Plotino - Tratado 43,8 (VI, 2, 8) — Os cinco gêneros primeiros: O Ser, o Repouso e o Movimento; O Mesmo e o Outro

8 Pero es menester poner estos tres géneros, puesto que la mente piensa cada uno de ellos por separado: a la vez que los piensa, los pone, puesto que los piensa, y existen, puesto que son pensados. Porque las cosas cuyo ser está acompañado de materia no tienen su ser en la Inteligencia, pero los que son inmateriales, si son pensados, en esto estriba su ser. Observa la Inteligencia, obsérvala en toda su pureza, mírala de hito en hito contemplándola sin los ojos del cuerpo: estás viendo el Hogar de la Esencia y en él una luz inextinguible; ves cómo está fija en sí misma y cómo está espaciada, siendo a la vez vida permanente y pensamiento que actúa no hacia el futuro, sino hacia el ya, mejor dicho, que es ya y siempre ya y lo siempre presente; ves cómo está pensando dentro, y no fuera, de sí misma. En pensar consiste, pues, su actividad y su movimiento, y en pensarse a sí misma, su esencia y su ser, porque piensa siendo y se piensa siendo, y el ser es como su punto de apoyo. La actividad que ejerce en sí misma no es su esencia, mas el punto en que termina y de donde parte es el ser. El ser es el objeto visto, no la visión, más aun la visión tiene su ser, ya que el punto de donde parte y en que termina es ser. Ahora bien, como la Inteligencia está en acto y no es potencia, por eso junta de nuevo los dos términos. No los separa, sino que se identifica con su objeto e identifica su objeto consigo misma. Y como es lo más estable de todo y la sede de las demás cosas, por eso dio existencia al Reposo y lo posee no como adventicio, sino como emanado de sí misma y en sí misma. Aquello en que termina el pensamiento sin haber empezado, es Reposo, y aquello de donde arranca sin haber arrancado, es Reposo. Porque el Movimiento no arranca del Movimiento ni termina en Movimiento. Además, la Idea consiste en un Reposo, como límite que es de la Inteligencia, mientras que la Inteligencia de la Idea es el Movimiento.

Así que todos los Seres son Ser, Movimiento y Reposo; 25éstos son géneros que transcienden todos los Seres; cada uno de los posteriores es un Ser, un Reposo y un Movimiento. Pues bien, uno que vea estos tres géneros tras haber llegado a la intuición de la naturaleza del Ser, viendo el Ser con el ser que hay en uno mismo y los otros dos con los otros dos: el Movimiento que hay en el Ser con el movimiento que hay en uno mismo y el Reposo con el reposo; que ajuste éstos con aquéllos; que los mezcle sin discriminarlos porque se le presentan juntos y como confundidos, pero que luego, apartándolos un poco, reteniéndolos y discriminándolos, discierna el Ser, el Reposo y el Movimiento, viendo que son tres y cada uno uno, ¿no es verdad que dice que son distintos entre sí, que los separa por la alteridad y que ve la Alteridad que hay en el Ser afirmando que son tres y que cada uno es uno? Pero de nuevo, al reducirlos a unidad, todos en uno y todos uno, al reducirlos y verlos reducidos a identidad, ¿no es verdad que ve surgir y existir la Identidad? Es necesario, por tanto, añadir a aquellos tres géneros estos dos: la Identidad y la Alteridad, de manera que resulten, en total, cinco géneros para todos los Seres; y que sean esos dos los que confieran a sus posteriores el ser idénticos y otros. Cada uno de éstos es, en efecto, «un idéntico» y «un otro»; porque si fueran simplemente lo «idéntico» y lo «otro» sin el «un», tendrían rango de género. Pero además son géneros primarios, porque de ellos nada podrás predicar en la quididad; podrás predicar de ellos el Ser, porque son, pero no como género, porque no son un Ser particular. Tampoco lo podrás predicar del Movimiento ni del Reposo, porque no son especies del Ser. Porque hay Seres que son como especies del Ser y otros que participan de él. A su vez, tampoco el Ser participa en éstos como en sus géneros, porque tampoco están por encima del Ser ni son anteriores al Ser.

