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
The case is similar with Intelligence. There is a kind of existence
of universal Intelligence, which is located above the particular
actualized intelligences, and is different from that of the particular
intelligences. These are filled with universal notions: universal
Intelligence furnishes to the particular intelligences the notions
they possess. It is the potentiality of these intelligences all of
which it contains in its universality; on their side, these, in their
particularity, contain universal Intelligence just as a particular
science implies universal science. The great Intelligence exists in
itself, and the particular intelligences also exist in themselves;
they are implied in universal Intelligence, just as this one is
implied in the particular intelligences. Each one of the particular
intelligences exists simultaneously in itself, and in something else
(in the universal Intelligence), just as universal Intelligence
exists simultaneously in itself and in all the others. In universal
Intelligence, which exists in itself, all particular intelligences
exist potentially, because it actually is all the intelligences,
and potentially each of them separately. On the contrary, these are
actualizations of the particular intelligences, and potentially
universal Intelligence. Indeed, so far as they are what is predicated
of them, they are actualizations of what is predicated; so far as
they exist in the genus that contains them, they are this genus
potentially.[326] Genus, as such, is potentially all the species it
embraces; it is none of them in actuality; but all are implied therein.
So far as genus is in actualization what exists before the species, it
is the actualization of the things which are not particular. As occurs
in the species, these particular things achieve such actualization only
by the actualization which emanates from the genus, and which, with
regard to them, acts as cause.
HOW INTELLIGENCE, THOUGH ONE, PRODUCES PARTICULAR THINGS.
21. How then does Intelligence, though remaining one, by Reason produce
particular things? This really amounts to asking how the inferior
genera derive from the four Genera. We shall then have to scrutinize
how this great and ineffable Intelligence, which does not make use
of speech, but which is entire intelligence, intelligence of all,
universal, and not particular or individual intelligence, contains all
the things which proceed therefrom.
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