Hypostases

The hypostases — ὑποστάσεις, “underlying realities” — are the three primary levels of reality in the Plotinian metaphysics: the One (to hen), Intellect (nous), and Soul (psychē). The three descend by the procession Plotinus calls prohodos and return by the conversion he calls epistrophē — and the whole metaphysical structure is ordered around this double movement of descent and return.

The One is beyond being, beyond predication, the source from which all proceeds without itself entering into procession. From the One issues Intellect, which contemplates the One and in that contemplation knows the intelligible Forms. From Intellect issues Soul, which descends toward matter and animates it — the cosmic Soul that orders the world and the individual souls that inhabit particular bodies. The doctrine of the three hypostases is the philosophical substrate inherited by the Christian trinitarian theology, by the Islamic-Neoplatonic tradition of Avicenna and the Ishraqi school, and by the Jewish Kabbalah’s sefirot — each of which adapts the Plotinian architecture to its own ends. See emanation and enneads.

Relationships

• plotinus
• the-one
• emanation