SOURCE: “World-Views in Collision: Plotinus, Gnostics, and Christians,” in Plotinus amid Gnostics and Christians, edited by David T. Runia, VU Uitgeverij / Free University Press, 1984, pp. 11-28.

In the following essay, originally presented as a lecture, Bos analyzes the conclusions Plotinus reached concerning contemplation and rationality.

1. Introduction: Boehm's Critique of Modern Culture

The past is not necessarily ‘passé’. Of course, the great figures of the past are no longer with us, but that need not mean that the times in which they lived are no longer of any relevance. The interest we have in history is based on the continuity between past and present. And that means that a period in the past can never lose its temporality and become ‘timeless’. This comes home to us most of all when the past is made relevant to the present in a deliberate and systematic way, with the intention of gaining...