This treatise is really a part of the treatise that precedes it chronologically, 5.8 (31). That treatise may also include 3.8 (30) and 2.9 (33). Their separation is owing to Porphyry’s non-chronological ordering. The task of 5.5 is to show that the intelligibles or Forms cannot be external to Intellect; rather, they must be constitutive of Intellect’s identity. This claim must be established not only to properly understand Intellect, but since Intellect is engaged in the paradigm of thinking, if Intellect is not cognitively identical with Forms, then the possibility of thinking even for us is eliminated. From the internal complexity of Intellect, Plotinus shows the necessity of an absolutely simple first principle of all.
§1. The necessity of the internality of Forms to Intellect. The identity of Forms and Intellect means that Forms are alive and are not separable from each other.
§2. Intellect is cognitively identical with Forms and so possesses them, or more exactly is them. Intellect’s cognition of Forms is non-inferential and non-propositional.
§3. Intellect, the second god, is the locus of Being and derived from the first god.
§4. The unity of Intellect is inferior to the unity of the One. The One is not a number.
§5. The One is productive of all things. It produces Intellect first. The One is not participated in.
§6. The transcendence of the One. It is beyond Being. The requirement of negative theology.
§7. Analogy of intellection to sight.
§9. The ‘containment’ of Soul within Intellect and Intellect within the One. The One is itself within nothing.
§10. The One is unlimited in power and is identical with the Good. The One must be unlike everything of which it is the cause.
§11. The unqualified unlimitedness of the One. The immateriality of the first principle of all.
§12. The priority of the Good to that which is beautiful. The desire for the Good is prior to the desire for the beautiful.
§13. The absolute simplicity and transcendence of the Good. The Good is not good nor does it possess any other predicates.