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' Aφελε παντα ossia spogliati di tutto. Un‘ammonizione di Plotino

Summary: The Plotinian admonition, “strip away everything,” differentiates itself from the detached declarations by the philosophical systems of the Hellenistic period for its metaphysical content, in the sense that the ethical emphasis and intellectual demand of such a liberation open the way for the return to The One and The Good. In Plotinus’ complex system, the liberation from all, above and beyond just historical and existential events, is appealed to in this same world view of life and reality.  This is all inclusive and delineated by the necessity of returning to the original unity from whence emanated. Arriving in our own times, in a culture which has lost basic structure and which  prefers the fragment to the whole, Plotinus presents one unmistakable mark of reality:  He invites modern man to return to the path which takes him back to the unity and simplicity of his beginnings.  From the light of this fundamental truth, man in every age, but especially more so today, must liberate himself from a suffocation of multiplicity of experiences, which above all distract him from the one Good and from the one Truth, which by nature he desires.