(20). This, then, is our answer to those who seek a philosophical demonstration. Those who are satisfied with the testimony of faith and sense, may be referred to those extracts from history which furnish numerous proofs thereof. We may also refer to the oracles given by the divinities who order an appeasement of the souls who were victims of some injustice, and to honor the dead, and to the rites observed by all towards those who live no more; which presupposes that their souls are still (…)
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Guthrie - Plotinus
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Guthrie-Plotinus: future
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
Guthrie-Plotinus: colors
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: circle
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe subject that perceives a sense-object must itself be single, and grasp this object in its totality, by one and the same power. This happens when by several organs we perceive several qualities of a single object, or when, by a single organ, we embrace a single complex object in its totality, as, for instance, a face. It is not one principle that sees the face, and another one that sees the eyes; it is the “same principle” which embraces everything at once. Doubtless we do receive a (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: plurality
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroConsider now the human soul which undergoes numberless ills while in the body, eking out a miserable existence, a prey to griefs, desires, fears, sufferings of all kinds, for whom the body is a tomb, and the sense-world a “cave” or “grotto.” This difference of opinions about the condition of the universal Soul and the human soul is not contradictory, because these two souls do not have the same reasons for descent into a body. To begin with, the location of thought, that we call the (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: passive
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroTo this we answer that our astrologer attributes indirectly to the stars all our characteristics: will, passions, vices and appetites; he allows us no r?le other than to turn like mills, instead of responsibility, as befits men, producing actions that suit our nature. On the contrary, we should be left in possession of what belongs to us by the observation that the universe limits itself to exercising some influence on what we possess already thanks to ourselves, and which is really (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: notions
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAre the notions of virtue, and other intelligible entities by the soul thought eternal, or does virtue arise and perish? If so, by what being, and how will it be formed? It is the same problem that remains to be solved. Intelligible entities must therefore be eternal and immutable, like geometrical notions, and consequently cannot be corporeal. Further, the subject in whom they exist must be of a nature similar to theirs, and therefore not be corporeal; for the nature of body is not to (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: intermediary
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAll that is moved must have a direction towards which it is moved; we must therefore conclude that that which has no direction towards which it is moved must be at a stand-still, and that anything born of this principle must be born without causing this principle to cease being turned towards itself. We must, however, remove from our mind the idea of a generation operated within time, for we are here treating of eternal things. When we apply to them the conception of generation, we mean only (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: immutable
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroWhat is the cause that certain bodies seem beautiful, that our ears listen with pleasure to rhythms judged beautiful, and that we love the purely moral beauties? Does the beauty of all these objects derive from some unique, immutable principle, or will we recognize some one principle of beauty for the body, and some other for something else? What then are these principles, if there are several? Or which is this principle, if there is but one? [Ennead I,6 (1) 1]
Are the notions of virtue, (…) -
Guthrie-Plotinus: feeling
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe same reflections may be made about pain, and one’s feeling of it. When a man’s finger is said to give him pain, this, no doubt, is a recognition that the seat of the pain is in the finger, and that the feeling of pain is experienced by the directing principle. Consequently, when a part of the spirit suffers, this suffering is felt by the directing principle, and shared by the whole soul. How can this sympathy be explained? By relay transmission, (the Stoic) will answer; the (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: appetite
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe sense-soul, which preserves the forms of sense-objects previously perceived, must preserve them without the body. Otherwise, these forms would inhere in the body like figures and corporeal shapes. Now, if the forms inhered in the sense-soul in this manner, they could not be received therein otherwise (than as corporeal impressions). That is why, if we do grant the existence of an entelechy, it must be inseparable from the body. Even the faculty of appetite, not indeed that which makes us (…)