Plotino – Tratado 44,27 (VI, 3, 27) — Repouso

27 Sobre la estabilidad, que se contrapone al movimiento, o mejor, sobre el reposo ¿qué hay que decir? ¿Hay que considerarlo como un nuevo género o hay que reducirlo a alguno de los mencionados? Pero quizá sea mejor reservar la estabilidad para los Seres inteligibles y estudiar en los de acá el reposo. Lo primero que hay que estudiar es en qué consiste este reposo. Y si aparece ser lo mismo que la estabilidad, ni siquiera sería correcto estudiarlo acá, puesto que acá nada es estable, sino que lo que parece estable se mueve con movimiento más lento. Pero si distinguimos entre reposo y estabilidad basándonos en que la estabilidad se da en el Ser absolutamente innoble, y el reposo, en cambio, en el que está quieto pero que es capaz por naturaleza de moverse cuando no se mueve, entonces si uno entiende por reposo el «pararse», está hablando de un movimiento que no ha cesado todavía, sino que está presente; pero si se refiere a un movimiento que ha dejado ya de estar en el móvil, lo primero que hay que preguntarse es si en el mundo de acá hay algo que no esté en movimiento.

Ahora bien, si no es posible que una cosa se mueva con todos los movimientos, sino que debe estar sin moverse con algunos movimientos, aun para que se pueda decir que lo que se mueve es tal cosa, entonces al decir que «no se mueve con movimiento local, sino que está en reposo con respecto a ese movimiento» ¿qué puede querer decir sino que «no se mueve»? Luego el reposo es negación del movimiento. Ahora bien, la negación no tiene rango de género. Que «está en reposo» no quiere decir sino que lo está con respecto a un movimiento determinado, por ejemplo, el local; quiere decir, por tanto, negación de esto. Y si alguno objeta: «¿Por qué no decimos que el movimiento es negación de la estabilidad?», responderemos: «Porque el movimiento aporta algo con su venida; es algo nuevo que actúa y empuja, por así decirlo, al sujeto y opera en él un sinfín de efectos y lo destruye, mientras que el reposo de cada cosa no es algo distinto de la cosa misma; significa solamente que carece de movimiento».

—Entonces, ¿por qué no dijimos que aun en los inteligibles la Estabilidad era una negación del Movimiento?

—Pues porque tampoco es posible calificar la Estabilidad de supresión del Movimiento, ya que no existe aquélla porque haya cesado éste, sino que aun existiendo éste, existe aquélla. Y no es verdad que la Estabilidad exista allá en la medida en que algo con capacidad natural de moverse no se mueva, sino que allá el Ser, en cuanto poseído de Estabilidad, es estable, y en cuanto dotado de Movimiento, estará moviéndose por siempre. Y por eso es estable por la Estabilidad, y está en movimiento por el Movimiento. El ser de acá, en cambio, se mueve por el movimiento y está en reposo por ausencia de movimiento, privado de un movimiento debido.

Además, hay que examinar en qué consista esta estabilidad de acá desde este nuevo punto de vista: Cuando uno pasa de la enfermedad a la salud, se cura. ¿Qué especie de reposo opondremos, pues, a esta curación? ¿El término inicial? Éste es enfermedad, no estabilidad. ¿El término final? Éste es salud, que no es lo mismo que la estabilidad. Y decir que la salud o la enfermedad son una cierta estabilidad, es decir que la salud y la enfermedad son especies de la estabilidad, lo cual es absurdo. Y si se dice que la estabilidad es un accesorio de la salud, la salud no será salud antes de que haya estabilidad. Pero sobre estas cuestiones, piense cada uno como le parezca.

XXVII. Occupons-nous maintenant de la stabilité (στάσις) ou du repos (ἠρεμία), qui est le contraire du mouvement (109). Faut-il en faire un genre ou le ramener à quelqu’un des genres déjà reconnus?

