Are not vice and virtue like wet and dry? like hot and cold? Mere natural polarities of being, of existence? are not good and evil symbolic of life and death? All 'concepts' being our synthesis, reconciliation of all?
These thoughts assail me as I read Plotinus ' THE ENNEADS, wherein the iconic, ancient African philosopher of Alexandria writes:
"Obviously, unless the particular is included under some general principle of order, there can be no signification...
"All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another ...
"All things must be enchained; and the sympathy and correspondence obtaining in any one closely knit organism must exist, first, and most intensely, in the All. There must be one principle constituting this unit of many forms of life and enclosing the several members within the unity, while at the same time, precisely as in each thing of detail the parts too have each a definite function , so in the All (the higher All) each several member must have its own task--but more markedly so since in this case the parts are not merely members but themselves Alls, members of the loftier Kind.
"Thus each entity takes its origin from one principle and, therefore, while executing its own function, works in with every other member of that All from which its distinct has by no means cut it off; each performs its act, each receives something from the others, each one at its own moment bringing its touch of sweet or bitter....
"Soul, then, in the same way, is intent upon a task of its own; in everything it does it consists as an independent source of motion; it may take a direct course or it may divagate, but a Law of Justice goes with every action in the Universe, which, otherwise, would be dissolved and is perdurable because the entire fabric is guided by the orderliness as by the power of the controlling force....
"And what of vice and virtue?..
"In a word, virtue is ours by the ancient staple of the Soul; vice is due to the commerce of a Soul with the outer world."
P. 80-82, THE ENNEADS by Plotinus (1991)

Sunday, February 12, 2017
THE ENNEADS
Are not vice and virtue like wet and dry? like hot and cold? Mere natural polarities of being, of existence? are not good and evil symbolic of life and death? All 'concepts' being our synthesis, reconciliation of all?
These thoughts assail me as I read Plotinus ' THE ENNEADS, wherein the iconic, ancient African philosopher of Alexandria writes:
"Obviously, unless the particular is included under some general principle of order, there can be no signification...
"All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another ...
"All things must be enchained; and the sympathy and correspondence obtaining in any one closely knit organism must exist, first, and most intensely, in the All. There must be one principle constituting this unit of many forms of life and enclosing the several members within the unity, while at the same time, precisely as in each thing of detail the parts too have each a definite function , so in the All (the higher All) each several member must have its own task--but more markedly so since in this case the parts are not merely members but themselves Alls, members of the loftier Kind.
"Thus each entity takes its origin from one principle and, therefore, while executing its own function, works in with every other member of that All from which its distinct has by no means cut it off; each performs its act, each receives something from the others, each one at its own moment bringing its touch of sweet or bitter....
"Soul, then, in the same way, is intent upon a task of its own; in everything it does it consists as an independent source of motion; it may take a direct course or it may divagate, but a Law of Justice goes with every action in the Universe, which, otherwise, would be dissolved and is perdurable because the entire fabric is guided by the orderliness as by the power of the controlling force....
"And what of vice and virtue?..
"In a word, virtue is ours by the ancient staple of the Soul; vice is due to the commerce of a Soul with the outer world."
P. 80-82, THE ENNEADS by Plotinus (1991)

