Nature, Contemplation, and the One

Nature, Contemplation, and the One
Author: John N. Deck
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 1967-12-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1442638184

Plotinus has been so highly regarded as a mystic that his importance as a philosopher has sometimes been thrown into eclipse. Yet neoplatonic philosophy lives in and through his works; indeed, his original development of Platonic and Aristotelian themes stands as a kind of summation of Greek philosophy as it first came to be known in the Christian West. In Nature, Contemplation, and the One, Professor Deck has undertaken a reappraisal of Plotinus' thought from the standpoint of a central doctrine in the Enneads, that of nature as contemplation. This new view enables him to show that the producing of the physical world by means of contemplation is an internally consistent doctrine with ramifications throughout the Plotinian view of being, causality, and the generation of a plural universe by the self-subsistent One. The result is a systematic account of Plotinus' major teachings, and a fresh view of their meaning and philosophic importance. Professor Deck has appended a new translation of the parts of the Enneads which are central to the doctrine of nature as contemplation, and his study proceeds by careful reference to the original texts. Students, philosophers, and historians will welcome this important and unusually clear-headed approach to a major figure in Western thought.

Connection with 48 Natural Contemplations

Connection with 48 Natural Contemplations
Author: Charmaine Coimbra
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-07-25
Genre:
ISBN: 9781735425610

Life's frenzy yanks us away from nature's calming elements. This book offers 48 moments of contemplation and meditation that follows a review of our links to nature. It is meant to help us walk in peace and respect regardless of our faith or belief system. I have borrowed the knowledge of scientists, quoted poets and writers, and share the wisdom of academics, philosophers, mystics, and the ancients to connect what I know about our seas to life, our trees to strength, our deserts to vision, and our homes to compassion, and all four elements to each other. I encourage you to find quiet moments and discover these outer links to personal inner peace, wisdom, and health.

Plotinus on Intellect

Plotinus on Intellect
Author: Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2007-02-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019928170X

Plotinus (205-269 AD) is considered the founder of Neoplatonism, the dominant philosophical movement of late antiquity, and a rich seam of current scholarly interest. Whilst Plotinus' influence on the subsequent philosophical tradition was enormous, his ideas can also be seen as the culmination of some implicit trends in the Greek tradition from Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.Emilsson's in-depth study focuses on Plotinus' notion of Intellect, which comes second in his hierarchical model of reality, after the One, unknowable first cause of everything. As opposed to ordinary human discursive thinking, Intellect's thought is all-at-once, timeless, truthful and a direct intuition into 'things themselves'; it is presumably not even propositional. Emilsson discusses and explains this strong notion of non-discursive thought and explores Plotinus' insistence that this mustbe the primary form of thought.Plotinus' doctrine of Intellect raises a host of questions that Emilsson addresses. First, Intellect's thought is described as an attempt to grasp the One and at the same time as self-thought. How are these two claims related? How are they compatible? What lies in Plotinus' insistence that Intellect's thought is a thought of itself? Second, Plotinus gives two minimum requirements of thought: that it must involve a distinction between thinker and object of thought, and that the object itselfmust be varied. How are these two pluralist claims related? Third, what is the relation between Intellect as a thinker and Intellect as an object of thought? Plotinus' position here seems to amount to a form of idealism, and this is explored.

The Heart of Plotinus

The Heart of Plotinus
Author: Algis Uždavinys
Publisher: World Wisdom, Inc
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2009
Genre: Enneads
ISBN: 1933316691

Drawing parallels with other traditions, the author emphasizes that Plotinus' philosophy was not a purely mental or rational exercise, but a complete way of life incorporating the spiritual virtues. He provides an introduction to his teachings and an informative commentary on the Enneads.

Alexandria

Alexandria
Author: David R. Fideler
Publisher: Red Wheel/Weiser
Total Pages: 502
Release: 1995-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780933999541

Journal of cosmology, philosophy, myth, and culture.

Autonomous Nature

Autonomous Nature
Author: Carolyn Merchant
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2015-08-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317395875

Autonomous Nature investigates the history of nature as an active, often unruly force in tension with nature as a rational, logical order from ancient times to the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. Along with subsequent advances in mechanics, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism, nature came to be perceived as an orderly, rational, physical world that could be engineered, controlled, and managed. Autonomous Nature focuses on the history of unpredictability, why it was a problem for the ancient world through the Scientific Revolution, and why it is a problem for today. The work is set in the context of vignettes about unpredictable events such as the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, the Bubonic Plague, the Lisbon Earthquake, and efforts to understand and predict the weather and natural disasters. This book is an ideal text for courses on the environment, environmental history, history of science, or the philosophy of science.

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness

Action, Contemplation, and Happiness
Author: C. D. C. Reeve
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2012-03-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0674065476

The notion of practical wisdom is one of Aristotle's greatest inventions. It has inspired philosophers as diverse as Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Elizabeth Anscombe, Michael Thompson, and John McDowell. Now a leading scholar of ancient philosophy offers a challenge to received accounts of practical wisdom by situating it in the larger context of Aristotle's views on knowledge and reality. That happiness is the end pursued by practical wisdom is commonly agreed. What is disputed is whether happiness is to be found in the practical life of political action, in which we exhibit courage, temperance, and other virtues of character, or in the contemplative life, where theoretical wisdom is the essential virtue. C. D. C. Reeve argues that the dichotomy is bogus, that these lives are in fact parts of a single life, which is the best human one. In support of this view, he develops innovative accounts of many of the central notions in Aristotle's metaphysics, epistemology, and psychology, including matter and form, scientific knowledge, dialectic, educatedness, perception, understanding, political science, practical truth, deliberation, and deliberate choice. These accounts are based directly on freshly translated passages from many of Aristotle's writings. Action, Contemplation, and Happiness is an accessible essay not just on practical wisdom but on Aristotle's philosophy as a whole.

The Structure of Being

The Structure of Being
Author: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1982-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780873955331

Neoplatonism has sometimes been seen as a species of mysticism. This volume shows that Neoplatonism has, on the contrary, a characteristic and definable structure. It presents the logic of Neoplatonism and carefully distinguishes it from the logic of other forms of philosophy.

The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good

The Structure of Being and the Search for the Good
Author: Dominic O'Meara
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2024-10-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1040230946

The essays in this book discuss a number of the central metaphysical and ethical themes that engaged the minds of Platonist philosophers during late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. One particular theme is that of the structure of reality, with the associated questions of the relations between soul and body and between intelligible and sensible reality, and the existence of mathematical objects. Other topics relate to evil and beauty, political life and its purpose, the philosophical search for the absolute Good, and how one can speak about this Absolute and have union with it. Going from Plato to Eriugena, the ways in which Platonist philosophers understood and developed these themes are analysed and compared.

The Plotinus Reader

The Plotinus Reader
Author: Plotinus
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2020-05-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1624668968

The Plotinus Reader provides a generous selection of translations from the fifty-four treatises that together make up the Enneads of Plotinus, a central work in the history of philosophy. They were prepared by a team of specialists in ancient philosophy and edited by Lloyd P. Gerson. Based on the definitive critical edition of the Greek along with decades of additional textual criticism by many scholars, these translations aim to provide a readable, accurate rendering of Plotinus’s often very difficult language. Included are extensive references to Plotinus’s sources, scores of cross-references, and an extensive glossary of technical terms.