And such a one will possess not merely the good, but the Supreme Good if, that is to say, in the realm of existents the Supreme Good can be no other than the authentically living, no other than Life in its greatest plenitude, life in which the good is present as something essential not as something brought from without, a life needing no foreign substance called in from a foreign realm, to establish it in good. Enneads I,4,3
There is, besides, no principle that can prevent anything from (…)
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MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna
Matérias
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Supreme Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castro -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Supreme
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThere ekei
’There’ - ‘in the Supreme’ - ‘in the Beyond’ and other similar words or phrases translate at convenience the word Ekei used by Plotinus for the Divine Sphere, the Intelligible World.
In childhood the main activity is in the Couplement and there is but little irradiation from the higher principles of our being: but when these higher principles act but feebly or rarely upon us their action is directed towards the Supreme; they work upon us only when they stand at the mid-point. (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Good and Beauty
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroWe may even say that Beauty is the Authentic-Existents and Ugliness is the Principle contrary to Existence: and the Ugly is also the primal evil; therefore its contrary is at once good and beautiful, or is Good and Beauty: and hence the one method will discover to us the Beauty-Good and the Ugliness-Evil. Enneads I,6,6
Such is the untroubled, the blissful, life of divine beings, and Evil has no place in it; if this were all, there would be no Evil but Good only, the first, the second and (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: evil
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAnother 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 (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Primal Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroTherefore, first let each become godlike and each beautiful who cares to see God and Beauty. So, mounting, the Soul will come first to the Intellectual-Principle and survey all the beautiful Ideas in the Supreme and will avow that this is Beauty, that the Ideas are Beauty. For by their efficacy comes all Beauty else, but the offspring and essence of the Intellectual-Being. What is beyond the Intellectual-Principle we affirm to be the nature of Good radiating Beauty before it. So that, (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: fire
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut is that conceivable? When warmth comes in to make anything warm, must there needs be something to warm the source of the warmth? If a fire is to warm something else, must there be a fire to warm that fire? Against the first illustration it may be retorted that the source of the warmth does already contain warmth, not by an infusion but as an essential phase of its nature, so that, if the analogy is to hold, the argument would make Virtue something communicated to the Soul but an (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: towards the Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIs it any explanation to say that desire is vested in a Faculty-of-desire and anger in the Irascible-Faculty and, collectively, that all tendency is seated in the Appetitive-Faculty? Such a statement of the facts does not help towards making the affections common to the Couplement; they might still be seated either in the Soul alone or in the body alone. On the one hand if the appetite is to be stirred, as in the carnal passion, there must be a heating of the blood and the bile, a (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: sphere
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroSo with us: it is from the Supreme that we derive order and distribution and harmony, which are virtues in this sphere: the Existences There, having no need of harmony, order or distribution, have nothing to do with virtue; and, none the less, it is by our possession of virtue that we become like to Them. Enneads I,2,
The Civic Virtues, on which we have touched above, are a principle or order and beauty in us as long as we remain passing our life here: they ennoble us by setting bound and (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: para o Bem
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de Castrotowards the Good
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MacKenna (Enneads) – Existência
10 de setembro de 2023, por Cardoso de CastroAll ’Nature’, even in the lowest, is in ceaseless Contemplation and Aspiration: while every being, until the ultimate possible is reached, tends to engender an image of itself, it tends also to rejoin the next highest, of which it is itself a shadow or lower manifestation: even Matter, all but outcast from the sphere of Being and unable to engender, has the power of receiving form and is, thereby, tending feebly towards Authentic-Existence, towards Soul and Mind, and so is linked, distantly, (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: intellection
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIn sum, then, life is the Good to the living, and the Intellectual-Principle to what is intellective; so that where there is life with intellection there is a double contact with the Good. Enneads I,7,
