ABSTRACT
This chapter examines various passages from Ficino’s commentary on the Enneads in which Ficino uses Plotinus’s psychology to argue against monopsychism – the idea, advocated by the medieval Arabic philosopher Averroes and his followers, that there is a unique intellect common to all human beings. To counter the Averroist position, Ficino showed that, according to Plotinian metaphysics, the unity of the first principle does not rule out the multiplicity of human souls and that souls are thus able to retain their individuality even when, after death, they rejoin the divine.
