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.
Peter AdamsonPlotinus 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.
Peter AdamsonPlotinus thought that the entire world has a single soul. He also thought that each animal and plant and of course human, has an individual soul.
Peter AdamsonAssuming there is an intellect, we're clearly not this universal intellect or we would know it. So that's one function of soul.
Peter AdamsonPeople often talk about Plotinus' system. The reason they do this is that Plotinus postulated a kind of series or chain of principles, so at the top there's what he called the One. Below the One is what he called Intellect. Below Intellect is Soul, and the effect of the soul is the physical world that we actually live in.
Peter Adamson