And we must consider also our acts of Intellection, their mode and their seat. Enneads I,1,
And by means of these Ideal-Forms, by which the Soul wields single lordship over the Animate, we have Discursive-Reasoning, Sense-Knowledge and Intellection. From this moment we have peculiarly the We: before this there was only the "Ours"; but at this stage stands the WE [the authentic Human-Principle] loftily presiding over the Animate. Enneads I,1,
And Intellection in us is twofold: since the (…)
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MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna
Matérias
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelecção
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Above-World
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroWhat definition are we to give to Eternity? Can it be identified with the [divine or] Intellectual Substance itself? This would be like identifying Time with the Universe of Heavens and Earth - an opinion, it is true, which appears to have had its adherents. No doubt we conceive, we know, Eternity as something most august; most august, too, is the Intellectual Kind; and there is no possibility of saying that the one is more majestic than the other, since no such degrees can be asserted in (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Movement
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAre not Being and Reality (to on and he ousia) distinct; must we not envisage Being as the substance stripped of all else, while Reality is this same thing, Being, accompanied by the others – Movement, Rest, Identity, Difference – so that these are the specific constituents of Reality? The universal fabric, then, is Reality in which Being, Movement, and so on are separate constituents. Enneads: II VI.
Now Movement has Being as an accident and therefore should have Reality as an accident; (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Absence
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut is Absence this privation itself, or something in which this Privation is lodged? Anyone maintaining that Matter and Privation are one and the same in substratum but stand separable in reason cannot be excused from assigning to each the precise principle which distinguishes it in reason from the other: that which defines Matter must be kept quite apart from that defining the Privation and vice versa. Enneads II,4,14
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Reason-Principles
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroFor, the quality [form] that has entered into Matter does not act as an entity apart from the Matter, any more than axe-shape will cut apart from iron. Further, Forms lodged in Matter are not the same as they would be if they remained within themselves; they are Reason-Principles Materialized, they are corrupted in the Matter, they have absorbed its nature: essential fire does not burn, nor do any of the essential entities effect, of themselves alone, the operation which, once they have (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute Beauty
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: Kind
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut if Soul [in man] and Essential Soul are one and the same, then the Soul will be an Ideal-Form unreceptive of all those activities which it imparts to another Kind but possessing within itself that native Act of its own which Reason manifests. Enneads I,1,
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 – (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute Evil
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIn what substantial-form [hypostasis] then is all this to be found - not as accident but as the very substance itself? For if Evil can enter into other things, it must have in a certain sense a prior existence, even though it may not be an essence. As there is Good, the Absolute, as well as Good, the quality, so, together with the derived evil entering into something not itself, there must be the Absolute Evil. Enneads I,8,3
There must, then, be some Undetermination-Absolute, some Absolute (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Man
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIn the case of carnal desire, it will certainly be the Man that desires, and yet, on the other hand, there must be desire in the Desiring-Faculty as well. How can this be? Are we to suppose that, when the man originates the desire, the Desiring-Faculty moves to the order? How could the Man have come to desire at all unless through a prior activity in the Desiring-Faculty? Then it is the Desiring-Faculty that takes the lead? Yet how, unless the body be first in the appropriate condition? (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute Magnitude
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroNor can we, on the other hand, think that matter is simply Absolute Magnitude. Enneads III,6,17
Magnitude is not, like Matter, a receptacle; it is an Ideal-Principle: it is a thing standing apart to itself, not some definite Mass. The fact is that the self-gathered content of the Intellectual Principle or of the All-Soul, desires expansion [and thereby engenders secondaries]: in its images - aspiring and moving towards it and eagerly imitating its act - is vested a similar power of (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: wisdom
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThose virtues, on the other hand, which spring not from contemplative wisdom but from custom or practical discipline belong to the Couplement: to the Couplement, too, belong the vices; they are its repugnances, desires, sympathies. Enneads I,1,
But what is this escape? "In attaining Likeness to God," we read. And this is explained as "becoming just and holy, living by wisdom," the entire nature grounded in Virtue. Enneads I,2,
But does not Likeness by way of Virtue imply Likeness to some (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute Unity
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAgain, whence does Matter derive its unifying power? It is assuredly not the Absolute Unity, but has only that of participation in Unity. Enneads VI,1,26
Anything that can be described as a unity is so in the precise degree in which it holds a characteristic being; the less or more the degree of the being, the less or more the unity. Soul, while distinct from unity’s very self, is a thing of the greater unity in proportion as it is of the greater, the authentic, being. Absolute unity it is (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: participation
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: Ser Absoluto
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroStability, then, may also be taken as a single genus. Obviously distinct from Motion and perhaps even its contrary, that it is also distinct from Being may be shown by many considerations. We may especially observe that if Stability were identical with Being, so also would Motion be, with equal right. Why identity in the case of Stability and not in that of Motion, when Motion is virtually the very life and Act both of Substance and of Absolute Being? However, on the very same principle on (…)
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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: Absolute Living-Form
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIn the Intellectuals, all, if the Absolute Living-Form, there is a multiple - a triad, let us say - that Triad of the Living-Form is of the nature of essence: and the Triad prior to any living thing, Triad in the realm of Being, is a principle of essence. Enneads VI,6,16
It appears then that Number in that realm is definite; it is we that can conceive the "More than is present"; the infinity lies in our counting: in the Real is no conceiving more than has been conceived; all stands entire; (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Beauty
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: Absolute-Being
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroWhat will this be? That Kind whose place is below all the patterns, forms, shapes, measurements and limits, that which has no trace of good by any title of its own, but [at best] takes order and grace from some Principle outside itself, a mere image as regards Absolute-Being but the Authentic Essence of Evil - in so far as Evil can have Authentic Being. In such a Kind, Reason recognizes the Primal Evil, Evil Absolute. Enneads I,8,3
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MacKenna-Plotinus: genera
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroPhilosophy at a very early stage investigated the number and character of the Existents. Various theories resulted: some declared for one Existent, others for a finite number, others again for an infinite number, while as regards the nature of the Existents - one, numerically finite, or numerically infinite - there was a similar disagreement. These theories, in so far as they have been adequately examined by later workers, may be passed over here; our attention must be directed upon the (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute-Intellect
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