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A PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTION ON PLOTINUS’ CONCEPT OF 

BEAUTY AS AN ECSTATIC EXPERIENCE OF THE SOUL 

Justin Nnaemeka ONYEUKAZIRI 

 

Abstract 

This paper posits Plotinus’ conception of beauty as not only one of the answers to 

the question on how to fill the lacuna created by the demise of religious sublimity 

and awareness in many. But is the most persuasive and transforming way for 

individual spiritual transformation and by extension the transformation of the 

world. It focuses on Plotinus’ concept of beauty, from the perspective of the 

human person. Attention has been given to Plotinus’ aesthetics mostly within the 

general scope of Platonism, focusing on the notion of beauty as form (intellectual 

beauty) and on the question of whether or not beauty is conceived as symmetry 

both in Plato and Plotinus. This paper claims that the notion of beauty for Plotinus 

is an ecstatic experience of the soul. Thus, for Plotinus, beauty is not just 

aesthetical, it is more so a spiritual experience in the soul. This focus on Plotinus’ 

notion of beauty is considered important as an alternative way for the cultivation of 

the interior life, in a world that is increasing becoming secularized. It is also 

relevant because the philosophical focus on beauty has largely been on the object 

out there. Even when a subjective focus is given on the concept of beauty, it is not 

largely focused on the spiritual transformation of the human person. Hence, this 

paper, is an analytical exposition of Plotinus’ works on beauty.  

Keywords: Aesthetics, Beauty, Ecstatic Experience, Soul 

 

1. Introduction 

Plotinus (203-270 CE), as the father of Neo-Platonism no doubt occupies a very 

important position in the history of Western Philosophy, especially in the ranks of 

Hellenistic philosophers. His impact and the influence of his thoughts on Christian 

philosophy and religion in general during its earlier period is enormous. Thus, his 

works are not unfamiliar to many Christian and Islamic religious and philosophical 

scholars, especially during the early medieval period. While attention has been 

sizably given to his metaphysics, comparably less has been given to his aesthetics. 

On many occasions, when attention is given to his aesthetics, it is done within the 

general scope of Platonism. By focusing on the question of whether or not beauty 

is conceived as symmetry or in sense-perception, this work thus, aims at focusing 

on Plotinus’ notion of beauty, from the perspective of the human person. That is to 

say, what does beauty do to the human person; how does beauty affect and 

transform the human person. This paper claims that the notion of beauty for 

Plotinus is an ecstatic experience of the soul. Thus, beauty is not just aesthetical, 

for Plotinus it is more so spiritual. This focus on Plotinus’ notion of beauty is 

considered important as an alternative way for the cultivation of the interior life, in 

a world that is increasing becoming secularized. It is also relevant because the 



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philosophical focus on beauty has largely been on the object out there. Even when 

a subjective focus is given on the concept of beauty, it is not largely focused on the 

spiritual transformation of the human person. Therefore, to execute this research, 

focus would be given primarily to Plotinus’ works and reference to other texts 

would be provided if it is necessary to understand Plotinus’ own text. The 

methodology implored would be more an analytical and personal reflective reading 

of Plotinus. Hence, to put in perspective the Plotinus notion of beauty as the 

ecstatic experience of the soul, a brief exposition of Plotinus’ Cosmology will be 

exposed. This will help to clarify Plotinus’ understanding of the soul and its 

relationship with the realities in his cosmology as its relates to his notion of beauty. 

Thus, to execute this, the following steps are taken: first, concisely expose 

Plotinus’ Cosmology. Second, Plotinus’ Analysis and Critique of the General 

Concept of Beauty will be exposed. Third, a reflection on Beauty as an Ecstatic 

Experience of the Soul will be expounded. Then there will be a conclusion 

reflecting on the transforming effect of beauty in the individual and the world.  

 

2. Plotinus’ Cosmology 

Plotinus is a thinker of an acutely active and rigorous critical mind, yet deeply 

spiritual and transcendental in his thinking and speculation. O’Meara (2010:301), 

describes Plotinus thus: “Among the philosophers of late antiquity Plotinus stands 

out as a thinker of exceptional depth, subtlety, originality and power.” He is indeed 

a man fully devoted to the transcendental life, whose last words to his pupil and his 

doctor, Eustochius, is: “Try to bring the divine in us to the divine in the All” 

(quoted in O’Meara 2010: 302). As a diehard Platonist, to understand the 

philosophy of Plotinus, and specifically his notion of beauty, one has to understand 

at least the fundamental positions in the philosophy of Plato. For instance, with 

respect to the concept of beauty, Yount (2014:49), notes:  

Both philosophers hold the following claims to be true: beauty is a 

Form; beauty is similar to but not identical with the Good; one can 

have a transformative vision of Beauty; the imitator (artist, poet) of 

Beauty does not know if the imitations are in fact beautiful or how bad 

his imitations are.  

