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Select Works of Plotinus · 678 of 752 · tr. Thomas Taylor

Select Works, Section 649

Section 10 10. But failure There? What can defensive horns serve to There? To sufficiency as living form, to completeness. That principle must be complete as living form, complete as Intellect, complete as life, so that if it is not to be one thing it may be another. Its characteristic difference is in this power of being now this, now that, so that, summing all, it may be the completest life-form, Intelligence complete, life in greatest fulness with each of the particulars complete in its degree while yet, over all that multiplicity, unity reigns. If all were one identity, the total could not contain this variety of forms; there would be nothing but a self-sufficing unity. Like every compound it must consist of things progressively differing in form and safeguarded in that form. This is in the very nature of shape and Reason-Principle; a shape, that of man let us suppose, must include a certain number of differences of part but all dominated by a unity; there will be the noble and the inferior, eye and finger, but all within a unity; the part will be inferior in comparison with the total but best in its place. The Reason-Principle, too, is at once the living form and something else, something distinct from the being of that form. It is so with virtue also; it contains at once the universal and the particular; and the total is good because the universal is not differentiated.
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Themes
Divine Providencetheology

Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.

[auto] The passage explicitly describes the future as foreconceived and existing for a purpose ordered by the divine cause.

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Divine Simplicitytheology

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

The divine stage is described as lacking nothing and containing causes inherently, suggesting an undivided nature.

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Emanation Hierarchycosmology

A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.

[auto] The passage describes a 'divine stage' unfolding into a 'later stage' with succession, reflecting the downward flow of reality from eternity to time.

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Logoscosmology

The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.

References to things being 'foreconceived' and existing for a 'purpose' imply a divine ordering principle or reason.

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Monadcosmology

The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.

The description of the source containing 'the cause of all as inherent to itself' aligns with the concept of a simple first principle.

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Opposites Transcendedanthropology

The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.

[auto] The passage explicitly states that the All presents 'succession while yet it is simultaneous,' dissolving the binary opposition between time and eternity.

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Paradox As Teachingethics

Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.

[auto] The claim that succession exists within simultaneity uses apparent contradiction to describe the ineffable nature of the divine.

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Pleromacosmology

The divine fullness or totality of the highest realm, populated by aeons and divine attributes, contrasted with the deficient material world.

It describes a divine stage that lacks nothing and contains all causes, matching the definition of divine fullness.

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Unity Of Beingtheology

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

[auto] The text asserts that 'The All... contains the cause of all as inherent to itself,' suggesting a fundamental non-dual reality at the divine source.

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Related passages · 6 parallels
christian_mysticism|Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names|Chapter 2, Section 1a
“65 CHAPTER II Concerning the Undifferencing and the Differentiation in Divinity, and the Nature of Divine Unification and Differentiation. 166 166 περὶ ἡνωμένης καὶ διακεκριμένης θεολογίας καὶ τίς ἡ θεία ἕνωσις καὶ διάκρισις. I. ’ Tis th…”
Shared concept: Divine Simplicity — The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being. (derived)
christian_mysticism|The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme|Chapter 7 (part 4)
“28.) "In Paradise the substance of the divine world penetrated the substance belonging to time, comparable to the power of the sun penetrating a fruit growing on a tree, and endowing it with such qualities as render it lovely to the sight a…”
Shared concept: Logos — The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world. (derived)
christian_mysticism|Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names|Chapter 2, Section 1k
“Indeed, He is not an unity in this sense, and doth not participate in unity nor possess it; 224 224 These two phrases well express the meaning of the title “Beyond things and supernally infusing Unity” (ὑπερηνωμένη), which I have generally…”
Shared concept: Pleroma — The divine fullness or totality of the highest realm, populated by aeons and divine attributes, contrasted with the deficient material world. (derived)
theosophy|The Secret Doctrine|Page 3 (part 7)
“Herbert Spencer has of late so far modified his Agnosticism, as to assert that the nature of the "First Cause,"* which the Occultist more logically derives from the "Causeless Cause," the "Eternal," and the "Unknowable," may be essentially…”
Shared concept: Unity Of Being — The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim. (derived)
christian_mysticism|The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme|Chapter 4 (part 1)
“p. 89 CHAPTER IV. CREATION. Everything we see in nature is manifested truth; only we are not able to recognise it as such, unless the truth is manifest within ourselves. God is the supreme, fundamental, universal, self-existent eternal…”
Shared concept: Unity Of Being — The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim. (derived)
christian_mysticism|Pseudo-Dionysius: The Mystical Theology|Chapter V-a
“That He Who is the Pre-eminent Cause of everything intelligibly perceived is not Himself any one of the things intelligibly perceived. Once more, ascending yet higher we maintain 537 537 It is not (1) a Thinking Subject; nor (2) an Act or…”
Shared concept: Paradox As Teaching — Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight. (derived)