Plotino – Tratado 39,18 (VI, 8, 18) — Imagens e expressões que significam aquilo que é o Bem

18. Para buscar este principio, nada deberá indagarse fuera de El. Pero todo lo que busquéis en su interior buscadlo en lo que le sigue; a El dejadle por completo tranquilo. Lo que está fuera de El no es otra cosa que él mismo, que lo abraza y lo mide todo. O mejor todavía, El se encuentra en lo más profundo de las cosas. Fuera de El y rodeándole o suspendidas de El están la razón y la inteligencia. Y aun ese título de inteligencia descansará en el contacto o enlace con El; pues es de El de quien posee el ser la inteligencia.

Ocurre aquí como con el círculo, que saca sus propiedades del centro por su contacto con él. De ahí recibe el círculo la forma, en tanto sus rayos, vueltos al centro, conforman asimismo por su extremo ese punto del que salen y al que se ven llevados. El centro, con todo, es algo más que la extremidad de los rayos; (repárese que, a pesar de su semejanza, los puntos extremos de los rayos sólo conservan de aquél una oscura huella, puesto que el centro los contiene a todos en potencia e incluso contiene a los rayos, que le afirman en todas partes por su centro y le hacen visible tal como es; gracias a ellos se da esa paradoja que incluye su desarrollo y no desarrollo).

Así y no de otro modo hay que considerar la inteligencia y el ser. Ambos vienen del Bien y se despliegan y se desenvuelven a partir de El; pero acreditan la dependencia de su naturaleza intelectual y atestiguan a la vez una inteligencia en la unidad, aunque no se trate aquí de la Inteligencia, porque estaríamos en realidad en el Uno. No confundamos el centro con los rayos ni con el círculo, puesto que el centro es el padre de) círculo y de los rayos a los que da una huella de sí mismo; y aun permaneciendo en su inmovilidad, les origina por una cierta fuerza suya y no permite la separación. Del mismo modo, el Bien es como el padre de la potencia intelectual que circula a su alrededor; constituye el modelo que la Inteligencia, en su unidad múltiple, presenta como imagen. Porque la Inteligencia es tal por ese su movimiento característico, en tanto el Bien ya permanecía en su inmovilidad antes de engendrarla y la engendra precisamente por la potencia que encierra en sí. ¿Qué coyuntura, qué azar o qué accidente podrían ser vecinos de esta potencia, productora de la Inteligencia y del Ser? Hay en el Uno algo que no hay en la Inteligencia, y esa luz que se expande por el espacio como proveniente de una fuente luminosa en sí misma, no es otra cosa que su imagen, en tanto la fuente es la verdadera realidad. Sin embargo, no podrá decirse que la luz expandida sea de otra especie. Y otro tanto ocurre con la Inteligencia, que es imagen del Uno; no existe desde luego por azar, sino que es razón y causa en cada una de sus partes.

Diremos del Uno que es la causa de la causa. Será, pues, causa de una manera más eminente y verdadera que la Inteligencia y, además, contendrá en sí mismo todas las causas inteligibles que puedan surgir de El, que no aparecerán por azar sino al modo como El las haya querido. Estamos ante una voluntad que no carece de razón y que no es la voluntad de producir al azar y como salga; al contrario, esta voluntad actúa debidamente, ya que nada queda al arbitrio del azar en el mundo inteligible. De ahí que hable Platón ¹ de lo que es debido y oportuno, deseando indicar con ello, en la medida de lo posible, que se encuentra lejos del azar y que es lo que ciertamente debe ser. Pero si es lo que debe ser, no podrá ser nada irracional; y si es lo verdaderamente a propósito, será también lo que tenga señorío sobre lo que viene después de El y, antes todavía, sobre sí mismo. No será entonces lo que es por azar, sino que, lo que es, se lo deberá a su propia voluntad. Mas, lo que debe ser y el acto de lo que debe ser constituyen en El una sola cosa; es lo que debe ser pero no al modo de un objeto sino como un acto primero que hace manifiesto que es lo que debe ser. Esto es cuanto acertamos a poder decir, dada la impotencia del lenguaje para expresar lo que nosotros quisiéramos.

