In contemporary philosophy, ‘postmodern’ ideas are those which, from the mid-nineteenth century set about dismantling the humanist creed of modernity.

In the same way that the Enlightenment broke with the grand cosmologies of Antiquity and brought about a new critique of religion, so too postmodernity set about demolishing the two strongest convictions of the Moderns from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries: the belief that the human is at the center of the modern world – which came to form the basis of all moral and political values; and, the belief that reason is an irresistible force for emancipation.

A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living
Luc Ferry

Luc Ferry
born 1951

. Wikipedia

Luc Ferry is a French philosopher at the University of Paris, a prolific author, and a notable proponent of secular humanism. From 2002 and until 2004 Ferry served in the French government as the Minister of Education. He lives in Paris.

Ferry has been awarded the Prix Medicis, Prix Jean-Jaques-Rosseau, and Aujourd’hui.

Books Luc Ferry has written include:

• A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living (Learning to Live)
• Heidegger and Modernity
• Learning to Live: A User’s Manual
• Man Made God: The Meaning of Life
• On Love: A Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century
• The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life (Learning to Live)
• What Is the Good Life?
• Why We Are Not Nietzscheans

The state of the highest spiritual concentration, in which every external object has disappeared, is at the same time the state in which one knows the deepest reality.

It is then that “all is so completely present to life that nothing any longer differs from it; such a life is a whole life, the pure and perfect life… It is then that it is sufficient in itself and that it no longer seeks anything.” (Plotinus Enneads V. 3. 16)

The Philosophy of Plotinus
Émile Bréhier

Background on Plotinus

Émile Bréhier
1886-1952

Émile Bréhier was a French philosopher. His interest was in classical philosophy, and the history of philosophy. He wrote a History of Philosophy, translated into English in seven volumes.

Bréhier studied at the University of Paris. In 1908 he received his doctorate at the Sorbonne with a dissertation about Philo of Alexandria. He was Henri Bergson‘s successor at the University of Paris in 1945

The task of ancient philosophers was to contemplate the cosmic order and its beauty, to live in harmony with it, and to transcend the limitations imposed by sense experience and discursive reasoning. Both Plato and Aristotle traced the origin of philosophy (philosophia, “the love of wisdom”) to wonder.

It was through philosophy, understood as a kind of ascetic exercise or training, that the cultivation of the natural, ethical, civic, purificatory, theoretic, paradigmatic, and hieratic virtues were to be practiced. And, it was through this noetic vision (study of the mind and intellect) that the ancient philosophers tried to awaken the divine light within, and to touch the divine Intellect in the cosmos.

By “philosophizing” ancient philosophers meant both noetic activity and spiritual practice; and, this was attributed not only to various Hellenic philosophers who belonged to different haireseis (Greek term meaning schools or theoretically founded ways of life), but also to the Egyptian priests, Chaldeans, and Indian Gymnosophists.

The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy
Algis Uzdavinys

Algis Uzdavinys
1962-2010

. Wikipedia

Algis Uždavinys was a prolific Lithuanian philosopher and scholar. His work pioneered the hermeneutical comparative study of Egyptian and Greek religions, especially their esoteric relations to Semitic religions, and in particular the inner aspect of Islam (Sufism). His books have been published in Lithuanian, Russian, English and French.

Uždavinys died in his sleep of an apparent heart attack on July 25, 2010 in his native village of Kabeliai, Lithuania.

Books written By Algis Uzdavinys include:

• Ascent to Heaven in Islamic and Jewish Mysticism
• Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism
• Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity 
• Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth: From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism
• The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Platonic and Pythagorean Philosophy 
• The Heart of Plotinus: The Essential Enneads