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
25. Plato therefore mingled the Good with pleasure, and did not
posit the Good exclusively in Intelligence, as he wrote in the
Philebus.[119] Appreciating this difficulty, he very rightly decided
on one hand that good did not consist in pleasure alone, and on the
other, that it did not consist in intelligence alone, inasmuch as he
failed to discover in it anything to arouse our desire. Perhaps Plato
had still another motive (in calling the Good a mixture), because he
thought that, with such a nature, the Good is necessarily full of
charm, desirable both for the seeker and the finder; whence it would
result that he who is not charmed has not found the Good, and that,
if he who desires be not happy, he evidently does not yet possess the
Good. It is not without a reason (that Plato formed this conception of
the Good); for he was not seeking to determine the universal Good, but
the good of man; and as such human good refers to (man, who is) a being
different from the absolute Good, then it becomes for him something
different from the Good in itself; and would therefore be defective and
composite. That is why (according to Plato), that which is alone and
single has no good, but is good in another and a higher sense.
THE ARISTOTELIAN SUPREME GOOD.[120]
The good must then be desirable; but it is good not because it is
desirable, but it is desirable because it is good.[121] Thus in the
order of beings, rising from the last to the First, it will be found
that the good of each of them is in the one immediately preceding,
so long as this ascending scale remain proportionate and increasing.
Then we will stop at Him who occupies the supreme rank, beyond which
there is nothing more to seek. That is the First, the veritable, the
sovereign Good, the author of all goodness in other beings. The good
of matter is form; for if matter became capable of sensation it would
receive it with pleasure. The good of the body is the soul; for without
her it could neither exist nor last. The good of the soul is virtue;
and then higher (waits), Intelligence. Last, the good of Intelligence
is the principle called the Primary nature. Each of these goods
produces something within the object whose good it is. It confers order
and beauty (as form does on matter); or life (as the soul does on the
body); or wisdom and happiness (as intelligence does on soul). Last,
the Good communicates to Intelligence its influx, and actualization
emanating from the Good, and shedding on Intelligence what has been
called the light of the Good. The nature of this we shall study later.
THE TRUE GOOD IMPLIES A COUNTERFEIT GOOD.
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