When1: 250
Who: Plotinus
What: philosopher
Where: Egypt/Rome, Italy
works\ Enneads or Six Enneads [250: Enneads are nine dieties of Egyptian mythology]
Detail: He lived 204 to 270, was Platonist, studied under Ammonius Saccas, and emphasized monism and rationalism.
Metaphysics
God is the good, perfect, supreme, unified, and free being. God, the Good, has no consciousness, no form, and no activity. God is the basis of Reason, Mind, and Being but is beyond them. God has no human traits.
Mind or divine spirit of God {divine consciousness} is self-acting and self-created and sustains material world. All things are imperfect copies or imitations of the good and perfect {emanation system} {system of emanation}. God overflows into the world, which reflects him as rational Mind {Nous} in matter and as Soul {Psyche, soul} in living things. The light of God makes all Ideas: being, rest, motion or change, identity, and difference. Ideas are God, soul, or spirit thought contents, because both are immaterial. Mind makes actual world, affecting Soul to make it form matter based on Ideas. Matter is Void, not material or spiritual but negation and non-being, with only possibility. Matter is absolute desire and is evil. However, evil does not actually exist, because it is non-being. Material world mixes Void and light of God, and so mixes good and evil.
Things in the world are in spheres around God. Farthest sphere is matter. Nearest sphere is divine Mind or reason.
Mind
Individual souls are Ideas and eternal. Souls can concentrate on either desire or reason. Contemplating Beauty moves toward spirit. The final step unites soul with spirit. All matter and souls try to reunite with God.
Human souls form self-consciousness and body from Mind and Ideas. Self-consciousness results when mind actively thinks about itself or its states.
Mind actively synthesizes and unifies perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, and does not just passively receive images from outside. Mind acts by taking conscious notice and doing something with perceptions. Body sensation is separate from consciousness of object or feeling.
Social Sciences>Philosophy>History>Mind
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Date Modified: 2022.0224