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
Does the intelligible world contain only what is found in the
sense-world, or does it contain anything additional?... Let us consider
the arts, in this respect. To begin with, the intelligible world
does not contain any imperfection. Evils here below come from lack,
privation, omission; it is a state of matter, or of anything similar to
matter, which failed to be completely assimilated.[143]
SOME ARTS ARE PURELY EARTHLY; OTHERS, LIKE MUSIC, INTELLIGIBLE.
11. Let us therefore consider the arts and their products. Unless as
represented within human reason, we cannot refer to the intelligible
world arts of imitation such as painting, sculpture, dancing, or
acting, because they are born here below, take sense-objects as models,
representing their forms, motions, and visible proportions.[144] If,
however, we possess a faculty which, by studying the beauties offered
by the symmetry of animals, considers the general characteristics of
this symmetry, it must form part of the intellectual power which, on
high, contemplates universal symmetry. Music, however, which studies
rhythm and harmony, is, so far as it studies what is intelligible in
these things, the image of the music that deals with intelligible
rhythm.
THERE ARE MANY AUXILIARY ARTS WHICH HELP THE PROGRESS OF NATURE.
The arts which produce sense-objects, such as architecture and
carpentry, have their principles in the intelligible world, and
participate in wisdom, so far as they make use of certain proportions.
But as they apply these proportions to sense-objects, they cannot
wholly be referred to the intelligible world, unless in so far as
they are contained within human reason. The case is similar with
agriculture, which assists the growth of plants; medicine, which
increases health, and (gymnastics) which supplies the body with
strength as well as vigor,[145] for on high there is another Power,
another Health, from which all living organisms derive their needed
vigor.
OTHER ARTS ARE INTELLIGIBLE WHEN APPLIED TO THE INTELLIGIBLE.
Last, whenever rhetoric, strategy, private and public finance and
politics weave beauty in their deeds, and they glance above, they
(discover) that they have added to their science a contribution from
the intelligible science.
The science of geometry, however, which deals (wholly) with
intelligible entities, must be referred to the intelligible world. So
also with philosophy, which occupies the first rank among sciences
because it studies essence. This is all we have to say about arts and
their products.
THE INTELLIGIBLE WORLD CONTAINS ONLY UNIVERSAL IDEAS; PARTICULARITIES
ARE DERIVED FROM MATTER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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