 Because freedom is a power to obtain what is truly good for yourself, Plotinus also joins the Stoics in rejecting the principle that, in order to be in control of what you do, you must have the ability to do otherwise than you do. Let us imagine that my daughter has a serious heart condition, and after researching the options to repair her heart, I follow the correct course of action, both because I love her and because I recognize that doing so is also good for me. If my reason is in charge of what I do, and I know that what I am doing is for the best, then I am incapable of not doing what I do. But it not some lack of power or external obstacle that prevents me from neglecting my daughter and doing what is worse. Instead, my action is an expression of my knowledge and my will, and that is why I cannot do otherwise (Enn. VI.8[39].10). Likewise, Plotinus thinks it would be perverse to say that I am forced or compelled to help my daughter, that my action is involuntary because it springs from some sort of “internal necessity”. Instead, an action is free when it is directed towards a good that you recognize, and slavery consists in being powerless to move towards your good. This is the kind of freedom enjoyed by the divine intellect. Plotinus believes that the Form of the Good, as described in places like book 6 of Plato’s Republic, is the transcendent source of everything that exists. (Plotinus sometimes calls it the One, to stress its simplicity.) The divine intellect fully understands and eternally contemplates the Good, and it does so freely—for why would it not do so? (Enn. VI.8[39].4)