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 statement that in what is immaterial, knowledge and the known thing
coincide,[15] must not be understood to mean that it is the knowledge
of the thing which is the thing itself, nor that the reason which
contemplates an object is this object itself, but rather, conversely,
that it is the thing which, existing without matter, is purely
intelligible and intellection. I do not here mean the intellection
which is neither a definition nor an intuition of a thing; but I say
that the thing itself, such as it exists in the intelligible world,
is exclusively intelligence and knowledge. It is not (the kind of)
knowledge that applies itself to the intelligible, it is the (actual)
thing itself which keeps that knowledge (thereof possessed by reason)
from remaining different from it, just as the knowledge of a material
object remains different from that object; but it is a veritable (kind
of) knowledge, that is, a knowledge which is not merely a simple
image of the known thing, but really is the thing itself. It is not
therefore the thought of the movement which produced movement in
itself, but the movement in itself which produced the thought, so that
the thought thinks itself as movement, and as thought. On the one hand,
intelligible movement is thought by the intelligible Essence; on the
other hand, it is movement in itself because it is first--for there
is no movement anterior thereto; it is real movement, because it is
not the accident of a subject, but because it is the actualization of
the essence which moves, and possesses actualized (existence); it is
therefore "being," though it be conceived as different from essence.
Justice, for instance, is not the simple thought of justice; it is a
certain disposition of Intelligence, or rather it is an actualization
of a determinate nature. The face of Justice is more beautiful than the
evening or morning stars, and than all visible beauty.[16] Justice may
be imagined as an intellectual statue which has issued from itself and
which has manifested itself such as it is in itself; or rather, which
subsists essentially in itself.
INTELLIGENCE THINKS THINGS NOT BECAUSE THEY EXIST, BUT BECAUSE IT
POSSESSES THEM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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