Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 3: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
17. It may be objected that actualization and movement do not, by
themselves, form a genus, but belong to the genus of relation, because
actualization exists through the power of something active, and
movement exists by the power of some motor, as such. We might answer
that relative conceptions are produced by habituation (the manner of
being) even of things, and not only through the relation established
between them by the mind. As the habituation is a mode of "hypostatic"
existence, although it be the "thing of something else," or although
it refer to something else,[274] it nevertheless possesses its nature
before being a relation. Now this actualization, this movement, this
habituation, which is the "thing of some other thing" nevertheless
possesses the property of existing and of being conceived by itself
before being a relation; otherwise, all things would be relative
conceptions; for there is nothing, not excluding the soul herself,
which does not bear some relation to something else. Moreover, why are
"action" and "acting" not relatives? For they necessarily are either a
movement or an actualization. If the Aristotelians consider "action" a
relative, and make a genus of "acting," why then do they not also place
"movement" among the relatives, and make a genus of "moving?" They
might, indeed, have subsumed under the genus "movement" the two species
"action" and "reaction" (or, "suffering"); but they have no right to
make two distinct genera of "acting" and "reacting," as they generally
do.
ON ARISTOTELIAN PRINCIPLES, EVEN INTELLECTION WOULD BE MOVEMENT OR
ACTUALIZATION.
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