c. A.D. 204 – 270

Plotinus

Worth knowing

A philosopher from Egypt who taught in Rome and founded what is now called Neoplatonism. He taught that all things come from the One.
His student Porphyry arranged his writings into six sets of nine treatises, the Enneads. Porphyry also wrote one of the fiercest attacks on Christianity in the ancient world.
Augustine read Plotinus in Latin and learned from him to think of God as spirit. In Confessions 7.9 he says he found the Word of God in these books, but not that the Word became flesh.

In Scholar’s Dream, Plotinus has one book

EnneadsPlotinus, Enneads (in Victorinus’ Latin)RationalityNatural Theology

Plotinus’s quotes in the game

Every quotation from Plotinus that a player meets in Scholar’s Dream, attached to the move that says it. Or see them as a plain list →

In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other, and each thing a book can do in a debate is called a move. Every quote below is spoken by one of those moves. Open “How it works in the game” under a quote to see the move, which books learn it, and which arguments it answers best.

“But over this divine, there is still a diviner: grasp the upward neighbour of the soul, its prior and source. Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle.”
Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.3 (trans. Stephen MacKenna & B. S. Page, public domain).public domain

How it works in the game: the move The One Beyond Being

Natural TheologyArgument · power 70 · 95% accurate

In the gamePlotinus gave Augustine a way to think about God that was not made of stuff — which is what finally let him stop imagining God as a very large luminous body.

Learned byEnneads (Lv 22)

Strong against

×2The Two Kingdomsan argument · why?

Plotinus taught Augustine to think of God as spirit, not as a vast body of light. Once God was no longer one substance fighting another, the two kingdoms fell apart.

Passages you can read in the game

Longer excerpts the Scriptorium holds on screen for a player to sit and read, word for word.

“If, then, it is the presence of soul that brings worth, how can a man slight himself and run after other things? You honour the Soul elsewhere; honour then yourself.”
Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.2 (trans. MacKenna & Page, public domain).

from Enneads

“But over this divine, there is still a diviner: grasp the upward neighbour of the soul, its prior and source. Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle.”
Plotinus, Enneads 5.1.3 (trans. MacKenna & Page, public domain).

from Enneads

Words Plotinus’s books borrow from others

Moves these books can learn whose quotation comes from somebody else. The citation on each one names who actually said it.

“He who pleads his cause first seems right; until another comes and questions him.”
Proverbs 18:17 (WEB).

How it works in the game: the move Question the Premise

RationalityType shift

In the gameChallenge the foundation of an argument before it can be pressed. Lowers the foe’s Contend.

Learned byEnneads (Lv 26)

“Let us walk properly, as in the day; not in reveling and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and lustful acts, and not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, for its lusts.”
Romans 13:13–14 (WEB) — the passage his eyes fell on in the garden at Milan. He read no further (Confessions 8.12).

How it works in the game: the move Take Up and Read

BibleArgument · power 80 · 100% accurate

In the gameA child’s voice over a garden wall, chanting a game: take up and read. He took up the book, read the first passage his eyes fell on, and did not need to read any further.

Learned byEnneads (Lv 30)

Strong against

×2.5The Life of Teresa of Jesusa book · why?

Teresa writes that when she read how Augustine heard the voice in the garden, it felt as if the Lord had spoken to her (Life 9.9).

Who else was alive

Plotinus against everyone else in the game.

A.D. 1A.D. 50A.D. 100A.D. 150A.D. 200A.D. 250A.D. 300A.D. 350A.D. 400A.D. 450

Matthew Paul John Mark Pliny the Elder Clement of Rome Ignatius An early Christian community Polycarp Claudius Ptolemy Hermas Justin Martyr Aristides Quadratus Melito Unknown authors writing under borrowed names Irenaeus The author of the Epistle to Diognetus Athenagoras Clement of Alexandria Tertullian Marcus Minucius Felix Origen Cyprian Plotinus Lactantius Eusebius Athanasius Eustathius of Sebaste Apollinaris of Laodicea Cyril of Jerusalem Epiphanius of Salamis Gregory of Nazianzus Basil of Caesarea Eunomius of Cyzicus Gregory of Nyssa Ambrose of Milan Jovinian Augustine The Macedonians Helvidius

Solid bar = firm dates · faded = approximate61 authors sit outside this window