VIII. Nous admettrons donc ces trois genres [l’Être, le Mouvement, la Stabilité] parce que l’Intelligence pense chacun d’eux séparément. En les pensant, elle les pose ; et, dès qu’elle les pense, ils existent (18). En effet, si les choses dont l’existence suppose la mati  ère n’ont pas leur existence dans l’Intelligence (sinon elles seraient immatérielles), tout au contraire, pour les choses immatérielles, être pensées, c’est exister. Contemple donc l’Intelligence pure, appliques-y ton regard intérieur au lieu de la chercher avec les yeux du corps : alors tu vois en elle le foyer de l’essence, où brille une lumière vigilante; tu vois comment les êtres subsistent en elle unis et divisés; tu vois en elle la vie permanente, la pensée qui s’applique non à l’avenir, mais au présent, qui le possède déjà, le possède toujours, qui enfin pense ce qui lui est intime et non ce qui lui est extérieur. L’Intelligence pense, voilà l’acte et le mouvement ; elle pense ce qui est en elle, voilà l’essence et l’être : car, en tant qu’existant l’Intelligence pense, elle se pense comme existant, et l’objet auquel elle applique sa pensée existe également. L’acte de l’Intelligence sur elle-même n’est pas l’Essence; mais l’objet auquel il se rapporte, le principe dont il provient, c’est l’Être. L’Être est en effet l’objet de l’intuition, non l’intuition même; celle-ci ne possède l’existence que parce qu’elle part de l’Être, et qu’elle se rapporte à lui. Or, comme l’être est en acte et non en puissance, il réunit les deux termes [l’existence et l’intuition, l’objet et le sujet] et, sans les séparer, il fait que l’intuition soit lui-même, que lui-même soit l’intuition. Fondement inébranlable de toutes choses, soutien de leur existence, l’Être ne tient ce qu’il possède de rien d’étranger; il l’a de lui et en lui. Il est à la fois le terme auquel aboutit la pensée parce qu’il est la Stabilité qui n’a pas eu de commencement, et le principe dont la pensée est née parce qu’il est la Stabilité qui n’est point née : par le Mouvement ne peut ni paître du mouvement ni aboutir au mouvement, l’idée (ἰδέα) aussi appartient au genre de la Stabilité parce qu’elle est le terme auquel aboutit l’Intelligence ; mais l’acte intellectuel par lequel elle est pensée constitue le Mouvement. Ainsi toutes ces choses ne font qu’un ; et le Mouvement, la Stabilité, les choses qui existent dans tous les êtres, constituent des genres. Chacun des êtres postérieurs à ces genres est à son tour aussi être, stabilité, mouvement.

Quand on voit ces trois choses en jetant un regard sur la nature de l’Être, quand on contemple l’Être par l’être qu’on a en soi, et les autres genres, le Mouvement et la Stabilité, par le mouvement et la stabilité qu’on a aussi en soi et qu’on met en harmonie avec ces intelligibles; quand, unissant, confondant, mêlant les trois genres, on ne les discerne plus ; et que, peu après, on les divise, on les démêle, on les distingue, qu’on voit ainsi l’Être, le Mouvement, la Stabilité, trois choses dont chacune existe à part : n’arrive-t-il pas alors que, d’un côté, on les regarde comme différentes, qu’on les discerne par leur différence, qu’on reconnaît la différence dans l’Être en posant trois choses dont chacune existe à part ; et que, d’un autre côté, si on les considère dans leur relation avec l’unité et dans l’unité, si on les ramène toutes à être une chose une et identique, on voit l’identité naître, disons pieux, exister ? II est donc nécessaire d’ajouter aux trois genres déjà reconnus l’identité et la différence ou bien le même et l’autre (ταὐτόν, θάτερον), deux genres nouveaux qui joints eux trois autres font en tout cinq genres pour toutes choses (19). L’Identité et la Différence communiquent aussi leur caractère aux êtres inférieurs ; car chacun d’eux a quelque chose d’identique et quelque chose de différent. C’est ainsi que l’Identité et la Différence, prises dans leur simplicité, sans que nul accident leur soit uni, se trouvent au nombre des genres.

