Nous

Nous is the divine Intellect in Neoplatonic metaphysics: the realm of intelligible Forms and the self-thinking activity that knows them.

The One: The ineffable first principle in Neoplatonism, beyond being and thought. Nous proceeds from this source while remaining its first determinate expression.
Intellect: The faculty or activity of grasping intelligible objects rather than sensing particulars. Neoplatonic Nous gives this general notion divine, self-subsistent form.
Plato: An ancient Greek philosopher whose dialogues developed influential accounts of Forms and intellectual knowledge. His Forms provide the chief intelligible realities later placed within Nous.
Porphyry: A third-century Neoplatonist who studied with Plotinus and edited the Enneads. His editorial work preserved Plotinus’s account of Nous for later philosophy.
Intellectual procession: The Neoplatonic account of how a lower level of reality proceeds from a higher one without diminishing it. It describes Nous’s emergence from the One.
Intelligibility: The capacity of something to be understood by thought. The Forms are fully intelligible within Nous, unlike changing sensible particulars.
Parmenides: An ancient Greek philosopher who argued that what-is is unified and cannot genuinely come to be or perish. His account of unity and being shaped later debates about the One and intelligible reality.
Iamblichus: A fourth-century Neoplatonist who expanded the system of divine realities and defended theurgy. His metaphysics elaborated the hierarchy surrounding Nous beyond Plotinus’s presentation.
Self-thinking thought: Thought whose knower, act of knowing, and intelligible object are one. Nous knows the Forms by thinking its own intelligible contents.
Being: That which exists, considered apart from any particular kind of entity. In Neoplatonism, Nous is the first principle in which being and thought coincide.

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