 

Besides, the philosophical kinship shared between Plato and Plotinus, to 

understand Plotinus’ philosophy, one also, needs to understand the positions where 

Aristotle differs from Plato.  More so, how Aristotle attempts to resolve the 

problems he considers inherent in Plato’s philosophy. This is because Plotinus, 

though being the most outstanding and faithful Platonist, especially during the 

Hellenistic period, he never considered Aristotle as an adversary of Plato. Plotinus, 

considers Aristotle as walking on the same philosophical paths as his master, Plato, 

and that he misunderstood certain positions of Plato. This, he tries to rectify by 



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mutually employing the philosophical thoughts of both Plato and Aristotle in his 

own philosophical discourse. Keeping with the philosophical spirit of the 

Hellenistic Roman periods, Plotinus thoughts are not merely rational philosophical 

positions separated from life, but a philosophy of life. A seeking, that is aimed at 

being a source of moral and spiritual ways of life for a person. During this period, 

in fact, philosophy as spirituality, the training and preparing of the soul for death, 

was at its peak. Keeping this in mind, the perspective of the cosmology of Plotinus 

could be understood. 

As a Platonist, Plotinus’ world-view or cosmology is idealist, thus, he maintains 

the key trends of Plato’s cosmology and cosmogony. Plato’s main exposition of his 

cosmology is in the dialogue entitled, Timaeus. And Plato’s cosmology is the fruit 

of his reflection and the discussion with his students in Timaeus. Plotinus believes 

in a world that is structurally ordered, with three hypostases/principles: The One, 

the Intellect (nous) and the Soul (psuche). O’Meara (307: footnote no. 11), 

observes: ‘Modern studies sometimes refer to Soul, Intellect and the One, in 

Plotinus, as “hypostases”. However, Plotinus uses the term hupostasis to refer, not 

to the One, but to the realities it produces, and a better term for all three would be 

“principles”, as suggested by Gerson 1994:3.’ He holds the existence of an 

ultimate transcendental reality, the First Principle, which he calls the One or the 

Good. The One is the First, “in the sense that it is simplest, and the self-Sufficient, 

because it is not composed of a number of parts” (Against the Gnostics, Bk II, 

9(1),10). From the one comes the Divine Intellect which contains the Forms of all 

things. After the Divine Intellect comes the Soul, and then the bodies and all other 

lower realities of purely corporal nature. The One is the generative force of all 

things, thus it is the transcendental Absolute Being, Good, Beauty and Truth. Thus, 

the One is beyond the complete grasp of every human language. Hence, he 

maintains, ‘whenever we say “the One” and whenever we say “the Good,” we 

must think that the nature we are speaking of is the same nature, and call it “one” 

not as predicating anything of it but as making it clear to ourselves as far as we 

can’ (Against Gnostics, BK II, 9(1), 5-10). Thus however, language is used, 

however, because it is the only way to communicate or engage in a discourse of 

the One. The One is not like the Judeo-Christian God, that is, a creator outside the 

world. The One is eternally transcendent from the world and immanent in the 

world. In the same way, other levels of being in the Plotinus’ universe, are not 

completely apart from another. Hence, though the Divine Intellect, the Soul and 

body are distinct beings, the body is in the soul, the soul is in the Intellect and the 

Intellect is in the One.   

While the One is the Absolute Good, Plotinus conceives matter, that is the sense-

world, as the principle of evil (in the moral sense).  Plotinus, employs a rational 

formative principle which he calls, logos, that flows from the Intellect, to explain 

the becoming and order of all things by providence (On Providence (1), Book 

3(2),15-25). On the hierarchical order of levels of being in Plotinus, Armstrong 

(1966: xvii), elucidates that the One though ontological remote and distinct from 



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other beings in his cosmology, the One is metaphysically present in all the other 

beings in the hierarchy. Hence, Armstrong (Armstrong,1966: xii) contends that 

there is an outgoing movement from unity (the One) to ever-increasing multiplicity 

(matter), which is a downward movement; the other movement is an upward 

movement from multiplicity to unification (the One). He considers these two 

movements as the profound tension in the thought of Plotinus on the understanding 

of the First Principle.  

