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9 - Pamprosopon

from Part III - Intellect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2024

Mateusz Stróżyński
Affiliation:
Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Poland
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Summary

This chapter shows that the entire intelligible world in Plotinus has a personal nature. Every real being is a person, not an abstract concept or a dead thing. Moreover, those real beings don’t exist in separation, and they are not autonomous individuals, but form a unified, living whole, an organism or, as Plotinus calls it, a city with a soul. The Forms are sacred statues of the gods, which can be seen through their sensible images. In the end, Plotinus coins a neologism to describe this peculiar vision of reality: παμπρόσοωπόν τι, “being-all-faces”. This grand vision gives a deeper meaning to all the earlier metaphors of statues, reflected images, and faces that I have been elucidating in the book. In a deep unity of the intelligible world, to know and love one’s own face or to know and love the face of another is to contemplate all the other faces that participate in the living city that is reality.

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Plotinus on the Contemplation of the Intelligible World
Faces of Being and Mirrors of Intellect
, pp. 319 - 351
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Pamprosopon
  • Mateusz Stróżyński, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Poland
  • Book: Plotinus on the Contemplation of the Intelligible World
  • Online publication: 03 September 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009494854.013
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  • Pamprosopon
  • Mateusz Stróżyński, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Poland
  • Book: Plotinus on the Contemplation of the Intelligible World
  • Online publication: 03 September 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009494854.013
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Pamprosopon
  • Mateusz Stróżyński, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Poland
  • Book: Plotinus on the Contemplation of the Intelligible World
  • Online publication: 03 September 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009494854.013
Available formats
×