Can anyone supply me with an analogy to explain Plotinus' "One"?

Question

The example I have been given is...
The Sun, the Earth & the moon.
The Sun is not part of the Earth but the Earth gets its light from the Sun.
This is all I can seem to remember.
Can anyone finish this or is there another analogy I can use? I have a presentation to do on Plotinus.

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

I think this is the analogy that you are looking for

Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One",

Plotinus compared the One to "light", the Nous (will) to the "Sun", and lastly the Soul to the "Moon" whose light is merely a "derivative conglomeration of light from the 'Sun'". As Plotinus explains in [V.VI.III] and elsewhere, it is impossible for the One to be Being or a self-sentient entity/Creationist-like God.

The One, being beyond all attributes including being and non-being, is the source of the world not through any act of creation, willful or otherwise, since activity cannot be ascribed to the unchangeable, immutable One. Plotinus resorts to a logical principle that the "less perfect" must, of necessity, "emanate", or issue forth, from the "perfect" or "more perfect". Thus, all of "creation" emanates from the One in succeeding stages of lesser and lesser perfection. These stages are not temporally isolated, but occur throughout time as a constant process. Later Neoplatonic philosophers, especially Iamblichus, added hundreds of intermediate beings as emanations between the One and humanity; but Plotinus' system was much simpler in comparison.

Read this for more info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinus