Curabitur vestibulum eget mauris quis laoreet. Phasellus in quam laoreet, viverra lacus ut, ultrices velit.
Quisque luctus, quam eget molestie commodo, lacus purus cursus purus, nec rutrum tellus dolor id lorem.
Nulla sed nunc et tortor luctus faucibus. Morbi at aliquet turpis, et consequat felis. Quisque condimentum.
Sed porttitor placerat rhoncus. In at nunc tellus. Maecenas blandit nunc ligula. Praesent elit leo.
Vivamus vel quam lacinia, tincidunt dui non, vehicula nisi. Nulla a sem erat. Pellentesque egestas venenatis lorem .
Quisque hendrerit purus dapibus, ornare nibh vitae, viverra nibh. Fusce vitae aliquam tellus.
FORE:The immortality of the soul is a subject on which idealistic philosophers habitually express themselves in terms of apparently studied ambiguity, and this is especially true of Plotinus. Here, as elsewhere, he repeats the opinions and arguments of Plato, but with certain developments which make his adhesion to the popular belief in a personal duration after death considerably more doubtful than was that of his master. One great difficulty in the way of Platos doctrine, as commonly understood, is that it attributes a permanence to individuals, which, on the principles of his system, should belong only to general ideas. Now, at first sight, Plotinus seems to evade this difficulty by admitting everlasting ideas of individuals no less than of generic types.514 A closer examination, however, shows that this view is even more unfavourable than Platos to the hope of personal immortality. For either our real self is independent of our empirical consciousness, which is just what we wish to have preserved, or, as seems more probable, the eternal existence which it enjoys is of an altogether ideal character, like that which Spinoza also attributed to the346 human soul, and which, in his philosophy, certainly had nothing to do with a prolongation of individual consciousness beyond the grave. As Madame de Sta?l observes of a similar view held at one time by Schelling, cette immortalit-l ressemble terriblement la mort. And when, in addition to his own theory of individual ideas, we find Plotinus adopting the theory of the Stoics, that the whole course of mundane affairs periodically returns to its starting-point and is repeated in the same order as before,515 we cannot help concluding that human immortality in the popular sense must have seemed as impossible to him as it did to them. We must, therefore, suppose that the doctrine of metempsychosis and future retributions which he unquestionably professes, applies only to certain determinate cycles of psychic life; or that it was to him, what it had probably been to Plato, only a figurative way of expressing the essential unity of all souls, and the transcendent character of ethical distinctions.516
Quisque luctus, quam eget molestie commodo, lacus purus cursus purus, nec rutrum tellus dolor id lorem.
FORE:The religious tendency of Senecas philosophy appears rather in his psychology than in his metaphysics, in the stress which he lays on human immortality rather than in his discussions on creation and divine providence. His statements on this subject are not, indeed, very consistent, death being sometimes spoken of as the end of consciousness, and at other times, as the beginning of a new life, the birthday of eternity, to quote a phrase afterwards adopted by Christian preachers. Nor can we be absolutely certain that the promised eternity is not merely another way of expressing the souls absorption into and identification with the fiery element whence it was originally derived. This, however, is an ambiguity to be met with in other doctrines of a spiritual existence after death, nor is it entirely absent from the language even of Christian theologians. What deserves attention is that, whether the future life spoken of by Seneca be taken in a literal or in a figurative sense, it is equally intended to lead our thoughts away from the world of sensible experience to a more ideal order of things; and, to that extent, it falls in with the more general religious movement of the age. Whether Zeller is, for that reason, justified in speaking of him as a Platonising Stoic seems more questionable; for the Stoics always agreed with Plato in holding that the soul is distinct from and superior to the body, and that it is consubstantial with the animating principle of Nature. The same circumstances which were elsewhere leading to a revival of Platonism, equally tended to develope this side of Stoicism, but it seems needless to seek for a closer connexion between the two phenomena.376
Curabitur vestibulum eget mauris quis laoreet. Phasellus in quam laoreet, viverra lacus ut, ultrices velit.
FORE:
Nulla sed nunc et tortor luctus faucibus. Morbi at aliquet turpis, et consequat felis. Quisque condimentum.
Quisque hendrerit purus dapibus, ornare nibh vitae, viverra nibh. Fusce vitae aliquam tellus. Proin sit amet volutpat libero. Nulla sed nunc et tortor luctus faucibus. Morbi at aliquet turpis, et consequat felis.
Elm St. 14/05 Lost City 03528 331 86 35 info@singolo.com