Plotinus
Plotino (204-270 AD) was the founder of Neoplatonism and the last great ancient philosopher.
For platonists, the real world cannot give any hope, only the "other world" is worth looking forward to, which is the eternal world of ideas, the real world that corresponds to the illusory phenomenal world. Christian theology blends this view with Plotinus's philosophy, depicting the "other world" as the kingdom of heaven after death.
The historical importance of Plotinus is reflected in the influence of his doctrines on Christianity and Catholic theology in the Middle Ages. The importance of his doctrine is, first of all, the beauty it expresses, which is a depiction of the "other world." In addition, it says more about what people will be more likely to believe in certain specific moods and in certain circumstances. Plotinus's theory has a high status for those who are unfortunate in the secular sense, but are determined to seek higher happiness in the theoretical world. Since happiness cannot be sought from the everyday world, but from thought and imagination, this requires an ability to ignore or despise the life of the senses.
Equally impossible to ignore the merits of Plotinus in terms of pure intellect. He clarified Plato's doctrine in many ways, especially with regard to the relationship between the soul and the body.
Plotinus's metaphysics began with a holy Trinity, spirit and soul. The first is supreme, the spirit is secondary, and finally the soul.
Too one
Taiyi is undefinable, it is above existence, and existence arises after Taiyi. Taiyi can be presented without anything: "It is nowhere, and nowhere is not it." "Taiyi precedes goodness and precedes beauty."
Spirit (nous)
As a noous translated as spirit, it is actually difficult to accurately express its exact meaning. In addition to the meaning of "spirit", it also has a very important intellectual element in Greek religious philosophy. Mathematics, the world of ideas, and all non-sensory thoughts constitute the activity of noous.
Plotinus said that nous was a shadow of Taiyi. There is noous because Taiyi must see something in his self-pursuit, and Taiyi's vision is nonous. A being that is not made up of parts may also recognize itself, in which case the seer and the seeer are the same. (A difficult concept to understand) The "divine mind" is lost in self-awareness, but we can recognize it. To know the divine mind, we must set aside our own body, and the part of the soul that shapes it, and "the senses that possess illusory and useless things such as desires and impulses."
When we are "dominated and inspired by God," we see not only nous, but also Taiyi. How can this be done? Nature is "severing ties with all things" and experiencing a state of "ecstasy" (standing outside one's own body).
soul
The soul, though lower than noous, is the creator of all living objects, creating the sun, moon, stars, and the entire visible world. The soul is the product of "divine intelligence." The soul is twofold: the inner soul is focused on noous; there is also a soul that faces outward. The outward-facing soul is associated with a downward movement in which the soul produces images of itself, the natural and sensory worlds.
In Plotinus's mysticism there is no hostility to the good, nor is there any element of gloom. After him, however, beauty and everything associated with pleasure was considered to belong to the devil, and pagans and Christians began to exalt ugliness and filth.
Matter is created by the soul and has no independent reality. Every soul descends into a body that suits itself at the moment it belongs to it. The motivation for this process is not rational, but something similar to sexual desire. If the soul has ever committed a sin, it must be punished, leaving the body and entering another body, at the request of justice. Sin must be punished, but punishment is achieved naturally by driving the perpetrator to make mistakes continuously.
The discussion of immortality is that the flesh is obviously not immortal because it is mixed, and if the flesh is part of our individual, then we are not completely immortal. Plotinus objected to Aristotle's claim that the soul was the form of the body. He believed that the soul was neither a material nor a material form of flesh, but an essence, and that essence was eternal.
The soul enters the body through desire from the world of reason that is high above. At its best, the soul "has the desire to order according to what it sees in the nous." The soul is concerned with the intrinsic realm within and wants to be able to produce as much as possible something that can be seen without having to look from the inside out.
The soul's desire to create has unfortunate consequences. As long as the soul lives in a purely essential world, it is not separated from other souls living in the same world. But as soon as the soul is united with the body, it has the task of ruling over things below itself, because of this task, it is separated from other souls. Other souls are also separated from each other by union with the body. The flesh binds the soul, "the flesh makes the truth obscure, but everything else is always clear and different." ”
The soul is at its best content with the essential world of nous, in which the soul should meditate and not create. So how to explain the creativity of the soul? For the created world, in its main line, is logically the best possible result, it is a facsimile of the eternal world, with the beauty that a facsimile might have.
In addition to arguing that the world is inevitably imperfect because it is a facsimile, Plotinus and other Christians also believe that there is a more definite evil that arises from sin. Sin is the product of free will, and Plotinus supports free will and opposes determinists.
Christian theology, in its systematic and rational part, largely adopts the doctrine of Plotinus.
The main merit of plotinus is that he constructed a safe refuge for ideals and hopes, and a refuge of moral and intellectual achievements. His system was not purely superstitious, but preserved much of the Greek intellectual thought, and strongly embodied the same zeal shared by both the Stoics and the Neoplatonists. This provided an inspiration for the subsequent rise of scholastic philosophy and the passion for re-studying Plato and other ancients that had been inspired by the development of the Renaissance.
The disadvantage of Plotinus's doctrine is that it encourages people to look inward rather than outward. When we look inward, we see the divine noous; when we look outward, we see the imperfections of the sensed world. This will lead to a stifling of scientific curiosity. Subjectivism invades people's feelings and doctrines. No one wants to delve into science anymore, only virtue is considered important. It is increasingly believed that virtue concerns only the virtuous will and not the desire to change the physical world or to improve the human system in it.
Plotinus was both the end of Greek doctrine and the beginning of Christendom.