Plotin und die moderne Literatur

This chapter gives an overview of the reception of Plotinus in modern and contemporary literature from the 18th to the 21st century. It discusses the presence of Plotinus or Plotinian ideas in German classical literature, in European Romanticism and American transcendentalism as well as in anti-modernist and esoteric movements around 1900 and in modern authors as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, Jorge Luis Borges and Philip K. Dick. While the sheer amount of Plotinizing material is impressive, it is important to take into account the peculiarities of reception in each epoch, because knowledge of Plotinus is usually mediated through academic or popular sources and because the image a given author has of Plotinus or what he takes to be (Neo-)Platonism is always dependent on their general outlook, whether literary or ideological.