D’abord, la stabilité convient plutôt au monde intelligible, et le repos au monde sensible. Examinons donc ce qu’est le repos. S’il est identique à la stabilité, il est inutile de le chercher ici-bas où rien n’est stable, où ce qui paraît stable a seulement un mouvement plus lent. Si le repos est différent de la stabilité, parce que celle-ci appartient à ce qui est complètement immobile, et le repos à ce qui est actuellement fixe, mais est naturellement mobile même lorsqu’il ne se meut pas, il faut établir la distinction suivante. Si l’on considère le repos ici-bas, ce repos est un mouvement qui n’a pas encore cessé, mais est imminent ; si l’on entend par repos la cessation complète du mouvement dans le mobile, il faut examiner s’il y a ici-bas quelque chose qui soit absolument sans mouvement. Comme il est impossible qu’une chose ait à la fois toutes les espèces de mouvement, qu’il y a nécessairement des mouvements qui ne sont pas réalisés en elle (puisqu’on dit qu’il y a en elle tel ou tel mouvement), quand une chose n’éprouve pas de déplacement et se repose par rapport à ce mouvement, ne doit-on pas dire d’elle à cet égard qu’elle ne se meut pas? Le repos est donc la négation du mouvement (110). Or la négation ne constitue pas un genre. La chose que nous considérons est en repos seulement par rapport au mouvement local : repos exprime donc ici uniquement la négation de ce mouvement.

On dira peut-être : pourquoi le mouvement n’est-il pas plutôt la négation du repos ? Nous répondrons alors que le mouvement [est une chose positive], qu’il apporte quelque chose avec soi, qu’il a de l’efficacité, qu’il donne une impulsion au sujet, qu’il produit ou détruit mille choses ; le repos, au contraire, n’est rien en dehors du sujet qui se repose et signifie seulement que celui-ci n’est pas en mouvement (111).

Pourquoi ne regardons-nous pas aussi la stabilité des choses intelligibles comme une négation du mouvement? C’est que la stabilité n’est pas la privation du mouvement : elle ne commence pas à exister quand le mouvement cesse, elle ne l’empêche pas d’exister en même temps qu’elle. Dans l’être intelligible, la stabilité n’a pas pour condition que ce qui est naturellement porté à se mouvoir cesse de se mouvoir. Il en est tout autrement : en tant que l’être intelligible est compris dans la stabilité, il est stable; en tant qu’il se meut, il se mouvra toujours ; il est donc stable par la stabilité, et il se meut par le mouvement ; le corps, au contraire, est mû sans doute par le mouvement, mais il ne se repose que par l’absence de mouvement, quand il est privé du mouvement qu’il devrait avoir. En quoi d’ailleurs consisterait la stabilité [si l’on supposait qu’elle existât dans les choses sensibles]? Quand quelqu’un passe de la maladie à la santé, il entre en convalescence. Quelle espèce de repos opposerons-nous donc à cette convalescence? Lui opposerons-nous l’état dont cet homme vient de sortir? Cet état est la maladie et non la stabilité. Lui opposerons-nous l’état dans lequel cet homme vient d’entrer? Cet état est la santé, qui n’est pas identique à la stabilité. Dire que la maladie et la santé sont chacune une sorte de stabilité, c’est faire delà maladie et delà santé des espèces de la stabilité, ce qui est absurde. Si l’on dit enfin que la stabilité est un accident de la santé, il en résulterait qu’avant la stabilité la santé ne serait pas santé. Mais que chacun raisonne là-dessus comme bon lui semble.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN STABILITY AND STILLNESS.

27. Let us now study stability or stillness, which is the contrary of movement. Are we to consider it itself a genus, or to reduce it to some one of the known genera? First, stability rather suits the intelligible world, and stillness the sense-world. Let us now examine stillness. If it be identical with stability, it is useless to look for it here below where nothing is stable, and where apparent stability is in reality only a slower movement. If stillness be different from stability, because the latter refers to what is completely immovable, and stillness to what is actually fixed, but is naturally movable even when it does not actually move, the following distinction should be established. If stillness here below be considered, this rest is a movement which has not yet ceased, but which is imminent; if by stillness is understood the complete cessation of movement in the moved, it will be necessary to examine whether there be anything here below that is absolutely without movement. As it is impossible for one thing to possess simultaneously all the species of movement, and as there are necessarily movements that are not realized in it — since it is usual to say that some particular movement is in something — when something undergoes no displacement, and seems still in respect to this movement, should one not say about it that in this respect it is not moving? Stillness is therefore the negation of movement. Now no negation constitutes a genus. The thing we are considering is at rest only in respect to local movement; stillness expresses therefore only the negation of this movement.