This means, that while there is generative movement of multiplicity downwards 

from the One via the Intellect and the Soul, there is a transcendental ascending 

movement of unification and perfection, from the Soul via the Intellect to the One. 

This ontological relationship between the One, the Intellect and the Soul and their 

downward and upward movements respectively, are very essential in 

understanding Plotinus’ notion of beauty. Below, then, shall be an analysis of his 

critique of the general conception of the beautiful. 

 

3. Plotinus’ Analysis and Critique of the General Concept of Beauty 

Plotinus’ concept of beauty is brilliantly exposed in his treatise entitled, On 

Beauty. Plotinus begins this treatise by reflecting on how beauty has been hitherto 

generally understood. Hence, Plotinus (On Beauty Book(Bk) 1, 6(1), 1-5) submits:  

Beauty is mostly in sight, but it is to be found too in things we hear, in 

combinations of words and also in music, and in all music [not only in 

songs]; for tunes and rhythms are certainly beautiful: and for those who 

are advancing upwards from sense-perception ways of life and actions 

and characters and intellectual activities are beautiful, and there is the 

beauty of virtue. 

 

In the above reference, Plotinus briefly summarizes how beauty has been generally 

conceived before and during his era. Thus, it should not be understood as the 

definition of beauty proper to him. His assertion is, according to the general view 

of many, beauty is conceived as activities within the realm of sense-perception. He 

strongly disagrees with this position. To this general view, the organs for sight and 

hearing, are the most prevalent human organs in the activities of conceiving 

beauty. When this is the case, then objects of beauty, could be found in physical 

and visible objects of nature and in fine and literary art works, like painting, 

sculpture, drawings, music, poetry, and songs of different forms.  The second level 

of the general view of beauty in his submission stated above, is the conception of 

beauty in “action and characters.” Though Plotinus did not provide examples of the 

beauties conceived in “action and characters”. It would not be incorrect to include 

here the beauties of drama, play and other theatric activities and the beauty of 

sports and military actions.  The third level of the general view of beauty, is the 



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beauty of or in intellectual activities: this would include all contemplative activities 

that engage the human mind or intellect. Definitely the engagement in the natural 

sciences, mathematics and above all Philosophy (metaphysics) would belong to 

this category of beauty.  The fourth level of the general view of beauty is the 

beauty of virtue: The beauty of virtue as the name implies is the beauty of the soul 

as a result of the virtuous activities of the soul. Thus, this, is the beauty we 

perceive in the actions of a courageous, humble, patient, charitable person and the 

like.  

Among the four general views of beauty highlighted above as summarized by 

Plotinus, the first and the second are not considered to be essential in what Plotinus 

constitutes as the beautiful. He only considers the third and the fourth views as the 

activities where what constitutes beauty could be possible. It shall be argued 

below, that Plotinus considers the beauty of virtue as the greatest of all conceptions 

of beauty. The beauties of intellectual activities and the beauty of virtue are both 

that of non-sense-perception. They are spiritual in nature, for they involve and 

engage the interior life of a person. Therefore, Plotinus considers the realm of 

sense-perception as not being principal for the conception of beauty.  

In the second paragraph on the treatise On Beauty (Bk 1, 6(1), 10-20), Plotinus 

raises six questions which could be considered as fundamental aesthetic questions: 

a. What makes us imagine or think a thing (body) is beautiful and attracts us? 

b. How are all the things which depend on the soul beautiful? 

c. Are things all beautiful by a single beauty or are there different beauties in 

different things? 

d. What is this single or multiple beauties? 

e. What is the principle of beauty which is present in bodies (things)? 

f. What is it that attracts the gaze of people to a thing and makes them to 

enjoy the thing? 

(a) raises the question on the why and where of the beautiful. Is the beautiful 

objectively in things or subjectively in the person who perceives the object? In 

other words, is the beautiful in the object per se, or in the person per se or in both? 

(b) presupposes that things depends on the soul to be judged to be beautiful. Which 

means that the beautiful is not in the object per se. But the critical question of (b), 

is how does the beautiful in a thing/object depend on the soul? This he claims has 

to do with the forms of things. Things can be beautiful because they possess forms. 

