Metaphysics

The Enneads

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Plotinus

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The Enneads is the collected body of Plotinus's philosophy, assembled and edited by his student Porphyry into six groups of nine treatises — the arrangement that gives the work its name. Written in Rome across the latter decades of the third century, the Enneads present a systematic Neoplatonic metaphysics built on three fundamental principles: the One, Intellect (Nous), and Soul. From the absolute unity of the One, reality unfolds through a process of emanation — not as creation by a willing God, but as the natural overflow of perfection. Philosophy, for Plotinus, is not mere speculation but a practical discipline of ascent: the soul must rise from matter through intellect to union with the One.