MY PHILOSOPHICAL FULMINATIONS ON PLOTINUS
If I lay aside Plotinus' classic work, THE ENNEADS, as being "linear," therefore unworthy of my time, am I not being ludicrously hubristic?
Is Plotinus not one of the greatest African savants, philosophers in history over the last 1800 years?
So what of Plotinus' pristine praise of "sophrosyny," (Greek word for philosophical abstraction of primal purity) as genesis, finality, God 's essence, as fountains of beauty?
All energy is reusable is it not, even his? Especially his! So tag alone.
If you do not like the present view, read on, as you did when reading the Bible, and encountered tough spots, rough places, disagreement.
For, indeed, Plotinus' friend and fellow scholar, Origen, also had his issues under your linear litmus test. Origen's theological classic ON FIRST PRINCIPLES, is also linear! And on it or in it Augustine exulted!
Bear in mind that "I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end," is the summation of it all; its being "quantum," is most compatible with your non-linear cosmic conception.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega; the First and the Last; the Beginning and the End." Rev. 22:13.
Plotinus' quotation that caused my philosophical fulmination reads :
"6. For, as the ancient teaching was, moral-discipline and courage and every virtue, not even excepting Wisdom, all is purification.
"Hence the Mysteries with good reason adumbrate the immersion of the unpurified in filth, even in the Nether-World, since the unclean loves filth for its filthiness, and swine foul of body find their joy in foulness.
"What else is Sophrosyny, rightly so-called, but to take no part in the pleasures of the body, to break away from them as unclean and unworthy of the clean? So too, Courage is but being fearless of the death which is but the parting of the Soul from the body, an event which no one can dread whose delight is to be his unmingled self. And Magnanimity is but disregard of the lure of the things here. And Wisdom is but the Act of the Intellectual-Principle withdrawn from the lower places and leading the Soul to the Above.
"The Soul thus cleansed is all Idea and Reason, wholly free of body, intellective, entirely of that divine order from which the wellspring of Beauty arises and all the race of Beauty.
"Hence the Soul heightened to the Intellectual-Principle is beautiful in all its power. For Intellection and all that proceeds from Intellection are the Soul's beauty, a graciousness native to it and not foreign, for only with these is it truly Soul. And it is just to say that in the Soul's becoming a good and beautiful thing is its becoming like to God, for from the Divine comes all Beauty and all Good in beings...."
P.51-52, "Beauty ."
Plotinus ascribes to God only the Good and the Beautiful, not the Evil nor the Ugly. What then is the source of these, the evil and the ugly, if not God? Is God less than omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent? I say not. Plotinus ' postulate of pristine purity is misplaced on our planet. Here, even gold is alloyed; here, air and water have impurities. Man does too. So too his lachrymose elegiac elucidation of Beauty's provenance.
Friday, October 28, 2016
MY PHILOSOPHICAL FULMINATIONS WITH PLOTINUS
MY PHILOSOPHICAL FULMINATIONS ON PLOTINUS
If I lay aside Plotinus' classic work, THE ENNEADS, as being "linear," therefore unworthy of my time, am I not being ludicrously hubristic?
Is Plotinus not one of the greatest African savants, philosophers in history over the last 1800 years?
So what of Plotinus' pristine praise of "sophrosyny," (Greek word for philosophical abstraction of primal purity) as genesis, finality, God 's essence, as fountains of beauty?
All energy is reusable is it not, even his? Especially his! So tag alone.
If you do not like the present view, read on, as you did when reading the Bible, and encountered tough spots, rough places, disagreement.
For, indeed, Plotinus' friend and fellow scholar, Origen, also had his issues under your linear litmus test. Origen's theological classic ON FIRST PRINCIPLES, is also linear! And on it or in it Augustine exulted!
Bear in mind that "I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end," is the summation of it all; its being "quantum," is most compatible with your non-linear cosmic conception.
"I am the Alpha and the Omega; the First and the Last; the Beginning and the End." Rev. 22:13.
Plotinus' quotation that caused my philosophical fulmination reads :
"6. For, as the ancient teaching was, moral-discipline and courage and every virtue, not even excepting Wisdom, all is purification.
"Hence the Mysteries with good reason adumbrate the immersion of the unpurified in filth, even in the Nether-World, since the unclean loves filth for its filthiness, and swine foul of body find their joy in foulness.
"What else is Sophrosyny, rightly so-called, but to take no part in the pleasures of the body, to break away from them as unclean and unworthy of the clean? So too, Courage is but being fearless of the death which is but the parting of the Soul from the body, an event which no one can dread whose delight is to be his unmingled self. And Magnanimity is but disregard of the lure of the things here. And Wisdom is but the Act of the Intellectual-Principle withdrawn from the lower places and leading the Soul to the Above.
"The Soul thus cleansed is all Idea and Reason, wholly free of body, intellective, entirely of that divine order from which the wellspring of Beauty arises and all the race of Beauty.
"Hence the Soul heightened to the Intellectual-Principle is beautiful in all its power. For Intellection and all that proceeds from Intellection are the Soul's beauty, a graciousness native to it and not foreign, for only with these is it truly Soul. And it is just to say that in the Soul's becoming a good and beautiful thing is its becoming like to God, for from the Divine comes all Beauty and all Good in beings...."
P.51-52, "Beauty ."
Plotinus ascribes to God only the Good and the Beautiful, not the Evil nor the Ugly. What then is the source of these, the evil and the ugly, if not God? Is God less than omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent? I say not. Plotinus ' postulate of pristine purity is misplaced on our planet. Here, even gold is alloyed; here, air and water have impurities. Man does too. So too his lachrymose elegiac elucidation of Beauty's provenance.
