This activity is screened not from the man entire but merely from one part of him: we have here a parallel to what happens in the activity of the physical or vegetative life in us which is not made known by the sensitive faculty to the rest of the man: if our physical life really constituted the "We," its Act would be our Act: but, in the fact, this physical life is not the "We"; the "We" is the activity of the Intellectual-Principle so that when the Intellective is in Act we are in Act. (…)
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MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna
Matérias
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelectivo
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
MacKenna-Plotinus: body
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroPleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat? Clearly, either in the Soul alone, or in the Soul as employing the body, or in some third entity deriving from both. And for this third entity, again, there are two possible modes: it might be either a blend or a distinct form due to the blending. Enneads I,1,
Now what could bring fear to a nature thus unreceptive of all the outer? Fear demands feeling. Nor is there place (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Ato-Intelectivo
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castrointellective act
Let us explain the conditions under which we become conscious of this Intellective-Act. Enneads I,4,10
In sum we may safely gather that while the Intellective-Act may be attended by the Imaging Principle, it is not to be confounded with it. Enneads I,4,10
The Good is that on which all else depends, towards which all Existences aspire as to their source and their need, while Itself is without need, sufficient to Itself, aspiring to no other, the measure and Term of all, (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: unity
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAll this accomplished, it gives up its touring of the realm of sense and settles down in the Intellectual Kosmos and there plies its own peculiar Act: it has abandoned all the realm of deceit and falsity, and pastures the Soul in the "Meadows of Truth": it employs the Platonic division to the discernment of the Ideal-Forms, of the Authentic-Existence and of the First-Kinds [or Categories of Being]: it establishes, in the light of Intellection, the unity there is in all that issues from these (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Intellective-Being
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut what must we do? How lies the path? How come to vision of the inaccessible Beauty, dwelling as if in consecrated precincts, apart from the common ways where all may see, even the profane? He that has the strength, let him arise and withdraw into himself, foregoing all that is known by the eyes, turning away for ever from the material beauty that once made his joy. When he perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not pursue: he must know them for copies, vestiges, (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Matter
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAs in Man before the organization or shaping by the All-Soul, so everywhere else there is Matter, always the same: there is a certain tendency to think of Matter as being ‘material’, e.g. in man as flesh or clay, in the world at large as some sort of powdery beginning or residue of things: this misconception must be carefully guarded out. ‘Matter’, says Jules Simon, ‘is rather a demand of thought than a reality of existence’: this is perhaps to state the case rashly, but it is certainly (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: intellective-forms
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroSimilarly, that self-intellection is an act upon a reality and upon a life; therefore, before the Life and Real-Being concerned in the intellection, there must be another Being and Life. In a word, intellection is vested in the activities themselves: since, then, the activities of self-intellection are intellective-forms, We, the Authentic We, are the Intelligibles and self-intellection conveys the Image of the Intellectual Sphere. Enneads III,9,3
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Princípio-Intelectual
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThus it is not easy, without knowledge and the training of habit, to quiver with any very real rapture over the notion of becoming ‘wholly identified with the Intellectual-Principle’; when it is understood and at each moment deeply realized that ‘The Intellectual-Principle’ is the highest accessible ‘Person’ of the Godhead, is very God, is the Supreme Wisdom immanent within the human soul and yet ineffably superior to all the Universe besides, then perhaps we may feel the great call to the (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: intellects
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroSo with Intellect. Intellect as a whole must be thought of as prior to the intellects actualized as individuals; but when we come to the particular intellects, we find that what subsists in the particulars must be maintained from the totality. The Intellect subsisting in the totality is a provider for the particular intellects, is the potentiality of them: it involves them as members of its universality, while they in turn involve the universal Intellect in their particularity, just as the (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: principle
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAnd this very examining principle, which investigates and decides in these matters, must be brought to light. Enneads I,1,
And the principle that reasons out these matters? Is it We or the Soul? We, but by the Soul. Enneads I,1,
Thus much to show that the principle that we attain Likeness by virtue in no way involves the existence of virtue in the Supreme. But we have not merely to make a formal demonstration: we must persuade as well as demonstrate. Enneads I,2,
