With the neoplatonist Plotinus, wrote Nathaniel Alfred Boll; "there even appears, probably for the first time in Western philosophy, idealism that had long been current in the East even at that time, for it taught... that the soul has made the world by stepping from eternity into time...". Similarly, in regard to passages from the Enneads, "The only space or place of the world is the soul" and "Time must not be assumed to exist outside the soul", Ludwig Noiré wrote: "For the first time in Western philosophy we find idealism proper in Plotinus, However, Plotinus does not address whether we know external objects, unlike Schopenhauer and other modern philosophers.

What sort of philosopher was Plotinus?