/lit/ - Literature

In reaction to the mortalism of the Epicureans, Stoics, and later Peripatetics, Plotinus set out, in Plato’s footsteps, to prove that the individual soul is immortal. He sets out his case in one of his earliest writings, Ennead 4. 7 (2), On the Immortality of the Soul. If the soul is the principle of life in living beings, it cannot itself be bodily in nature. If it is a body, it must be either one of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, or a compound of one or more of them. But the elements are themselves lifeless. If a compound
has life, this must be due to a particular proportion of the elements in the compound: but this must have been conferred by something else, the cause that provides the recipe for and combines the ingredients of the mixture. This something else is soul