MacKenna-Plotinus: Felicidade

Are we to make True Happiness one and the same thing with Welfare or Prosperity and therefore within the reach of the other living beings as well as ourselves? There is certainly no reason to deny well-being to any of them as long as their lot allows them to flourish unhindered after their kind. Enneads   I,4,1

And if, even, we set Happiness in some ultimate Term pursued by inborn tendency, then on this head, too, we must allow it to animals from the moment of their attaining this Ultimate: the nature in them comes to a halt, having fulfilled its vital course from a beginning to an end. Enneads I,4,1

Fifth tractate - Happiness and extension of time. Enneads I,5,16

Is it possible to think that Happiness increases with Time, Happiness which is always taken as a present thing? The memory of former felicity may surely be ruled out of count, for Happiness is not a thing of words, but a definite condition which must be actually present like the very fact and act of life. Enneads I,5,1

It may be objected that our will towards living and towards expressive activity is constant, and that each attainment of such expression is an increase in Happiness. Enneads I,5,2

Still the one life has known pleasure longer than the other? But pleasure cannot be fairly reckoned in with Happiness - unless indeed by pleasure is meant the unhindered Act [of the true man], in which case this pleasure is simply our "Happiness." And even pleasure, though it exist continuously, has never anything but the present; its past is over and done with. Enneads I,5,4

There is no absurdity in taking count of time which has ceased to be: we are merely counting what is past and finished, as we might count the dead: but to treat past happiness as actually existent and as outweighing present happiness, that is an absurdity. For Happiness must be an achieved and existent state, whereas any time over and apart from the present is nonexistent: all progress of time means the extinction of all the time that has been. Enneads I,5,7

If Happiness demands the possession of the good of life, it clearly has to do with the life of Authentic-Existence for that life is the Best. Now the life of Authentic-Existence is measurable not by time but by eternity; and eternity is not a more or a less or a thing of any magnitude but is the unchangeable, the indivisible, is timeless Being. Enneads I,5,7

Now to make multiplicity, whether in time or in action, essential to Happiness is to put it together by combining non-existents, represented by the past, with some one thing that actually is. This consideration it was that led us at the very beginning to place Happiness in the actually existent and on that basis to launch our enquiry as to whether the higher degree was determined by the longer time. It might be thought that the Happiness of longer date must surpass the shorter by virtue of the greater number of acts it included. Enneads I,5,10

To put Happiness in actions is to put it in things that are outside virtue and outside the Soul; for the Soul’s expression is not in action but in wisdom, in a contemplative operation within itself; and this, this alone, is Happiness. Enneads I,5,10

Now, once Happiness is possible at all to Souls in this Universe, if some fail of it, the blame must fall not upon the place but upon the feebleness insufficient to the staunch combat in the one arena where the rewards of excellence are offered. Men are not born divine; what wonder that they do not enjoy a divine life. And poverty and sickness mean nothing to the good - only to the evil are they disastrous - and where there is body there must be ill health. Enneads III,2,5