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MacKenna-Plotinus: perfect unity

quinta-feira 1º de fevereiro de 2024, por Cardoso de Castro

  

It may be objected that the Intellectual-Principle possesses its content in an eternal conjunction so that the two make a perfect unity, and that thus there is no Matter there. Enneads   II,4,

Suppose that Life, then, to revert – an impossibility – to perfect unity: Time, whose existence is in that Life, and the Heavens, no longer maintained by that Life, would end at once. Enneads III,7,

This vision achieved, the acting instinct pauses; the mind is satisfied and seeks nothing further; the contemplation, in one so conditioned, remains absorbed within as having acquired certainty to rest upon. The brighter the certainty, the more tranquil is the contemplation as having acquired the more perfect unity; and – for now we come to the serious treatment of the subject- Enneads III,8,

If, on the contrary, the sensation is vested not merely in the "leading principle," but in any and every part of the soul, what special function raises the one rather than the other into that leading rank, or why is the sensation to be referred to it rather than elsewhere? And how, at this, account for the unity of the knowledge brought in by diverse senses, by eyes, by ears? On the other hand, if the soul is a perfect unity – utterly strange to part, a self-gathered whole – if it continuously eludes all touch of multiplicity and divisibility – then, no whole taken up into it can ever be ensouled; soul will stand as circle-centre to every object [remote on the circumference], and the entire mass of a living being is soulless still. Enneads IV,2,

Supposing that first henad alone to exist, it must obviously be lodged either in the thing of completest Being or at all events in the thing most completely a unity. If in the thing of completest Being, then the other henads are but nominal and cannot be ranked with the first henad, or else Number becomes a collection of unlike monads and there are differences among monads [an impossibility]. If that first henad is to be taken as lodged in the thing of completest unity, there is the question why that most perfect unity should require the first henad to give it unity. Enneads VI,6,