Geist

This entry addresses one of the most difficult subjects in Plotinus, his philosophy of Intellect. Intellect is a hypostasis, a self-sufficient eternal principle immediately after and from the One; at the same time it is the principle of individual human being, insofar as the latter is essentially endowed with rationality and intellection. The various aspects of Intellect are discussed: its non-processual procession from the One as Being and, together with Being, Thought; its inner structure as an eternal self-realization mediated within itself and determined by categorial structures (the ‘greatest kinds’ from Plato’s Sophist), a totality and community that unites all beings in a unity-in-plurality; and its ‘presence’ in individual thought both as an intellective principle and as a logos that unfolds itself in propositional form.