XVIII. En cherchant ce principe, ne cherchez rien hors de lui; cherchez en lui tout ce qui est après lui, mais n’essayez pas de le pénétrer lui-même : car Lui, il est le dehors (τὸ ἕξω), parce qu’il comprend toute» choses (περίληψις πάντων) et en est ta mesure (58); il est aussi le dedans, parce qu’il est la profondeur la plus intime de toutes choses (ἡ εἴσω ἐν βάθει). Ce qui est hors de lui, ce qui le touche en quelque sorte circulairement et lui reste suspendu, c’est la liaison, l’Intelligence; celle-ci même n’est Intelligence que parce qu’elle le touche, qu’autant qu’elle le touche, qu’elle lui est suspendue (59) : car c’est de lui qu’elle tient d’être Intelligence. Elle ressemble à un cercle qui, touchant son centre par toute sa circonférence, devrait manifestement toute sa puissance à ce centre, et serait en quelque sorte centriforme (κεντορειδής). S’unissant ainsi dans un centre unique, les rayons d’un pareil cercle ont l’extrémité par laquelle ils touchent au centre semblable à ce à quoi ils aboutissent et dont ils sortent ; mais ce centre est supérieur [en simplicité] aux rayons et aux extrémités qui en sont les points. Ces extrémités, bien qu’elles soient telles que le centre, n’en sont cependant que de faibles vestiges : car celui-ci contient dans sa puissance les extrémités des rayons et les rayons mêmes ; il est présent partout dans ces rayons, il y manifeste sa nature, il y est développé sans cependant être développé. C’est de cette manière que l’Intelligence, avec l’Être, est née de Lui, comme une sorte d’effusion et de développement; et, en demeurant suspendue à la nature intellectuelle de l’Un, elle atteste par là qu’il y a en lui une sorte d’intelligence, laquelle n’est pas proprement intelligence, puisqu’il est l’Un absolu. Comme le centre, sans être ni les rayons ni le cercle, est cependant le père du cercle et des rayons (car il donne des vestiges de sa nature, et, en vertu d’une puissance immanente, il engendre par une force propre le cercle et les rayons qui ne se séparent point de lui (60)] ; de même, l’Un est l’archétype de la puissance intellectuelle qui se meut autour de lui et qui est son image : car il y a dans l’Un une espèce d’intelligence qui, se mouvant pour ainsi dire dans tous les sens et de toutes les manières, devient par là l’Intelligence; tandis que l’Un, demeurant au-dessus de l’Intelligence, l’engendre par sa puissance (61). Comment la fortune, la contingence, le hasard, pourraient-ils approcher de cette puissance qui a créé Γ In tel ligence (δύναμις νοοποιός), puissance vraiment et essentiellement créatrice? En effet, tel est ce qui est dans l’Intelligence, tel est ce qui est dans l’Un, quoique ce qui est en lui soit bien supérieur.

Qu’on se représente la clarté répandue au loin par une source lumineuse qui demeure en elle-même : la clarté répandue est l’image, et la source d’où elle sort est la Lumière véritable (62). Cependant, la clarté répandue, c’est-à-dire l’Intelligence, n’est pas une image qui ait une forme étrangère [à son principe] : car elle n’existe pas par hasard ; elle est raison et cause dans chacune de ses parties. L’Un est donc la cause de la cause : il est cause d’une manière suprême (αἰτιώτατον) et dans le sens le plus vrai, contenant à la fois toutes les causes intellectuelles qui doivent naître de lui; il a engendré ce qui est né de lui, non par l’effet du hasard, mais comme il l’a voulu lui-même. Or, sa volonté n’a pas été irrationnelle, ni fortuite, ni accidentelle ; elle a été ce qu’il convenait qu’elle fut, parce qu’en lui rien n’est fortuit. Aussi Platon l’a-t-il appelé le convenable (63) et l’opportun, pour exprimer autant que possible que Dieu est étranger a tout hasard, que ce qu’il est est le convenable même. Or, s’il est le convenable, il ne Test pas irrationnellement. S’il est l’opportun (καιρός), et s’il est a ce titre maître absolu (τὸ μάλιστα κυριώτατον) des êtres qui sont au-dessous de lui (64), à plus forte raison est-il opportun pour lui-même : il n’est donc point par hasard ce qu’il est, il est ce qu’il a voulu être ; car il veut les choses convenables, et en lui le convenable et l’acte du convenable ne font qu’un. Il est le convenable, non comme étant sujet, mais comme étant acte premier, lequel s’est manifesté tel qu’il était convenable qu’il fût. C’est là ce que nous pouvons dire de Lui, dans l’impuissance où nous sommes de nous exprimer à son égard comme nous le voudrions (65).

CHANCE COULD NOT CAUSE THE ONE THAT IS THE CENTRE OF THE CIRCULAR INTELLIGENCE.

18. If then you seek this (Principle), do not expect to find anything on the outside of Him; in Him seek all that is after Him, but do not seek to penetrate within Him; for He is what is outside (of everything), the comprehension of all things, and their measure. Simultaneously, He is the internal, being the most intimate depth of all things; (in which case) the external would be (represented by) Reason and Intelligence, which like a circumference fit around Him and depend from Him. Indeed, Intelligence is such only because it touches Him, and so far as it touches Him, and depends from Him; for it is its dependence from Him that constitutes its intelligence. It resembles a circle which is in contact with its centre. It would be universally acknowledged that such a circle would derive all its power from the centre, and would, in a higher sense, be centriform. Thus the radii of such a circle unite in a single centre by extremities similar to the distal and originating (extremities). These (distal) extremities, though they be similar to the centric ones, are nevertheless but faint traces thereof; for the latter’s potentiality includes both the radii and their (distal) extremities; it is everywhere present in the radii, manifests its nature therein, as an immature development. This is an illustration how Intelligence and Essence were born from (the divinity) as by effusion or development; and by remaining dependent from the intellectual nature of the Unity, it thereby manifests an inherent higher Intelligence, which (speaking strictly), is not intelligence, since it is the absolute Unity. A centre, even without radii or circumference, is nevertheless the “father” of the circumference and the radii, for it reveals traces of its nature, and by virtue of an immanent potency, and individual force, it begets the circumference and the radii which never separate from it. Similarly, the One is the higher archetype of the intellectual power which moves around Him, being His image. For in the Unity there is a higher Intelligence which, so to speak, moving in all directions and manners, thereby becomes Intelligence; while the Unity, dwelling above Intelligence, begets it by its power. How then could fortune, contingency and chance approach this intelligence-begetting Power, a power that is genuinely and essentially creative? Such then is what is in Intelligence, and such is what is in Unity, though that which is in Him is far superior.

