free men
فريق العمـــــل *****
التوقيع : 
عدد الرسائل : 1500
الموقع : center d enfer
تاريخ التسجيل : 26/10/2009
وســــــــــام النشــــــــــــــاط : 6
 | |  Matter | |
Without light, it would not make any sense to speak of darkness. In fact, there would be no such thing as darkness, since darkness is, if it is anything, light’s absence and opposite. In the same way as darkness is a by-product of light, so matter, the Neoplatonists reasoned, is nothing but a by-product of the dynamic emanation of the First. In fact, it is the limit at which the energy transmitted in the chain of inner and outer activities at the various levels of reality exhausts itself and comes to an end. Just as darkness has no capacity to make itself visible, in the same way matter no longer has any inner activity that could give rise to a further outer activity. As such, it is merely passive, and the eternal process of consecutive production of ever lower levels of reality necessarily comes to an end. But importantly for us, it is the realm at which the activity of Soul informed by Consciousness becomes phenomenal and perceptible. It would be wrong to say that matter does not exist at all, or is a nothing. According to this theory, at any rate, matter exists, but not as a separate ontological principle distinct from the One with effects of its own. Rather, it is a fringe phenomenon of the life of the soul, a by-product of the activity of higher realms of Being. As such, it is no thing, an entirely immaterial and formless non-entity. This Plotinian doctrine was destined to raise controversy among later Neoplatonists, when it was proposed that matter should at the very least have the property of undefined three-dimensionality.An even more controversial doctrine connected to matter was the explanation of evil. Plotinus had tried to uphold the view, consistent with his entire ontology, that at no point in the great chain of Being coming from above does anything emerge that could be regarded as evil, or the cause of evil. Nevertheless, evil, and in particular moral evil, is obviously part of our experience of the world, and an explanation had to be given as to where it originated. Plotinus’ answer was that evil arises from below, not above, and is intimately connected with matter. Yet importantly, matter is not an independent principle of evil in any Manichean or Gnostic sense, as it has no active power on its own. Rather, evil arises if and when higher beings, and in particular human beings, direct their attention towards the material world below, instead of the intelligible world above, and have an all-encompassing concern for it. The regard downwards, as it were, rather than upwards towards Consciousness and the divine essences, is what contaminates the soul and renders it morally evil. Even though it is surprising how much explanatory force for the nature and existence of moral evil this theory affords, it remained controversial even among Neoplatonists. Proclus, in the fifth century, dedicated an entire treatise to repudiating Plotinus on this point. Proclus abandoned the comforting notion of the essential goodness of humanity and, not unlike Augustine before him, insisted on the real possibility of the moral depravity of the human soulqua soul. | |
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