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PHILOSOPHY, ROME and its EMPIRE (7 of 7)

Stoicism influenced Christianity, and so too did the Platonism of Plotinus (PLOH-tinus). He belonged to the third century -- eight centuries since Rome's independence from the Etruscans. He was born in Egypt and lived between the years 204 and 270, or thereabouts. He studied philosophy at Alexandria. He considered himself a Platonist and wrote a theology that would inspire people in modern times to consider him a major philosopher during ancient times and to label him a "neo-Platonist." His views had a wide following during his century and later and passed into Christianity. Had Christianity remained another Jewish sect rather than having spread to gentiles, neo-Platonism might have become the dominant faith in the western world -- without any one church in authority worshipping a jealous god.

Like Christianity, neo-Platonism had appeal as an alternative to the Roman Empire's chaos and decadence. Whereas Plato wanted to put people into a perfect society, Plotinus called on people to withdraw from politics and from the world of the senses and to seek instead an awareness of and solidarity with God. It was withdrawal to the extent that it had no sense of belonging to a state that grown in disrepute. Plotinus' religion was personal -- without a sense of belonging to a community as did Christianity.

In the year 245, at age forty, Plotinus settled in Rome, and there he founded a school. He conducted friendly and informal discussions on commentaries that had been written on Plato and Aristotle, defending Plato against Aristotle's criticisms while making some concessions to Aristotle. Plotinus encouraged the discussions to continue until his students believed that the philosophical problems they had raised were solved.

Plotinus pondered what he saw as "the ordered universe," and he concluded that its "material mass" had existed forever and would "forever endure." He saw God as soul, as a supreme spirit, and he saw soul as primary. He believed that all nature had been created by this supreme spirit. He saw soul not as intellect, as did Aristotle, nor as thought, pointing out that thought requires a subject, which would make soul a duality rather than primary. Nor, claimed Plotinus, is soul a plurality of things -- as it is believed by those who see God as everything. Soul, believed Plotinus, is the source of plurality.

Like the Manichaeans, Gnostics, Zoroastrians and others, Plotinus found evil in materiality. This was a time of widespread disgust with the human body, and Plotinus saw the body as a prison or tomb in which one's soul was trapped. He did not believe that salvation from this prison would come from outside oneself, as a struggle between Good and Evil or God and Satan. He believed in a salvation, or grace, by finding one's own pure spirit, one's own godly soul. And this was done, he reasoned, by avoiding vain preoccupations with one's body and by avoiding exaggerated worries.

Like the Stoics, he believed that suffering had no effect on one who had found grace. He believed in an inner freedom through indifference toward external circumstances.

Plotinus disagreed with the Gnostics that an evil power had created materiality. And, contrary to the Gnostics, he defended the notion of God creating all (including evil) by claiming that evil had a rightful place in the universe. Most or all forms of evil, he wrote, "serve the universe." Vice, he wrote, "stirs us to thoughtful living, not allowing us to drowse in security."

Like Plato, Plotinus believed that to find truth one had to look beyond materiality (the world known through the senses). Like Plato, he believed that through reason and knowledge one could work his way to a union with and an awareness of God. He believed in an ecstatic union with God that could not be adequately expressed with words.

Plotinus described his own salvation in a way that was similar to ideas in India centuries before: contact with God through repose, meditation and renunciation. He believed in fleeing alone "toward the Solitary One."

Plotinus combined his search for salvation with acts of virtue. He wrote that "Without virtue, God is only a word." He believed that a part of the self, as soul, resides in the heavens, and, ascending to that level, one rests with the Divine and experiences a love of gentle Goodness. The Good, he believed, was always gentle. He claimed that the experience of being at this higher level could remain with one as one pursued his earthly living, looking after himself and others.

It was at this higher level, according to Plotinus, that one found love, which he saw as a part of any pursuit of virtue and unity with God. On love he was close to Plato, but different from Plato in that Plato believed that love is an achievement that begins with experience at the lowly, material level. Plotinus denied that love had any such lowly origins. Plotinus believed that love was an ingredient that added to the objects or person loved, making that object something that it was not before, love being superior to the object it is placed upon. Beyond this, Plotinus saw the question what is love as similar to questions why is there Soul and why does the Creator create: unanswerable.

Plotinus saw himself as not having answers to everything. He confessed to not having an answer as to why God created the cosmos. Some questions, he believed, could not be answered.