Was Plotinus really a Monist? It seems like The One's power does not extend to matter (Intellect can only impose form on matter, it didn't generate matter) and, additionally, the forms imposed by Intellect are subject to corruption by matter.
It seems more like believes in two sources (The One, which is the source of the intelligible world and the levels that derive from it directly) and another unnamed source (the source of matter, 'the receptacle', e.t.c.) that interacts with the emanations of the One to create the material world.
He just doesn't discuss the other source because his system is all about reunification with The One and escaping this other source -- the fact that he doesn't discuss it doesn't change the fact that his system does not appear to be a Monist system.
I thought the receptacle along with anything else comes from the One too
Josiah Garcia
>6 In his writing on the nature of evil he does say that matter came from the One. Thinking that he believed in a second source of matter is to affirm that he held that a being, who came from the One, was the source of all evil; meaning, that he would contradict his whole argument in his writing against the gnostics. Matter can, according to him, be considered the origin of corruption in corporeal things, but it is not absolute evil, as it is not absolute non existence; even if it is no being.
Henry Wilson
how can the one create something that is evil or corrupt? he seems to hold that a being that does not come from the One is the source of all evil (though he refuses to say it explicitly)
Asher Thompson
well not so much a 'being' as a negative equivalent to the one
Ian Peterson
Matter is not evil and corrupt, but only the lowest sort of thing, although even that description might make it too essencial. Essences are corruptible due to being composite of matter and form, and are therefore lower to things that are only subsistent form. The One does not make evil things, as I said, as not even matter is complete non existence which would be complete evil; Plotinus, however, uses that language in an analogical way, as he says in his writing on evil. Matter, though the principle of corruptibility, is needed, according to Plotinus, so that the One might complete his bringing into being of all things, as he says in his ennead on evil, again.
Angel Morgan
No he isn't a monist, and I don't know why people say he is. It is One because all thingS come from it, it is the Good because all things shall return to it, it God the King of all because we are.
Gabriel James
Your writing is barely comprehensible and you didn't explain why the One does not make evil things
Anthony Martin
Evil is an effect of the divine freedom of our souls. Potency is a good, and in thr potential of Power there is the necessary capacity for evil. But even evil is in reality only the lowest goods, a misuse of goods, our looking away from God isn't evil: the evil is turning your gaze beyond necessity, you persist in minor good, you linger and grow stale.
Jacob Edwards
If you are a monist you can't say we are 'looking' away from God, as that would be dualistic because it negates the power God has.
Evan Smith
Luckily we aren't monists
Tyler Parker
>Was Plotinus really a Monist?
Yes.
Josiah Sanchez
Even if the stance you adopt in your post is uncontroversial, dominant, and/or mainstream, your post is still contentless and worthless if you don't substantiate your stance. Don't post unless you have something to say.
Nicholas Rivera
seething
Alexander Baker
>“To the philosopher...it is necessary, for these reasons, neither to accept, from those who assert either one or many forms, that the all is static, nor, again, to listen at all to those who in every way move being, but rather to say, as in the children’s prayer, that being and the all is as many things as are immovable and in motion, both together” (249c10-d4).
Michael Scott
MILKY MILKY WARM AND TASTY!
MOMMY! MILKY! PLEASE BE HASTY!
REFRESHING DRINK FROM MOMMY'S UDDERS!
I WANT MOMMY'S AND NO OTHER'S!
GIVE IT! GIVE IT! GIVE IT NOW!
GIVE ME MILKY, LAZY SOW!
UNTIL YOU DO I'LL SCREAM I'LL SHOUT!
I'M CRY I'LL WHINE AND STOMP ABOUT!
UNTIL MY BELLY IS FULL AND HAPPY!
I REFUSE TO TAKE A NAPPY!
Tyler Watson
That post has a little more tacit content thanks to the context, the implicit joke being that you were told to make higher content posts, and instead you made a post that superficially seems to be the lowest content post possible (a one-word shitty meme). It packs a surprising amount of content into a small package: defiance and disrespect, proper timing, witty brevity. We get a sense of your personality and your intentions. Thank you for improving your posting.
Just don't confuse this instance for a universal rule. If you normally just pick a random post you dislike and write "cringe" or "seething," it's as contentless as in the opposite direction (instead of saying "yes" without substantiating your position, you're just saying "no"). Don't do that.
You can reply with the same joke again to this post. The repetition will be a new bit of content, distinct from the first joke.
Nolan Lopez
Plotinus was.
Jose Myers
Nope.
Hunter Williams
Yes he was, his rejection of the eccentric behavior of some gnostic dualists is proof of it.
fecking based; whetting your analytical mind and manner of locution on those niggas
William Perez
samefag
Levi Bailey
Ontological/Priority Monism isn't Existential Monism—which is the type of monism that "monism" usually refers to, i.e: All is One and multiplicity is an illusion, this is not Plotinus, nor Platonism. To talk of the One as only that absolute simplicity is to deny HIM the Kingship of all existence and his being that highest good all THINGS will return to. Nous is the All, it is the One that is everything, the actualization of all potential; and Soul is that within which the reality we live in pours forth from and abides in, it is principle of movement and sequence; The One is Beyond yet the most near of all, to deny the Many is to deny Plato.
>I must speak of this matter to you in enigmas, in order that if anything should happen to these tablets “in the recesses of the sea or land,“ whoever reads them may not understand our meaning. It is like this. Upon the king of all do all things turn; he is the end of all things and the cause of all good. Things of the second order turn upon the second principle, and those of the third order upon the third. Now the soul of man longs to understand what sort of things these principles are, and it looks toward the things that are akin to itself, though none of them is adequate; clearly the king and the other principles mentioned are not of that sort.
If you have read some of the enneads, what I wrote is quite simple to understand, even if I were mistaken. The One does not make evil things, but evil can occur in goods of the third rank (corporeal essences). As he says in 1.8, evil is a privation; so, the One does make evil things. At any rate, has made a good point.
Hudson Russell
>he One does make evil things It should read: does not make...
