Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four PeriodsPlotinus
Philosophy
Plotinos: Complete Works, v. 4: In Chronological Order, Grouped in Four Periods
Plotinus
Plotinus
For details, the reader is referred to Zeller's fuller account of
these pre-Platonic elements.[471] But we may summarize as follows:
the physical elements to which the Hylicists had in turn attributed
finality Plato united into Pythagorean matter, which remained as
an element of Dualism. The world of nature became the becoming of
Heraclitus. Above that he placed the Being of Parmenides, in which the
concepts of Socrates found place as ideas. These he identified with
the numbers and harmonies of Pythagoras, and united them in an Eleatic
unity of many, as an intelligible world, or reason, which he owed to
Anaxagoras. The chief idea, that of the Good, was Megaro-Socratic. His
cosmology was that of Timaeus. His psychology was based on Anaxagoras,
as mind; on Pythagoras, as immortal. His ethics are Socratic, his
politics are Pythagorean. Who therefore would flout Plato, has all
earlier Greek philosophy to combat; and whoever recognizes the
achievements of the Hellenic mind will find something to praise in
Plato. When, therefore, we are studying Platonism, we are only studying
a blending of the rays of Greece, and we are chiefly interested in
Greece as one of the latest, clearest, and most kindred expressions of
human thought.
If however we should seek some one special Platonic element, it
would be that genuineness of reflection, that sincerity of thought,
that makes of his dialogues no cut and dried literary figments, but
soul-tragedies, with living, breathing, interest and emotion. Plato
thus practised his doctrine of the double self,[472] the higher and
the lower selves, of which the higher might be described as "superior
to oneself." In his later period, that of the Laws, he applied this
double psychology to cosmology, thereby producing doubleness in
the world-Soul: besides the good one, appears the evil one, which
introduces even into heaven things that are not good.
It was only a step from this to the logical deduction of Xenocrates
that these things in heaven were "spirits" or "guardians," both good
and evil, assisting in the administration of human affairs.[473] Such
is the result of doubleness introduced into anthropology; introduced
into cosmology, it establishes Pythagorean indefinite duality as the
principle opposing the unity of goodness.
The next step was taken by Plutarch. The evil demons, had, in Stoic
phraseology, been called "physical;" and so, in regard to matter,
they came to stand in the relation of soul to body. Original matter,
therefore, became two-fold; matter itself, and its moving principle,
"the soul of matter." This was identified with the worse World-soul
by a development, or historical event, which was the ordering of the
cosmos, or, creation.
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