The Ascent of the Soul as Spiritual Exercise in Plotinus’ Enneads

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the ascent of the soul as one of the fundamental spiritual exercises in Plotinus’ philosophy can be approached from three perspectives: anabatic proper, aphaeretic and agnoetic. All of them are based on the hierarchical structure of knowledge and being in Plotinus’ philosophy, but they differ in details. The methods are reconstructed on the basis of the analysis of selected passages from the Enneads.