ABSTRACT
Central to Plotinus’ philosophical system is the doctrine of the three principles: the One, Intellect and Soul. Our main interest in Plotinus arises from his theory of beauty, expounded in his treatise On Beauty, which is the first treatise he wrote and became one of his best-known works. Plotinus begins by criticising a form of the Stoic theory of beauty which we saw in Cicero, a theory which identifies it with symmetry or proportion, of parts to one another or to the whole, along with good colour. The view that visual art is not just a copying of what we see, but expresses an idea in the artist’s mind derived from the Forms, is not original with Plotinus. Seneca goes on to describe Aristotle’s theory according to which there are four causes: the matter, the maker, the form and the end for which it is produced.
