Neoplatonist School of Ancient Greek Philosophy Texts
Plotinus (c. 205–270 CE) gave the teaching of his master Ammonius Saccas of Egypt its lasting systematic form, and the philosophy that issued from him is known as Neoplatonism. It is a strict monism of principle: all reality derives from a single transcendent source, the One (τὸ Ἕν), which stands beyond being, multiplicity, and every category of thought.
From the One, reality unfolds in a series of ordered stages. The first emanation is Νοῦς, the divine Mind and the realm of the divine ideas; from Νοῦς comes Ψυχή, which mediates between the intelligible world and the sensible cosmos. The material world is a by-product of this unfolding, not an independent principle of things. Matter (ὕλη) is not an entity in its own right but a formless non-being arising from the activity of Ψυχή, and evil is typically understood as matter's privation of form, though later thinkers debated its precise status.
The human ψυχή is immortal and pre-exists the body, composed of a lower, non-rational part and a higher, rational one, and many Neoplatonists posited a subtle vehicle (ὄχημα) for it, enabling its return to the One after death. Against the Gnostics they refused to vilify the material world, viewing it instead as an ordered, though diminished, emanation. The philosophical goal is an ascent toward unity with the One, achieved through contemplation.
Plotinus worked in Rome and left his writings as the <cite>Enneads</cite>, arranged and published by his student and editor Porphyry (c. 234–305 CE). After them the school divided into lineages: Iamblichus (c. 245–325 CE) led the Syrian school and introduced theurgic, ritual practice, while in the 5th and 6th centuries the academies of Athens, under Proclus (412–485 CE), and of Alexandria flourished. Proclus systematised the later doctrines, and later thinkers often departed from Plotinus on specific points, such as the status of evil, while keeping the emanative structure intact. Imperial order closed the Athenian academy in 529 CE, the conventional end of the school's continuous history.