This article argues that Plotinus wrote Ennead VI 8 (39) to direct his students to see that our freedom is founded on the One, a goal pursued by means of a polemic against Alexander of Aphrodisias’ De fato and De anima. The first part aims to establish that the “rash discourse” introduced in chapter 7 is an interpretation of De fato’s position on the freedom of the gods. Plotinus reads his opponent’s thesis by transferring to the level of the One (...) a tripartite structure made up of nature, reason, and chance, a structure that Alexander used to explain events on the level of Becoming. The second part proposes to see the treatise as a dialectical process. Plotinus starts his inquiry at the levels of soul and Intellect. He later arrives at the discourse about the One, in which he tries to progressively overcome the limits of language by analyzing alternative positions from the viewpoint of discourse, words, and finally thought. In doing this, he insists on his reversal of Alexander’s theses: the One is simple and therefore not constrained by its nature; it is free thanks to a will incapable of choosing between the contraries and directed metaphorically toward itself. (shrink)