There is the likeness (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelectos
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut why should it not be simply a dyad? Because neither of the constituents could ever be a pure unity, but at the very least a duality and so progressively [in an endless dualization]. Besides, in that first duality of the hypothesis there would be also movement and rest, Intellect and the life included in Intellect, all-embracing Intellect and life complete. That means that it could not be one Intellect; it must be Intellect agglomerate including all the particular intellects, a thing (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: power
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIt will hold itself above all passions and affections. Necessary pleasures and all the activity of the senses it will employ only for medicament and assuagement lest its work be impeded. Pain it may combat, but, failing the cure, it will bear meekly and ease it by refusing assent to it. All passionate action it will check: the suppression will be complete if that be possible, but at worst the Soul will never itself take fire but will keep the involuntary and uncontrolled outside its (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Highest Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAnd, further, these Civic Virtues - measured and ordered themselves and acting as a principle of measure to the Soul which is as Matter to their forming - are like to the measure reigning in the over-world, and they carry a trace of that Highest Good in the Supreme; for, while utter measurelessness is brute Matter and wholly outside of Likeness, any participation in Ideal-Form produces some corresponding degree of Likeness to the formless Being There. And participation goes by nearness: the (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelectual
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThis also we possess as the summit of our being. And we have It either as common to all or as our own immediate possession: or again we may possess It in both degrees, that is in common, since It is indivisible – one, everywhere and always Its entire self – and severally in that each personality possesses It entire in the First-Soul [i.e. in the Intellectual as distinguished from the lower phase of the Soul]. Enneads I,1,
The first degree is the conversion from the lower life; the second – (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIt can scarcely prove to be The Good: The Absolute Good cannot be thought to have taken up its abode with Evil. We can think of it only as something of the nature of good but paying a double allegiance and unable to rest in the Authentic Good. Enneads I,2,4
This Absolute Good other entities may possess in two ways - by becoming like to It and by directing the Act of their being towards It. Enneads I,7,1
How can there any contrary to the Absolute Good, when the absolute has no quality? (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIs it any explanation to say that desire is vested in a Faculty-of-desire and anger in the Irascible-Faculty and, collectively, that all tendency is seated in the Appetitive-Faculty? Such a statement of the facts does not help towards making the affections common to the Couplement; they might still be seated either in the Soul alone or in the body alone. On the one hand if the appetite is to be stirred, as in the carnal passion, there must be a heating of the blood and the bile, a (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Authentic Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIt can scarcely prove to be The Good: The Absolute Good cannot be thought to have taken up its abode with Evil. We can think of it only as something of the nature of good but paying a double allegiance and unable to rest in the Authentic Good. Enneads I,2,4
Now if happiness did indeed require freedom from pain, sickness, misfortune, disaster, it would be utterly denied to anyone confronted by such trials: but if it lies in the fruition of the Authentic Good, why turn away from this Term (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Princípio
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroNo; from the organized body and something else, let us say a light, which the Soul gives forth from itself, it forms a distinct Principle, the Animate; and in this Principle are vested Sense-Perception and all the other experiences found to belong to the Animate. Enneads I,1,
But does not Likeness by way of Virtue imply Likeness to some being that has Virtue? To what Divine Being, then, would our Likeness be? To the Being – must we not think? – in Which, above all, such excellence seems to (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: presence of the Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut at this rate the Good is nothing but the mere sensation, the bare activity of the sentient life. And so it will be possessed by all that feel, no matter what. Perhaps it will be said that two constituents are needed to make up the Good, that there must be both feeling and a given state felt: but how can it be maintained that the bringing together of two neutrals can produce the Good? They will explain, possibly, that the state must be a state of Good and that such a condition constitutes (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Reason-Principle
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroWe see partial wrong; from what is before us we divine that which is lacking to the entire form [or Kind] thus indicated; we see that the completed Kind would be the Indeterminate; by this process we are able to identify and affirm Evil. In the same way when we observe what we feel to be an ugly appearance in Matter – left there because the Reason-Principle has not become so completely the master as to cover over the unseemliness – we recognise Ugliness by the falling-short from Ideal-Form. (…)