MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna

Matérias

• MacKenna-Plotinus: soul (Enneads III)
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  As for Things of Process or for Eternal Existents whose Act is not eternally invariable we must hold that these are due to Cause; Causelessness is quite inadmissible; we can make no place here for unwarranted “slantings,” for sudden movement of bodies apart from any initiating power, for precipitate spurts in a SOUL with nothing to drive it into the new course of action. Such causelessness would bind the SOUL under an even sterner compulsion, no longer master of itself, but at the mercy of (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: Zeus
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  What human thing, then, is great, so as not to be despised by one who has mounted above all we know here, and is bound now no longer to anything below? If the Sage thinks all fortunate events, however momentous, to be no great matter – kingdom and the rule over cities and peoples, colonisations and the founding of states, even though all be his own handiwork – how can he take any great account of the vacillations of power or the ruin of his fatherland? Certainly if he thought any such event (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: soul (Enneads I)
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  1. Pleasure and distress, fear and courage, desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat? Clearly, either in the SOUL alone, or in the SOUL as employing the body, or in some third entity deriving from both. And for this third entity, again, there are two possible modes: it might be either a blend or a distinct form due to the blending. Enneads I,1,1
  2. This first enquiry obliges us to consider at the outset the nature of the SOUL that is whether a distinction (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: power
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  It will hold itself above all passions and affections. Necessary pleasures and all the activity of the senses it will employ only for medicament and assuagement lest its work be impeded. Pain it may combat, but, failing the cure, it will bear meekly and ease it by refusing assent to it. All passionate action it will check: the suppression will be complete if that be possible, but at worst the Soul will never itself take fire but will keep the involuntary and uncontrolled outside its (…)

• Plotino - Tratado 53,9 (I, 1, 9) — Nossa responsabilidade ética
  26 de janeiro de 2022, por Cardoso de Castro

  traduzindo MacKenna
  9. Aquela Alma, então, em nós, se manterá em sua natureza aparte de tudo que pode causar qualquer dos males que o homem faça ou sofra; pois todos tais males, como vimos, pertencem somente ao Animado, à Parelha.
  Mas há uma dificuldade em compreender como a Alma pode ir sem culpa se nossa mentação e raciocínio estão investidas nela: por toda esta espécie inferior de conhecimento é desilusão e é a causa de muito do que é mal.
  Quando tivermos feito mal é porque fomos (…)

• Plotino - Tratado 33,1 (II, 9, 1) — Só existem três realidades inteligíveis
  19 de janeiro de 2022, por Cardoso de Castro

  Míguez
  1. Nos ha parecido que la naturaleza del Bien es simple y primitiva, porque todo lo que no es primitivo no es simple. Esta naturaleza nada contiene en sí misma y es algo uno que no se diferencia tampoco de lo que llamamos el Uno. Porque el Uno no es algo de lo que se diga a continuación que es uno, cosa que no se dice igualmente del Bien.
  Cuando hablemos del Uno o del Bien, conviene que pensemos en una misma naturaleza; si realmente afirmamos es una, nada en verdad le atribuimos, (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: Universe
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  But the Universe outside; how is it aligned towards the Good? The soulless by direction toward Soul: Soul towards the Good itself, through the Intellectual-Principle. Enneads I,7,
  With this, we would have no longer the distinction of one order, the heavenly system, stable for ever, and another, the earthly, in process of decay: all would be alike except in the point of time; the celestial would merely be longer lasting. If, then, we accepted this duration of type alone as a true account of (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: Enneads III,8
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  Tractate 30 Third Ennead. Eighth tractate. Nature contemplation and the one.
  1. Supposing we played a little before entering upon our serious concern and maintained that all things are striving after Contemplation, looking to Vision as their one end - and this, not merely beings endowed with reason but even the unreasoning animals, the Principle that rules in growing things, and the Earth that produces these - and that all achieve their purpose in the measure possible to their kind, each (…)

• Plotino - Tratado 51,4 (I, 8, 4) — Os males segundos: males dos corpos e vícios da alma
  2 de fevereiro de 2022, por Cardoso de Castro

