The Middle Platonists he sees the Platonic tradition reaching its
culmination in Plotinus: 'I have striven to write the history of the
period with hardly a glance forward to Plotinus. This . . . has been
a deliberate move, to prevent him from dominating the scene.
This does not alter the fact that Middle Platonism must always be
of interest chiefly as a prologue to Plotinus.' ⁷

Others see Plotinus as an independent and original thinker
using Plato, where appropriate, to support his own ideas. J.M. Rist
says ' Plotinus' major motive for philosophizing is to rationalize his
own intuitions and experiences. Plotinus is a Platonist because
Plato enables him to achieve this with the most success', ⁸ R. E.
Witt suggests that Plotinus first formulates a system of his own
and then elicits the same doctrines from Plato, ⁹ and W. K. C.
Guthrie is even more extreme in saying 'With Plotinus and his
followers . . . there does seem to enter a new religious spirit which
is not fundamentally Greek'. ¹⁰ But if this were the case, and if
Plotinus were exploiting Plato in this way, it seems strange that
he should devote the major part of his writing to an examination
of Plato's doctrines in which the sacrosanctity of those doctrines
is paramount. Nor would he have asked the permission of the
Emperor Gallienus to rebuild a ruined 'city of philosophers' in
Campania as Platonopolis, in which the intended inhabitants, who
were to include Plotinus and his friends, were to live according to
the laws of Plato. ¹¹

Others take an intermediate position, including Dodds, who
claims that ' Plotinus built his structure very largely out of used
pieces, the materials that Greek philosophical tradition presented
to him. But the essence of the Plotinian system lies in the new
meaning which the whole imposed on the parts; its true originality
is not in the materials but in the design'. ¹²

Yet others see Plotinus as a Platonist intent on transmitting the
teachings of Plato to his own generation; in the words of Henry
'a Plato not transmuted and transposed, but rediscovered and
revitalised'. ¹³ Perhaps the last word on this question ought to go to
Plotinus himself, who says at V. 1. 8. 10 'these words are nothing

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