As would be argued below, for Plotinus to be formless is to be ugly; formlessness 

is disorder. The question (c) raises the problematic that is inherent when the 

beautiful is conceived in respect to being “well-proportioned” or mathematically 

symmetrical. When a beautiful house is adjudged to be such, is it as a result of the 

combination of the beauty of the constituted parts that are well-proportioned or is it 

as a result of the collective whole, which is the house? If it is either a single beauty 

or multiple beauties, (d) seeks to know what this beauty or these beauties are. (e) 



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raises the questions on the quiddity of beauty, what makes beautiful things 

beautiful? That is to say what is the Form of beauty per se? He considers, the last 

question (f) of a paramount importance. For the understanding of it, he thinks is a 

stepping-stone to the understanding of the rest of the questions. (f) presupposes 

that the beautiful attracts and excites. But why do we get attracted to the beautiful 

and are excited in the beautiful is the crux of the question. 

Thus, he asks: “What is it that attracts the gaze of those who look at something, 

and turns and draws them to it and makes them enjoy the sight?” First, he gives the 

general responses of people. The first and common response is “good proportion of 

the parts to each other and to the whole, with the addition of good colour” (Bk 1, 

6(1), 20-25). Simply put, being beautiful is being “well-proportioned and 

measured.” This is the question: whether or not beauty is symmetry? There has 

been a scholarly controversy among scholars on Plotinus, whether Plato and 

Plotinus have the same view on beauty as symmetry. Yount (2014:49-51), claims, 

Anton and Rist, posit that Plato did not hold beauty as symmetry but Plotinus does; 

but contrary to their views, he argues that both Plato and Plotinus are in agreement 

on the idea of symmetry and beauty. Yount argues, that Plotinus holds that beauty 

is Form, but only argues for beauty as symmetry with regards to objects of sense-

perception. And he believes that, that is also Plato’s position. Gerson (1994), 

seems to hold that Plotinus was reluctant to identify beauty with symmetry. He 

contends: “On reflection, however, the refusal to identify beauty, even bodily 

beauty, with symmetry is somewhat puzzling. As we have seen, matter is 

unmeasuredness or absence of symmetry and form is a kind of symmetry” (p. 213). 

This paper argues, neither Plato nor Plotinus opposes this theory, they both hold 

that well-proportioned and measure of parts and the whole, make up what is said to 

be beautiful. Nevertheless, they did not consider well-proportioned and measure, 

that is, symmetry, as what defines the beautiful. It is the contemporaneous 

Hellenistic school of thought, the Stoics, who exclusively define the beautiful as 

well-proportioned and measured with the addition of good colour (see Cicero, 

Tusculan Disputations, IV). Plotinus’ contention on this theory, is that if well-

proportioned and measured is what essentially defines the beautiful, it implies that 

“nothing single and simple but only a composite thing will have any beauty” (Bk 

1, 6(1), 25-30). For if beauty is in the whole as well-proportioned, it implies, the 

parts cannot be beautiful, since the parts are not well-proportioned. But how can 

there be the whole without the part? One can not even conceive the whole without 

necessarily conceiving the parts. Hence, Plotinus contends, if it is the case that 

beauty is exclusively well-proportioned, then, only the whole will be beautiful not 

the parts that make the whole. For the parts of a whole, do not have the property of 

beauty by themselves. When the beauty of a thing is grasped, the thing is grasped 

as a whole not in parts.  

Plotinus’ question for those who claim that beauty is well-proportioned per se, 

then will be, how can the whole be beautiful when the parts that makes the whole 



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are not beautiful? Plotinus’ counterargument is that, “if the whole is beautiful the 

parts must be beautiful too; a beautiful whole can certainly not be composed of 

ugly parts; all the parts must have beauty” (Bk 1, 6(1), 30-35). Therefore, he 

deductively contends that it is not possible for the whole to be beautify without the 

parts. More so, even for a body that is whole, sometimes either because of lack of 

colours, or excess of colour from natural sunlight or from human made lights, 

things are judged to be beautiful or not beautiful. Therefore, Plotinus rejects this 

theory of beauty as well-proportioned as unsubstantial. He adjudges, “being 

beautiful is something else over and above good proportion, and good proportion is 

beautiful because of something else” (Bk 1, 6(1), 40-45). This “something else” 

that constitutes “being beautiful” is what this paper intends to disclose and will be 

explored below. Plotinus, further rejects this theory (beauty as well-proportioned 

or symmetry) by arguing from beauty as actions: intellectual actions and virtuous 

actions. He holds that it will be practically impossible to state what constitutes the 

“well-proportioned” in these non-body-like activities, if one considers them as 

having beauty.  

