The individual immortality of the soul in Commentary on Plotinus by Marsilio Ficino L'immortalità individuale dell'anima nel commento a plotino di marsilio ficino

According to Averroes's doctrine of the unicity of the intellect, individual human minds were supposed to be reabsorbed into a single intellect. This view was particularly abhorrent to Ficino. He was convinced that the rational souls of human beings, because they were intellective by nature, were capable of surviving and preserving their individuality after the death of their bodies. To counter the Averroist theory, Ficino turned to Plotinus's doctrine of the unity of Soul, in particular to some important loci discussed in Enneads IV. Here Plotinus had argued that all souls, while different from each other, belonged to the hypostasis of Soul. By referring to this position, Ficino was able to demonstrate, from a philosophical point of view, the primacy of Soul as a first principle, without ruling out the possibility of the immortality of individual souls.