Tractate 49 Fifth Ennead. Third tractate. The knowing hypostases and the transcendent.
1. Are we to think that a being knowing itself must contain diversity, that self-knowledge can be affirmed only when some one phase of the self perceives other phases, and that therefore an absolutely simplex entity would be equally incapable of introversion and of self-awareness?
No: a being that has no parts or phases may have this consciousness; in fact there would be no real self-knowing in an (…)
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MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna
Matérias
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Enneads V,3
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Mind
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroFor as long as divine Mind and Soul exist, the divine Thought-Forms will pour forth into that phase of the Soul: as long as there is a sun, all that streams from it will be some form of Light. Enneads II,3,
But that argument would equally cancel the Matter present in the bodily forms of this realm: body without shape has never existed, always body achieved and yet always the two constituents. We discover these two – Matter and Idea – by sheer force of our reasoning which distinguishes (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Stability
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroNow Motion, thus manifested in conjunction with Being, does not alter Being’s nature – unless to complete its essential character – and it does retain for ever its own peculiar nature: at once, then, we are forced to introduce Stability. To reject Stability would be more unreasonable than to reject Motion; for Stability is associated in our thought and conception with Being even more than with Motion; unalterable condition, unchanging mode, single Reason-Principle – these are characteristics (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: impression
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIn fine we are not to think of Evil as some particular bad thing – injustice, for example, or any other ugly trait – but as a principle distinct from any of the particular forms in which, by the addition of certain elements, it becomes manifest. Thus there may be wickedness in the Soul; the forms this general wickedness is to take will be determined by the environing Matter, by the faculties of the Soul that operate and by the nature of their operation, whether seeing, acting, or merely (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Act of the Intellect
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut how can I form the conception of the sizelessness of Matter? How do you form the concept of any absence of quality? What is the Act of the Intellect, what is the mental approach, in such a case? The secret is Indetermination. Enneads II,4,10
Soul, then, is one and many - as many as are manifested in that oneness - one in its nature, many in those other things. A single Existent, it makes itself many by what we may call its motion: it is one entire, but by its striving, so to speak, to (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Enneads VI,5
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroTractate 23 Sixth Ennead. Fifth tractate On the integral omnipresence of the authentic existent (2).
1. The integral omnipresence of a unity numerically identical is in fact universally received; for all men instinctively affirm the god in each of us to be one, the same in all. It would be taken as certain if no one asked How or sought to bring the conviction to the test of reasoning; with this effective in their thought, men would be at rest, finding their stay in that oneness and (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Supreme
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThere ekei
’There’ - ‘in the Supreme’ - ‘in the Beyond’ and other similar words or phrases translate at convenience the word Ekei used by Plotinus for the Divine Sphere, the Intelligible World.
In childhood the main activity is in the Couplement and there is but little irradiation from the higher principles of our being: but when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme; they work upon us only when they stand at the mid-point. (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute-Man
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIt remains to decide whether only what is known in sense exists There or whether, on the contrary, as Absolute-Man differs from individual man, so there is in the Supreme an Absolute-Soul differing from Soul and an Absolute-Intellect differing from Intellectual-Principle. Enneads V,9,13
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Plotino - Tratado 1,5 (I,6,5) - Afetos ligados ao encontro do belo
18 de setembro de 2021, por Cardoso de CastroBaracat
5. Devemos, portanto, inquirir os amantes a respeito do que não está na sensação: Que sentis ante às chamadas belas ocupações, aos belos modos, aos comportamentos temperantes e, de modo geral, às ações da virtude, às disposições e à beleza das almas? Vós, vendo-vos belos em vossos interiores, que [310] experimentais? Como vos dionisais [anabakcheuesthai], e vos excitais, e desejais congregar-vos convosco, colhendo-vos de vossos corpos? Pois é isso que sentem os verdadeiros (…) -
Plotino - Tratado 10,1 (V, 1, 1) — A alma deve se conhecer a si mesma para reencontrar "o deus que é seu pai"
16 de janeiro de 2022, por Cardoso de CastroMíguez
1. ¿Cómo podremos explicar que las almas hayan olvidado a Dios, su padre, y que, siendo como son partes de él y que a él pertenecen por entero, se ignoren a sí mismas y le ignoren a él?. Digamos que el principio del mal es para ellas la audacia, la generación, la diferenciación primera y el deseo de ser ellas mismas. Pues queriendo gozar de su independencia, se sirven del movimiento que ellas poseen para dirigirse al lugar contrario al que ocupa la divinidad. Llegadas a este punto, (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Authentic-Existent
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAuthentic-Existent, Authentic-Existents, Authentic-Existence represent what is usually conveyed by the English philosophical term Real-Being. This choice was made, mainly, on considerations of literary convenience: an original writer can so play with his sentence-construction as to avoid the awkward clash between the noun and participle; a translator works more freely when there is no possibility of this clash.