  Igal
  4 En cambio, la naturaleza de los cuerpos, por cuanto participa de materia, será un mal no primario. Porque, eso sí, los cuerpos poseen una forma inauténtica, están privados de vida, se destruyen unos a otros, es desordenado el movimiento que originan, son impedimento para el alma — para la actividad propia del alma — y eluden la sustancia, fluyendo como están constantemente: son un mal de segundo orden. Pero el alma no es mala por sí misma, y tampoco es mala toda ella. — ¿Pues cuál (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute-Man
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  It 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

• Plotino - Tratado 2,3 (IV,7,3) - imortalidade: polêmica contra o materialismo
  31 de dezembro de 2021, por Cardoso de Castro

  tradução
  3. E se alguém dissesse que assim não se passa, mas que são átomos ou coisas indivisíveis [atomon] que produzem [poiein] a alma [psyche], quando elas se reúnem e em se unificando e em partilhando suas afecções [pathos], também seria refutado pelo fato que se trata de uma justaposição, mas que não forma um todo [holon], porque nada disto que é um e partilha suas afecções [sympatheia] não pode nascer de corpos [soma] que são desprovidos de afecção [apatheia] e que não podem formar (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute-Rectitude
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  But taking Rectitude to be the due ordering of faculty, does it not always imply the existence of diverse parts? No: There is a Rectitude of Diversity appropriate to what has parts, but there is another, not less Rectitude than the former though it resides in a Unity. And the authentic Absolute-Rectitude is the Act of a Unity upon itself, of a Unity in which there is no this and that and the other. Enneads I,2,6

• MacKenna-Plotinus: Absolute-Principle
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  Besides quantitativeness itself [the Absolute-Principle] does not possess quantity, which belongs only to things participating in it, a consideration which shows that Quantitativeness is an Idea-Principle. A white object becomes white by the presence of whiteness; what makes an organism white or of any other variety of colour is not itself a specific colour but, so to speak, a specific Reason-Principle: in the same way what gives an organism a certain bulk is not itself a thing of magnitude (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: Mal
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  evil
  In so far as Evil exists, the root of evil is in Matter; but Evil does not exist; all that exists, in a half-existence, is the last effort of The Good, the point at which The Good ceases because, so to speak, endlessness has all but faded out to an end. If this seem too violent a paradox to be even mentioned amongst us, we must remember that it is to some degree merely metaphorical, like so much in Plotinus: it is the almost desperate effort to express a combined idea that seems to be (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: happiness
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  Fourth tractate - On true happiness. Enneads I,4,6
  It may be a distasteful notion, this bringing-down of happiness so low as to the animal world - making it over, as then we must, even to the vilest of them and not withholding it even from the plants, living they too and having a life unfolding to a Term. Enneads I,4,1
  Perhaps, then, those are in the right who found happiness not on the bare living or even on sensitive life but on the life of Reason? But they must tell us it should be (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: three
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  We must begin by distinguishing the three types. Let us take the musician first and indicate his temperamental equipment for the task. Enneads I,3,
  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 (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: Filosofia
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  Philosophy 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: Father
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  The Fatherland to us is There whence we have come, and There is The Father. Enneads: I. VI. 8
  But, since the expression "this place" must be taken to mean the All, how explain the words "mortal nature"? The answer is in the passage [in which the Father of Gods addresses the Divinities of the lower sphere], "Since you possess only a derivative being, you are not immortals... but by my power you shall escape dissolution." Enneads: I. VIII. 7
  Therefore we must affirm no more than these (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: evil
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  Another suggestion might be that all is due to an opinion or judgement: some evil seems to have befallen the man or his belongings and this conviction sets up a state of trouble in the body and in the entire Animate. But this account leaves still a question as to the source and seat of the judgement: does it belong to the Soul or to the Couplement? Besides, the judgement that evil is present does not involve the feeling of grief: the judgement might very well arise and the grief by no means (…)

• MacKenna-Plotinus: multiplicity
  1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro

  Now to make multiplicity, whether in time or in action, essential to Happiness is to put it together by combining non-existents, represented by the past, with some one thing that actually is. This consideration it was that led us at the very beginning to place Happiness in the actually existent and on that basis to launch our enquiry as to whether the higher degree was determined by the longer time. It might be thought that the Happiness of longer date must surpass the shorter by virtue of (…)