Sein

Being is what exists primally and originally after the One. The hypostasis of Intellect constitutes Being as atemporal procession from the One and as return to it, when Intellect attempts to recover its unity by means of reflection and cognition. For Plotinus, Being in terms of an Aristotelian ontology can only be discussed on this foundation. Still, that notion of being is strongly present, even omnipresent, in Plotinus’ thought. This entry discusses the Plotinian latitudo entis as well as the categorial analogies to the multiple aspects of Being whose diversity is bound together by the world-soul (i.e. substantial, accidental, temporal Being etc.). The core of Plotinus’ ontology is, as it were, the unfolding, mediated by Intellect, of the One into a multiplicity whose most beautiful and most stable form is the cosmos, the ordered world.