    Plotinus views ethics according to the criterion of what contributes to our identification with our higher selves and what contributes to our separation from that identification.  All virtuous practices make a positive contribution to this goal.  But virtues can be graded according to how they do this (see I 2).  The lowest form of virtues, what Plotinus, following Plato, calls ‘civic’ or ‘popular’, are the practices that serve to control the appetites (see I 2. 2).  By contrast, higher ‘purificatory’ virtues are those that separate the person from the embodied human being (I 2. 3).  One who practices purificatory virtue is no longer subject to the incontinent desires whose restraint constitutes mere civic or popular virtue.  Such a person achieves a kind of ‘likeness to God’ recommended by Plato at Theaetetus 176a-b.  Both of these types of virtue are inferior to intellectual virtue which consists in the activity of the philosopher (see I 2. 6).  One who is purified in embodied practices can turn unimpeded to one’s true self-identity as a thinker.