It happens, moreover, that the adopted term is in itself better, at least for (…) -
Plotino - Tratado 27,29 (IV, 3, 29) — A memória depende da faculdade representativa (2)
14 de janeiro de 2022, por Cardoso de CastroMíguez
29. ¿Atribuiremos la memoria a la facultad de sentir y afirmaremos en tal sentido que la memoria y la facultad de sentir son una y la misma cosa? Si la imagen de Hércules, tal como se decía, es capaz de recordar, tendremos que hablar de dos facultades de sentir y, en todo caso, si la memoria y la sensación son cosas diferentes, habrá que contar con dos memorias. Si la memoria y la facultad de sentir son una y la misma cosa, dado que hay una memoria de nuestros conocimientos habrá (…) -
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: Proficient
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe Proficient translates o opoudaios, and means the achieved Mystic, the Adept, almost the ‘Uniate’, the human being who has become ‘wholly the Divine’.
And the Proficient [the Sage], how does he stand with regard to magic and philtre-spells? In the soul he is immune from magic; his reasoning part cannot be touched by it, he cannot be perverted. But there is in him the unreasoning element which comes from the [material] All, and in this he can be affected, or rather this can be affected (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: triad
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroSuccession or repetition gives us Number dyad, TRIAD, etc. and the extent traversed is a matter of Magnitude; thus we have Quantity of Movement in the form of number, dyad, TRIAD, decade, or in the form of extent apprehended in what we may call the amount of the Movement: but, the idea of Time we have not. That definite Quantity is merely something occurring within Time, for, otherwise Time is not everywhere but is something belonging to Movement which thus would be its substratum or (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Number
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroNow all that is Number and Reason-Principle is outside of boundlessness: these bestow bound and settlement and order in general upon all else: neither anything that has been brought under order nor any Order-Absolute is needed to bring them under order. The thing that has to be brought under order [e.g., Matter] is other than the Ordering Principle which is Limit and Definiteness and Reason-Principle. Therefore, necessarily, the thing to be brought under order and to definiteness must be in (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: animal
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIt may be a distasteful notion, this bringing-down of happiness so low as to the animal world – making it over, as then we must, even to the vilest of them and not withholding it even from the plants, living they too and having a life unfolding to a Term. Enneads I,4,
Now in common use this word "Life" embraces many forms which shade down from primal to secondary and so on, all massed under the common term – life of plant and life of animal – each phase brighter or dimmer than its next: (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: perfect unity
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIt may be objected that the Intellectual-Principle possesses its content in an eternal conjunction so that the two make a perfect unity, and that thus there is no Matter there. Enneads II,4,
Suppose that Life, then, to revert – an impossibility – to perfect unity: Time, whose existence is in that Life, and the Heavens, no longer maintained by that Life, would end at once. Enneads III,7,
This vision achieved, the acting instinct pauses; the mind is satisfied and seeks nothing further; the (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: organized body
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 is it not a paradox that, while Matter, the Substrate, is to them an existence, bodies should not have more claim to existence, the universe yet more, and not merely a claim grounded on the reality of one of its (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: ordering principle
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe ordering principle is twofold; there is the principle known to us as the Demiurge and there is the Soul of the All; we apply the appellation "Zeus" sometimes to the Demiurge and sometimes to the principle conducting the universe. Enneads IV,4,
Now, apartness may be explained as simply differentiation: but how account for priority unless on the assumption of some ordering principle arranging from above, and in that disposal necessarily affirming a serial order? There must be such a (…)