After establishing that the theory on well-proportioned and measured in addition 

with good colour, is not sustainable for defining the beautiful, he proffers what he 

thinks the primary beauty in bodies is. He maintains that the primary beauty in 

bodies:  

Is something which we become aware of even at the first glance; the 

soul speaks of it as if it understood it, recognizes and welcomes it and 

as it were adapts itself to it. But when it encounters the ugly it shrinks 

back and rejects it and turns away from it and is out of tune and 

alienated from it (Bk 1, 6(2),1-10). 

 

With this reference, Plotinus maintains a different position on the conception of the 

beautiful. He points to the soul as the fundamental factor in the conception of the 

beautiful. He makes the soul of the human person the ground where the activities 

of beauty take place. For him what makes a thing beautiful is the form of the thing, 

and this form of the thing can only be grasped by the soul of the human person. 

Hence, without the soul it is not possible to grasp the beauty of things. But how 

does Plotinus conceive the soul, which is for him the fundamental principle where 

the conception of the beautiful happens? 

Plotinus’ conception of the soul is akin to the fundamentals of Plato’s conception 

of the soul, however, it has its own specificity. Plotinus agrees with Plato, in the 

understanding of the soul as the true spiritual and incorporeal being of the human 

being that inhabits in a physical and corporal body. Thus, both agree that the soul 

is the “great intermediary between the worlds of intellect and sense and the 

representative of the former in the latter” (Armstrong, 1966: xxii). Plotinus, unlike 



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Plato, distinguishes the concept of the third hypostasis/principle (that is to say, the 

hypostasis after the One and the Intellect, in the hierarchical structure of Plotinus’ 

cosmology as exposed above), into two: the individual souls and the Universal 

Soul. This means for Plotinus, the third hypostasis (the soul) in his hierarchy of 

beings, though one reality is understood in two ways, the Universal Soul and the 

individual souls. The Universal Soul is the same soul that individuates itself as the 

individual souls in every human person. Thus the individual soul as the form of the 

body for Plotinus is more in the sense of the Plato’s form than in the sense of the 

Aristotle’s form. The soul of which Plotinus speaks of in reference to beauty, is the 

individual souls. It is the part of a person where the contemplation of forms, and 

actions of virtues are produced and enacted. It is that part of a person that can bring 

the individual into union with the Absolute One.  

Hence, Plotinus maintains that, the soul by its very nature, “is related to the higher 

kind of reality in the realm of being, when it sees something akin to it or a trace of 

its kindred reality, is delighted and thrilled and returns to itself and remembers 

itself and its own possessions” (Bk 1, 6(2), 5-10). What this implies, is that 

Plotinus thinks that the soul which is spiritual has the similitude and capacity not 

only to recognize the beauty as a form of everything beautiful, but to also delight 

in beauty per se. In other words, there is something in the nature of the soul that 

enables it to grasp the beautiful. It is only by the means of the soul that beauty as 

one of the forms produced by the One, by the creative principle of Logos in the 

Intellect can be grasped and experienced by the human person.  

Hence, it implies that for Plotinus, the beauty is not in sense-perceptions but in the 

soul or the Intellect. He maintains, that things are beautiful in the material world 

because they participate in the form of the beauty in the Intellect. He puts it thus: 

“We maintain that the things in this world are beautiful by participating in form” 

(Bk 1, 6(2),15). While he explains absolute ugliness, thus: “for every shapeless 

thing which is naturally capable of receiving shape and form is ugly and outside 

the divine formative power and form” (Bk 1, 6(2),15-20). One should be careful 

not to understand the sense of form here, merely as the structure of a thing as in 

Aristotle’s notion of form. For as in Plato’s notion of form, Plotinus holds that 

everything has, or better put is capable of a form. If beauty is well-formness, 

ugliness is the distortion of form. It is thus the privation of the form of a thing that 

is naturally capable of receiving form, which is thus, outside the divine formative 

power, that is said to be absolute ugliness.  

Below, shall be an exposition of how the soul grasps the form of the beautiful and 

what happens to the soul in its experience of the beautiful. 

