ABSTRACT
The last great school of Greek philosophy was Neoplatonism, and its most famous representative was Plotinus, born in Lykopolis, Egypt, in a.d. 204. In his late twenties, Plotinus began to study in Alexandria with Ammonius Saccas, a shadowy figure who was also the teacher of the theologian Origen. Plotinus, again borrowing from Plato, calls this ultra-reality the “Good” or the “One.” Plotinus himself claimed to have achieved such a union four times during his life. Plotinus’s writings were edited by one of his pupils, Porphyry, in the form of six groups of nine “Tractates”, published as the so-called Enneads. The selections, in the A. H. Armstrong translation, begin with a portion of Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus. Next is the famous Treatise on Beauty. This Tractate explains how the ascent of the soul to the One/Good is dependent on the beauty of soul, a god-like disposition. Plotinus’ description parallels the ascending dialectic in Plato’s Symposium.
