Ancient Philosophy · Part 25 · Rome, Alexandria and beyond · C1
Plotinus and Hypatia: The One and the Last Philosopher of Alexandria
Part 25 of Ancient Philosophy: two hundred years after Philo, an Egyptian-born philosopher will turn Plato into a vision of the One, from which everything flows like light from the sun. Two hundred years after him, in Philo’s own city, a woman will teach mathematics and Plato until a mob kills her. Cleft sentences (It was in Alexandria that…; What Plotinus taught was…), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the end of the story of ancient philosophy, and it happens here, in Alexandria.
It was in Alexandria that the greatest Platonist after Plato will learn philosophy, and it was in Alexandria that the last famous philosopher of this city will die. One story is beautiful; the other is terrible.
Plotinus (about 205–270 CE) will be born in Egypt and will study philosophy in Alexandria for eleven years with a teacher called Ammonius Saccas. He will then teach in Rome. His pupil Porphyry will collect his writings into six groups of nine treatises, the Enneads, and write his life.
Plotinus will teach that everything comes from the One, beyond all thought and being, from which flow Intellect and Soul, as light flows from the sun. The human soul can return to the One by turning inward. Modern scholars call his philosophy Neoplatonism; he simply thought he was explaining Plato.
Hypatia (about 355–415 CE), daughter of the mathematician Theon, will teach mathematics, astronomy and Platonic philosophy in Alexandria. She will be killed by a Christian mob in 415, during a violent conflict between the city’s bishop and its prefect. Her own writings are lost.
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