It may seem reasonable to lay down as a law that when any powers are contained by a recipient, every action or state expressive of them must be the action or state of that recipient, they themselves remaining unaffected as merely furnishing efficiency. Enneads I,1,
Let the earth-bound man be handsome and powerful and rich, and so apt to this world that he may rule the entire human race: still there can be no envying him, the fool of such lures. Perhaps such splendours could not, from the (…)
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MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna
Matérias
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MacKenna-Plotinus: powers
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Form-Soul
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut if Matter by very essence is evil how could it choose the good? This question implies that if Evil were self-conscious it would admire itself: but how can the unadmirable be admired; and did we not discover that the good must be apt to the nature? There that question may rest. But if universally the good is Form and the higher the ascent the more there is of Form-Soul more truly Form than body is and phases of soul progressively of higher Form and Intellectual-Principle standing as Form (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Idea
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAll shapelessness whose kind admits of pattern and form, as long as it remains outside of Reason and Idea, is ugly by that very isolation from the Divine-Thought. And this is the Absolute Ugly: an ugly thing is something that has not been entirely mastered by pattern, that is by Reason, the Matter not yielding at all points and in all respects to Ideal-Form. Enneads I,6,
But where the Ideal-Form has entered, it has grouped and coordinated what from a diversity of parts was to become a (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Ideia Formadora
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAnaxagoras, in identifying his "primal-combination" with Matter - to which he allots no mere aptness to any and every nature or quality but the effective possession of all - withdraws in this way the very Intellectual-Principle he had introduced; for this Mind is not to him the bestower of shape, of Forming Idea; and it is co-aeval with Matter, not its prior. But this simultaneous existence is impossible: for if the combination derives Being by participation, Being is the prior; if both are (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: reasoning
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThus assuredly Sense-Perception, Discursive-Reasoning; and all our ordinary mentation are foreign to the Soul: for sensation is a receiving – whether of an Ideal-Form or of an impassive body – and reasoning and all ordinary mental action deal with sensation. Enneads I,1,
There is no reason why the entire compound entity should not be described as the Animate or Living-Being – mingled in a lower phase, but above that point the beginning of the veritable man, distinct from all that is kin to (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: forming-Idea
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe dark element in the Intelligible, however, differs from that in the sense-world: so therefore does the Matter - as much as the forming-Idea presiding in each of the two realms. The Divine Matter, though it is the object of determination has, of its own nature, a life defined and intellectual; the Matter of this sphere while it does accept determination is not living or intellective, but a dead thing decorated: any shape it takes is an image, exactly as the Base is an image. There on the (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: bodies
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAnd how do we possess the Divinity? In that the Divinity is contained in the Intellectual-Principle and Authentic-Existence; and We come third in order after these two, for the We is constituted by a union of the supreme, the undivided Soul – we read – and that Soul which is divided among [living] bodies. For, note, we inevitably think of the Soul, though one undivided in the All, as being present to bodies in division: in so far as any bodies are Animates, the Soul has given itself to each (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Ideia-Formante
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut what is the root of this evil state? how can it be brought under the causing principle indicated? Firstly, such a Soul is not apart from Matter, is not purely itself. That is to say, it is touched with Unmeasure, it is shut out from the Forming-Idea that orders and brings to measure, and this because it is merged into a body made of Matter. Enneads I,8,4
Our knowledge of the first is gained from the ultimate of all, from the very shadow cast by the fire, because this ultimate [the (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Life
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThus the Life is one thing, the Act is another and the Expiator yet another. The retreat and sundering, then, must be not from this body only, but from every alien accruement. Such accruement takes place at birth; or rather birth is the coming-into-being of that other [lower] phase of the Soul. For the meaning of birth has been indicated elsewhere; it is brought about by a descent of the Soul, something being given off by the Soul other than that actually coming down in the declension. (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Forming-Ideas
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroForming Idea
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Qualidade
