“To Try to Bring the Divine in Us Back Up to the Divine in the All”: The Gnostic Background of Plotinus’s Last Words

Abstract

Controversy has long surrounded Plotinus’s dying words to his disciple Eustochius, as reported by Porphyry in his Vita Plotini. This paper focuses not on the philological difficulties of his last words, but their philosophical significance. First, it argues that these words are in fact intelligible within Plotinus’s overall system: they evoke an insoluble paradox at the very center of his conception of contemplative ascent. Second, it argues that these words find significant parallels in Platonizing Sethian sources, by which Plotinus was likely influenced (and not vice versa). Third, it suggests that his final words may have been a ritual utterance, something like the “redemption” rite performed at the moment of death among followers of the Valentinian heresiarch Marcus, as reported by Irenaeus. This would help to explain the urgency of his dying words: could Plotinus have been waiting on Eustochius precisely so he could utter this “last rite,” as it were, in his company and thus “bring the divine in us back up to the Divine in the All”?