AS CAUSE, SUITABILITY, AND OPPORTUNITY, THE SUPREME IS BEYOND CHANCE.

(As illustration), consider the radiance shed afar by some luminous source that remains within itself; the radiation would represent the image, while the source from which it issues would be the genuine light. Nevertheless, the radiation, which represents the intelligence, is not an image that has a form foreign (to its principle), for it does not exist by chance, being reason and cause in each of its parts. Unity then is the cause of the cause; He is, in the truest sense, supreme causality, simultaneously containing all the intellectual causes He is to produce; this, His offspring, is begotten not as a result of chance, but according to His own volition. His volition, however, was not irrational, fortuitous, nor accidental; and as nothing is fortuitous in Him, His will was exactly suitable. Therefore Plato called it the “suitable,” and the “timely,” to express as clearly as possible that the (Divinity) is foreign to all chance, and that He is that which is exactly suitable. Now if He be exactly suitable, He is so not irrationally. If He be timely, He must (by a Greek pun), also be “supremely sovereign” over the (beings) beneath Him. So much the more will He be timely for Himself. Not by chance therefore is He what He is, for He willed to be what He is; He wills suitable things, and in Him that which is suitable, and the actualization thereof, coincide. He is the suitable, not as a subject, but as primary actualization manifesting Him such as it was suitable for Him to be. That is the best description we can give of Him, in our impotence to express ourselves about Him as we should like.

18. Seeking Him, seek nothing of Him outside; within is to be sought what follows upon Him; Himself do not attempt. He is, Himself, that outer, He the encompassment and measure of all things; or rather He is within, at the innermost depth; the outer, circling round Him, so to speak, and wholly dependent upon Him, is Reason-Principle and Intellectual-Principle-or becomes Intellectual-Principle by contact with Him and in the degree of that contact and dependence; for from Him it takes the being which makes it Intellectual-Principle.

A circle related in its path to a centre must be admitted to owe its scope to that centre: it has something of the nature of that centre in that the radial lines converging on that one central point assimilate their impinging ends to that point of convergence and of departure, the dominant of radii and terminals: the terminals are of one nature with the centre, separate reproductions of it, since the centre is, in a certain sense, the total of terminals and radii impinging at every point upon it; these lines reveal the centre; they are the development of that undeveloped.

In the same way we are to take Intellectual-Principle and Being. This combined power springs from the Supreme, an outflow and as it were development from That and remaining dependent upon that Intellective nature, showing forth That which, in the purity of its oneness, is not Intellectual-Principle since it is no duality. No more than in the circle are the lines or circumference to be identified with that Centre which is the source of both: radii and circle are images given forth by indwelling power and, as products of a certain vigour in it, not cut off from it.

Thus the Intellective power circles in its multiple unity around the Supreme which stands to it as archetype to image; the image in its movement round about its prior has produced the multiplicity by which it is constituted Intellectual-Principle: that prior has no movement; it generates Intellectual-Principle by its sheer wealth.

Such a power, author of Intellectual-Principle, author of being – how does it lend itself to chance, to hazard, to any “So it happened”?

What is present in Intellectual-Principle is present, though in a far transcendent mode, in the One: so in a light diffused afar from one light shining within itself, the diffused is vestige, the source is the true light; but Intellectual-Principle, the diffused and image light, is not different in kind from its prior; and it is not a thing of chance but at every point is reason and cause.

The Supreme is cause of the cause: it is cause preeminently, cause as containing cause in the deepest and truest mode; for in it lie the Intellective causes which are to be unfolded from it, author as it is not of the chance – made but of what the divine willed: and this willing was not apart from reason, was not in the realm of hazard and of what happened to present itself.

Thus Plato, seeking the best account of the necessary and appropriate, says they are far removed from hazard and that what exists is what must exist: if thus the existence is as it must be it does not exist without reason: if its manner of being is the fitting, it is the utterly self-disposing in comparison with its sequents and, before that, in regard to itself: thus it is not “as it happened to be” but as it willed to be: all this, on the assumption that God wills what should be and that it is impossible to separate right from realization and that this Necessary is not to God an outside thing but is, itself, His first Activity manifesting outwardly in the exactly representative form. Thus we must speak of God since we cannot tell Him as we would.