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut if Matter is devoid of quality how can it be evil? It is described as being devoid of quality in the sense only that it does not essentially possess any of the qualities which it admits and which enter into it as into a substratum. No one says that it has no nature; and if it has any nature at all, why may not that nature be evil though not in the sense of quality? Quality qualifies something not itself: it is therefore an accidental; it resides in some other object. Matter does not (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Formless
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThus the Life in the Supreme was the collectivity of power; the vision taking place There was the potentiality of all; Intellectual-Principle, thus arising, is manifested as this universe of Being. It stands over the Beings not as itself requiring base but that it may serve as base to the Form of the Firsts, the Formless Form. And it takes position towards the soul, becoming a light to the soul as itself finds its light in the First; whenever Intellectual-Principle becomes the determinant of (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: memory
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe born lover, to whose degree the musician also may attain – and then either come to a stand or pass beyond – has a certain memory of beauty but, severed from it now, he no longer comprehends it: spellbound by visible loveliness he clings amazed about that. His lesson must be to fall down no longer in bewildered delight before some, one embodied form; he must be led, under a system of mental discipline, to beauty everywhere and made to discern the One Principle underlying all, a Principle (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: formlessness
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroMatter becomes mistress of what is manifested through it: it corrupts and destroys the incomer, it substitutes its own opposite character and kind, not in the sense of opposing, for example, concrete cold to concrete warmth, but by setting its own formlessness against the Form of heat, shapelessness to shape, excess and defect to the duly ordered. Thus, in sum, what enters into Matter ceases to belong to itself, comes to belong to Matter, just as, in the nourishment of living beings, what is (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Universe
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut the Universe outside; how is it aligned towards the Good? The soulless by direction toward Soul: Soul towards the Good itself, through the Intellectual-Principle. Enneads I,7,
With this, we would have no longer the distinction of one order, the heavenly system, stable for ever, and another, the earthly, in process of decay: all would be alike except in the point of time; the celestial would merely be longer lasting. If, then, we accepted this duration of type alone as a true account of (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute Formlessness
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThere must, then, be some Undetermination-Absolute, some Absolute Formlessness; all the qualities cited as characterizing the Nature of Evil must be summed under an Absolute Evil; and every evil thing outside of this must either contain this Absolute by saturation or have taken the character of evil and become a cause of evil by consecration to this Absolute. Enneads I,8,3
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MacKenna-Plotinus: sensation
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroFirstly, what is the seat of Sense-Perception? This is the obvious beginning since the affections and experiences either are sensations of some kind or at least never occur apart from sensation. Enneads I,1,
Thus assuredly Sense-Perception, Discursive-Reasoning; and all our ordinary mentation are foreign to the Soul: for sensation is a receiving – whether of an Ideal-Form or of an impassive body – and reasoning and all ordinary mental action deal with sensation. Enneads I,1,
Now if there (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: material forms
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThis natural tendency must be made the starting-point to such a man; he must be drawn by the tone, rhythm and design in things of sense: he must learn to distinguish the material forms from the Authentic-Existent which is the source of all these correspondences and of the entire reasoned scheme in the work of art: he must be led to the Beauty that manifests itself through these forms; he must be shown that what ravished him was no other than the Harmony of the Intellectual world and the (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: air
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroMatter exists; Soul exists; and they occupy, so to speak, one place. There is not one place for Matter and another for Soul-Matter, for instance, kept to earth, Soul in the air: the soul’s "separate place" is simply its not being in Matter; that is, its not being united with it; that is that there be no compound unit consisting of Soul and Matter; that is that Soul be not moulded in Matter as in a matrix; this is the Soul’s apartness. Enneads I,8,
We have a parallel in our earth, constant (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: formas de Ser
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut that this same Mars, or Aphrodite, in certain aspects should cause adulteries - as if they could thus, through the agency of human incontinence, satisfy their own mutual desires - is not such a notion the height of unreason? And who could accept the fancy that their happiness comes from their seeing each other in this or that relative position and not from their own settled nature? Again: countless myriads of living beings are born and continue to be: to minister continuously to every (…)