The present treatise is, in a way, a continuation of the chronologically previous treatise 6.9 (9) ‘On the Good or the One’. Given the perfection of the first principle of all, the question may be raised as to why there is any separation from it, including the separation of embodied souls. This treatise attempts to answer that question by situating the embodied lives of individuals into the larger metaphysical framework. This framework is a hierarchy of principles, beginning with the One, followed by the Intellect, and then Soul. Plotinus aims to show how from the unqualifiedly simple first principle of all anything non-simple can arise and how the process of unfolding or emanating is one of increasing complexity or ontological separation from the One. Here Plotinus also argues that his systematic representation of Plato’s philosophy is accurate.
§1. Souls are separated from their father. The means of reconciliation are twofold: cultivation of disdain for that which is contaminated with matter and a technique for the recollection of one’s authentic heritage. The need for self-knowledge in order to know this.
§2. The familial relation between the individual soul and the soul of the cosmos. Soul is the source of the life and motion of all things.
§3. Soul is an image of Intellect, the intelligible matter for the form that is an expressed principle of Intellect.
§4. The paradigmatic status of Intellect, containing all intelligible reality. The identity of Intellect and Forms.
§5. The absolutely simple One is above Intellect and is its cause. Number is generated by the operation of the One on the Indefinite Dyad, which is inchoate Intellect.
§6. How the One produces Intellect without itself changing. How Intellect reverts to the One and in so doing thinks all intelligibles and generates Soul.
§7. Intellect is like the One but not vice versa. The complete transcendence of the One. The generation of Soul by Intellect is the last generation within intelligible reality.
§8. The Platonic provenance of the three hypostases. Parmenidean antecedents, and the superiority of the account of Parmenides in the dialogue of that name.
§9. The contributions of Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Aristotle to the doctrine of three hypostases.
§10. In what way the three hypostases are in us. The need to separate from the body.
§11. It is owing to the presence of Intellect that the embodied soul can think and with the presence of Intellect comes the One, its cause.
§12. The need to turn from the exterior to the interior and to ascend to the intelligible world.