Tugend

The most characteristic feature of Plotinus’ ethics is his distinction of social or civic virtues (aretai politikai) and kathartic or purificatory virtues (aretai kathartikai), from which later Neoplatonists developed the doctrine of the scales of virtues. Already in Plotinus himself, civic and karthartic virues are steps of an ascending movement that successively purifies the philosopher’s soul and enables it to contemplate Intellect itself, where the paradigmatic Forms of the virtues reside. This chapter discusses the characteristics of the Plotinian kinds of virtue and the ways in which they are acquired and addresses the problem – much debated in scholarship – if and how, in an ethical theory that largely equates virtue and self-perfection, there can be a convincing argument for other-regard and an ethics of social life.