Plotinus was influenced by the sapiential teaching of Plato, late platonists as Numenius, and Ammonius. The true starting points of Plotinus' philosophy are not platonic texts but a mystical experience both of God and of the inner spiritual world. Owing to the descending evolution from One to matter, longing and impulse towards the One are a natural disposition in man. Against this background, ethics and politics play little part in plotinian teaching. On the other side, plotinian positive conception of the world as reflecting the supreme goodness is whoiiy opposed to gnostic contempt of material cosmos, extended to social and political fields. Gnostics, moreover, sustain the possession by a few men of divine sonship conveying the eschatological identificationn with, God, whereas Numenius and Plotinus conceive a universal capacity to selfdivinisation conveying withdrawal of the NI» when the Eros wiii be the only self.
Later neoplatonists biased this mystical trend by introducing theurgic and demonicalntes borrowed from the East. In the way of shaping rites and hierarchy they were surpassed by the christian neoplatonists.
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