure position Plotinus as the apex of ancient philosophy-as-a-way-of-life, whose mystical union with the One represents a culminating spiritual exercise. Dihle attends to Plotinus’s theories of volition and self-cognition within the history of will. A persistent tension runs through all these readings: whether Plotinus’s subordination of matter represents a Gnostic rejection of embodied existence or a more affirmative, albeit hierarchical, vision of cosmic goodness.

In the library 20 passages

The philosophy of Plotinus is an account of an ordered structure of living reality, which proceeds eternally from its transcendent First Principle, the One or Good, and descends in an unbroken succession of stages from the Divine Intellect and the Forms therein through Soul

Edinger frames Plotinus’s entire metaphysical system as a naive precursor to Jung’s psychology of the Self, mapping the procession-and-return structure onto individuating psychic movement.

Edinger, Edward F., The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999thesis

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Hillman regards Plotinus, Ficino and Vico as precursors of archetypal psychology… man can act unconsciously, can be partially conscious and partially unconscious at the same time. For Plotinus, like Jung, there is one universal psyche.

Samuels reports Hillman’s claim that Plotinus is a founding voice of the Southern, imaginal lineage of archetypal psychology, sharing with Jung a doctrine of universal, non-ego-centered psychic unity.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985thesis

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Jung refers to this doctrine of Plotinus as a parallel to his notion of synchronicity. Plotinus writes: … Now are we to hold similarly that your soul and mine and all are one, and that the same thing is true of the universe

Edinger documents Jung’s use of Plotinus’s omnipresent soul-unity in the Enneads as a classical precedent for the concept of synchronicity.

Edinger, Edward F, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One Early Greek Philosophy thesis

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Lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentered; beholding a marvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine

Sharpe and Ure present Plotinus’s first-person account of mystical ascent from the Enneads as the culminating instance of philosophy as a transformative spiritual exercise.

Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis

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Lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentered; beholding a marvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine

Sharpe and Ure cite Plotinus’s own phenomenological description of mystical union as the experiential summit toward which Neoplatonic philosophy-as-a-way-of-life aims.

Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021thesis

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His attitude to the visible universe was utterly opposed to that of the Gnostics. For Plotinus, in this entirely true to Plato’s doctrine, the visible universe was good, an essential part of the nature of things, not the result of any fall or error

Armstrong’s account, quoted by Edinger, establishes Plotinus’s anti-Gnostic affirmation of the visible world’s goodness, a position that distinguishes him from dualist rejection of matter.

Edinger, Edward F., The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999supporting

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Plotinus’s texts on this unitive experience strain against the limits of language. Alongside a language of love and desire, we read metaphors of intoxication, inspiration, madness, flight, illumination and initiation into the mysteries

Sharpe and Ure analyze the rhetorical complexity of Plotinus’s mystical language, noting its deliberate transgression of rational discourse in favor of initiatory metaphor.

Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting

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Plotinus’s texts on this unitive experience strain against the limits of language. Alongside a language of love and desire, we read metaphors of intoxication, inspiration, madness, flight, illumination and initiation into the mysteries

Sharpe and Ure note how Plotinus’s description of union with the One deliberately exceeds conceptual language, employing initiatory and affective metaphor to convey a trans-rational event.

Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting

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Plotinus is reluctant to admit it, but he actually has a fourth distinct hypostasis, and it has its special name, Nature… his trinitarian thinking was so definite that many of the Christian theologians took it over

Edinger argues that Plotinus implicitly presents a quaternity rather than a pure trinity, a structure later assimilated into Christian theology and psychologically significant for the fourth, inferior function.

Edinger, Edward F., The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999supporting

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With Plotinus’s conception of philosophy as a transcendent initiation, we also see how close the pagan thought of the later Imperium had drawn to the Christian religion which would soon supplant it.

Sharpe and Ure situate Plotinus at the threshold between pagan philosophy and Christian religion, his initiatory mysticism foreshadowing the theurgic turn taken by his Neoplatonic successors.

Matthew Sharpe and Michael Ure, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting

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With Plotinus’s conception of philosophy as a transcendent initiation, we also see how close the pagan thought of the later Imperium had drawn to the Christian religion which would soon supplant it.

Sharpe and Ure mark Plotinus as a pivotal historical figure whose mystical philosophy of initiation bridges late pagan thought and the emerging Christian synthesis.

Sharpe, Matthew and Ure, Michael, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting

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At the age of twenty-seven, he fell in love with philosophy in a sudden awakening to his calling. He gave himself over for eleven years to the Alexandrian teacher Ammonius Saccus — an apprenticeship in philosophy — and then he proceeded on his own.

Edinger draws on Porphyry’s biography to establish Plotinus’s personal formation, emphasizing the sudden vocational call and extended apprenticeship that shaped his philosophical life.

Edinger, Edward F., The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One: Early Greek Philosophy From Thales to Plotinus, 1999supporting

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According to Plotinus, it is the inexhaustible wealth and the goodness of the One rather than the will to use its power to which the world owes its existence.

Dihle situates Plotinus within the history of volitional theory by showing that Plotinus grounds creation in divine goodness and overflow rather than in will or intentional power.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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This concept, which has far-reaching consequences in the theory of ethics, is called tolma by Plotinus, a term already used in Gnosticism and earlier Platonism and has important voluntar[istic implications].

Dihle traces Plotinus’s concept of tolma — the soul’s audacious self-assertion — as a key term linking Gnostic, Platonic, and Plotinian ethics in the theory of voluntary self-differentiation from the One.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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He discovered the difference between self-cognition and self-consciousness… he investigated in what way intelligence and memory constitute man’s individuality. But the problem of will does not seem to be one of his favorite psychological topics.

Dihle credits Plotinus with important innovations in self-cognition and individuality theory while noting that volitional psychology remained comparatively undeveloped in his system.

Albrecht Dihle, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting

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Plotinus connects the term adespoton not only with choice (helesthai) and with what is upto us (eph’ hēmin) and voluntary (hekousion), but also with boulēsis, one of the words conventionally translated as ‘will’.

Sorabji examines Plotinus’s contribution to the ancient concept of will by showing how he interconnects the voluntariness, freedom, and self-mastery of the soul through a cluster of technical Greek terms.

Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting

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The philosophy of Plotinus is an account of an ordered structure of living reality, which proceeds eternally from its transcendent First Principle, the One or Good… There are two movements in Plotinus’s universe, one of outgoing from unity to an ever-increasing multiplicity and the other of return to unity and unification.

Edinger summarizes Armstrong’s account of the dual cosmic movement in Plotinus — procession and return — as a structural parallel to individuating psychic dynamics.

Edinger, Edward F, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One Early Greek Philosophy supporting

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In the passage cited earlier, Plotinus was not quite clear on that question; he fluctuated. Armstrong says in regard to Plotinus’ attitude: His attitude to the visible universe was utterly opposed to that of the Gnostics

Edinger acknowledges an ambiguity in Plotinus’s attitude toward matter and evil, noting that his position fluctuates between affirmation and ambivalence while remaining formally distinct from Gnosticism.

Edinger, Edward F, The Psyche in Antiquity, Book One Early Greek Philosophy supporting

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Plotinus (205–270) had studied in Alexandria under Origen’s old teacher Ammonius Saccus and had later joined the Roman army, hoping that it would take him to India, where he was anxious to study.

Armstrong situates Plotinus biographically within the intellectual milieu of Alexandria, noting his shared teacher with Origen and his ill-fated attempt to reach Indian philosophy through military service.

Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993aside

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