Tag: Stephen MacKenna

  • Absence

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    But is ABSENCE this privation itself, or something in which this Privation is lodged? Anyone maintaining that Matter and Privation are one and the same in substratum but stand separable in reason cannot be excused from assigning to each the precise principle which distinguishes it in reason from the other: that which defines Matter must…

  • accidental

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    Those that refuse to place the Sage aloft in the Intellectual Realm but drag him down to the ACCIDENTAL, dreading accident for him, have substituted for the Sage we have in mind another person altogether; they offer us a tolerable sort of man and they assign to him a life of mingled good and ill,…

  • Enneads III,8 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 30 Third Ennead. Eighth tractate. Nature contemplation and the one. 1. Supposing we played a little before entering upon our serious concern and maintained that all things are striving after Contemplation, looking to Vision as their one end – and this, not merely beings endowed with reason but even the unreasoning animals, the Principle…

  • Enneads III,6 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 26 Third Ennead. Sixth tractate. The impassivity of the unembodied. 1. In our theory, feelings are not states; they are action upon experience, action accompanied by judgement: the states, we hold, are seated elsewhere; they may be referred to the vitalized body; the judgement resides in the Soul, and is distinct from the state…

  • Enneads III,9 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 13 Third Ennead. Ninth tractate. Detached considerations. 1. “The Intellectual-Principle” (= the Divine Mind) – we read (in the Timaeus) – “looks upon the Ideas indwelling in that Being which is the Essentially Living (= according to Plotinus, the Intellectual Realm), “and then” – the text proceeds – “the Creator judged that all the…

  • Enneads IV,1 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 21 The Fourth Ennead First tractate. On the essence of the soul (1). 1. In the Intellectual Kosmos dwells Authentic Essence, with the Intellectual-Principle (Divine Mind) as the noblest of its content, but containing also souls, since every soul in this lower sphere has come thence: that is the world of unembodied spirits while…

  • Enneads IV,2 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 4 Fourth Ennead. Second tractate. On the essence of the soul (2). 1. In our attempt to elucidate the Essence of the soul, we show it to be neither a material fabric nor, among immaterial things, a harmony. The theory that it is some final development, some entelechy, we pass by, holding this to…

  • Enneads IV,3 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 27 Fourth Ennead. Third tractate. Problems of the soul (1). 1. The soul: what dubious questions concerning it admit of solution, or where we must abide our doubt – with, at least, the gain of recognizing the problem that confronts us – this is matter well worth attention. On what subject can we more…

  • Enneads IV,4 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 28 Fourth Ennead. Fourth tractate. Problems of the soul (2). 1. What, then, will be the Soul’s discourse, what its memories in the Intellectual Realm, when at last it has won its way to that Essence? Obviously from what we have been saying, it will be in contemplation of that order, and have its…

  • Enneads IV,5 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 29 Fourth Ennead. Fifth tractate. Problems of the soul (3). (also entitled “On sight”). 1. We undertook to discuss the question whether sight is possible in the absence of any intervening medium, such as air or some other form of what is known as transparent body: this is the time and place. It has…

  • Enneads IV,6 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 41 Fourth Ennead. Sixth tractate. Perception and memory. 1. Perceptions are no imprints, we have said, are not to be thought of as seal-impressions on soul or mind: accepting this statement, there is one theory of memory which must be definitely rejected. Memory is not to be explained as the retaining of information in…

  • Enneads IV,7 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 2 Fourth Ennead. Seventh tractate. The immortality of the soul. 1. Whether every human being is immortal or we are wholly destroyed, or whether something of us passes over to dissolution and destruction, while something else, that which is the true man, endures for ever – this question will be answered here for those…

  • Enneads IV,9 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 8 Fourth Ennead. Ninth tractate. Are all souls one? 1. That the Soul of every individual is one thing we deduce from the fact that it is present entire at every point of the body – the sign of veritable unity – not some part of it here and another part there. In all…

  • Enneads V,1 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 10 The Fifth Ennead First tractate. The three initial hypostases. 1. What can it be that has brought the souls to forget the father, God, and, though members of the Divine and entirely of that world, to ignore at once themselves and It? The evil that has overtaken them has its source in self-will,…

  • Enneads V,2 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 11 Fifth Ennead. Second tractate. The origin and order of the beings. Following on the first. 1. The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession – running back, so to speak, to it – or, more correctly, not…

  • Enneads V,3 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 49 Fifth Ennead. Third tractate. The knowing hypostases and the transcendent. 1. Are we to think that a being knowing itself must contain diversity, that self-knowledge can be affirmed only when some one phase of the self perceives other phases, and that therefore an absolutely simplex entity would be equally incapable of introversion and…

  • Enneads V,4 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 7 Fifth Ennead. Fourth tractate. How the Secondaries rise from the First: and on the One. 1. Anything existing after The First must necessarily arise from that First, whether immediately or as tracing back to it through intervenients; there must be an order of secondaries and tertiaries, in which any second is to be…

  • Enneads V,5 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 32 Fifth Ennead. Fifth tractate. That the intellectual beings are not outside the intellectual-principle: and on the nature of the good. 1. The Intellectual-Principle, the veritably and essentially intellective, can this be conceived as ever falling into error, ever failing to think reality? Assuredly no: it would no longer be intelligent and therefore no…

  • Enneads V,6 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate Fifth Ennead. Sixth tractate. That the principle transcending being has no intellectual act. What being has intellection primally and what being has it secondarily. 1. There is a principle having intellection of the external and another having self-intellection and thus further removed from duality. Even the first mentioned is not without an effort towards…

  • Enneads V,7 (MacKenna)

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    Tractate 18 Fifth Ennead. Seventh tractate. Is there an ideal archetype of particular beings? 1. We have to examine the question whether there exists an ideal archetype of individuals, in other words whether I and every other human being go back to the Intellectual, every (living) thing having origin and principle There. If Socrates, Socrates’…