And if it is a Reason-Principle, one whose incoming constitutes the body, then clearly this Principle contains embraced within itself all the qualities. If this Reason-Principle is to be no mere principle of definition exhibiting the nature of a thing but a veritable Reason constituting the thing, then it cannot itself contain Matter but must encircle Matter, and by being present to Matter elaborate the body: thus the body will be Matter associated with an indwelling Reason-Principle which (…)
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MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna
Matérias
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MacKenna-Plotinus: intellectual principle
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
MacKenna-Plotinus: morality
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe existence, or half-existence, of Matter brings about the necessity of morality. The Divine perfection is above morality, is ‘unmoral’; the purely material is below morality; morality is for man; man - being divine at his topmost pitch and ‘human’ at the mean, and brute below that and merely vegetative below that and merely Matter in the lowest range of his nature -man, if he is to reach his good, the desired of every being, must ‘what in him is dark illumine, what is low raise and (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: moving principle
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIf on the contrary each is a principle, then the effective powers become a matter of chance; under what compulsion are they to hold together and act with one mind towards that work of unity, the harmony of the entire heavenly system? Again what can make it necessary that the material bodies of the heavenly system be equal in number to the Intellectual moving principles, and how can these incorporeal Beings be numerically many when there is no Matter to serve as the basis of difference? For (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Percepção do Sentido
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castrosensation sense-percepetion
Sensation and Sense-Perception are used, almost indifferently, for any action or passive-state by which man experiences the material world or any of its manifestations or representations.
Firstly, 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,. 1
Thus assuredly Sense-Perception, Discursive-Reasoning; and all (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: principle of Difference
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBeing, thus, exhibits every shape and every quality; it is not seen as a thing determined by some one particular quality; there could not be one only, since the principle of Difference is there; and since Identity is equally there, it must be simultaneously one and many. And so Being is; such it always was: unity-with-plurality appears in all its species, as witness all the variations of magnitude, shape and quality. Clearly nothing may legitimately be excluded [from Being], for the whole (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Senso-percepção
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroSense-Perception
It has been explained that seeing and all sense-perception can occur only through the medium of some bodily substance, since in the absence of body the soul is utterly absorbed in the Intellectual Sphere. Sense-perception being the gripping not of the Intellectual but of the sensible alone, the soul, if it is to form any relationship of knowledge, or of impression, with objects of sense, must be brought in some kind of contact with them by means of whatever may bridge the (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: principle of Intellection
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 (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Act
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroActs
Act, with the capital, usually translates the difficult word energeia and stands for the Expression of the Identity of any being or for its characteristic function, an expression and function which may, often, be entirely within, the very reverse of any operation upon the outer.
But 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 (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: thinking principle
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAs a beginning, what is the origin of the Ideas in general? It is not that the thinking principle thought of each Idea and by that act of thought procured their several existences; not because Justice and Movement were thus thought did they come to be; that would imply that while the thought is later than the thing – the concept of Justice must be later than Justice itself – yet the thought precedes what, as founded on the thinking, owes its existence to it. Besides, if justice is only a (…)
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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: principle of Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe principle is that evil by definition is a falling short in good, and good cannot be at full strength in this Sphere where it is lodged in the alien: the good here is in something else, in something distinct from the Good, and this something else constitutes the falling short for it is not good. And this is why evil is ineradicable: there is, first, the fact that in relation to this principle of Good, thing will always stand less than thing, and, besides, all things come into being (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Filosofia
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroPhilosophy in Plotinus often means not Metaphysics but the Act or State of the Uniate: it might, often, without much fault of tone, be taken as the equivalent of 1, Sanctity, and 2, the Mystic Way.
What, then, is Philosophy? Philosophy is the supremely precious. Enneads I,1,II. 5
Is Dialectic, then, the same as Philosophy? It is the precious part of Philosophy. We must not think of it as the mere tool of the metaphysician: Dialectic does not consist of bare theories and rules: it deals (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: vegetal principle
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut every living being includes the vegetal principle, that principle of growth and nourishment which maintains the organism by means of the blood; this nourishing medium is contained in the veins; the veins and blood have their origin in the liver: from observation of these facts the power concerned was assigned a place; the phase of the soul which has to do with desire was allocated to the liver. Certainly what brings to birth and nourishes and gives growth must have the desire of these (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: philosophy
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroPhilosophy
In this last case it will be the double task of philosophy to direct this lower Soul towards the higher, the agent, and except in so far as the conjunction is absolutely necessary, to sever the agent from the instrument, the body, so that it need not forever have its Act upon or through this inferior. Enneads I,1,. 3
It is in this sense that we read of the Soul: "We saw it as those others saw the sea-god Glaukos." "And," reading on, "if we mean to discern the nature of the (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: intellective principle
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 (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: animate
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIt might be ventured that memory, no less than sensation, is a function of the Couplement, on the ground that bodily constitution determines our memories good or bad; but the answer would come that, whether the body happens or not to be a hindrance, the act of remembering would still be an act of the soul. And in the case of matters learned [and not merely felt, as corporeal experiences], how can we think of the Couplement of soul and body as the remembering principle? Here, surely, it must (…)
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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 (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: ascent
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroOf these material elements - for example - fire, the keen and swift, cooperates by its upward tendency as earth by its lingering below; for we must not imagine that the fire, once it finds itself at the point where its ascent must stop, settles down as in its appropriate place, no longer seeking, like all the rest, to expand in both directions. No: but higher is not possible; lower is repugnant to its Kind; all that remains for it is to be tractable and, answering to a need of its nature, to (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: active principle
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThat principle [of the new birth] strives to gain control, and if it succeeds it also lives and itself, in turn, possesses a guiding spirit [its next higher]: if on the contrary it is weighed down by the developed evil in the character, the spirit of the previous life pays the penalty: the evil-liver loses grade because during his life the active principle of his being took the tilt towards the brute by force of affinity. If, on the contrary, the Man is able to follow the leading of his (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Authentic-Being
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAuthentic Being
By this Non-Being, of course, we are not to understand something that simply does not exist, but only something of an utterly different order from Authentic-Being: there is no question here of movement or position with regard to Being; the Non-Being we are thinking of is, rather, an image of Being or perhaps something still further removed than even an image. Enneads I,8,