Global capitalism is not new. It founded America; imported Africans; it conquered the globe in the guise of trade, national sovereignty and religion : back of it all was the "the pursuit of something outside itself for its own fulfillment , and so it becomes the enemy to what it needs." THE ENNEADS by Plotinus (1991), p. 137
"The Intellectual Realm was not of a nature to be the ultimate of existents. It was the first and it held great power, all there is of power; this means that it is productive without seeking to produce; for if effort and search were incumbent upon it, the Act would not be its own, would not spring from its essential nature; it would be, like a craftsman, producing by a power not inherent but acquired, mastered by dint of study.
"The Intellectual Principle, then, in its unperturbed serenity has brought the universe into being, by communicating from its own sphere to Matter; and this gift is the Reason-Form flowing from it. For the Emanation of the Intellectual Principle is Reason, an emanation unfailing as long as the Intellectual Principle continues to have a place among beings....
"The Intellectual Sphere (the Divine) alone is Reason, and there can never be another Sphere that is Reason and nothing else; so that, given some other system, it cannot be as noble as the first; it cannot be Reason: yet since such a system cannot be merely Matter, which is utterly unordered, it must be a mixed thing. Its two extremes are Matter and Divine Reason; its governing principle is Soul, presiding over the conjunction of the two, and to be thought of not as laboring in the task but as administering serenely by little more than an act of presence."
P.137-138, "Providence : First Tractate," THE ENNEADS by Plotinus (1991)
Global capitalism is not new. It founded America; imported Africans; it conquered the globe in the guise of trade, national sovereignty and religion : back of it all was the "the pursuit of something outside itself for its own fulfillment , and so it becomes the enemy to what it needs." THE ENNEADS by Plotinus (1991), p. 137
"The Intellectual Realm was not of a nature to be the ultimate of existents. It was the first and it held great power, all there is of power; this means that it is productive without seeking to produce; for if effort and search were incumbent upon it, the Act would not be its own, would not spring from its essential nature; it would be, like a craftsman, producing by a power not inherent but acquired, mastered by dint of study.
"The Intellectual Principle, then, in its unperturbed serenity has brought the universe into being, by communicating from its own sphere to Matter; and this gift is the Reason-Form flowing from it. For the Emanation of the Intellectual Principle is Reason, an emanation unfailing as long as the Intellectual Principle continues to have a place among beings....
"The Intellectual Sphere (the Divine) alone is Reason, and there can never be another Sphere that is Reason and nothing else; so that, given some other system, it cannot be as noble as the first; it cannot be Reason: yet since such a system cannot be merely Matter, which is utterly unordered, it must be a mixed thing. Its two extremes are Matter and Divine Reason; its governing principle is Soul, presiding over the conjunction of the two, and to be thought of not as laboring in the task but as administering serenely by little more than an act of presence."
P.137-138, "Providence : First Tractate," THE ENNEADS by Plotinus (1991)
