Termo: Plotinus – Armstrong

V. 8. 1 (Armstrong Selection and Translation) (The artist imitates the beauty of the world of Noûs, to which he has access directly, and not necessarily through the medium of nature.) Since we maintain that the man who has attained to contemplation of the beauty of the world of Noûs, and understood the beauty of…

II. 3. 7 (Armstrong Selection and Translation from the Enneads AP) (Why do the stars, and omens in general, announce the future? Why is divination possible? Because the whole universe is a single living being, with a unified organic structure; and so from signs appearing in one member we can divine what is going to…

But it is the theory of the most rigid and universal Necessity: all the causative forces enter into the system, and so every several phenomenon rises necessarily; where nothing escapes Destiny, nothing has power to check or to change. Such forces beating upon us, as it were, from one general cause leave us no resource…

VI. 8. 15 (Armstrong Selection and Translation) (We know that the One is altogether outside the realm of chance because we are aware of something in ourselves which transcends chance by the power of Its light; and when we attain to that and become it and put away all else we are more than free,…

Habit is an Act directed upon something had (some experience produced by habit) and binding it as it were with the subject having (experiencing), as the Act of production binds producer and product. Enneads: VI I. 9

The upholder of Happening must be asked how this false happening can be supposed to have come about, taking it that it did, and how the happening, then, is not universally prevalent. If there is to be a natural scheme at all, it must be admitted that this happening does not and cannot exist: for…

V. 3. 17 (Armstrong Selection and Translation AP) (The One transcends even Noûs, and our soul is not satisfied till it reaches It; the attainment described as an illumination.) What then is better than this wisest life, without fault or mistake, and than Noûs which contains everything, than universal life and universal Noûs? If we…

I. 4. 16 (Armstrong Selection and Translation AP) (The good man’s independence of and care for his body and bodily life.) If anyone does not set the good man up on high in this world of Noûs, but brings him down to chance events and fears their happening to him, he is not keeping his…

V. 7. 1 (Armstrong Selection and Translation from the Enneads) (There are Forms of individuals; our personalities have eternal principles in the intelligible world. Arguments drawn from reincarnation and the Stoic doctrine of eternal recurrence do not serve to disprove this. We are made individuals by form, not matter. We must not be afraid of…

The organs of touch are at the ends of the nerves, which also have the power of moving the living creature; it is there that the soul offers itself in that capacity. The nerves start in the brain (enkephalos) and it is there that people locate the principles of perception, impulse and of the whole…

estéril So that “ receptacle ” and “ nurse ” are more proper terms for it (matter); but “ mother ” is only used in a manner of speaking, for matter itself brings forth nothing. But those people seem to call it “ mother ” who claim that the mother holds the position of matter…

VI. 5, 12 (Armstrong Selection and Translation) (The All, Real Being, or Noûs, is infinite, not spatially, but because it is entirely without quantity, pure spirit. We, in our higher selves, are truly that All, but we do not understand it and so effectively become it till we radically simplify ourselves and turn away from…

III. 2. 17 (Armstrong Selection and Translation from the Enneads) (The imperfect unity of the visible world means that there must necessarily be a place in it for moral evil. But this does not excuse the wicked, for they are souls who exist before they came into this world, and they bring their own characters…