Plotin
For him, beauty is the presence of form and of the intelligible in matter, and the soul recognises it because it is kin to it.
Life
Plotinus (c. 205-270), a Greek-speaking philosopher born in Egypt, taught in Rome and founded Neoplatonism. His treatises, gathered after his death by his disciple Porphyry into six Enneads, describe a reality that proceeds from the One through Intellect and Soul down to matter. For him the aim of life is to ascend toward the One by purifying the soul. He deeply influenced Christian, Jewish and Muslim thought, and the reflection on beauty.
Main works
Fifty-four treatises edited by Porphyry: the One, Intellect, Soul, beauty, virtue and the return to the source.
Beauty is the presence of form in matter; the purified soul can rise to Beauty itself.
In his own words
« Never would the eye have seen the sun without having become sunlike, nor can a soul see beauty without having become beautiful. »
Οὐ γὰρ ἂν πώποτε εἶδεν ὀφθαλμὸς ἥλιον ἡλιοειδὴς μὴ γεγενημένος, οὐδὲ τὸ καλὸν ἂν ἴδοι ψυχὴ μὴ καλὴ γενομένη.
« Go back into yourself and look. And if you do not yet see yourself beautiful, do as the maker of a statue that is to be beautiful: he cuts away here, scrapes there, makes this part smooth and that part clean. »
Ἄναγε ἐπὶ σαυτὸν καὶ ἴδε· κἂν μήπω σαυτὸν ἴδηις καλόν, οἷα ποιητὴς ἀγάλματος, ὃ δεῖ καλὸν γενέσθαι, τὸ μὲν ἀφαιρεῖ, τὸ δὲ ἀπέξεσε, τὸ δὲ λεῖον, τὸ δὲ καθαρὸν ἐποίησεν
Positions
click a row to see the evidenceThe first principle is the One, beyond being and thought, source of everything but not a personal God.
Plotin, Ennéades V.1, VI.9 (v. 270)
True knowledge is intellect contemplating the intelligible forms within itself, not sense experience.
Plotin, Ennéades V.5 (v. 270)
The soul is immaterial and immortal; it is not the body nor a harmony of it.
Plotin, Ennéades IV.7 (v. 270)
Virtues purify the soul and make it like the divine.
Plotin, Ennéades I.2 « Sur les vertus » (v. 270)
Life's goal is the soul's return to the One, through purification and contemplation.
Plotin, Ennéades I.6, VI.9 (v. 270)