All knowledge comes by Reason and the Intellectual Act; in this case Reason conveys information in any account it gives, but the act which aims at being intellectual is, here, not intellection but rather its failure: therefore the representation of Matter must be spurious, unreal, something (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: nature of the Good
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroFor the moment let us define the nature of the Good as far as the immediate purpose demands. The Good is that on which all else depends, towards which all Existences aspire as to their source and their need, while Itself is without need, sufficient to Itself, aspiring to no other, the measure and Term of all, giving out from itself the Intellectual-Principle and Existence and Soul and Life and all Intellective-Act. All until The Good is reached is beautiful; The Good is beyond-beautiful, (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: God
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIt is not difficult to explain this distinction. Hercules was a hero of practical virtue. By his noble serviceableness he was worthy to be a God. On the other hand, his merit was action and not the Contemplation which would place him unreservedly in the higher realm. Therefore while he has place above, something of him remains below. Enneads I,1,
But what is this escape? "In attaining Likeness to God," we read. And this is explained as "becoming just and holy, living by wisdom," the entire (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Good and Bad
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroTo deny Evil a place among realities is necessarily to do away with the Good as well, and even to deny the existence of anything desirable; it is to deny desire, avoidance and all intellectual act; for desire has Good for its object, aversion looks to Evil; all intellectual act, all Wisdom, deals with Good and Bad, and is itself one of the things that are good. Enneads I,8,12
There must then be The Good - good unmixed - and the Mingled Good and Bad, and the Rather Bad than Good, this last (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: genus
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroFor these last are opposed as members of one species or of one genus, and, within that common ground, they participate in some common quality. Enneads I,8,
Now to the content of the divine order, the fixed quality, the measuredness and so forth – there is opposed the content of the evil principle, its unfixedness, measurelessness and so forth: total is opposed to total. The existence of the one genus is a falsity, primarily, essentially, a falseness: the other genus has Essence-Authentic: (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: source of evil
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroEighth tractate - On the nature and source of evil. Enneads I,8,3
If all this be true, we cannot be, ourselves, the source of Evil, we are not evil in ourselves; Evil was before we came to be; the Evil which holds men down binds them against their will; and for those that have the strength - not found in all men, it is true - there is a deliverance from the evils that have found lodgement in the soul. Enneads I,8,5
But of what nature would this contrary be, the contrary to universal (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: earth
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut suppose that he himself is offered a victim in sacrifice? Can he think it an evil to die beside the altars? But if he go unburied? Wheresoever it lie, under earth or over earth, his body will always rot. Enneads I,4,
This, indeed, is the mood even of those who, having witnessed the manifestation of Gods or Supernals, can never again feel the old delight in the comeliness of material forms: what then are we to think of one that contemplates Absolute Beauty in Its essential integrity, no (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: good or evil
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut, to begin with, it is surely unsound to deny that good of life to animals only because they do not appear to man to be of great account. And as for plants, we need not necessarily allow to them what we accord to the other forms of life, since they have no feeling. It is true people might be found to declare prosperity possible to the very plants: they have life, and life may bring good or evil; the plants may thrive or wither, bear or be barren. Enneads I,4,1
What, then, is the evil (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelecto
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroWhen the Intellect is in upward orientation that [lower part of it] which contains [or, corresponds to] the life of the Soul, is, so to speak, flung down again and becomes like the reflection resting on the smooth and shining surface of a mirror; in this illustration, when the mirror is in place the image appears but, though the mirror be absent or out of gear, all that would have acted and produced an image still exists; so in the case of the Soul; when there is peace in that within us (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Act of the Intellect
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut how can I form the conception of the sizelessness of Matter? How do you form the concept of any absence of quality? What is the Act of the Intellect, what is the mental approach, in such a case? The secret is Indetermination. Enneads II,4,10
Soul, then, is one and many - as many as are manifested in that oneness - one in its nature, many in those other things. A single Existent, it makes itself many by what we may call its motion: it is one entire, but by its striving, so to speak, to (…)