Plotinus on founding freedom in Ennead VI.8[39]

It is commonly assumed that Plotinus was not particularly interested in ethical and practical matters and that the goal he set for the achievement of happiness was essentially contemplative and otherworldly. We owe this assumption to a selection of some passages in Plotinus’ Enneads and also to a very in uential article by Dillon, “An Ethics for the Late Antique Sage” (Dillon 1996b; for Plotinus’ ethics, see Schniewind 2003). e impact of such a reading of Plotinus is that the metaphysical part of his philosophy (broadly speaking, the two rst hypostases: the Intellect and the One) is o en taken as having little or no signi cance regarding the way a sage, in his view, should act “here below”.1