Unlike later Neo-Platonists, Plotinus says that our souls are always connected to the universal intellect and that we never really fall away..

There's going to be this realm of Platonic forms and then there's going to be this single mind, the 'nous', which grasps them..

Plotinus, when he thinks about mind or intellect, the Greek word is 'nous', he thinks about something that's very different, it's much more elevated ….

Al-Ghazali is the most important philosophical theologian of classical Islam, and Moderation in Belief is among his most important works. It sets out….

Basically the problem is that if the intellect is looking at or beholding the forms, what it will get is some kind of representation or image of the ….

In fact Plotinus thought not only that soul in general is eternal so that you always have soul, but he thought that each person's soul is eternal..

Plotinus thought that the entire world has a single soul. He also thought that each animal and plant and of course human, has an individual soul..

What the soul is doing is kind of walking through the forms, and so our experience of thinking isn't normally this kind of pure intuitive insight tha….

In fact Plotinus does believe in divine providence, though when he talks about divine providence, he talks about that providence being exercised by t….

Soul puts the determination or forms or images of forms, into matter..

Plato in his dialogue The Phaedo says that whereas sticks and stones are both equal and unequal, (so maybe what that means is that each stick is goin….

The intellect must be different from the soul..

This condition of uncertainty and unrest in the Roman Empire might explain why at Plotinus' philosophy encourages us to sort of flee from the physica….

For Plotinus, what really exists are the Platonic forms, so the true nature or form of things like justice, beauty, maybe numbers, things like that, ….

We do each have an intellect but there's a universal intellect which is the same for everybody, as it were. And this single intellect is grasping the….

I'm sure that Plotinus wasn't that impressed by the Christians..

There's a stronger and more kind of controversial element of Plotinus' view of matter, which is that he actually identifies it with evil, or at least….

Once you're in a kind of revealed religious tradition, you wind up having to explain how the things said about God in the Bible or the Qur'an or what….

In fact one of the things about Plotinus is that he maybe not singlehandedly, but I think more than anyone else, killed off the variety and dissensio….

I think it's important to realise that what happens in Neo-Platonism beginning with Plotinus and Porphyry and then going on for the next several cent….

The body distracts your soul..