MOVEMENT IS MORE THAN THE NEGATION OF REST.

It may perhaps be asked, why is movement not rather the negation of rest? We shall then answer that movement (is something positive), that it brings something with it; that it has some efficiency, that it communicates an impulsion to the subject, that produces or destroys many things; stillness, on the contrary, is nothing outside of the subject which is still, and means no more than that the latter is still.

IN THE INTELLIGIBLE STABILITY DOES NOT IMPLY STILLNESS.

But why should we not regard the stability of intelligible things also as a negation of movement? Because stability is not the privation of movement; it does not begin to exist when movement ceases, and it does not hinder it from simultaneous existence with it. In intelligible being, stability does not imply the cessation of movement of that whose nature it is to move. On the contrary, so far as intelligible being is contained in (or, expressed by) stability, it is stable; so far as it moves, it will ever move; it is therefore stable by stability, and movable by movement. The body, however, is no doubt moved by movement, but it rests only in the absence of movement, when it is deprived of the movement that it ought to have. Besides, what would stability be supposed to imply (if it were supposed to exist in sense-objects)? When somebody passes from sickness to health, he enters on convalescence. What kind of stillness shall we oppose to convalescence? Shall we oppose to it that condition from which that man had just issued? That state was sickness, and not stability. Shall we oppose to it the state in which that man has just entered? That state is health, which is not identical with stability. To say that sickness and health are each of them a sort of stability, is to consider sickness and health as species of stability, which is absurd. Further, if it were said that stability is an accident of health, it would result that before stability health would not be health. As to such arguments, let each reason according to his fancy!

27. What view are we to take of that which is opposed to Motion, whether it be Stability or Rest? Are we to consider it as a distinct genus, or to refer it to one of the genera already established? We should, no doubt, be well advised to assign Stability to the Intellectual, and to look in the lower sphere for Rest alone.

First, then, we have to discover the precise nature of this Rest. If it presents itself as identical with Stability, we have no right to expect to find it in the sphere where nothing is stable and the apparently stable has merely a less strenuous motion.

Suppose the contrary: we decide that Rest is different from Stability inasmuch as Stability belongs to the utterly immobile, Rest to the stationary which, though of a nature to move, does not move. Now, if Rest means coming to rest, it must be regarded as a motion which has not yet ceased but still continues; but if we suppose it to be incompatible with Motion, we have first to ask whether there is in the Sensible world anything without motion.

Yet nothing can experience every type of motion; certain motions must be ruled out in order that we may speak of the moving object as existing: may we not, then, say of that which has no locomotion and is at rest as far as pertains to that specific type of motion, simply that it does not move?

Rest, accordingly, is the negation of Motion: in other words, it has no generic status. It is in fact related only to one type of motion, namely, locomotion; it is therefore the negation of this motion that is meant.

But, it may be asked, why not regard Motion as the negation of Stability? We reply that Motion does not appear alone; it is accompanied by a force which actualizes its object, forcing it on, as it were, giving it a thousand forms and destroying them all: Rest, on the contrary, comports nothing but the object itself, and signifies merely that the object has no motion.

Why, then, did we not in discussing the Intellectual realm assert that Stability was the negation of Motion? Because it is not indeed possible to consider Stability as an annulling of Motion, for when Motion ceases Stability does not exist, but requires for its own existence the simultaneous existence of Motion; and what is of a nature to move is not stationary because Stability of that realm is motionless, but because Stability has taken hold of it; in so far as it has Motion, it will never cease to move: thus, it is stationary under the influence of Stability, and moves under the influence of Motion. In the lower realm, too, a thing moves in virtue of Motion, but its Rest is caused by a deficiency; it has been deprived of its due motion.

What we have to observe is the essential character of this Sensible counterpart of Stability.

Consider sickness and health. The convalescent moves in the sense that he passes from sickness to health. What species of rest are we to oppose to this convalescence? If we oppose the condition from which he departs, that condition is sickness, not Stability; if that into which he passes, it is health, again not the same as Stability.

It may be declared that health or sickness is indeed some form of Stability: we are to suppose, then, that Stability is the genus of which health and sickness are species; which is absurd.

Stability may, again, be regarded as an attribute of health: according to this view, health will not be health before possessing Stability.

These questions may however be left to the judgement of the individual.