SOURCE: “Human Freedom in the Thought of Plotinus,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 292-314.

In the following essay, Leroux attempts to clarify some of the more difficult aspects of Plotinus's ideas regarding freedom.

Freedom belongs to the category of issues that affect the whole of Plotinus's metaphysics. Insofar as they are not merely beings ranged in a hierarchy but also moments in an infinite process by which the One expresses itself and infinitely offers itself as the Good, all aspects of this metaphysics, whether subjective or objective, are brought into play by freedom. Metaphysics must give an account of this process; it must express its dynamic and offer an explanation of its principal stages in narrative form. Consequently, what is at issue is nothing other than the freedom of each being to evolve or act, depending on its...