Ancient Roman Philosopher, Founder of Neoplatonism
Plotinus (c. 204–270) was a philosopher of the ancient Roman period, founder of Neoplatonism, who built on the foundation of Plato’s theory of Forms a metaphysical system of far more pronounced mystical color. He proposed that all things spring from an ultimate origin beyond being and intellect, describable by no concept or category — "the One" — which, like an overflowing source of light, produces in turn, through "emanation," the "Nous" (Intellect / the world of Forms) and the "Soul," and then, extending downward, the material world, the levels of existence growing ever further from the perfect unity of "the One" and tending toward multiplicity and lack the lower they go. He held that the ultimate end of philosophy is, through rational contemplation and mystical meditation, to make the soul return upward level by level and at last become one with "the One" — a mystical path of return that profoundly shaped the philosophical interpretation of the concept of "God" by Christian theologians such as Augustine.
Plotinus’s student Porphyry records that a painter once wished to paint a portrait of Plotinus, and he firmly refused, holding that the body is but a base vessel the soul temporarily inhabits, a "shadow of a shadow" of the soul’s true essence, and that to leave a portrait of this shell would be meaningless — an anecdote that vividly embodies his philosophical stance of prizing the soul utterly and disdaining the material existence of the body.
Plotinus depicted the cosmos as a hierarchy emanating and deriving downward level by level from "the One": the One → Nous (Intellect) → Soul → the material world, each level an imitation and diminution of the one above — a precise metaphysical hierarchy that later provided an important philosophical resource for the Christian theological cosmology of "God’s creation" and the "great chain of being."
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.
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