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
To this (definition) it may be objected that if warming oneself consist
in receiving such heat as partially contributes to the subject's being,
and partly does not do so, then we have here one and the same thing
which both is, and is not an experience. To this it may be answered
that there are two ways of warming oneself. Besides, even when the
heating contributes to the being, it does so only in the degree that
some other object experiences. For instance, the metal will have
to be heated, and undergo an experience, for the production of the
being called statue, although this statue itself be heated only
incidentally. If then the metal become more beautiful by the effect
of that which heats it, or by the effect of the heating itself, it
undergoes an experience; for there are two manners of (undergoing an
experience, or) suffering: the one consists in becoming worse, and the
other in becoming better--or at least, in not altering.
TRANSMISSION, RECEPTION AND RELATION UNDERLIE ACTION AND EXPERIENCE.
22. The cause that a being undergoes an experience is that it contains
the kind of movement called alteration, whichever way it modify him;
on the contrary, action means to have in oneself a definite movement,
derived from oneself, or a movement which has its goal in some other
being, and its origin in self. In both cases there is movement;
but with this distinction: that action, so far as it is action, is
impassible; while an experience consists in the experiencer's reception
of a disposition new to him, without the reception of anything that
contributes towards his being; so as to avoid (the case of the statue,
above, where) the experience happened to one being (the metal), while
it was another being that was produced (the statue). Consequently, the
same thing will in one state be an action, and in other, an experience.
Thus the same movement will in one being be an action, because it
is considered from a certain viewpoint; and from another it will be
an experience, because it is disposed some other way. Action and
experience seem therefore to be relative, if one consider the action
in its relation with experience, since the same thing is action in the
one, and experience in the other. Also, because neither of these two
can be considered in itself, but only in him who acts, or experiences,
when the one moves, and the other is moved. Each of these terms
therefore implies two categories; one gives the movement, the other
receives it; consequently we have transmission and reception, which
result in relation. If he who received the movement possesses it as
he possesses color, why could it not also be said that he possessed
movement? Absolute movements, such as walking (and thinking) possess
steps and thought.
PREDICTION AND RESPONSIVENESS TO IT DO NOT FALL UNDER DEFINITION FOR
ACTION AND EXPERIENCE.
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