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Philosophical Haiku

Plotinus (204/5-270 CE)

by Terence Green

All flows from the One,
My soul flies to Intellect
I long to return

Born in Egypt, Plotinus first appears in the history books as a student in Alexandria, where he studied Greek philosophy for eleven years. Then he did a stint in the Roman army, which was to head East, his aim being to learn from Persian and Indian philosophers (presumably he anticipated being able to take time out from pillaging, killing and oppressing). He later came to Rome where he spent the rest of his life teaching, developing a system of metaphysics that would become known as Neoplatonism. In his rather toadying biography of Plotinus, his pupil Porphyry describes him as a ‘god-like man’, which is a nice way of saying he was a mystic who said mysterious, beautiful, and frequently incomprehensible things.

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