Conclusion

Summary

Lloyd Gerson wrote in his 1994 monograph on Plotinus: “The elements of Plotinus’ thought that can usefully be labeled ‘mystical’ are rather easily isolated from his other epistemological doctrines.” Whether that is true depends heavily on how we understand “mystical”. In any case, Gerson proposes to reconstruct a firmly third-person, objective view of Plotinus’ philosophy. This book is an attempt at something quite different, namely, to see not only Plotinus’ epistemological doctrines but also his metaphysical doctrines as impossible to isolate from the “mystical” or “contemplative”, or, as I have argued here, the first-person, subjective dimension of his philosophy. As a result of such a reconstruction, Plotinus’ philosophy as a whole is contemplative. Everything in it contemplates and everything is contemplation.