Plotinus 204—270 C.E.

In a quiet Roman house in the middle of the third century of our era, a man who did not want his birthday known and did not like to be painted sat surrounded by students, talking about how the soul could return to its true home. Outside, the empire was groaning under pressure: political instability, plagues, frontier wars, a sense that the old gods and old institutions were losing their grip. Inside, this man was building, in conversation, one of the most ambitious spiritual metaphysics the West would ever know. His name was Plotinus, and though he never set out to found a “school,” later generations would call his system Neoplatonism. In the long story of Western moral philosophy, he is the one who radically interiorizes ethics, making the good life a matter of turning inward and upward toward an ultimate source beyond being and thought. Selenius Media