Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 2: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
Is this intuition similar to the intuition of an object grasped in its
entirety by a single glance, or does it contain all the thoughts of
the intelligibles contemplated simultaneously? Since the intelligibles
offer a varied spectacle, the thought which grasps them must evidently
be equally multiple and varied, comprehending several thoughts, like
the perception of a single sense-object, as for instance that of a face
comprehends several perceptions because the eye, on perceiving the
face, simultaneously sees the nose and the other features.
IN THE INTELLIGIBLE ANTERIORITY REFERS TO ORDER, NOT TO TIME.
It may be objected that it may happen that the soul will divide and
develop something which was unitary. This thing must then already
have been divided in intelligence, but such a division is more like
an impression. As anteriority or posteriority in ideas does not
refer to time, so also will the mental conception of anteriority and
posteriority not be subject to temporal conditions, but refer to order
(which presides over intelligible things). For instance, on considering
a tree's order that extends from the roots to the tree-top, priority
and posteriority exists only under the relation of order, inasmuch as
the whole plant is perceived at one single glance.
INTELLIGENCE IS NOT A UNITY; BUT ITS MANIFOLD IS PRODUCED BY A UNITY.
How can things be prior or posterior, if the soul that contemplates the
One embrace all things? The potentiality which is One is one in such a
manner that it is multiple when it is contemplated by another principle
(Intelligence), because then it is not simultaneously all things in one
single thought. Indeed, the actualizations (of Intelligence) are not
a unity; but they are all produced by an ever permanent potentiality;
they therefore become multiple in the other principles (the
intelligibles); for Intelligence, not being unity itself, can receive
within its breast the nature of the multiple which did not formerly
exist (in the One).
THE SOUL DOES NOT EVEN REMEMBER HERSELF.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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