Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 1: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 1: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
Intelligence exists (as intelligence) because it thinks existence.
Existence exists (as existence) because, on being thought, it makes
intelligence exist and thinks.[229] There must therefore exist
something else which makes intelligence think, and existence exist,
and which consequently is their common principle. In existence they
are contemporaneous and substantial, and can never fail each other.
As intelligence and existence constitute a duality, their common
principle in this consubstantial unity that they form, and which is
simultaneously existence and intelligence, the thinking subject and
the object thought; intelligence as thinking subject, and existence
as object thought; for thought simultaneously implies difference and
identity.
THE SIX CATEGORIES FROM WHICH ALL THINGS ARE DERIVED.
The first principles, therefore, are existence and intelligence,
identity and difference, movement and rest.[230] Rest is the condition
of identity; movement is the condition of thought, since the latter
presupposes the differences of the thinking subject and of the object
thought, and because it is silent if reduced to unity. The elements
of thought (subject and object) must thus stand in the relation
of differences, but also in that of unity, because they form a
consubstantial unity, and because there is a common element in all that
is derived therefrom. Besides, here difference is nothing else than
distinction. The plurality formed by elements of thought constitutes
quantity and number;[231] and the characteristic of every element,
quality.[232] From these first principles (the categories, that are the
genera of being) all things are derived.
THE SOUL AS NUMBER CONNECTED WITH INTELLIGENCE.
5. Thus the human soul is full of this divinity (of Intelligence);
she is connected therewith by these (categories), unless the soul
(purposely) withdraws from (that intelligence). The Soul approaches
Intelligence, and thus having been unified, the Soul wonders, 'Who
has begotten this unity?' It must be He who is simple, who is prior
to all multiplicity, who imparts to Intelligence its existence and
manifoldness, and who consequently produces number. Number, indeed,
is not something primitive; for the One is prior to the "pair." The
latter ranks only second, being begotten and defined by unity, by
itself being indefinite. As soon as it is defined, it is a number in
so far as it is a "being"; for these are the grounds on which the Soul
also is a number.[233]
THOUGHT IS ACTUALIZATION OF SIGHT, AND BOTH FORM BUT ONE THING.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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