Plotinus
- 1. Splendor Plotinus
- 2. What then is our course, what the manner of our flight? This is not a journey for the feet; the feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of coach or ship to carry you away; all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see: you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth- right of all, which few turn to use. And this inner vision, what is its operation? Newly awakened it is all too feeble to bear the ultimate splendour. Therefore the Soul must be trained- to the habit of remarking, first, all noble pursuits, then the works of beauty produced not by the labour of the arts but by the virtue of men known for their goodness: lastly, you must search the souls of those that have shaped these beautiful forms. Plotinus
- 3. Simile of the Line How do you know? What is real? –Recognition –The Forms the Mind recognizing: The Good The True The Good The Beautiful The True The Beautiful Understanding forms geometric forms reasoning functions proofs formulae beliefs ordinary the eye sensations things the sun imaginings illusions You know best that That which changes which changes least. least is most real.
- 4. Causality Formal Material Efficient Final Aristotle’s Four Causes
- 5. Substantial Accidental General Wearing Clothes Thing Biota Animal Vertebrate Mammal { Primate Homonidae Wearing a Dress Homo Depiction Sapiens Being Female Sapiens Specific Being Diotima
- 6. Accident Substance/Cause Accident
- 7. Plotinus: A Classical Fusion The Good
- 8. Plotinus: A Classical Fusion The Good Cause
- 9. Plotinus: A Classical Fusion The Good Cause Chaotic Matter
- 10. Plotinus: A Classical Fusion The Good Cause Living Matter Chaotic Matter
- 11. Plotinus: A Classical Fusion The Good Cause Spirit Matter Living Matter Chaotic Matter
- 12. Plotinus: A Classical Fusion The Good Reason Reason Cause Spirit Matter Living Matter Chaotic Matter
- 13. Plotinus: A Classical Fusion The Good Reason Reason Cause Spirit Matter Living Matter Chaotic Matter
- 14. The Good Reason Reason Cause Spirit Matter Living Matter Plotinus: A Classical Chaotic Matter Fusion
- 15. The One Reason Reason Cause Spirit Matter Living Matter Plotinus: A Classical Chaotic Matter Fusion
- 16. The One Intellectual Principle Cause Soul Motion Nature Plotinus: A Classical Chaotic Matter Fusion
- 17. Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine. When you know that you have become this perfect work, when you are self-gathered in the purity of your being, nothing now remaining that can shatter that inner unity, nothing from without clinging to the authentic man, when you find yourself wholly true to your essential nature, wholly that only veritable Light which is not measured by space, not narrowed to any circumscribed form nor again diffused as a thing void of term, but ever unmeasurable as something greater than all measure and more than all quantity- when you perceive that you have grown to this, you are now become very vision: now call up all your confidence, strike forward yet a step- you need a guide no longer- strain, and see. This is the only eye that sees the mighty Beauty. If the eye that adventures the vision be dimmed by vice, impure, or weak, and unable in its cowardly blenching to see the uttermost brightness, then it sees nothing even though another point to what lies plain to sight before it. Plotinus