Thus, 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
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Guthrie-Plotinus: guardians
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
Guthrie-Plotinus: goodness
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBesides, nobody would admit that perversity could come from beings who are divinities. How could one believe that they are the authors of the evils attributed to them, and that they themselves become evil because they set or pass under the earth, as if they could possibly be affected by the fact that, in regard to us, they seem to set; as if they did not continue to wander around the heavenly sphere, and remained in the same relation to the earth? Besides it is incredible that because a star (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: categories
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe first principles, therefore, are existence and intelligence, identity and difference, movement and rest. Rest is the condition of identity; movement is the condition of thought, since the latter presupposes the differences of the thinking subject and of the object thought, and because it is silent if reduced to unity. The elements of thought (subject and object) must thus stand in the relation of differences, but also in that of unity, because they form a consubstantial unity, and (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: duality
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBesides, Unity in itself is the first of all; but intelligence, forms and essence are not primary. Every form is manifold and composite, and consequently must be something posterior; for parts are prior to the composite they constitute. Nor is intelligence primary, as appears from the following considerations. For intelligence existence is necessarily thought and the best intelligence which does not contemplate exterior objects, must think what is above it; for, on turning towards itself, it (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: darkness
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroFrom their birth, men exercise their senses, earlier than their intelligence, and they are by necessity forced to direct their attention to sense-objects. Some stop there, and spend their life without progressing further. They consider suffering as evil, and pleasure as the good, judging it to be their business to avoid the one and encompass the other. That is the content of wisdom for those of them that pride themselves on being reasonable; like those heavy birds who, having weighted (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: birth
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIf everything that happens has a cause, it is possible to discover such fact’s proximate causes, and to them refer this fact. People go downtown, for example, to see a person, or collect a bill. In all cases it is a matter of choice, followed by decision, and the determination to carry it out. There are, indeed, certain facts usually derived from the arts; as for instance the re-establishment of health may be referred to medicine and the physician. Again, when a man has become rich, this is (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: health
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAs has already been said above this hypothesis is inadmissible for several reasons. To begin with, the soul is prior (to the body), and the harmony is posterior thereto. Then the soul dominates the body, governs it, and often even resists it, which would be impossible if the soul were only a harmony. The soul, indeed, is a “being,” which harmony is not. When the corporeal principles of which we are composed are mingled in just proportions, their temperament constitutes health (but not a (…)
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Guthrie-Plotinus: sound
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: liberty
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIn this case, even if we possessed the power of doing something by ourselves, we would not be any the less than the remainder of the universe subjected to necessity, because Fate, containing the whole series of causes, necessarily determines each event. Now since Fate includes all causes, there is nothing which could hinder the occurrence of that event, or alter it. If then everything obeys the impulsion of a single principle, nothing is left to us but to follow it. Indeed, in this case, the (…)