We must focus our observations on Plotinos as a philosopher. To
begin with, we should review his successors, Porphyry, Jamblichus,
Sallust, Proclus, Hierocles, Simplicius;[738] Macrobius;[739] Priscus;
Olympicdorus and John Philoponus.[740]
Among the Arabian philosophers that follow in his steps are Maimonides
and Ibn Gebirol.[741]
Of the Christian fathers we first have two who paraphrased, rather than
quoted him.
St. Augustine by name quotes i. 6; iii. 2; iv. 3, and v. 1; he
paraphrases parts of i. 2; ii. 1; iii. 6, 7; iv. 2, 7; vi. 5, 6.[742]
St. Basil so closely paraphrases parts of Plotinos in his treatise on
the Holy Spirit,[743] his letter on the Monastic Life,[744] and his
Hexameron,[745] that Bouillet prints the passage in question in deadly
parallel.
Other Christian Plotonic students were Gregory of Nyssa, Synesius,
Dionysius the Areopagite, Theodorus, Aeneas of Gaza, Gennadius;[746]
Victorinus;[747] Nicephorus Chumnus;[748] and Cassiodorus.[749]
Thomas Aquinas also was much indebted to Plotinos; and after him came
Boethius, Fénélon, Bossnet and Leibnitz (all quoted in Bouillet's work).
We have frequently pointed out that Plotinos' "bastard reasoning"
process of reaching the intelligible was practically paraphrased by
Kant's dialectical path to the "thing-in-itself." This dialetic, of
course, was capitalized by Hegel.
Drews has shown that Edouard von Hartmann used Plotinos'
semi-devotional ecstasy as a metaphysical basis for his philosophy of
the Unconscious.
It is, of course, among mystics that Plotinos has been accorded the
greater honor. His practical influence descended through the visions
and ecstasies of the saints down to Swedenborg, who attempted to write
the theology of the ecstasy; and the relation between these two,
Swedenborg and Plotinos should prove a fertile field for investigation.