Plotinus

The paper has two main aims: first, to offer a general overview about Augustine’s concept of corporeal matter, based on a comprehensive
examination of all the occurrences of the Latin lemmas "materia" and "materies" in his works; second, to discuss more in detail the vexed question of Plotinus' influence on Augustine’s conception of matter, in order to highlight that the major meeting points between Augustine and Plotinus rest on a purely literal level, and to rather point out the significant conceptual differences between these two thinkers.

This article deals with the theory of the so-called ‘intelligible Triad’ (esse, vivere, intellegere) to show in what way this theory was developed in Neoplatonism (by Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus) and transformed in the Patristic Thought (in Marius Victorinus, Augustine, Dionysius Areopagita, Maximus the Confessor, John Scott Eriugena),
where this theory was used to describe three main attributes of God as well as mutual relations between three Persons of the Holy Trinity and the structure of the created world and human soul.

Compare Origen’s understanding of God (On First Principles) to that of Plotinus’ (Enneads) to show the divergent paths they took.  Answer is to include Plato’s metaphysics and Stoicism contribution to the development of their thought, and Justin Martyr and Irenaeus’ influence on Origen.

San Juan de la Cruz es considerado cabal e intencionalmente uno de los poetas a lo divino, cuya literatura representa una de la joyas más preciosas que integran el tesoro de nuestra lengua materna. Por su parte, dentro de la historia del pensamiento occidental, Plotino ha sido quizás uno de los más grandes intelectuales que ha establecido la visión unitiva como un principio relevante de su propio sistema filosófico. ¿Es que acaso el santo Carmelita pudo haber leído al pensador neoplatónico? A partir de la pericia erudita, hoy es posible afirmar que las Enéadas de Plotino gozaban de prestigio durante el siglo de oro español, en particular en las aulas de la Universidad de Salamanca, cuya biblioteca había recibido en 1532 una encomienda de libros provenientes de Venecia, entre los que se destaca la edición de 1492 de los textos de Plotino, en la célebre traducción latina de M. Ficino. Asimismo, San Juan de la Cruz fue rector del Colegio de Alacá durante el semestre de 1571-1572, donde aquella edición ocupaba un lugar privilegiado entre las obras de referencia. Aun cuando sea imprudente sostener taxativamente una influencia directa, a lo sumo es dable plantear una cierta analogía estructural en función de algunas temáticas recursivas que permiten vincular conceptualmente la mística sanjuanista con la filosofía plotiniana. Sobre la base de esta línea metodológica, en esta ocasión se estudia la imagen lírica de la "blanca palomica" a fin de elucidar cuáles son los fundamentos inteligibles que le subyacen.

Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), written by Andrew Niccol, has been approached from various philosophical perspectives particularly in relation to Cartesian skepticism and the question of the external world, Sartrean existentialism and the affirmation of individual freedom, and some accounts of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. However, despite the aforementioned philosophical approaches, no Neoplatonic interpretation of the film has been offered. In this paper I aim to offer a Plotinian reading of The Truman Show with special reference to Plotinus’ dual-aspect theory of the soul and human freedom. I shall argue that The Truman Show can be interpreted as a discourse on selfhood, self-determination, and individual freedom in self-transcendence.

https://www.lesbelleslettres.com/livre/3694-le-parmenide-au-miroir-des-platonismes

Prix Reinach de l'Association des Etudes grecques (2019)

CR :
Philosophie antique (G. Aubry ) : https://journals.openedition.org/philosant/1790
BMCR (R. Matoso) : http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2019/2019-07-27.html

The philosophy of Plotinus is essentially based on a process of emanation. This process, which has various names, creates an ontological hierarchy system by starting from a first principle. These can be summarized as One, Nous, and Soul. Each of them was conceived by Plotinus as a hypostasis and connected with being. Even in Turkish Plotinus research, this process, which is commonly known with the doctrine of overflowing from perfection, has been interpreted differently. The purpose of this study is to draw attention to other interpretations outside this well-known interpretation and to present them for discussion. Different interpretations of emanation, determined as two metaphorical and two philosophical explanations, form the core of the article. The first of the metaphorical explanations can be summarized as the Aristotelian biological principle. That is, anything that reaches fullness must give rise to something else that comes after it. This is both a biological and a logical necessity. In this explanation, it can be said that Plotinus is trying to establish a similarity between the process of production and generation in living beings and the process of emanation from the One. The second metaphorical explanation is that the One is compared to objects such as light, fire, or snow. In this account, the self-existence of fire, light, and, snow represent the ontological state of the One. Parallel to these objects, the heat, brightness, and cold emanating from them represent the Nous. Plotinus attempts to establish a metaphorical approximation between the elements that emanate from these objects and Nous that emanates from the One. The first of the philosophical explanations, on the other hand, is based on the necessary reflex of contemplation. According to this, the Nous is a product of the necessary and unconscious contemplation of the One and arises as an indeterminate level of being as a result of this contemplation. This level, which can be called pre-entity, gains determination by turning to the One for contemplation and reaching nous-being. We have tried to highlight the second philosophical explanation as to the two-acts theory. This explanation relies primarily on Plotinus' account of the One as dunamis panton. The One is the productive power of all things as dunamis panton. The One as such can be interpreted as two kinds of activity. The first is the state of activity in itself, in its essence, which is defined as energeia tes ousias. The second is the state of activity [energeia ek tes ousias] that comes from its essence and expresses what it is to the other. These doctrines will be analyzed using extensive quotations from Plotinus' Enneads. The difficulties Plotinus had in describing his doctrine of emanation are another focus of this article. In this context, Plotinus' presentation of the One as absolutely transcendent and indefinable poses a difficult problem. This question, of course, also complicates the describability of the emergence of Nous from the One. In this article, this emanation process will be reinterpreted from different perspectives. Finally, in view of the Pythagorean tetractys concept, another mathematical explanation for this emanation process is presented.

