Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead II 5 On What Is Potentially and What Actually written by Cinzia Arruzza and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-31 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term dunamis (potentiality) entered into the philosophical vocabulary with Plato, but it was with Aristotle that it acquired, together with energeia (actuality), the strong technical meaning that the two terms have maintained, with variations, throughout subsequent philosophical tradition. The significance of the notions of actuality and potentiality in Plotinus' thought can hardly be overstated. Throughout the Enneads, they are crucial to understanding the specific causality of intelligible realities and the relation of participation between intelligible and sensible realms. In Ennead II.5, Plotinus for the first time provides a systematic clarification of his peculiar use of these terms, through a sustained revision of Aristotle's own elaboration of the topic and of his terminology. The treatise discusses the different meanings of potentiality and actuality as well as the way each of them applies or does not apply to the sensible realm, to the intelligible realm, and to matter.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead V 5 written by Lloyd Gerson and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2013-07-15 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Platonists beginning in the Old Academy itself and up to and including Plotinus struggled to understand and articulate the relation between Plato's Demiurge and the Living Animal which served as the model for creation. The central question is whether "e;contents"e; of the Living Animal, the Forms, are internal to the mind of the Demiurge or external and independent. For Plotinus, the solution depends heavily on how the Intellect that is the Demiurge and the Forms or intelligibles are to be understood in relation to the first principle of all, the One or the Good. The treatise V.5 [32] sets out the case for the internality of Forms and argues for the necessary existence of an absolutely simple and transcendent first principle of all, the One or the Good. Not only Intellect and the Forms, but everything else depends on this principle for their being.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead II 9 written by Sebastian Gertz and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-28 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How was the universe created, and what is our place within it? These are the questions at the heart of Plotinus' Against the Gnostics. For the Gnostics, the universe came into being as a result of the soul's fall from intelligible reality-it is the evil outcome of a botched creation. Plotinus challenges this, and insists that the soul's creation of the world is the necessary consequence of its contemplation of the ideal forms. While the Gnostics claim to despise the visible universe, Plotinus argues that such contempt displays their ignorance of the higher realities of which the cosmos is a beautiful image.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead VI 4 VI 5 written by Eyjolfur Strange Emilsson, Steven and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2015-01-14 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ennead VI.4-5, originally written as a single treatise, contains Plotinus' most general and sustained exposition of the relationship between the intelligible and the sensible realms, addressing and coalescing two central issues in Platonism: the nature of the soul-body relationship and the nature of participation. Its main question is, How can soul animate bodies without sharing their extension? The treatise seems to have had considerable impact: it is much reflected in Porphyry's important work, Sententiae, and the doctrine of reception according to the capacity of the recipient, for which this treatise is the main source, resonated in medieval thinkers.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead IV 4 30 45 IV 5 written by Gary M. SJ Gurtler and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ennead IV.4.30-45 and IV.5 retrieves the unity in this last section of Plotinus' treatise on Problems concerning the Soul. Combining translation with commentary, Gurtler enhances both the accuracy of the translation and the recovery of Plotinus' often unsuspected originality. This is especially true for IV.5, where previous translations fail to convey the concise nature of his argument against both the Aristotelian and Platonic theories of vision. Plato and Aristotle each claim that vision depends on the light between the eye and the object, but Plotinus presents evidence that this is not the case and develops a novel theory of light as a second activity that moves from source to object directly, even arguing that color is in the light itself rather than merely a quality of the object. This theory of vision, in turn, depends on the nature of sympathy developed especially in IV.4.30-45, where Plotinus shows how action at a distance is both possible and necessary for the proper unity in diversity of the sensible cosmos.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead IV 7 written by Barrie Fleet and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2016-03-30 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ennead IV.7 is a very early treatise (second according to Porphyry's chronological table), and unlike the many treatises devoted to attempts at untangling various issues Plotinus found problematic in Plato's thinking, this one presents the teachings of the other main schools current in Plotinus' day: the Stoics, Epicureans, Pythagoreans, and Peripatetics, all of whom presented soul as something material or as contingent upon material soul, and so as being neither truly immortal nor imperishable. It includes observations on many mainly Stoic doctrines on perception, memory, sensation, thought, virtue, powers of material bodies, mixture and reproduction (Chapters 1-83); on Pythagorean attunement (84); and on Peripatetic entelechy (85). In Chapters 9-10 Plotinus presents, in broad terms, Plato's doctrines on soul's immortality-mainly that of the individual soul, but a fortiori that of the soul of the cosmos. These chapters offer some of Plotinus' most powerful prose. He is not concerned to prove the soul's immortality-that was an uncontroversial tenet of Platonism, to be taken for granted. In this treatise Plotinus is laying down the indisputable foundations for his later writings.
