Plotino – Tratado 5,7 (V, 9, 7) — O Intelecto, as Formas e as ciências

7. De las ciencias que se dan en el alma razonable unas tienen un objeto sensible — supuesto que a éstas deba llamárselas ciencias y no les convenga ya el nombre de opinión — y, como posteriores a las cosas, son también las imágenes de ellas. Otras, las verdaderas ciencias, tienen un objeto inteligible y vienen de la Inteligencia al alma razonable sin necesidad de pensar nada sensible. Como tales ciencias, son idénticas a las cosas que piensan y tienen en sí mismas su objeto inteligible y el pensamiento de este objeto. Porque la Inteligencia, que permanece siempre interior a sí misma, es idéntica a los seres primeros. Y no se lanza a su objeto como si no lo poseyese o hubiese de adquirirlo, o como sí debiese abrirse paso entre cosas que están fuera de su alcance. Este es, sin duda, el proceder del alma. Mas la Inteligencia permanece inmóvil en sí misma y lo es todo a la vez. No piensa una cosa para que esta cosa exista, porque tampoco cuando piensa en Dios, viene Dios a la existencia, ni cuando piensa en el movimiento, se produce el movimiento. De ahí que no resulte exacto el afirmar que las ideas son pensamientos, si se toma esto en el sentido de que una cosa se produce o existe después que la Inteligencia la ha pensado. Porque el objeto pensado debe ser anterior al pensamiento de él. De otro modo, ¿cómo se le aplicaría el pensar? Pues no es por suerte o al azar como el pensamiento viene a su objeto.

VII. Les notions scientifiques (ἐπιστήμαι) que l’âme se forme des objets sensibles par la raison discursive, et qu’il conviendrait plutôt d’appeler opinions (27), sont postérieures à ces objets (ὕστεραι τῶν πραγμάτων, a posteriori), par conséquent n’en sont que les images; mais les notions vraiment scientifiques que la raison discursive reçoit de l’intelligence ne font concevoir rien de sensible. En tant qu’elles sont des notions scientifiques, elles sont les choses mêmes dont elles sont les conceptions : elles offrent l’union intime de l’intelligence et de la pensée. L’Intelligence intérieure (ὁ νοῦς ἔνδον), qui est les essences premières, se possède elle-même intimement, habile en elle-même de toute éternité, enfin est un acte : elle ne promène pas ses regards hors d’elle, parce qu’elle possède tout en elle-même; elle n’acquiert pas, ne raisonne pas pour trouver des choses qui ne lui seraient pas présentes. Ce sont là des opérations propres à l’âme; l’intelligence, demeurant fixée en elle-même, est toutes choses simultanément; ce n’est cependant pas la pensée qui fait subsister chacune d’elles : ce n’est pas parce que l’intelligence a pensé Dieu ou le mouvement, par exemple, que Dieu ou le mouvement existent (28). Quand on dit que les pensées (νοήσεις) sont les formes (εἴδη), on se trompe si l’on entend par là que l’intelligible n’existe que parce que l’intelligence le pense; au contraire, c’est seulement parce que l’intelligible existe que l’intelligence peut penser. Sinon, comment arriverait-elle à le penser? Elle ne peut le rencontrer par hasard, ni se consumer en efforts stériles.

THERE ARE SCIENTIFIC NOTIONS THAT ARE POSTERIOR, BUT SOME THAT ARE PRIOR.

7. The scientific notions that the soul forms of sense-objects, by discursive reason, and which should rather be called opinions, are posterior to the objects (they deal with); and consequently, are no more than images of them. But true scientific notions received from intelligence by discursive reasons do not contain any sense-conceptions. So far as they are scientific notions, they are the very things of which they are the conceptions; they reveal the intimate union of intelligence and thought. Interior Intelligence, which consists of the primary (natures) possesses itself intimately, resides within itself since all eternity, and is an actualization. It does not direct its glances outside of itself, because it possesses everything within itself; it does not acquire, and does not reason to discover things that may not be present to them. Those are operations characteristic of the soul. Intelligence, remaining fixed within itself, is all things simultaneously. Nevertheless, it is not thought which makes each of them subsist; it is only because intelligence thought the divinity or movement, for instance, that the divinity or movement exists. When we say that thoughts are forms, we are mistaken if thereby we mean that the intelligible exists only because Intelligence thinks it. On the contrary, it is only because the intelligible exists, that Intelligence can think. Otherwise, how would Intelligence come to think the intelligible? It cannot meet the intelligible by chance, nor waste itself in fruitless efforts.

VII. The sciences, however, of sensibles, which are in the rational soul, if it is proper to say that there are sciences of these, since the appellation adapted to them is that of opinion, in consequence of being posterior to sensible things, are the images of them. But the sciences of intelligibles, which are truly sciences, and which descend from intellect into the rational soul, understand indeed nothing sensible; but so far as they are sciences, are each of the things which are the objects of their perception; and possess internally the intelligible and intelligence. This, however, is because intellect is inward, which is primary natures themselves, is eternally present with itself, and exists in energy. It likewise does not extend itself to the objects of its perception as if it did not possess them, or as if it acquired them externally, or obtained them by a discursive process, as if they were not already present with it (for these are the passions of soul); but it stands firmly in itself, being at once all things, and does not energize intellectually in order that it may give subsistence to every thing. For it does not, when it intellectually perceives God, become God, nor when it understands motion does it become motion. Hence, if the assertion that forms are intellections signifies, that when intellect understands this particular form it then becomes that form, it is not true. For it is necessary that the object of intellection should be prior to this intellectual perception. Or how would intelligence arrive at the perception of it? For it cannot be fortuitously, nor does intelligence extend itself towards the intelligible in vain.

7. Knowledge in the reasoning soul is on the one side concerned with objects of sense, though indeed this can scarcely be called knowledge and is better indicated as opinion or surface-knowing; it is of later origin than the objects since it is a reflection from them: but on the other hand there is the knowledge handling the intellectual objects and this is the authentic knowledge; it enters the reasoning soul from the Intellectual-Principle and has no dealing with anything in sense. Being true knowledge it actually is everything of which it takes cognisance; it carries as its own content the intellectual act and the intellectual object since it carries the Intellectual-Principle which actually is the primals and is always self-present and is in its nature an Act, never by any want forced to seek, never acquiring or traversing the remote – for all such experience belongs to soul – but always self-gathered, the very Being of the collective total, not an extern creating things by the act of knowing them.

Not by its thinking God does God come to be; not by its thinking Movement does Movement arise. Hence it is an error to call the Ideas intellections in the sense that, upon an intellectual act in this Principle, one such Idea or another is made to exist or exists. No: the object of this intellection must exist before the intellective act [must be the very content not the creation of the Intellectual-Principle]. How else could that Principle come to know it: certainly not [as an external] by luck or by haphazard search.