For Plotinus, what really exists are the Platonic forms, so the true nature or form of things like justice, beauty, maybe numbers,… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
In fact one of the things about Plotinus is that he maybe not singlehandedly, but I think more than anyone else, killed… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
There's a stronger and more kind of controversial element of Plotinus' view of matter, which is that he actually identifies it with… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
If you think about even very common examples like, say, something that you would build, like a clock or a car or… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
I think it's important to realise that what happens in Neo-Platonism beginning with Plotinus and Porphyry and then going on for the… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
If you think about for example, proportionality and beauty, things like that, these seem to be some kind of representations of a… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
What the soul is doing is kind of walking through the forms, and so our experience of thinking isn't normally this kind… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
The soul must be distinct from intellect because even at its best, what the soul does when it's thinking, is it thinks… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
Plotinus, when he thinks about mind or intellect, the Greek word is 'nous', he thinks about something that's very different, it's much… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
Plotinus thought that the entire world has a single soul. He also thought that each animal and plant and of course human, has an… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
Assuming there is an intellect, we're clearly not this universal intellect or we would know it. So that's one function of soul. — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
The body is some kind of image of you, it's kind of something that's just attached to your soul, some kind of outside principle,… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
The forms are part of the mind, or really are the mind, they're just the contents of this universal night. — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
Before the 3rd century you're having several philosophical schools still as a going concern. You have not only the Platonists and the Aristotelians but… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
Unlike later Neo-Platonists, Plotinus says that our souls are always connected to the universal intellect and that we never really fall away. — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
The forms in intellect are some kind of blueprint or model on which the physical world is based, and something needs to come along… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
Once you're in a kind of revealed religious tradition, you wind up having to explain how the things said about God in the Bible… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
Al-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out al-Ghazali's… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
In fact Plotinus thought not only that soul in general is eternal so that you always have soul, but he thought that each person's… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
Basically the problem is that if the intellect is looking at or beholding the forms, what it will get is some kind of representation… — Peter Adamson Copy Share Image