Les cinq genres que nous reconnaissons sont premiers, parce que l’on ne peut rien affirmer d’eux dans la catégorie de l’essence (ἐν τῷ τί ἐστι). On peut sans doute en affirmer l’être parce qu’ils sont des êtres; mais on n’en affirme pas l’être comme genre, parce que l’essence n’est pas un être particulier. L’Être ne s’affirme pas non plus du Mouvement ni de la Stabilité, parce que ce ne sont pas là des espèces de l’Être, Il n’y a que les êtres particuliers qui puissent se rapporter à l’Être, les uns comme espèces de l’Être, les autres comme participant à l’existence. L’Être ne participe pas non plus de ces quatre genres comme s’ils étaient des genres supérieurs dans lesquels il serait compris lui-même : car la Stabilité, le Mouvement, l’Identité et la Différence ne dépassent pas la sphère de l’Être et ne lui sont pas antérieurs.

ESSENCE, STABILITY AND MOVEMENT EXIST BECAUSE THOUGHT BY INTELLIGENCE.

8. We must posit these three genera (essence, movement, and stability) because intelligence thinks each of them separately. By thinking them simultaneously, Intelligence posits them; and, as soon as Intelligence thinks them, they are (in existence). The things whose existence ("essence") implies matter do not exist in Intelligence; for otherwise they would be immaterial. On the contrary, immaterial things come into existence by merely being thought. So then contemplate pure Intelligence, instead of seeking it with your bodily eyes, fix on it your interior gaze. Then will you see the hearth of "Being," where shines an unsleeping light; you will see therein how essences subsist as simultaneously divided and united; you will see in it an abiding life, the thought which applies not to the future, but to the present; which possesses it already, and possesses it for ever; which thinks what is intimate to it, and not what is foreign. Intelligence thinks: and you have actualization and movement. Intelligence thinks what is in itself: and you have "being"" and essence; for, by merely existing, Intelligence thinks: Intelligence thinks itself as existing, and the object to which Intelligence applies its thought exists also. The actualization of Intelligence on itself Is not "being"; but the object to which it refers, the Principle from which it derives, is essence. Essence, indeed, is the object of intuition, but not intuition itself; the latter exists (has "essence") only because it starts from, and returns thereto. Now as essence is an actualization, and not a potentiality, it unites both terms (existence and intuition, object and subject), and, without separating them, it makes of intuition essence, and of essence intuition. Essence is the unshakable foundation of all things, and support of their existence; it derives its possessions from no foreign source, holding them from itself, and within itself. It is simultaneously the goal of thought, because it is stability that never needed a beginning, and the principle from which thought was born, because it is unborn stability; for movement can neither originate from, nor tend towards movement. The idea also belongs to the genus of stability, because it is the goal (or limit) of intelligence; but the intellectual actualization by which it is thought constitutes movement. Thus all these things form but one thing; and movement, stability, and the things which exist in all essences constitute genera (or classifications). Moreover, every essence posterior to these genera is, in its turn, also definite essence, definite stability, and definite movement.

THIS TRIUNE PLAY IMPLIES ALSO IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE.

Summing up what we have discovered about the nature of Essence, we find first three genera. Then, these three, Essence, Movement and Stability were contemplated respectively by the essence, movement and stability within ourselves, which we also harmonized with those intelligibles. Then again we lost the power of distinguishing them by uniting, confusing, and blending these three genera. But a little later we divided, extricated and distinguished them so as again to see essence, movement and stability; three things, of which each exists apart. The result of this process then is that they are regarded as different, discerning them by their differences, and recognizing difference in essence by positing three things each of which exists apart. On the other hand, if they be considered in their relation with unity and in unity, if they be all reduced to being something single and identical, one may see the arising, or rather the existing of identity. To the three genera already recognized, therefore, we shall have to add identity or difference, or (in Platonic language), "sameness and other-ness." These two classifications added to the three others, will in all make five genera for all things. Identity and difference (are genuine genera, indeed, because they) also communicate their characteristics to inferior (beings), each of which manifests some such element.