Η παρούσα εργασία επιχειρεί να συγκρίνει τα πλατωνικά κείμενα (Συμπόσιον, Φαῖδρος) με την πραγματεία Περὶ νοητοῦ Κάλλους του Πλωτίνου αναφορικά με το ζήτημα της ομορφιάς. Ειδικότερα, η έρευνα επικεντρώνεται στην Ιδέα του Κάλλους και στον τρόπο με τον οποίο αυτή παρουσιάζεται στην διοτιμική κλίμακα (Συμπόσιον) και στον μύθο του πτερωτού άρματος της ψυχής (Φαίδρος) αλλά και στην πλωτινική πραγματεία.

Esta tradução integra minha tese de doutorado, que pode ser encontrada aqui, no Academia.edu, é em: http://www.bibliotecadigital.unicamp.br/document/?code=vtls000390053. Trata-se de um trabalho em revisão. Correções e comentários são muito bem-vindos.

Whitehead's thought continues to attract attention in mathematics and metaphysics, but few have recognized with Roland Faber, the deeply mystical dimensions of his philosophy. "If you like to phrase it so," Whitehead states, "philosophy is mystical. For mysticism is direct insight into depths as yet unspoken." Where, however, do these unspoken depths speak in Whitehead, and what are their associated themes in his philosophy? For the first time, Depths As Yet Unspoken gathers together Faber's most compelling writings on Whitehead's mutually immanent themes of mysticism, multiplicity, and divinity. In dialogue with a diversity of voices, from process philosophers and theologians, to mystical and poststructuralist thinkers, Faber creatively articulates Whitehead's "theopoetic" process cosmogony in its relevance to metaphysics, cosmology, everyday experience, religious pluralism, and interreligious violence, spirituality, and longstanding concerns of the theological tradition, including creation, the Trinity, revelation, religious experience, and divine mystery. Although Whitehead's mystical inclinations may not be obvious at first, they in fact constitute the apophatic backdrop to his entire philosophical corpus. Through Faber's work, Whitehead's philosophy is revealed to be nothing short of a remarkable endeavor to speak to the unfathomable depth of things.

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Esta tradução integra minha tese de doutorado, que pode ser encontrada aqui, no Academia.edu, é em: http://www.bibliotecadigital.unicamp.br/document/?code=vtls000390053. Trata-se de um trabalho em revisão. Correções e comentários são muito bem-vindos.

This essay refers to 'attributes' of the Absolute and shows how they are reflected in specific facets of contemplative asceticism and renunciation and that this is the way to embody the Absolute in this world.  It attempts to establish contemplative asceticism and renunciation 'a priori', in a way, directly on the basis of metaphysical and spiritual facts and the nature of the One, without recourse to external authorities or traditions.

Abstract: The paper opens with a brief overview of ‘limerence’ or obsessive love disorder (OLD) from the perspectives of psychology, neurology, anthropology, and sociology, but concludes that certain unique characteristics of the condition suggest that it is better understood as a
form of ‘divine madness’, resulting from the failure of the Platonic ascent of love to follow its natural trajectory. The paper focuses on Plotinus’s model of the erotic ascent from the one to the ONE, drawing parallels with the Indian bhakti tradition and other models derived from transpersonal psychology. The final section explores the distinction between pagan and Christian Platonism and the entailments of the latter for secular perspectives on love.

Keywords: limerence; obsessive love disorder; Platonism; Plotinus;
bhakti yoga; transpersonal psychology.

Plotinus was one of the more respected but less understood figures of his times. Throughout this paper, we will analyze two aspects of this highly influential philosopher.

