In this very late treatise, Plotinus considers the relation between the person or self and the human being, composed of body and soul. He is, as always, trying to follow Plato as he understands him but also, especially here, to draw on Peripatetic insights. Plotinus will identify the true self with the immortal, undescended intellect and the embodied subject of psychical activities as its image. This distinction between immortal and mortal kinds of soul, drawn from Timaeus, will provide the basis for his explanation of punishment and moral responsibility: it is only the embodied self that can be held responsible.
This treatise is placed first by Porphyry since in a way the entire structure of Plotinus’ philosophy begins with our personal reflections on identity.
§1. What is the subject of embodied states and activities?
§2. What is the soul? Is it itself a composite or is it form?
§3. The various ways in which the soul has been conceived of as related to the body.
§4. The soul imparts life to the body without being mixed with it.
§5. How can the states of the body be transmitted to the soul?
§6. In what sense is the soul actively involved with the body and in what sense is it impassive?
§7. It is not the soul itself that endows the body with life, but its activity.
§8. Relation of the embodied soul to Intellect.
§9. Vice is attributed to the living being, not to the soul itself.
§10. The ambiguity of ‘we’ between embodied and disembodied self.
§11. The psychical status of children and animals.
§13. In Again, the ambiguity in the reference to the subject of intellectual activity.