Abstract

This paper focuses on Plotinus’ account of life and being in treatises VI, 2 [43] On the genera of being and III, 7 [45] On eternity and time. Life and being play a key role in Plotinus’ ontology since they characterise incorporeal realities as such. Therefore, focusing on these items makes it possible to attain an account of intelligible reality according to the principles appropriate to it. Three issues are considered: the cognitive process through which the soul grasps being and life when it turns its cognitive activity away from the bodies and reverts to itself ; the status of being and life as genera of the intelligible reality ; Plotinus’ account of life as the way of being typical of intelligible realities ; his gradualist account of the hierarchy of life.