ABSTRACT
One of the particularities of Neoplatonic philosophy is its conception of the soul and its relationship to what there is, to metaphysics. Both living and cognitive capacities are explained through the soul’s intimate relationship with the essence of reality. For the Neoplatonists, the soul is, as it were, a window to the entire cosmos and metaphysical realm, through its likeness and natural connection to them. Combining, as can be noted in several chapters of this volume, Platonic and Aristotelian in uences, the Neoplatonic soul functions both as a principle of di erent living functions and that of powers of cognition, being an intermediary in between the higher and perfect ontological realities and the sensible and bodily realm. According to Plotinus, a human being, and her soul, stretches all the way from her connection to the body through the hypostasis Soul and Intellect to touch her ultimate source, the One. is explains our capacities, from desire and other living functions to perception, language and concept-formation, discursive thinking, as well as knowledge and moral instinct. While the later Neoplatonists came to question this part of Plotinus’ anthropology, they did retain, in mediated ways, the human soul’s innate capacities of approaching what is perfect or divine.
