Applying this conception to the universe, we rise to Intelligence, recognizing therein the demiurgic creator of the world. It was in receiving from it its shapes by the intermediation of another principle, the universal Soul, that the (material) substances became water, air, earth and fire. On the one hand, the Soul shapes the four elements of the world; on the other, she receives from Intelligence the (seminal) reasons, as the souls of the artists themselves receive from the arts the (…)
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Guthrie - Plotinus
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Guthrie-Plotinus: creator
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
Guthrie-Plotinus: category
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIf there were no body, the soul could not have any procession, since the body is the natural locality of her development. As the soul must extend, she will beget a receiving locality, and will, consequently, produce the body. The soul’s rest is based, and depends for growth on (the intellectual category of) rest itself. The soul thus resembles an immense light which weakens as it becomes more distant from its source, so that at the extremity of its radiation, it has become no more than an (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: father
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThis indeed is the occasion to quote (from Homer) with peculiar force, “Let us fly unto our dear fatherland!” But how shall we fly? How escape from here? is the question Ulysses asks himself in that allegory which represents him trying to escape from the magic sway of Circe or Calypso, where neither the pleasure of the eyes, nor the view of fleshly beauty were able to hold him in those enchanted places. Our fatherland is the region whence we descend here below. It is there that dwells our (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: reality
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro(14). It is absolutely necessary to postulate the existence of a nature different from bodies, by itself fully possessing genuine existence, which can neither be born nor perish. Otherwise, all other things would hopelessly disappear, as a result of the destruction of the existence which preserves both the individuals and the universe, as their beauty and salvation. The soul, indeed, is the principle of movement (as Plato thought, in the Phaedrus); it is the soul that imparts movement to (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: perception
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThough I should set myself in opposition to popular views, I shall set down clearly what seems to me the true state of affairs. Not the whole soul enters into the body. By her higher part, she ever remains united to the intelligible world; as, by her lower part, she remains united to the sense-world. If this lower part dominates, or rather, if it be dominated (by sensation) and troubled, it hinders us from being conscious of what the higher part of the soul contemplates. Indeed that which is (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: vice
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut how shall we train this interior vision? At the moment of its (first) awakening, it cannot contemplate beauties too dazzling. Your soul must then first be accustomed to contemplate the noblest occupations of man, and then the beautiful deeds, not indeed those performed by artists, but those (good deeds) done by virtuous men. Later contemplate the souls of those who perform these beautiful actions. Nevertheless, how will you discover the beauty which their excellent soul possesses? (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: ugly
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro(The Stoics), like almost everybody, insist that visual beauty consists in the proportion of the parts relatively to each other and to the whole, joined to the grace of colors. If then, as in this case, the beauty of bodies in general consists in the symmetry and just proportion of their parts, beauty could not consist of anything simple, and necessarily could not appear in anything but what was compound. Only the totality will be beautiful; the parts by themselves will possess no beauty; (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: privation
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThus, in her ascension towards divinity, the soul advances until, having risen above everything that is foreign to her, she alone with Him who is alone, beholds, in all His simplicity and purity, Him from whom all depends, to whom all aspires, from whom everything draws its existence, life and thought. He who beholds him is overwhelmed with love; with ardor desiring to unite himself with Him, entranced with ecstasy. Men who have not yet seen Him desire Him as the Good; those who have, admire (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: physical
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroHow can both sensible and intelligible objects be beautiful? Because, as we said, sensible objects participate in a form. While a shapeless object, by nature capable of receiving shape (physical) and form (intelligible), remains without reason or form, it is ugly. That which remains completely foreign to all divine reason (a reason proceeding from the universal Soul), is absolute ugliness. Any object should be considered ugly which is not entirely molded by informing reason, the matter, not (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: immovable
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe function of the rational soul is to think, but she does not limit herself to thinking. Otherwise there would be no difference between her and intelligence. Besides her intellectual characteristics, the soul’s characteristic nature, by virtue of which she does not remain mere intelligence, has a further individual function, such as is possessed by every other being. By raising her glance to what is superior to her, she thinks; by bringing them down to herself, she preserves herself; by (…)