 
4. Beauty as Ecstatic Experience of the Soul  

For Plotinus, beauty like truth is grasped by the contemplation of the soul on the 

form of beauty in things, as the soul ascends upwards through the Intellect towards 

union with the One. The beauty grasped by the contemplation of the soul, is 



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referred by Plotinus as “the beauty beyond.” He maintains that, “about the beauties 

beyond, which it is no more the part of sense to see, but the soul sees them and 

speaks of them without instruments—we must go up to them and contemplate 

them and leave sense to stay down below” (Bk, 6(4), 1-5). It follows, that, the 

grasping of the beauty beyond involves a personal encounter or an intuitive 

experience of the soul with the form of the beautiful. To this effect, Plotinus posits 

this experience of the beauty, thus: “These experiences must occur whenever there 

is contact with any sort of beautiful thing, wonder and a shock of delight and 

longing and passion and a happy excitement” (Bk, 6(4),15-20). Thus, one can say 

for Plotinus the quiddity of an aesthetic experience is: a feeling of wonder, a shock 

of delight, passionate longing, and a happy excitement. These feelings are 

experienced irrespective of the beautiful thing encountered. Based on the fact that 

these experiences take effect in the soul of a person, Plotinus thus, argues for the 

reality of invisible beauties. Hence, holding that one can have these aesthetic 

experiences, he adjudges that the souls can have invisible beauties, especially in 

the soul of those who are passionately in love with the invisible activities, which 

are basically activities of the mind and virtue (See Bk, 6(4),20ff).  

Using the metaphor of loving affection stung sharply between lovers, Plotinus, 

engages in a discourse of beauty as an ecstatic experience of the soul. The 

experience of love between lovers, carnal or spiritual, has the characteristic 

experiences used by Plotinus to describe the experience of beauty. They are: 

wonder, a shock of delight, passionate longing, and a happy excitement. Plotinus’ 

project here is to demonstrate that the kind of ecstatic experience that happens in 

the soul of the lover in the encounter with the beloved, is a similar kind of ecstatic 

experience that happens in the soul of the person who in union with the One, 

encounters the form of beauty in beautiful things. 

Plotinus, asks the question: What makes lovers to have the above feeling? He 

completely rules out all activities on the order of sense-perception, such as shape, 

colour, size, as the cause of the ecstatic experience in the lover.  But he claims that 

what makes lovers have these feelings is because of the presence of the souls 

which possess a moral order of virtues. He claims that, “you feel like this when 

you see, in yourself or in someone else, greatness of soul, a righteous life, a pure 

morality, courage with its noble look, and dignity and modesty advancing in a 

fearless, calm and unperturbed disposition, and the godlike light of intellect 

shining upon all this” (Bk, 6(5),10-15). By this response, Plotinus once again 

dismisses mere “well-proportioned and colour” as the essential properties of 

beauty. He thus exults beauty to a more sublime realm, that is effected by 

righteousness, virtues and an illuminated intellectual life.  These properties of 

beauty, righteousness, virtues and illuminated intellectual life, as adduced by 

Plotinus, are of the invisible and spiritual sublime realm that the soul must attain in 

order to truly grasp the beauty. They are what throw us into wonder and 

excitement when we are in love. Courageous acts or the virtues of patient 

endurance and charity are always attractive and applauded by all, irrespective of 



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time, nationality, race, colour or culture. This explains why ethics and aesthetics 

always go together and are rarely inseparable. This sustains the point made above 

that for Plotinus, beauty is essentially a spiritual experience in the soul, not in the 

activities of sense-perception.  

Having established beauty as the ecstatic experience in the soul due to the 

contemplative relationship of the soul on the form of beauty, Plotinus further 

argues that beauty, “really exists”, by the real existence of the properties that 

reveal the beautiful above. That is to say, beauty as form in the Intellect, has 

subsistence existence. Beauty is not merely the idea or the notion of the beautiful, 

it has a real existence. Thus, the human soul becomes a beautiful soul when it falls 

in love with Beauty in its path to union with the One.  According to Gerson 

(1994:212), this happens “Because beauty is a property of Forms as contemplated, 

images of Forms possess images of that property. Images of beauty are found in 

bodies, and generally in objects of sight; objects of other senses; ways of life; 

actions; characters; and virtue (1.6.1).” In other words, individual things and 

actions or virtue are beautiful because in them is possessed the image of the form 

of Beauty. Therefore, what happens in the experience of the beautiful is the 

encounter of the soul with the form of Beauty per se.  This thus, requires a 

transcending upward movement of the human soul beyond the natural realm of 

sense-perception of individual things. This transcendence movement of the soul is 

enabled and perfected by activities of: virtue, righteousness and intellection. 

Hence, these activities are what makes the soul lovable and beautiful. Therefore, 

for the soul to maintain its beauty, it must not be corrupted by matter and the 

desires and passions of the body. For, “So we shall be right in saying that the soul 

becomes ugly by mixture and dilution and inclination towards the body and 

matter” (Bk, 6(5),45-50). Thus, the soul must constantly purge itself of the lust of 

the body, by leading a virtuous and righteous life with a love for a contemplative 

intellectual life.  

Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo, has argued strongly for philosophy as the major means 

for the purification of the soul, asserting: “release and separation of the soul from 

the body is the preoccupation of the philosophers” (67d). Thus, the courageous and 

self-controlled soul is not consumed by the fire of lusts of the body and has no fear 

of death, since death brings forth the final liberation of the soul from the body. 

Plotinus, then submits: “So the soul when it is purified becomes form and 

formative power, altogether bodiless and intellectual and entirely belonging to the 

divine, whence beauty springs and all that is akin to it. Soul, then, when it is raised 

to the level of intellect increases in beauty” (Bk, 6(5),15-20). As the soul ascends 

upwards toward the Intellect in the Plotinus’ cosmology, it increases in beauty. 

This is because, “Intellect and the things of intellect are its beauty, its own beauty 

and not another’s, since only then [when it is perfectly conformed to intellect] is it 

truly soul” (Bk, 6(5),15-20). Since the soul becomes truly the soul when it 

conforms to the Intellect, the soul, thus, becomes truly beautiful when it units with 

the universal soul, in the Intellect. To this effect, Gerson (1994:212), maintains: 



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“just as the desire for good is the desire to be associated with Intellect in 

contemplating Forms, so beauty is that aspect of intelligible reality that produces 

delight in the contemplator when contemplation is occurring.” Beyond the 

conformity with the intellect, the soul becomes not only beautiful but also good, 

when it units with the One, God. By God here, Plotinus’s God should be 

understood. Which is the Ultimate First Principle of reality, which because it is the 

Absolute, is the Absolute Good and the Absolute Beauty. On the contrary, a soul 

that is not tending in union with the One, becomes ugly and evil. Note, by evil, 

Plotinus means a privation of the good, and by ugly he means a privation of the 

beautiful. Now God, the One, is the Absolute Beauty from which comes the 

Intellect, which is beauty. The soul is given beauty by Intellect. Hence it is the 

shaping of the soul that makes everything beautiful. The soul, which is a form can 

and is what grasps and masters the form of the beautiful in all things said to be 

beautiful. In fact, the things that are beautiful exist because they have forms and 

they are spoken of as beautiful by the form of the human person which is the soul 

(see Bk, 6(7),35ff). 

Having established, what beauty, and how the soul can be beautiful and how the 

soul makes everything it grasps beautiful, Plotinus makes a passionate appeal to 

seek the truly beautiful, the One, God. Since, the One, is the remote source of all 

forms which is the cause of the beautiful, the most sublime experience of the 

beautiful is union with the One. He exhorts that the seeking of this beauty is worth 

more than any other attainment in life. Hence for him, failure in life lays not in the 

inability to attain physical or perceptive beauties, nor socio-political beauties. It 

lays rather in the failure to grasp and unite with the Absolute beauty, which is the 

One. For a true lover of the One gives away every attainment in order to be united 

with the One, God (see Bk, 6(7),35ff).  

This kind of person, no doubt must be spiritual minded not carnal; must seek the 

things above not the things below; must search for the good interiorly not 

exteriorly. Hence, Gerson (1994:216), expounding this point, maintains that 

Plotinus by this position: 

… describes and promotes qualifiedly a world-renouncing 

conversion…. Let us remember that this call to holiness…. is located 

in the middle of a discussion of beauty. This remarkable association of 

the religious with the aesthetic is not of course uniquely Plotinian. But 

it is to say naturally Plotinian.   

 

The soul of such a person must be ready to undergo a necessary training, “first of 

all to look at beautiful ways of life: then at beautiful works, not those which the 

arts produce, but the works of men who have a name for goodness: then look at the 

souls of the people who produce the beautiful works” (Bk, 6(9),1-10). With 



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personal cultivation and training of this sort, the flight of the soul to its lover, 

Intellect, becomes possible and easy. For the Intellect, is the beauty par excellence, 

and from the Intellect, the soul aims at union with the source of beauty, the One. 

Only the souls which are akin and are like the One, can grasp and be beautiful as 

the One. For as he posits, “No eye ever saw the sun without becoming sun-like, 

nor can a soul see beauty without becoming beautiful” (Bk, 6(9),25-35). What it 

implies is that one must necessarily become godlike in order to be united with the 

One, God and become beautiful. And the path to godlikeness is the ascent of the 

soul to the intellect, where lies the Form of beauty, by the ascent to the Intellect to 

union with the One. 

