Return to the One ISBN 978-0-9777352-1-1 is an exposition of the teachings of Plotinus, a Greek mystic philosopher.
An "secluded" person that can free himself from time, experiences eternity by "mystical show" (spiritual perception) (Plotinus).
Plotinus |
By day he is philosophy professor Julien Villeneuve at Montreal CEGEP Collège de Maisonneuve, with a strong affinity for Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus.
In addition to all these he published Denkwürdigkeiten aus der Geschichte des Christentums (1823-1824, 2 vols., 1825, 3 vols., 1846); Das Eine und Mannichfaltige des christlichen Lebens (1840); papers on Plotinus, Thomas Aquinas, Theobald Thamer, Blaise Pascal, John Henry Newman, Blanco White and Thomas Arnold, and other occasional pieces (Kleine Gelegenheitsschriften, 1829), mainly of a practical, exegetical and historical character.
His research interests range throughout the ancient pagan and Christian thought, and his most significant contributions have touched gradually Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, Socrates and Augustine of Hippo.
The term "henology" distinguishes the discipline that concerns The One, as in the philosophies of Plato and Plotinus, from disciplines that concern Being (as in Aristotle and Aquinas) and also from those that seek to understand Knowledge and Truth (as in Kant and Descartes).
At a time when Neoplatonism in philosophy, as well as philosophy itself in the university, was considered hopelessly outdated, he developed a freshman class called "Dream worlds and real worlds" that brought the message of Plotinus to the most unpromising students; it proved to be immensely popular, disconcerting his academic rivals.
The Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Porphyry has been referred to as in fact being orthodox Platonic philosophy by scholars like John D. Turner.
The two figures at the left of Plotinus were used as part of the cover art of both Use Your Illusion I and II albums of Guns N' Roses.