On the one hand, we shall focus on Porphyry’s portrait of Plotinus as an ideal sage and a paradigm of philosophical perfection. Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, for example, should be seen rather as a hagiographical work than a biography. According to Porphyry’s Vita Plotini, his master lived a divine life by attaining and possessing every possible virtue.

The second aspect which will be discussed in this paper was Plotinus’ mystical doctrine. The purpose of Plotinian philosophy is to unite oneself with the One, which is above all intellection. By reviewing the Three Hypostases [namely the One, the Intellect and the Soul], we were prepared to explore one of the most popular aspects of the legacy of Plotinus: the Mysticism and the Mystical Union with the One.

Esta tradução integra minha tese de doutorado, que pode ser encontrada aqui, no Academia.edu, é em: http://www.bibliotecadigital.unicamp.br/document/?code=vtls000390053. Trata-se de um trabalho em revisão. Correções e comentários são muito bem-vindos.

The philosophical concept of apocatastasis denotes a return to the beginning, restoration of the primal order of things, restitution of the ideal unity, which on the basis of the law of necessity or the original sin has been lost. In philosophical thought, it is possible to indicate two basic levels on which the return is considered, the level of macro-scale of cosmos and the level of the creation, especially the level of human beings. Thus, it is possible to define a cosmological and personal aspect of the philosophical concept of apocatastasis. In order for the concept to take place, there have to be met certain conditions, such as e.g. an idea of the perfect nature of the beginning and the degradation of the cosmos in the course of history, the cyclical nature of time, the concept of cosmological justice, the evil taken as a lack of good or the idea of kinship between human and god. The article describes the main modes of the concept of apocatastasis in philosophical thought and analyses major requirements that are and have to be met on the way to the concept of eternal return.

After some general remarks on Plotinus’s Platonizing criticism of Aristotle’s Categories, and specifically the category of relation, I will show how his Platonic treatment of the category of relation leads him to a definition of reality that excludes several otherwise plausible non-Platonic notions of a real relation.

My theme is ‘life-writing’, understood as the shaping of one's life through the contemplation of values, although this activity is mostly unreflective. To become an art so that one's life can be shaped in greater accord with clearly held values, this process must become reflective. These values have an inescapably ethical dimension, because as we necessarily poetize our surrounding world, we contribute to our personal and communal ethos the character that arises from the culturally shaping power of guiding ideals. Even the immoralist cultivates life within an ethos where obscure feelings connect with some thing or other, whereby certain aims will then appear more valuable than others.

To understand how we cannot help but shape our lives according to dimly or clearly intuited values, I compare Coleridge’s primary imagination, the ‘shaping spirit’ ‘necessary for all human perception’ with Kant’s ‘blind though indispensible function of the soul, without which we would have no cognition at all, yet of which we are scarcely ever conscious’. With Coleridge, we find in imagination an impulse to connect profound but obscure presentiments and ideas with our surroundings. This impulse propels great art and everyday aesthetics alike. Whether we pursue merely what attracts us, or seek value beyond this, all lives are freely shaped, without excuses, as the existentialists say, but not always in the most pellucid consciousness. Our choices inevitably engage us in the poetic art of life-writing. Cast in medias res, we necessarily improvise. But this is no argument against lives being moral-aesthetic works, spontaneous compositions in value.

Сознание принято считать понятием, принадлежащим исключительно новоевропейской философии, и начинать его историю с XVII в., с Декарта. В связи с этим встает вопрос: насколько правомерно рассматривать тему сознания применительно к античной философии и, в частности, к философии Плотина? Среди исследователей довольно широко распространено мнение, что поскольку в словоупотребление древних греков не входил термин, соответствующий современному понятию «сознание», то и такой «вещи» как сознание они не знали. А значит, несмотря на пространные рассуждения о душе, уме и мышлении, о сознании древние не говорили ровным счетом ничего. Чтобы выяснить, так ли это, нам придется совершить краткий экскурс в историю понятия сознания и попытаться хотя бы в общих чертах уяснить себе, что же именно подразумевает под ним новоевропейская философия.

This paper offers an introduction to Platonism as a context for the poetry of Edmund Spenser (1552-1599). It begins with a broad outline of sixteenth-century Platonism, and then shows how  Platonism informs Sir Kenelm Digby's (1603-1655) assessment of Spenser's poetic achievement.

