Men reason, though some do so more than others may do, as in anything else. There are degrees.
Yet, reasoning has its governor, as does its one opposite, unreasoning.
Like blocks put on a speedometer, reason and unreasoning are limited.
There is chance which intersects with its opposite, order, like fiery meteors out of nowhere pummeling earth, each one manifests in time. Here, too, there are degrees that distinguish and differentiate each.
One may infer, therefore, that each of these four segments is limited in time and space by something else.
There are also degrees, it seems, of life and death in certain life forms, since some life hibernates, lowers its metabolism for months, until rebirth or revival when stimulated. In certain plants and insects, this process may take years to cycle, to recycle. So life, death, reasoning, chance, order, unreasoning, are all by degrees.
Good and evil would necessarily fall into similar striations of degrees as the dyads listed above for review . There would be degrees of each as preset by the geometer, barometer, the thermometer, micrometer of all.
The above thoughts were inspired by my reading of THE ENNEADS of Plotinus, the classical 3rd century philosopher who was taught by Ammonias Sacca, whose identity is yet the fodder of wonder and awe. Both men were African. Both men were associated with Origen, the first Christian theologian, Plotinus as fellow student; Sacca, teacher.
Plotinus writes:
"The question arises what phase of the Soul enters into the union for the period of embodiment and what phase remains distinct , what is separable , and what necessarily interlinked, and in general what the Living-Being is.
"On this there has been a conflict of teaching: the matter must be examined later on from quite other considerations than occupy us here....
"No doubt the Reason-Principle (conveyed by the Soul) covers all the action and experience of this realm: nothing happens, even here, by any form of hazard; all follows a necessary order.
"Is everything, then, attributed to the act of the Reason-Principles?..,
"If such a conception of the Soul be rejected as untenable we are obliged to think that the Reason-Principles themselves foreknew or even contained the ruin and all the consequences of flaw.
"But then we would be imputing the creation of evil to the Reason-Principles, though (we ought to be saved from this by reflecting that) the arts and their guiding principles do not include blundering , do not cover the inartistic, the destruction of the work of art .
"And here it will be objected that in the All there is nothing contrary to nature, nothing evil.
"Still by the side of the better there exists also what is less good ."
P.88-89 (1991)
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
DEGREES...
Men reason, though some do so more than others may do, as in anything else. There are degrees.
Yet, reasoning has its governor, as does its one opposite, unreasoning.
Like blocks put on a speedometer, reason and unreasoning are limited.
There is chance which intersects with its opposite, order, like fiery meteors out of nowhere pummeling earth, each one manifests in time. Here, too, there are degrees that distinguish and differentiate each.
One may infer, therefore, that each of these four segments is limited in time and space by something else.
There are also degrees, it seems, of life and death in certain life forms, since some life hibernates, lowers its metabolism for months, until rebirth or revival when stimulated. In certain plants and insects, this process may take years to cycle, to recycle. So life, death, reasoning, chance, order, unreasoning, are all by degrees.
Good and evil would necessarily fall into similar striations of degrees as the dyads listed above for review . There would be degrees of each as preset by the geometer, barometer, the thermometer, micrometer of all.
The above thoughts were inspired by my reading of THE ENNEADS of Plotinus, the classical 3rd century philosopher who was taught by Ammonias Sacca, whose identity is yet the fodder of wonder and awe. Both men were African. Both men were associated with Origen, the first Christian theologian, Plotinus as fellow student; Sacca, teacher.
Plotinus writes:
"The question arises what phase of the Soul enters into the union for the period of embodiment and what phase remains distinct , what is separable , and what necessarily interlinked, and in general what the Living-Being is.
"On this there has been a conflict of teaching: the matter must be examined later on from quite other considerations than occupy us here....
"No doubt the Reason-Principle (conveyed by the Soul) covers all the action and experience of this realm: nothing happens, even here, by any form of hazard; all follows a necessary order.
"Is everything, then, attributed to the act of the Reason-Principles?..,
"If such a conception of the Soul be rejected as untenable we are obliged to think that the Reason-Principles themselves foreknew or even contained the ruin and all the consequences of flaw.
"But then we would be imputing the creation of evil to the Reason-Principles, though (we ought to be saved from this by reflecting that) the arts and their guiding principles do not include blundering , do not cover the inartistic, the destruction of the work of art .
"And here it will be objected that in the All there is nothing contrary to nature, nothing evil.
"Still by the side of the better there exists also what is less good ."
P.88-89 (1991)