Is it possible to think that Happiness increases with Time, Happiness which is always taken as a present thing? The memory of former felicity may surely be ruled out of count, for Happiness is not a thing of words, but a definite condition which must be actually present like the very fact and act of life. Enneads I,5,
Both are engendered, in the sense that they have had a beginning, but unengendered in that this beginning is not in Time: they have a derived being but by an eternal (…)
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MacKenna / Stephen MacKenna
Matérias
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Time
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Primal Intellect
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThey hope to get the credit of minute and exact identification by setting up a plurality of intellectual Essences; but in reality this multiplication lowers the Intellectual Nature to the level of the Sense-Kind: their true course is to seek to reduce number to the least possible in the Supreme, simply referring all things to the Second Hypostasis - which is all that exists as it is Primal Intellect and Reality and is the only thing that is good except only for the first Nature - and to (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Nature
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIt has been said more than once that the perfect life and the true life, the essential life, is in the Intellectual Nature beyond this sphere, and that all other forms of life are incomplete, are phantoms of life, imperfect, not pure, not more truly life than they are its contrary: here let it be said succinctly that since all living things proceed from the one principle but possess life in different degrees, this principle must be the first life and the most complete. Enneads I,4,
Those (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Intelecto Divino
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThus, supposing we were enquiring for the finest type of the human being as known here, we would certainly not demand that he prove identical with Man as in the Divine Intellect; we would think it enough in the Creator to have so brought this thing of flesh and nerve and bone under Reason as to give grace to these corporeal elements and to have made it possible for Reason to have contact with Matter. Enneads III,2,7
This Reason-Principle, then - let us dare the definition in the hope of (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Form
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroHence it is that Fire itself is splendid beyond all material bodies, holding the rank of Ideal-Principle to the other elements, making ever upwards, the subtlest and sprightliest of all bodies, as very near to the unembodied; itself alone admitting no other, all the others penetrated by it: for they take warmth but this is never cold; it has colour primally; they receive the Form of colour from it: hence the splendour of its light, the splendour that belongs to the Idea. And all that has (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Intellect and Soul
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroAs a mighty Intellect and Soul, he must be a principle of Cause; he must be the highest for several reasons but especially because to be King and Leader is to be the chief cause: Zeus then is the Intellectual Principle. Aphrodite, his daughter, issue of him, dwelling with him, will be Soul, her very name Aphrodite [= the habra, delicate] indicating the beauty and gleam and innocence and delicate grace of the Soul. Enneads III,5,8
In the one type of Motion a new Form comes into existence (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: essence
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroLet us then suppose Soul to be in body as Ideal-Form in Matter. Now if – the first possibility – the Soul is an essence, a self-existent, it can be present only as separable form and will therefore all the more decidedly be the Using-Principle [and therefore unaffected]. Enneads I,1,
We come now to that other mode of Likeness which, we read, is the fruit of the loftier virtues: discussing this we shall penetrate more deeply into the essence of the Civic Virtue and be able to define the (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: divine Intellect
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroDivine Intellect
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MacKenna-Plotinus: divine
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroIs Likeness, then, attained, perhaps, not by these virtues of the social order but by those greater qualities known by the same general name? And if so do the Civic Virtues give us no help at all? It is against reason, utterly to deny Likeness by these while admitting it by the greater: tradition at least recognizes certain men of the civic excellence as divine, and we must believe that these too had in some sort attained Likeness: on both levels there is virtue for us, though not the same (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Authentic Intellect
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe life in the Divine Intellect is also an Act: it is the primal light outlamping to itself primarily, its own torch; light-giver and lit at once; the authentic intellectual object, knowing at once and known, seen to itself and needing no other than itself to see by, self-sufficing to the vision, since what it sees it is; known to us by that very same light, our knowledge of it attained through itself, for from nowhere else could we find the means of telling of it. By its nature, its (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Motion
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroMotion, for example, is different from Being, but plays about it, springing from it and living within it: Matter is, so to speak, the outcast of Being, it is utterly removed, irredeemably what it was from the beginning: in origin it was Non-Being and so it remains. Enneads: II V.
