Segundo Jean-Michel Charrue, o Diálogo de Platão, Parmênides, desempenha em Plotino um papel considerável. Não se poderia sublinhar sua importância. É sobre ele que Plotino e todo neoplatonismo construíram longos desenvolvimentos de sua metafísica. Que ele seja abordado por não importa que entrada nos Enéadas, vê-se quase sempre ou uma citação ou uma alusão de algumas palavras devidas ao estudo deste diálogo platônico. O primeiro entre os modernos a ter tido plenamente consciência deste fato foi E.R. Dodds.
Earlier, Parmenides made some approach to the doctrine in identifying Being with Intellectual-Principle while separating Real Being from the realm of sense. V First 8
The Platonic Parmenides is more exact; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many and a third which is a One-and-many; thus he too is in accordance with our thesis of the Three Kinds. V First 8
In virtue of this Essence it is that life endures, that the Intellectual-Principle endures, that the Beings stand in their eternity; nothing alters it, turns it, moves it; nothing, indeed, is in being besides it to touch it; anything that is must be its product; anything opposed to it could not affect it. Being itself could not make such an opposite into Being; that would require a prior to both and that prior would then be Being; so that Parmenides was right when he taught the identity of Being and Unity. Being is thus beyond contact not because it stands alone but because it is Being. For Being alone has Being in its own right. VI Sixth 18