Plotino - Tratado 28,2 (IV, 4, 2) — A memória em sua relação à união da alma e do corpo (2)

2. Demos esto por bueno. Más, ¿cómo se recuerda de sí mismo? No tiene, desde luego, el recuerdo de sí mismo, ni sabe que es él, Sócrates  , por ejemplo, quien contempla; no sabe tampoco si es una inteligencia o un alma. Pero habrá que dirigir la mente a este tipo de contemplación, que incluso se da en este mundo donde no hay lugar para que el pensamiento vuelva sobre sí mismo. Es claro que nos poseemos a nosotros mismos, pero nuestra actividad se dirige al objeto contemplado hasta convertirnos en él, ofreciéndonos como su materia. Somos entonces como la forma de lo que vemos, pero, en realidad, nosotros mismos, no lo somos más que en potencia. Con lo que vendría a resultar que este ser está en acto precisamente cuando no piensa en nada. Y ello sería así si se encorase completamente vacío. Ahora bien, como en realidad es él mismo todas las cosas, cuando piensa en sí mismo piensa también todas las cosas. De tal modo que en esa intuición y visión en acto que tiene de sí mismo abarca en realidad todas las cosas, al igual que en la intuición de todas las cosas se abarca también a sí mismo. Si esto es así, sus pensamientos son realmente cambiantes, cosa que anteriormente no admitíamos.

Sólo la inteligencia permanece idéntica a sí misma. En cuanto al alma, situada en los límites del mundo inteligible, afirmaremos que puede cambiar, puesto que puede avanzar más hacia adentro. Si una cosa permanece alrededor de algo, conviene naturalmente que cambie y que no permanezca siempre de la misma manera. O lo que es lo mismo, no se habla de un verdadero cambio al mencionar el paso de los inteligibles a sí mismo, o de sí mismo a los inteligibles. Porque es claro que este mismo ser es todas las cosas, y él y todas las cosas constituyen una unidad. El alma que permanece en la región de los inteligibles experimente cosas diferentes en lo que respecte a si misma y a los objetos que hay en ella. Pero, si vive puramente en este mundo, ella misma tiene que poseer la inmutabilidad, puesto que ha de ser lo que son estos objetos. Incluso cuando se encuentra en la tierra, el alma debe tender necesariamente a la unión con la inteligencia, si de verdad se vuelve hacia ella. Cuando esto ocurre, nada se intercala entre ella y la inteligencia, y el alma se dirige a la inteligencia y armoniza enteramente con ella. Esta unidad no puede ser destruida en modo alguno, pero es la unidad de dos cosas. Es así que el alma no puede cambiar sino que conserva una relación inmutable con la inteligencia y posee a la vez la conciencia de sí misma; de tal modo que ha venido a ser una sola cosa con lo inteligible.

II. Admettons qu’il en soit ainsi. L’âme se souvient-elle d’elle-même? — Ce n’est pas probable : celui qui contemple le monde intelligible ne se rappelle pas qui il est, qu’il est Socrate par exemple, qu’il est une âme ou une intelligence. Comment en effet s’en souviendrait-il? Tout entier à la contemplation du monde intelligible, il ne fait pas un retour sur lui-même par la pensée; il se possède lui-même, mais il s’applique à l’intelligible et devient l’intelligible, à l’égard duquel il joue le rôle de matière ; il prend la forme de l’objet qu’il contemple, et il n’est alors lui-même qu’en puissance. Il n’est donc lui-même en acte que quand il ne pense pas l’intelligible. Quand il n’est que lui-même, il est vide de toutes choses, parce qu’il ne pense pas l’intelligible; mais s’il est tel par sa nature qu’il soit toutes choses, en se pensant lui-même, il pense toutes choses. Dans cet état, se voyant lui-même en acte par le regard qu’il jette sur lui-même, il embrasse toutes choses dans cette intuition; d’un autre côté, par le regard qu’il jette sur toutes choses, il s’embrasse lui-même dans l’intuition de toutes choses (08).

S’il en est ainsi [dira-t-on], il change de pensées, et nous avons plus haut refusé de l’admettre. — L’intelligence est immuable, mais l’âme, placée aux dernières limites du monde intelligible, peut subir quelque mutation quand elle se replie sur elle-même. En effet, ce qui s’applique à l’immuable éprouve nécessairement quelque mutation à son égard, puisqu’il n’y reste pas toujours appliqué. A parler rigoureusement, il n’y a pas changement lorsque l’âme se détache des choses qui lui appartiennent pour se tourner vers elle-même, et vice versa : car elle est toutes choses, et l’âme avec l’intelligible ne font qu’un. Mais, quand l’âme est dans le monde intelligible, elle devient étrangère à elle-même et à ce qui lui appartient; alors, vivant purement dans le monde intelligible, elle participe à son immutabilité, elle est tout ce qu’il est : car, dès qu’elle s’est élevée à cette région supérieure, elle doit nécessairement s’unir à l’Intelligence, vers laquelle elle s’est tournée et dont elle n’est plus séparée par aucun intermédiaire. En s’élevant à l’Intelligence, l’âme se met en harmonie avec elle et par suite s’y unit d’une manière durable, de telle sorte que toutes les deux soient à la fois une et deux. Dans cet état, l’âme ne peut changer, elle est appliquée d’une manière immuable à la pensée, et elle a en même temps conscience d’elle-même, parce qu’elle ne fait plus qu’une seule et même chose avec le monde intelligible.