Gnosticism and Manichaeism took some of Plato's ideas and shape them into their dualistic credo, thus setting off a storm of protest by the Neoplatonists who condemned Gnostic distortion of the teachings of Plato. Plotinus believed that the teachings of Gnostics were horrible because hey apparently followed the teachings of Plato and had some compatible views on the origin and nature of the cosmos with Platonism, but "Gnostic myth" actually twisted Plato's original teachings, and ultimately turned against him. Neoplatonists had a generally cheerful and optimistic view of the world as opposed to the Gnostics who despised it. Evil does not exist, it is just a "lack or deficit of Goodness" according to Neoplatonism. The only source of evil for Neoplatonists is being in the state of distance from the One, as a result of turning to the excessive material pleasures downwards and not toward superior spiritual reality upwards. Augustine became Neoplatonist in indirect way, and we know that Neoplatonistic texts helped in his transition to Christianity. He used the Platonic writings to attack Manichaeism, a sect which he once belonged. He came across Neoplatonic works of Plotinus and Ambrose written in Latin that helped him to change his Manichaean way of thinking about good and evil. Augustine said that Manichaean God is not true God because He is vulnerable to evil, stating that a true God is omnipotent and can't be affected in any way. After Augustine encountered Neoplatonic teachings he called Manichean teachings extremely simplified, pointing out that people are not found in every life situation torn between just two alternatives: good and evil, since people have multiple, complex and complicated desires and needs. According to Augustine we do not have two substances in us that are in war with each other, light and darkness, good and evil, but the problem is in our will that longs for a multitude of things that we want, of which only some are good. In this way he formulated his doctrine of good and evil influenced by Neoplatonism which was completely different from the dualistic approach we find in Gnosticim and Manichaeism.

A Q. and A. on "the reason for asceticism".  An inquiry I received about the rationale for asceticism from a Platonist perspective giving the questioner's tentative understanding and asking for my comments followed by my somewhat lengthy response.  I give an explanation from some aspects of the Platonist rationale for asceticism and its uncompromising necessity, and point out that asceticism is not just instrumental but a necessary and ongoing good in itself, and that contemplation and asceticism must always go together.

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A great American psychologist summarizes one of the most difficult of subjects--the nature of dreaming--after decades of lifting matters out of the morass of Freudianism. The result nonetheless is a thin gruel that misses the main thing about dreams: their unworldly imaginative power. But he is not the only one. Who defends the psyche in modern science? Who knows what it is, where it resides, and how it controls the brain? The true theory of dreaming will emerge only by facing and answering these questions, which can be said to have baffled ancient, medieval, and modern investigators alike. At present materialism stands confused, pathetically benighted in its own shadow.

Readers are now advised that a new approach to the true theory of dreaming, as well as the first mechanistic explanation of Night Terrors in scientific history, is contained in the reviewer's illustrated essay on this page called 'The Last Day.' Both this late 2017 review and the new 2020 essay concern the same foundational ideas within idealism and can be said to blend smoothly together to produce an increasingly coherent view of the phenomenology as well as the fundamental nature of dreaming, the achievement of which depends on isolating and identifying the cosmic generator of dreams.

See also 'Sartre on Dreaming' (2022) and 'On the Materialization of Being' (2022) for deeper insights into the nature of dreaming according to idealism and in the context of the embodiment of the psyche, which reaches far deeper inwardly than the farthest galaxies are from the Solar System.

Plotinus confronts us with a "unification of rationalism and
mysticism" (Bréhier). Also Tarkovsky’s "spiritualist"
penchant flows out of a religious, "non-modern" attitude.
But Tarkovsky and Plotinus are also heirs of a rationalist
tradition strongly marked by scientific formalism. Tarkovsky was well aware of the philosophical problems linked to the subjectivism of perception. He intended to modify the final result obtained by the materialist deconstruction of subjectivist empathy carried out before by the Eisensteinian materialism-formalism. Plotinus was confronted with problems of the same order. He aspires a "mystical union," Plotinus could be classified
as a subjectivist. Still, the "mystical union" of Plotinus’ design is not as simplistic as that which is usually advanced by subjectivism. I detect the development of Russian formalism towards a Plotinian "formalism" realized by Tarkovsky. The conception of the image as "an organic link between idea and form" culminates in an aesthetics of non-symbolic images communicated without passing through the intermediary of the intellect, directly representing the Intelligible.

The full text is available here
http://kata.petra.ac.id/index.php/ing/article/view/18851/18544

Many similar subjects can be traced in world literature; among them is nature since it belongs to man/nature binary opposition. The American poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) employs nature in his works. Throughout his works, the American writer discusses the affinity between man and nature, emphasizing how man takes advantage of it. The contemporary Iranian poet, Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980), also makes intensive use of nature in his poems; his interest in the subject increases along with his tendency to Buddhism. Sepehri is proficient in using nature either in philosophical or emotional issues. Due to the significance of nature in the works or the two figures, an ecocritical reading of them is not only applicable but unavoidable. This comparative study aims at investigating different approaches towards nature employed by the two poets, emphasizing their points of difference. Although both poets employ nature in their works with romantic tendencies, the postmodern environmental ethics of Sepehri is in direct contrast to the instrumental value viewpoint held by his American counterpart.