Plotinus views on soul, suicide, and incarnation

The questions that need to be answered, if we want to understand the role of suicide and its connection with the soul, incarnation, murder of man and living beings in the Universe of Plotinus, are as follows: To what extent should the body be considered an outer shell? Is purification the goal of the incarnation of the soul? Is it not the case that through the incarnation in the individual soul new, previously hidden possibilities are actualized, or is the body only a tool for punishing the soul and its alienation? Our ideas about Plotinus philosophy essentially depend on how we solve this riddle. And although, as the comparison of Ennead 1.4.46 and 1.9.16 shows, Plotin changed his attitude toward suicide as he age, this concept arises in his philosophy in several basic contexts. First of all, in the traditional sense for the present, he asks about whether the soul should, if it is given free choice, leave the body or stay in it? In addition, Plotinus enriches our concept of suicide with two additional meanings. Secondly, he considers self-incarnation to be suicide, illustrating this idea with the myths about the infant Dionysus and Narcisse: the incarnation is presented here as an involuntary suicide, the result of the irrational desire of the soul for matter. Secondly, suicide should be considered the killing or destruction of another living being or plant, because in this case we destroy a particle of a single soul, which are themselves involved. Unlike Plotinus, the late Neoplatonists, such as Damascus, insisted on the impossibility of a complete separation of the soul from the case as long as the body is alive, which made it impossible for the soul of the potential sage to completely immerse himself in the positive nothingness of the absolutely Ineffable first principle. After all, the soul is always connected with the body, which can not accompany its true self on the path to another in relation to the soul full of Nothingness.