Idioma: Inglês

23ª edição (1980)

Formato: 16x24

N. Pág.: 360

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
PLOTINUS, 205 - 270



PLOTINUS, according to his biographer and dis¬ciple, Porphyry, "seemed to be ashamed of be¬ing in a body and hence refused to tell any¬thing about his parents, his ancestry, ar his country." He is known, however, to have come from Egypt, and one ancient source claims that he was bom at Lycopolis, now Asyut, in Dp¬per Egypt. His parents evidently possessed some means, for at the age of eight Plotinus was attending a school of grammar.
At Alexandria when he was twenty-eight Plotinus discovered his vocation as a philos¬opher. He had evidently been attending the schools and listening to the famous men of the city, then the intellectual capital of the world. But he failed to find any satisfaction until a friend, to whom he had unburdened himself, took him to hear the philosopher, Am¬monius Saccas, known as the "God-taught." Porphyry records that as soon as he had en¬tered and heard Ammonius, Plotinus ex¬claimed to his friend: "That is the man I have been seeking."
For eleven years Plotinus was the disciple of Ammonius. It is possible that the master and his students led a kind of common life. Plo¬tinus and two more of the group are known to have entered a compact to keep secret the doe¬trine of their master. Ammonius himself left no writings, and his teaching was probably concemed more with establishing a way of life than in pursuing intellectual knowledge for its own sake .. When Plotinus at the age of thirty-nine left Ammonius, it was with the de¬cision to "obtain direct knowledge of the philosophy practised among the Persians and honored among the Indians." The emperor, Gordian, was then preparing to lead an expedi¬tion into Persia, and Plotinus arranged to travei with the army. He reached Mesopotamia, but his plans for study were cut short when the emperor was assassinated, and Plotinus with difliculty escaped to Antioch and then to Rome, where he arrived in 245.
For the next twenty-five years Plotinus was a teacher of philosophy in Rome and some¬thing like a director of conscience. Among his
v


followers, besides professional philosophers, such as Porphyry, there were several physi¬cians, senators, a poet, a former rhetorician who had tumed banker, and many distin¬guished women. One senator, as the result of his association with Plotinus, "reached such a state of detachment that he abandoned all his goods, dismissed his servants, and gave up all his oflices." Plotinus was approached for advice on all kinds of questions; several wealthy peo¬pie at their death confided the material and spiritual care of their children to him, and he took them into his house. The emperor, Gal¬lienus, and his wife, Salonina, held him in par¬ticular esteem. Plotinus attempted to persuade them to establish a city in Campania modelled after Plato's Republic and to be known as Pla¬tonopolis; only the opposition of the emperor's advisers is supposed to have prevented the real¬ization of the projecto
During the first ten years that Plotinus was in Rome, he imitated his master, Ammonius, and committed none of his teaching to writing. This may have been partly due to his pledge to keep secret his master's teaching, for after that pledge had been broken by others, he be¬gan to write. When Porphyry became his fol¬lower in 263 Plotinus had completed twenty¬one of his fifty-four treatises, but their circula¬tion was very restricted. Plotinus is supposed to have been indifferent to his writing. Much of it was done while he was in the midst of other tasks; he paid little attention to the niceties of Greek style, and because of the weakness of his sight, he did not re-read his compositions. He produced most of his work during the six years that Porphyry was with him; the questioning and urging of Porphyry and another philosopher led him to write twenty-four treatises. The final nine were writ¬ten in the last two years of his life while he was seriously failing in health. His writings were collected after his death by Porphyry; his ar¬rangement of them in groups of nine has given them the name Enneads.
The mode of life followed by Plotinus was austere; he abstained completely from meat.