But this science, this Dialectic essential to all the three classes alike, what, in sum, is it? It is the Method, or Discipline, that brings with it the power of pronouncing with final truth upon the nature and relation of things – what each is, how it differs from others, what common quality all have, to what Kind each belongs and in what rank each stands in its Kind and whether its Being is Real-Being, and how many Beings there are, and how many non-Beings to be distinguished from Beings. (…)
Página inicial > Palavras-chave > Escritores - Obras > MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna
MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna
Matérias
-
MacKenna-Plotinus: Beings
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
MacKenna-Plotinus: forms of life
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut, to begin with, it is surely unsound to deny that good of life to animals only because they do not appear to man to be of great account. And as for plants, we need not necessarily allow to them what we accord to the other forms of life, since they have no feeling. It is true people might be found to declare prosperity possible to the very plants: they have life, and life may bring good or evil; the plants may thrive or wither, bear or be barren. Enneads I,4,1
It has been said more than (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Divino
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut 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 inhere, that is to the Soul of the Kosmos and to the Principle ruling within it, the Principle endowed with a wisdom most wonderful. What could be more fitting than that we, living in this world, should become Like to its ruler? But, at the beginning, we are met by the doubt (…)
-
MacKenna-Plotinus: ideal forms
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIf sensation is apprehension by means of the soul’s employment of the body, intellection cannot be a similar use of the body or it would be identical with sensation. If then intellection is apprehension apart from body, much more must there be a distinction between the body and the intellective principle: sensation for objects of sense, intellection for the intellectual object. And even if this be rejected, it must still be admitted that there do exist intellections of intellectual objects (…)
-
MacKenna-Plotinus: Authentic
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,
But since we hold that happiness is for human beings too, we must consider what this perfect life is. The matter may be stated thus: It has been shown elsewhere that man, when he commands not merely the life of sensation but also Reason (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: bodily forms
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAnother school makes it incorporeal: among these, not all hold the theory of one only Matter; some of them while they maintain the one Matter, in which the first school believes, the foundation of bodily forms, admit another, a prior, existing in the divine-sphere, the base of the Ideas there and of the unembodied Beings. Enneads II,4,1
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 (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: quantity
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut if we are to consider only the present and may not call in the past to make the total, why do we not reckon so in the case of time itself, where, in fact, we do not hesitate to add the past to the present and call the total greater? Why not suppose a quantity of happiness equivalent to a quantity of time? This would be no more than taking it lap by lap to correspond with time-laps instead of choosing to consider it as an indivisible, measurable only by the content of a given instant. (…)
-
MacKenna-Plotinus: forms of existence
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe School that erects other material forces into universal causes is met by the same reasoning: we say that while these can warm us and chill us, and destroy weaker forms of existence, they can be causes of nothing that is done in the sphere of mind or soul: all this must be traceable to quite another kind of Principle. Enneads III,1,3
And what else is there to attribute to it? Repose, no doubt; but, to an Intellectual-Principle, Repose is not an abdication from intellect; its Repose is (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: substance
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAnd such a one will possess not merely the good, but the Supreme Good if, that is to say, in the realm of existents the Supreme Good can be no other than the authentically living, no other than Life in its greatest plenitude, life in which the good is present as something essential not as something brought from without, a life needing no foreign substance called in from a foreign realm, to establish it in good. Enneads I,4,
In what substantial-form [hypostasis] then is all this to be found (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Divine 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,3,18
No: The Divine Mind in its mentation thinks itself; the object of the thought is nothing external: Thinker and Thought are one; therefore in its thinking and knowing it possesses itself, observes itself and sees itself not as something unconscious but as knowing: in this Primal (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Quantidade
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroNo: all that ever appears upon it is brought in by the Idea: the Idea alone possesses: to it belongs the magnitude and all else that goes with the Reason-Principle or follows upon it. Quantity is given with the Ideal-Form in all the particular species – man, bird, and particular kind of bird. Enneads II,4,
The imaging of Quantity upon Matter by an outside power is not more surprising than the imaging of Quality; Quality is no doubt a Reason-Principle, but Quantity also – being measure, (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Supreme Mind
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroTo increase the Primals by making the Supreme Mind engender the Reason-Principle, and this again engender in the Soul a distinct power to act as mediator between Soul and the Supreme Mind, this is to deny intellection to the Soul, which would no longer derive its Reason from the Intellectual-Principle but from an intermediate: the Soul then would possess not the Reason-Principle but an image of it: the Soul could not know the Intellectual-Principle; it could have no intellection. Enneads II,9,1
-
MacKenna-Plotinus: intellectual
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroTo deny Evil a place among realities is necessarily to do away with the Good as well, and even to deny the existence of anything desirable; it is to deny desire, avoidance and all intellectual act; for desire has Good for its object, aversion looks to Evil; all intellectual act, all Wisdom, deals with Good and Bad, and is itself one of the things that are good. Enneads I,8,
And we must remember that what comes from the supernals does not enter into the recipients as it left the source; (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelligible Kind
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThus the All stands as one all-complete Life, whose members, to the measure in which each contains within itself the Highest, effect all that is high and noble: and the entire scheme must be subordinate to its Dirigeant as an army to its general, "following upon Zeus" - it has been said - "as he proceeds towards the Intelligible Kind." Enneads II,3,13
If all this is so, then [the secret of creation is that] the Soul of the All abides in contemplation of the Highest and Best, ceaselessly (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: perception
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe faculty of perception in the Soul cannot act by the immediate grasping of sensible objects, but only by the discerning of impressions printed upon the Animate by sensation: these impressions are already Intelligibles while the outer sensation is a mere phantom of the other [of that in the Soul] which is nearer to Authentic-Existence as being an impassive reading of Ideal-Forms. Enneads I,1,
When we have done evil it is because we have been worsted by our baser side – for a man is many (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelligible Realm
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroFurther, admitting that there is an Intelligible Realm beyond, of which this world is an image, then, since this world-compound is based on Matter, there must be Matter there also. Enneads II,4,4
The 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; (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Reality
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAll until The Good is reached is beautiful; The Good is beyond-beautiful, beyond the Highest, holding kingly state in the Intellectual-Kosmos, that sphere constituted by a Principle wholly unlike what is known as Intelligence in us. Our intelligence is nourished on the propositions of logic, is skilled in following discussions, works by reasonings, examines links of demonstration, and comes to know the world of Being also by the steps of logical process, having no prior grasp of Reality but (…)
-
MacKenna-Plotinus: Objeto Inteligível
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut might it not be the Intelligible object itself? No: for the Intelligible makes an equally inseparable duality with the Intellectual-Principle. Enneads III,8,9
If, then, neither the Intellectual-Principle nor the Intelligible Object can be the First Existent, what is? Our answer can only be: The source of both. Enneads III,8,9
The Intelligible Object is the Intellectual-Principle itself in its repose, unity, immobility: the Intellectual-Principle, contemplator of that object - of the (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: species
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThose, then, that set happiness not in the mere living but in the reasoning life seem to overlook the fact that they are not really making it depend upon life at all: they admit that this reasoning faculty, round which they centre happiness, is a property [not the subject of a property]: the subject, to them, must be the Reasoning-Life since it is in this double term that they find the basis of the happiness: so that they are making it consist not in life but in a particular kind of life – (…)
-
MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelligible object
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIntelligible Object