The extent of the Movement of the All, then? The Celestial Circuit may, no doubt, be thought of in terms of quantity. It answers to measure – in two ways. First there is space; the movement is commensurate with (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Matter and Form
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe same fact is clearly established by decay, a process implying a compound object; where there is decay there is a distinction between Matter and Form. Enneads II,4,6
They must, therefore, consist of Matter and Form-Idea - Form for quality and shape, Matter for the base, indeterminate as being other than Idea. Enneads II,4,6
This implies the distinction of Matter and Form in it - as there must be in all actual seeing - the Matter in this case being the Intelligibles which the (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: souls
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroSee also: soul, Soul.
What do you feel in presence of the grace you discern in actions, in manners, in sound morality, in all the works and fruits of virtue, in the beauty of souls? ENNEADS: I. VI. 5
Therefore the Soul must be trained — to the habit of remarking, first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty produced not by the labour of the arts but by the virtue of men known for their goodness: lastly, you must search the souls of those that have shaped these beautiful forms. (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Substantial Form
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroFurther, if to a Form be added the qualification "bound up with, involved in Matter," Matter separates that Form from other Forms: it does not however embrace the whole of Substantial Form [as, to be the genus of Form, it must]. Enneads VI,3,3
Equally the Substantial Form is never a predicate, since it never acts as a modification of anything. Form is not an attribute of Matter hence, is not predicable of Matter it is simply a constituent of the Couplement. On the other hand, the Form of a (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: faculty
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe Soul in turn – apart from the nature of the Animate – must be either impassive, merely causing Sense-Perception in its yoke-fellow, or sympathetic; and, if sympathetic, it may have identical experiences with its fellow or merely correspondent experiences: desire for example in the Animate may be something quite distinct from the accompanying movement or state in the desiring faculty. Enneads I,1,
But this would mean that life itself belongs not to the Soul but to the Couplement; or at (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Living Form
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBut is it not a paradox that, while Matter, the Substrate, is to them an existence, bodies should not have more claim to existence, the universe yet more, and not merely a claim grounded on the reality of one of its parts? It is no less paradoxical that the living form should owe existence not to its soul but to its Matter only, the soul being but an affection of Matter and posterior to it. From what source then did Matter receive ensoulment? Whence, in short, is soul’s entity derived? How (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: desire
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroPleasure 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,
It may be objected that the Soul must however, have Sense-Perception since its use of its instrument must acquaint (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Form-Idea
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroThe basic-constituents of things must be either their Form-Idea or that Primal Matter [of the Intelligible] or a compound of the Form and Matter. Enneads II,4,6
Form-Idea, pure and simple, they cannot be: for without Matter how could things stand in their mass and magnitude? Neither can they be that Primal Matter, for they are not indestructible. Enneads II,4,6
They must, therefore, consist of Matter and Form-Idea - Form for quality and shape, Matter for the base, indeterminate as being (…) -
MacKenna-Plotinus: Substância
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroA further evidence is in our speaking of a fire being burned out, when it has passed over into another element; we do not say that the Matter has been burned out: in other words, modification affects what is subject to dissolution; the acceptance of modification is the path towards dissolution; susceptibility to modification and susceptibility to dissolution go necessarily together. But Matter can never be dissolved. What into? By what process? Still: Matter harbours heat, cold, qualities (…)
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MacKenna-Plotinus: Form-Ideas
1º de fevereiro, por Cardoso de CastroBy common agreement of all that have arrived at the conception of such a Kind, what is known as Matter is understood to be a certain base, a recipient of Form-Ideas. Thus far all go the same way. But departure begins with the attempt to establish what this basic Kind is in itself, and how it is a recipient and of what. Enneads II,4,1
We have remarked that its apparent subsistence is in fact an assemblage of Sensibles, their existence guaranteed to us by sense-perception. But since their (…)