Download or read book Plotinus and the Presocratics written by Giannis Stamatellos and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2008-01-03 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book-length philosophical study on the Presocratic influences in Plotinus’ Enneads.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead I 1 written by Gerard O'Daly and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2017-12-28 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ennead I.1 is a succinct and concentrated analysis of key themes in Plotinus' psychology and ethics. It focuses on the soul-body relation, discussing various Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic views before arguing that there is only a soul-trace in the body (forming with the body a "e;compound"e;), while the reasoning soul itself is impassive and flawless. The soul-trace hypothesis is used to account for human emotions, beliefs, and perceptions, and human fallibility in general. Its problematic relation to our rational powers, as well as the question of moral responsibility, are explored. Plotinus develops his original and characteristic concept of the self or "e;we,"e; which is so called because it is investigated as something common to all humans (rather than a private individual self), and because it is multiple, referring to the reasoning soul or to the "e;living thing"e; composed of soul-trace and body. Plotinus explores the relation between the "e;we"e; and consciousness, and also its relation to the higher metaphysical entities, the Good, and Intellect.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead VI 8 written by Kevin Turner Corrigan, John and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-17 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ennead VI.8 gives us access to the living mind of a long dead sage as he tries to answer some of the most fundamental questions we in the modern world continue to ask: are we really free when most of the time we are overwhelmed by compulsions, addictions, and necessities, and how can we know that we are free? Can we trace this freedom through our own agency to the gods, to the Soul, Intellect, and the Good? How do we know that the world is meaningful and not simply the result of chance or randomness? Plotinus' On the Voluntary and on the Free Will of the One is a groundbreaking work that provides a new understanding of the importance and nature of free human agency. It articulates a creative idea of agency and radical freedom by showing how such terms as desire, will, self-dependence, and freedom in the human ethical sphere can be genuinely applied to Intellect and the One while preserving the radical inability of all metaphysical language to express anything about God or gods.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead V 1 On the Three Primary Levels of Reality written by Eric D Perl and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2015-12-23 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plotinus' Treatise V.1 comes closer than any other to providing an outline of his entire spiritual and metaphysical system, and as such it may serve to some degree as an introduction to his philosophy. It addresses in condensed form a great many topics to which Plotinus elsewhere devotes extended discussion, including the problem of the multiple self; eternity and time; the unity-in-duality of intellect and the intelligible; and the derivation of intelligible being from the One. Above all, it shows that the so-called "e;three hypostases"e;-soul, intellect, and the One-are best understood not as a sequence of three things additional to one another, but as three levels of possession of the same content, so that each lower level-soul in relation to intellect and intellect in relation to the One-is an "e;image"e; and "e;expression"e; of its superior. Plotinus exhorts the human soul to overcome its alienation from its own true nature and its divine origin by first recognizing itself as superior to the body and the same in kind as the animating principle of the entire cosmos, and then discovering within itself the still higher levels of reality from which it derives: intellect and, ultimately, the One or Good, the supreme first principle of all things. To do so the soul must redirect its attention inward and upward to become aware of the divinity which is always within it but from which it is distracted by the clamor of the senses.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead III 4 On Our Allotted Guardian Spirit written by Wiebk-Marie Stock and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Our Allotted Guardian Spirit is a lively and at times perplexing text combining general reflections on the nature of the soul with a discussion of the phenomenon of a personal guardian spirit. Plotinus wants to interpret Plato, and aims to integrate Plato's various statements about daimones into one comprehensive theory. This leads to some views that are, if not exotic, then at least strange on first encounter. However, a closer reading reveals that Plotinus is not interested in demonology per se. Instead, the central concern of the treatise are ideas about the soul, the self, and self-consciousness. Plotinus' explorations produce a theory of the mind as the agent and activity responsible for a person’s ethical choices and conduct of life. The demon emerges as a philosophical tool passed down from Plato, but adapted and rationalized to try to explain motivation to action, the impulse toward the ethical life, and even the various differences in human ethical and psychological constitution. This innovative theory is a response to a strong and ongoing current of thought in the philosophical tradition. The introduction offers an overview of ancient demonologies, starting with Homer and the Presocratics, and is followed by an in-depth examination of Plato, the Stoics, Plotinus, and later Neoplatonic developments. As such the book presents Plotinus’ specific rationalizing response to the idea of a guardian spirit in the context of ancient philosophical demonologies.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead I 6 On Beauty written by Andrew Smith and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-02 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ennead I.6 is probably the best known and most influential treatise of Plotinus, especially for Renaissance artists and thinkers. Although the title may suggest a work on aesthetics and thus of limited focus, this is far from the case. For it quickly becomes apparent that Plotinus' main interest is in transcendent beauty, which he identifies with the Good, the goal of all philosophical endeavor in the Platonist's search to assimilate himself with the divine. The treatise is at once a philosophical search for the nature of the divine and at the same time an encouragement to the individual to aspire to this goal by taking his start from the beauty which is experienced in this world; for it is an image of transcendent beauty. This upward movement of the treatise reflects throughout the speech of Socrates in Plato's Symposium in which he recounts the exhortation of the priestess Diotima to ascend from earthly to transcendent beauty, which for Plotinus is identified with the divine.
