Categoria: Neoplatonismo
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Questions About the Soul. (Second Part.) SPEECH OF SOUL IN THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD. 1. When the soul will have risen to the intelligible world, what will she say, and what will she remember? She will contemplate the beings to which she will be united and she will apply her whole attention thereto; otherwise, she would…
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Tractate 28 Fourth Ennead. Fourth tractate. Problems of the soul (2). 1. What, then, will be the Soul’s discourse, what its memories in the Intellectual Realm, when at last it has won its way to that Essence? Obviously from what we have been saying, it will be in contemplation of that order, and have its…
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Psychological Questions — III. About the Process of Vision and Hearing. IT IS UNCERTAIN WHETHER AN INTERMEDIARY BODY BE IMPLIED BY VISION. 1. Above we suggested the question whether it be possible to see without some medium such as the air or a diaphanous body; we shall now try to consider it. It has already…
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Tractate 29 Fourth Ennead. Fifth tractate. Problems of the soul (3). [also entitled “On sight”]. 1. We undertook to discuss the question whether sight is possible in the absence of any intervening medium, such as air or some other form of what is known as transparent body: this is the time and place. It has…
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Of Sensation and Memory. STOIC DOCTRINES OF SENSATIONS AND MEMORIES HANG TOGETHER. If we deny that sensations are images impressed on the soul, similar to the impression of a seal, we shall also, for the sake of consistency, have to deny that memories are notions or sensations preserved in the soul by the permanence of…
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Tractate 41 Fourth Ennead. Sixth tractate. Perception and memory. 1. Perceptions are no imprints, we have said, are not to be thought of as seal-impressions on soul or mind: accepting this statement, there is one theory of memory which must be definitely rejected. Memory is not to be explained as the retaining of information in…
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Of the Immortality of the Soul: Polemic Against Materialism. IS THE SOUL IMMORTAL? 1. Are we immortal, or does all of us die? (Another possibility would be that) of the two parts of which we are composed, the one might be fated to be dissolved and perish, while the other, that constitutes our very personality,…
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Tractate 2 Fourth Ennead. Seventh tractate. The immortality of the soul. 1. Whether every human being is immortal or we are wholly destroyed, or whether something of us passes over to dissolution and destruction, while something else, that which is the true man, endures for ever – this question will be answered here for those…
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Of the Descent of the Soul Into the Body. THE EXPERIENCE OF ECSTASY LEADS TO QUESTIONS. 1. On waking from the slumber of the body to return to myself, and on turning my attention from exterior things so as to concentrate it on myself, I often observe an alluring beauty, and I become conscious of…
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Tractate 6 Fourth Ennead. Eighth tractate. The soul’s descent into body. 1. Many times it has happened: Lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentered; beholding a marvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the…
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Whether All Souls Form a Single One? IF ALL SOULS BE ONE IN THE WORLD-SOUL, WHY SHOULD THEY NOT TOGETHER FORM ONE? 1. Just as the soul of each animal is one, because she is entirely present in the whole body, and because she is thus really one, because she does not have one part…
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Tractate 8 Fourth Ennead. Ninth tractate. Are all souls one? 1. That the Soul of every individual is one thing we deduce from the fact that it is present entire at every point of the body – the sign of veritable unity – not some part of it here and another part there. In all…
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The Three Principal Hypostases, or Forms of Existence. AUDACITY THE CAUSE OF HUMAN APOSTASY FROM THE DIVINITY. 1. How does it happen that souls forget their paternal divinity? Having a divine nature, and having originated from the divinity, how could they ever misconceive the divinity or themselves? The origin of their evil is “audacity,” generation,…
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Tractate 10 The Fifth Ennead First tractate. The three initial hypostases. 1. What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the father, God, and, though members of the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves and It? The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will,…
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Of Generation, and of the Order of things that Rank Next After the First. WHY FROM UNITY THIS MANIFOLD WORLD WAS ABLE TO COME FORTH. 1. The One is all things, and is none of these things. The Principle of all things cannot be all things. It is all things only in the sense that…
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Tractate 11 Fifth Ennead. Second tractate. The origin and order of the beings. Following on the first. 1. The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession – running back, so to speak, to it – or, more correctly, not…
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The Self-Consciousnesses, and What is Above Them. IS KNOWLEDGE DEPENDENT ON THE COMPOSITENESS OF THE KNOWER? 1. Must thought, and self-consciousness imply being composed of different parts, and on their mutual contemplation? Must that which is absolutely simple be unable to turn towards itself, to know itself? ls it, on the contrary, possible that for…
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Tractate 49 Fifth Ennead. Third tractate. The knowing hypostases and the transcendent. 1. Are we to think that a being knowing itself must contain diversity, that self-knowledge can be affirmed only when some one phase of the self perceives other phases, and that therefore an absolutely simplex entity would be equally incapable of introversion and…
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How What is After the First Proceeds Therefrom; of the One. NECESSITY OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE FIRST. 1. Everything that exists after the First is derived therefrom, either directly or mediately, and constitutes a series of different orders such that the second can be traced back to the First, the third to the second,…
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Tractate 7 Fifth Ennead. Fourth tractate. How the Secondaries rise from the First: and on the One. 1. Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in which any second is to be…