For Plotinus, what really exists are the Platonic forms, so the true nature or form of things like justice, beauty, maybe numbers, things like that, and these he associates with the intellect because they're the objects of intellect, they are things that intellect can think about.

In fact Plotinus does believe in divine providence, though when he talks about divine providence, he talks about that providence being exercised by the intellect and the soul of the world, rather than the One.

If you think about for example, proportionality and beauty, things like that, these seem to be some kind of representations of a kind of unity.

Plotinus is usually called the Founder of Neo Platonism and what that means is that in this philosophical circle, he was founding a kind of renewed attempt to understand the thought of Plato which however they were combining with the thought of other philosophers, including Aristotle, the Stoics and Pythagoreans and so on.

In fact one of the things about Plotinus is that he maybe not singlehandedly, but I think more than anyone else, killed off the variety and dissension among the philosophical schools of antiquity.

Basically the problem is that if the intellect is looking at or beholding the forms, what it will get is some kind of representation or image of the forms, but it won't actually have the forms, it won't touch them as it were, or it won't incorporate them.

When you're seeking after bodily pleasure of food and drink for example, this is going to prevent you from doing what you should be doing which is contemplating.