Plotinus Quotes on Knowledge
Plotinus's Enneads — edited by his student Porphyry from material composed in the second half of the third century — present the founding work of Neoplatonism. The hierarchy of hypostases — the One, the Intellect (nous), and the Soul — descends from absolute unity through the intelligible world of the Forms to the Soul that animates the sensible cosmos, with the human soul ascending the same ladder in the reverse direction through philosophical contemplation. Genuine knowledge for Plotinus is the soul's progressive identification with the higher hypostases through which it has descended, culminating in the rare and momentary mystical union with the One that transcends the duality of knower and known.
Quotes
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“Withdraw into yourself and look.”
First Ennead, Sixth Tractate, Section 9 -
Attributed to Plotinus:
“If you do not become equal to God, you cannot understand God: for the like is known by the like.”
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Attributed to Plotinus:
“All things, in proportion to their possession of being, possess unity.”
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Attributed to Plotinus:
“He who has but the slightest experience of beauty knows what beauty is.”
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Attributed to Plotinus:
“Knowledge has three degrees: opinion, science, and illumination.”
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Attributed to Plotinus:
“The wise man recognises the idea of the good in all that he sees.”
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“First Tractate : The Animate and the Man, §1”
Pleasure and distress, fear and courage , desire and aversion, where have these affections and experiences their seat? Clearly, either in the Soul alone, or in the Soul as employing the body, or in some third entity deriving from both. And for this third entity, again, there are two possible modes: it might be either a blend or a distinct form due to the blending. -
“First Tractate : The Animate and the Man, §3”
We may treat of the Soul as in the body — whether it be set above it or actually within it — since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate. Now from this relation, from the Soul using the body as an instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body's experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with wh -
“All teems with symbol ; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.”
II.3.7 -
“First Ennead, Sixth Tractate, Section 9”
Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer. ... Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow or beauty and never cease chiseling yo -
“First Ennead, Book VI, as translated by Thomas Taylor , The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation (1891) pp. 43-44.”
Hence, as Narcissus , by catching at the shadow, plunged himself in the stream and disappeared, so he who is captivated by beautiful bodies , and does not depart from their embrace, is precipitated , not with his body, but with his soul, into a darkness profound and repugnant to intellect (the higher soul), through which, remaining blind both here and in Hades, he associates with shadows . -
“First Ennead, Book VIII, as translated by Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation (1891) pp. 38-39.”
When the soul has descended into generation (from its first divine condition) she partakes of evil, and is carried a great way into a state the opposite of her first purity and integrity, to be entirely merged in which, is nothing more than to fall into a dark mire. ...The soul dies as much as it is possible for the soul to die: and the death to her is, while baptized or immersed in the present bo