Download or read book Aristotle s Empiricism written by Jean De Groot and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Aristotle's Empiricism, Jean De Groot argues that an important part of Aristotle's natural philosophy has remained largely unexplored and shows that much of Aristotle's analysis of natural movement is influenced by the logic and concepts of mathematical mechanics that emerged from late Pythagorean thought. De Groot draws upon the pseudo-Aristotelian Physical Problems XVI to reconstruct the context of mechanics in Aristotle's time and to trace the development of kinematic thinking from Archytas to the Aristotelian Mechanics. She shows the influence of kinematic thinking on Aristotle's concept of power or potentiality, which she sees as having a physicalistic meaning originating in the problem of movement.De Groot identifies the source of early mechanical knowledge in kinesthetic awareness of mechanical advantage, showing the relation of Aristotle's empiricism to more ancient experience. The book sheds light on the classical Greek understanding of imitation and device, as it questions both the claim that Aristotle's natural philosophy codifies opinions held by convention and the view that the cogency of his scientific ideas depends on metaphysics.
Download or read book Devil s Grinder written by Mircea Ionescu Quintus and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2013-08-08 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of Poems-offered as a dual-language English-Romanian edition-together with a critical Expose by the translators, a Preface by the author, a Chronicle and Biography, conveys to the reader a very personal tale of a human tragedy of unspeakable horrors the author endured alongside tens of thousands of other political prisoners at forced labor camps, so-called "e;Gulags"e; at the Danube-Black Sea Canal (the "e;Canal"e;) during Romania's Communist regime after WWII. This book is a Zeitzeugnis-a witness of the time-an account not only of a reprehensible past time but a very pertinent manifest for hope for younger generations everywhere in the world. This book is based on Moara Dracilor by Mircea Ionescu-Quintus, published in Romanian in 1999 by Editura Ion Creanga S.A., Romania. The new title is a dual-language (English-Romanian) edition, with a new Foreword, a new Preface by the author, a new About the Translators, seven additional Poems, three new Illustrations, and a new author Biography.It is a must-read for students and anyone interested in politics, political history, Eastern-European history, Communist regimes, Romania, Romanian history, Romanian politics, History of Political Oppression, Testimonial Literature, Poetry, Eastern-European poetry, Romanian poetry, and socio-political poetry.
Download or read book Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy Volume 51 written by Victor Caston and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-22 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy is a volume of original articles on all aspects of ancient philosophy. The articles may be of substantial length, and include critical notices of major books. OSAP is now published twice yearly, in both hardback and paperback. "'Have you seen the latest OSAP?' is what scholars of ancient philosophy say to each other when they meet in corridors or on coffee breaks. Whether you work on Plato or Aristotle, on Presocratics or sophists, on Stoics, Epicureans, or Sceptics, on Roman philosophers or Greek Neoplatonists, you are liable to find OSAP articles now dominant in the bibliography of much serious published work in your particular subject: not safe to miss." - Malcolm Schofield, Cambridge University "OSAP was founded to provide a place for long pieces on major issues in ancient philosophy. In the years since, it has fulfilled this role with great success, over and over again publishing groundbreaking papers on what seemed to be familiar topics and others surveying new ground to break. It represents brilliantly the vigour—and the increasingly broad scope—of scholarship in ancient philosophy, and shows us all how the subject should flourish." - M.M. McCabe, King's College London
Download or read book Plotinus on the Contemplation of the Intelligible World written by Mateusz Stróżyński and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-30 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study offers an innovative understanding of the central role of the act of contemplation in the philosophy of Plotinus.
Download or read book PLOTINUS Ennead VI 9 On the Good or the One written by Stephen Clark and published by Parmenides Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-30 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This early treatise is placed by Plotinus’ editor at the very end of the Enneads, as the culmination of his thought, matching Plotinus’ own last recorded instruction, “to bring the god in you back to the god in the all.” It is a cosmological sketch, arguing that the being of anything depends on its being unified by its orientation to its own good, and so also the being of Everything, the All. The One, or the Good, is at once the goal of all things both individually and collectively, and also the transcendent source of all that we experience, mediated through an intelligible order. But it is also, and perhaps more importantly, intended as a guide to the proper education and discipline of our own motives and experience. We are encouraged to put aside immediate sensory data, egoistic prejudice and sensual impulse, first to grasp at least a little of the intelligible order within which we all live, and at last to purge even those last intellectual attachments and experience what cannot be adequately described: the unity of being.