THESE FIVE GENERA ARE PRIMARY BECAUSE NOTHING CAN BE AFFIRMED OF THEM.

These five genera that we thus recognize are primary, because nothing can be predicated of them in the category of existence (being). No doubt, because they are essences, essence might be predicated of them; but essence would not be predicated of them because "being" is not a particular essence. Neither is essence to be predicated of movement or stability, for these are species of essence. Neither does essence participate in these four genera as if they were superior genera under which essence itself would be subsumed ; for stability, movement, identity and difference do not protrude beyond the sphere of essence, and are not anterior thereto.

8. We cannot indeed escape positing these three, Being, Motion, Stability, once it is the fact that the Intellect discerns them as separates; and if it thinks of them at all, it posits them by that very thinking; if they are thought, they exist. Things whose existence is bound up with Matter have no being in the Intellect: these three principles are however free of Matter; and in that which goes free of Matter to be thought is to be.

We are in the presence of Intellect undefiled. Fix it firmly, but not with the eyes of the body. You are looking upon the hearth of Reality, within it a sleepless light: you see how it holds to itself, and how it puts apart things that were together, how it lives a life that endures and keeps a thought acting not upon any future but upon that which already is, upon an eternal present - a thought self-centred, bearing on nothing outside of itself.

Now in the Act of Intellect there are energy and motion; in its self-intellection Substance and Being. In virtue of its Being it thinks, and it thinks of itself as Being, and of that as Being, upon which it is, so to speak, pivoted. Not that its Act self-directed ranks as Substance, but Being stands as the goal and origin of that Act, the object of its contemplation though not the contemplation itself: and yet this Act too involves Being, which is its motive and its term. By the fact that its Being is actual and not merely potential, Intellect bridges the dualism [of agent and patient] and abjures separation: it identifies itself with Being and Being with itself.

Being, the most firmly set of all things, that in virtue of which all other things receive Stability, possesses this Stability not as from without but as springing within, as inherent. Stability is the goal of intellection, a Stability which had no beginning, and the state from which intellection was impelled was Stability, though Stability gave it no impulsion; for Motion neither starts from Motion nor ends in Motion. Again, the Form-Idea has Stability, since it is the goal of Intellect: intellection is the Form’s Motion.

Thus all the Existents are one, at once Motion and Stability; Motion and Stability are genera all-pervading, and every subsequent is a particular being, a particular stability and a particular motion.

We have caught the radiance of Being, and beheld it in its three manifestations: Being, revealed by the Being within ourselves; the Motion of Being, revealed by the motion within ourselves; and its Stability revealed by ours. We accommodate our being, motion, stability to those [of the Archetypal], unable however to draw any distinction but finding ourselves in the presence of entities inseparable and, as it were, interfused. We have, however, in a sense, set them a little apart, holding them down and viewing them in isolation; and thus we have observed Being, Stability, Motion - these three, of which each is a unity to itself; in so doing, have we not regarded them as being different from each other? By this posing of three entities, each a unity, we have, surely, found Being to contain Difference.

Again, inasmuch as we restore them to an all-embracing unity, identifying all with unity, do we not see in this amalgamation Identity emerging as a Real Existent?

Thus, in addition to the other three [Being, Motion, Stability], we are obliged to posit the further two, Identity and Difference, so that we have in all five genera. In so doing, we shall not withhold Identity and Difference from the subsequents of the Intellectual order; the thing of Sense has, it is clear, a particular identity and a particular difference, but Identity and Difference have the generic status independently of the particular.

They will, moreover, be primary genera, because nothing can be predicated of them as denoting their essential nature. Nothing, of course we mean, but Being; but this Being is not their genus, since they cannot be identified with any particular being as such. Similarly, Being will not stand as genus to Motion or Stability, for these also are not its species. Beings [or Existents] comprise not merely what are to be regarded as species of the genus Being, but also participants in Being. On the other hand, Being does not participate in the other four principles as its genera: they are not prior to Being; they do not even attain to its level.