The importance of Plotinus is not only his own philosophical ideas which are quite interesting, but his historical impact as the founder of neo-Platonism which is the main philosophical tradition of late antiquity.

Just the way you might look at a painting and see the painting, and the painting is outside you, so this immaterial intellect would see the forms and behold them, as if they were standing before it. And Plotinus said that that can't be right because it falls prey to sceptical objections.

In fact Plotinus thought not only that soul in general is eternal so that you always have soul, but he thought that each person's soul is eternal.

We do have intellects and Plotinus controversially thought that even though we might not be aware of it, our souls are always connected to the intellect. They never fully descend as he would put it.

This is in a way the most important thing about soul is that it's a kind of principle which mediates between the universal intellect and the material world.

The importance of Plotinus is not only his own philosophical ideas which are quite interesting, but his historical impact as the founder of neo-Platonism which is the main philosophical tradition of late antiquity.

Sometimes clichés are true.