In Disagreement with the Academy

[sdi]

A little conversation that came up lately where I realized my opinions have hardened further against the mainstream...

A. Wait, that's not what Plato says!

@sdi. Yeah, but I just don't like Plato very much. He makes me angry.

A. But how are you so into Neoplatonism, then?

@sdi. Okay, this is controversial but I'm just going to go ahead and say it: I don't think Plotinus was a Platonist. Yeah, yeah, everyone says he was; but in my opinion, Plotinus was something else entirely. To be a Platonist, you have to take up and teach the positions of Plato, but Plotinus didn't do this: he taught his own experiences and reasoning, and willfully read contortions into Plato in order to shore it up. He used Plato as a resource rather than a source. I'll accept that Porphyry was a Platonist, and Proclus super definitely was a Platonist, but I think Plotinus was more like a Socrates than either of them: just doing his own weird thing.

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The obvious counterexample to my thesis is that whole Platonopolis business [Life of Plotinus XII]. I'm honestly not sure what to make of that, since it's so out of character for our philosopher (at least, per his writings). It seems to me that his dæmon did well to keep it from coming off, though; I can't see how it could possibly have worked out well for him.

(It didn't come up in the conversation, but I think it is similar with Neopythagoreanism: Plotinus' mystical take on number is so at odds with the likes of Nicomachus or Pseudo-Iamblichus that it seems to me to be impossible to reconcile.)