Plotinus ENNEADS - THE THIRD ENNEAD, Part II, Complete

Translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page.

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THE THIRD ENNEAD:   1) FATE,   2) ON PROVIDENCE,   3) ON PROVIDENCE II,   4) OUR TUTELARY SPIRIT,   5) ON LOVE,   6) THE IMPASSIVITY OF THE UNEMBODIED,   7) TIME AND ETERNITY,   8) NATURE CONTEMPLATION AND THE ONE,   9) DETACHED CONSIDERATIONS

II: 42 pages - You are on Page 35

NINTH TRACTATE.

DETACHED CONSIDERATIONS.

1. “The Intellectual-Principle” [= the Divine Mind] — we read [in the Timaeus] — “looks upon the Ideas indwelling in that Being which is the Essentially Living [= according to Plotinus, the Intellectual Realm], “and then” — the text proceeds — “the Creator judged that all the content of that essentially living Being must find place in this lower universe also.”

Are we meant to gather that the Ideas came into being before the Intellectual-Principle so that it “sees them” as previously existent?

The first step is to make sure whether the “Living Being” of the text is to be distinguished from the Intellectual-Principle as another thing than it.

It might be argued that the Intellectual-Principle is the Contemplator and therefore that the Living-Being contemplated is not the Intellectual-Principle but must be described as the Intellectual Object so that the Intellectual-Principle must possess the Ideal realm as something outside of itself.

But this would mean that it possesses images and not the realities, since the realities are in the Intellectual Realm which it contemplates: Reality — we read — is in the Authentic Existent which contains the essential form of particular things.

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