Nous

Nous, the divine Intellect, is the second of Plotinus's three hypostases, proceeding directly from the One. It is the level of true being and of genuine thought, where the Forms reside not as objects standing outside the mind but as its very content — for in Nous the knower and the known are one and the same. To think, here, is to be what one thinks.

How it arises

Intellect comes to be when the indeterminate power that flows from the One turns back to contemplate its source. Unable to grasp that overflowing simplicity all at once, it grasps it as a many — and this articulation of the One's unity into a structured plurality is the world of Forms. Nous is therefore eternity itself: a timeless, complete possession of all that truly is, with no before or after.

Its place in the order

Beneath Nous comes Soul, which takes the patterns held in Intellect and unfolds them in time and motion, giving life and order to the cosmos. The roots of the doctrine lie in Aristotle's self-thinking Unmoved Mover and in the divine craftsman of Plato's Timaeus; the ascent of the philosopher is, in large part, the rising of the soul into the timeless life of Nous, the threshold of union with the One beyond it.

From Anaxagoras to Plotinus

Anaxagoras first set Nous over the cosmos as the orderer of all things; Aristotle made the divine an Intellect eternally thinking itself, the unmoved mover of desire. Plotinus made Intellect the second principle after the One — the level where being and thought coincide and the Forms are the very contents of a divine mind that grasps all of them at once, timelessly.