Plotinus on Body and Beauty: Society, Philosophy, and Religion in Third-Century Rome

Plotinus, the most profound philosopher of the third century C.E., has been influential on Byzantine and Western Christianity, and Islam. In the West, Augustine brought Plotinian philosophy into Christianity, ensuring the interest of a long line of Christian thinkers. As Margaret Miles shows, Plotinus’s philosophy holds both perennial attraction and offers specific contributions to particular issues at the beginning of the twenty first century.

Miles offers a fresh interpretation which situates Plotinus’s philosophical ideas in the context of society and culture in which those ideas developed. Using extant evidence (the Enneads, Porphyry’s Life), she reconstructs an intense third-century conversation, n namely the relationship of body and soul. Mile’s portrayal of Plotinus will encourage readers from a range of disciplines to question their construction of body, "self", and identity.