Plotinus c. 204 – 270

Plotinus was a 3rd-century philosopher of late antiquity, born in Roman Egypt and active in Rome, where he founded the philosophical school whose teaching is preserved in the Enneads. Edited by his student Porphyry, the Enneads develop a Platonic metaphysics in which all reality emanates from a single ineffable source called the One, through Intellect and Soul, into the perceptible cosmos. Plotinus is regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism, the dominant philosophical current of late antiquity. His thought decisively influenced Christian theology through Augustine, Islamic philosophy through al-Farabi and Avicenna, and the Renaissance Platonists through Marsilio Ficino. The Enneads remain among the most ambitious works of Western metaphysics.