THE SOUL DOES NOT EVEN REMEMBER HERSELF.

2. Granted. But does the soul remember herself? Probably not. He who contemplates the intelligible world does not remember who he is; that, for instance, he is Socrates, that he is a soul or an intelligence. How indeed would he remember it? Entirely devoted to the contemplation of the intelligible world, he does not by thought reflect back upon himself; he possesses himself, but he applies himself to the intelligible, and becomes the intelligible, in respect to which he plays the part of matter. He assumes the form of the object he is contemplating, and he then is himself only potentially. Actually, he is himself only when he thinks the intelligible. When he is himself only, he is empty of all things, because he does not think the intelligible; but if by nature he is such that he is all things, in thinking himself, he thinks all things. In this state, seeing himself actually by the glance he throws on himself, he embraces all things in this intuition; on the other hand, by the glance he throws on all things, he embraces himself in the intuition of all things.

IN THE INTELLIGIBLE SELF-DIRECTION OF THOUGHT IS NOT CHANGEABLENESS.

Under the above circumstances, the soul changes thoughts — something that we above refused to admit. Intelligence is indeed immutable; but the soul, situated on the extremities of the intelligible world, may undergo some change when she reflects upon herself. Indeed, what applies to the immutable necessarily undergoes some change in respect to it, because it does not always remain applied to it. To speak exactly, there is no change when the soul detaches herself from the things that belong to her to turn towards herself, and conversely; for the soul is all things, and the soul forms but one thing with the intelligible. But when the soul is in the intelligible world, she becomes estranged from herself and from all that belongs to her; then, living purely in the intelligible world, she participates in its immutability, and she becomes all that it is; for, as soon as she has raised herself to this superior region, she must necessarily unite herself to Intelligence, towards which she has turned, and from which she is no longer separated by an intermediary. On rising towards intelligence, the soul attunes herself to it, and consequently unites herself with it durably, in a manner such that both are simultaneously single and double. In this state the soul cannot change; she is immutably devoted to thought, and she simultaneously has self-consciousness, because she forms a unity with the intelligible world.

2. Enough on that point: we come now to the question of memory of the personality?

There will not even be memory of the personality; no thought that the contemplator is the self - Socrates, for example - or that it is Intellect or Soul. In this connection it should be borne in mind that, in contemplative vision, especially when it is vivid, we are not at the time aware of our own personality; we are in possession of ourselves but the activity is towards the object of vision with which the thinker becomes identified; he has made himself over as matter to be shaped; he takes ideal form under the action of the vision while remaining, potentially, himself. This means that he is actively himself when he has intellection of nothing.

Or, if he is himself [pure and simple], he is empty of all: if, on the contrary, he is himself [by the self-possession of contemplation] in such a way as to be identified with what is all, then by the act of self-intellection he has the simultaneous intellection of all: in such a case self-intuition by personal activity brings the intellection, not merely of the self, but also of the total therein embraced; and similarly the intuition of the total of things brings that of the personal self as included among all.

But such a process would appear to introduce into the Intellectual that element of change against which we ourselves have only now been protesting?

The answer is that, while unchangeable identity is essential to the Intellectual-Principle, the soul, lying so to speak on the borders of the Intellectual Realm, is amenable to change; it has, for example, its inward advance, and obviously anything that attains position near to something motionless does so by a change directed towards that unchanging goal and is not itself motionless in the same degree. Nor is it really change to turn from the self to the constituents of self or from those constituents to the self; and in this case the contemplator is the total; the duality has become unity.

None the less the soul, even in the Intellectual Realm, is under the dispensation of a variety confronting it and a content of its own?

No: once pure in the Intellectual, it too possesses that same unchangeableness: for it possesses identity of essence; when it is in that region it must of necessity enter into oneness with the Intellectual-Principle by the sheer fact of its self-orientation, for by that intention all interval disappears; the soul advances and is taken into unison, and in that association becomes one with the Intellectual-Principle - but not to its own destruction: the two are one, and two. In such a state there is no question of stage and change: the soul, without motion [but by right of its essential being] would be intent upon its intellectual act, and in possession, simultaneously, of its self-awareness; for it has become one simultaneous existence with the Supreme.