 

 

5. Conclusion 

This paper focused on Plotinus’ notion of beauty as the ecstatic experience of the 

soul, by arguing that sense-perception is not considered essential for the grasp of 

beauty in Plotinus. It engaged in a reflection of Plotinus’ notion or conception of 

beauty as it concerns the spiritual transformation of the human person. That is to 

say, what beauty does to the human person, how beauty affects and transforms the 

human person, and by extension how the beautiful soul could transform the world. 

It emphasizes that for Plotinus beauty is not just aesthetical, it is more so a spiritual 

experience in the soul. It is the transcending upward movement of the soul in union 

with the One, through the contemplation of the form, Beauty, in the Intellect.  

Now, one may ask: Of what relevance is Plotinus’ philosophy of beauty to the 

world today? This paper contends that Plotinus’ notion of beauty as ecstatic 

experience of the soul is relevant now, not only for the transformation of the 

individual human person, but also for the transformation of the world today. Of 

course, when individuals are transformed, the world by logical necessity will be 

transformed since it is individual human persons that make up the world as a social 

reality. The world today epistemologically speaking, is a scientifically led world. 

People today seek empirically based fact; thus, truth is becoming equal to fact and 

knowledge equal to science. Our world, led by this epistemologically attitude has 

brought enormously unparalleled economic and technological advancements when 

compared to any other period in human history. The metaphysics that seem to 

support this epistemological disposition is fundamentally materialistic and/or 

physicalistic. The natural consequence of such metaphysical dispositions, coupled 

with capitalistic economic pursuit, is atheism or at best agnosticism or secularism. 

In this kind of world, religion is either killed, suppressed or manipulated. In Africa, 

and most other parts of developing areas of the world, religion is getting more and 

more manipulated. While in the developed parts, religion is getting more and more 

directly or indirectly suppressed.  



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As the world becomes more scientifically advanced and economically richer, the 

souls of men and women are becoming more and more impoverished and thirsty 

for truth, beauty and tranquility. The interior part, the soul, of the human person 

can only be cultivated and guided by the teachings of religious masters and/or the 

teachings of wise persons, generally called philosophers. Religion and philosophy 

take upon themselves the responsibility to guide the spiritual, intellectual and 

moral lives of people. They also cultivate the soul to transcend the world of sense-

perception and encounter the transcendent beyond. But in the event when more and 

more people are becoming areligious, secularized or atheistic, the souls of many 

are panting for a means to satisfy their longing for the sublime and for the order of 

their interior being. It is little wonder that there is revival of philosophical 

discourses in most developing parts of the world. It is interesting to see a wave of 

revival in the ancient and Hellenistic philosophies in the West and the increase 

intensity in the study and research of classical Chinese philosophy and Buddhist 

philosophy in the East. Many non-religious people are going to Stoicism, Neo-

Platonism, Epicureanism, Confucianism and Buddhism, as guides to cultivate their 

interior life and spirituality. More and more, it is becoming clearer to many that the 

problem of the world today is not merely socio-political or scientific, It is rather, 

greatly aesthetical, or more precisely meta-aesthetical. There is a role that religion 

plays in human consciousness, which is a constant reminder to the human person 

on the transient nature of this world and of the value and aspiration towards the 

transcendental. But with secularization and atheism overwhelming many parts of 

the West and with the manipulation and commercialization of religion in Africa, 

aesthetical awakening has become a central option for the salvation of human 

interiority.   

This paper posits Plotinus’ conception of beauty as not only one of the answers to 

the question on how to fill the lacuna created by the demise of religious sublimity 

and awareness in many. But is the most persuasive and transforming way for 

individual spiritual transformation and by extension the transformation of the 

world. The person who follows the path of Plotinus’ activities of the soul in the 

grasp of beauty, becomes a beautiful soul in itself. The “beautiful soul” of 

Plotinus, is always longing for and desires to remain in the ecstatic experience of 

beauty and union with the One. It does not attach itself to goods and honours of 

this world of sense-perception. Because it has a beautiful soul, it is well-ordered 

and endeavours to make everything it encounters ordered. The beautiful soul puts 

forms in everything that is formless, by so doing making the ugly beautiful. When 

the souls of men and women of this world are converted, and transformed into the 

beautiful soul of Plotinus, this world will be definitely be more peaceful, just and 

livable.   

Therefore, this paper is a reminder of the place of philosophical reflection in our 

world today and a call to visit or revisit the richness in the philosophy of Plotinus, 

a man who spent his life desiring to have a beautiful soul. 



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