“For Plotinus, what really exists are the Platonic forms, so the true nature or form of things like justice, beauty, maybe numbers, things like that, and these he associates with the intellect because they're the objects of intellect, they are things that intellect can think about.” ThinkingFormJusticeNumbersObjectsIntellectAssociatesTrue NaturePlatonic Author:Peter Adamson
“We do each have an intellect but there's a universal intellect which is the same for everybody, as it were. And this single intellect is grasping the platonic forms.” FormUniversalIntellectGraspingPlatonic Author:Peter Adamson
“The idea is that to grasp an idea like equality or justice, you can't look at the equal and just or unjust things in the world around you, you have to somehow ascend to or maybe remember some kind of idea of equality and justice and this would be a Platonic form, and it would be different from the things that partake in the form.” WorldLooksKindIdeasDifferentWould BeRememberFormJusticeEqualUnjustPlatonicEquality And Justice Author:Peter Adamson
“Plato in his dialogue The Phaedo says that whereas sticks and stones are both equal and unequal, (so maybe what that means is that each stick is going to be equal to some other sticks and unequal to some other sticks, so equal to the stick on the left maybe but shorter than the stick on its right) the form of equal is going to be just equal, and it won't partake of inequality at all. And it will be the cause of equality in things that are equal, for example, equal sticks and stones.” MeanFormLeftCausesExampleEqualStonesSticksDialogueInequalityPlatoSticks And Stones Author:Peter Adamson
“There's going to be this realm of Platonic forms and then there's going to be this single mind, the 'nous', which grasps them.” MindFormRealmsPlatonic Author:Peter Adamson
“Just the way you might look at a painting and see the painting, and the painting is outside you, so this immaterial intellect would see the forms and behold them, as if they were standing before it. And Plotinus said that that can't be right because it falls prey to sceptical objections.” IfsWayLooksSaidMightFormFallPaintingStandingIntellectPreyObjections Author:Peter Adamson
“Basically the problem is that if the intellect is looking at or beholding the forms, what it will get is some kind of representation or image of the forms, but it won't actually have the forms, it won't touch them as it were, or it won't incorporate them.” IfsKindProblemFormIntellectRepresentation Author:Peter Adamson
“The forms are part of the mind, or really are the mind, they're just the contents of this universal night.” MindFormNightUniversal Author:Peter Adamson
“The soul must be distinct from intellect because even at its best, what the soul does when it's thinking, is it thinks linguistically, it thinks in a temporarily extended way, so it for example, might go through the steps of an argument chain, as if you were going through a syllogism and seeing that something followed from the premises, whereas intellect simply grasps the forms.” IfsThinkingWayDoeSoulMightFormStepsSeeingExampleArgumentIntellectChainsPremises Author:Peter Adamson
“What the soul is doing is kind of walking through the forms, and so our experience of thinking isn't normally this kind of pure intuitive insight that intellect gets, and that intellect must get right, because it's always identical to its objects, it's always the same as the forms that it's thinking about.” ThinkingKindSoulFormObjectsWalkingPureInsightIntellectIntuitiveIdentical Author:Peter Adamson
“Soul puts the determination or forms or images of forms, into matter.” SoulMatterFormDetermination Author:Peter Adamson
“The forms in intellect are some kind of blueprint or model on which the physical world is based, and something needs to come along and shape the matter in accordance with that blueprint. What does that is soul.” WorldNeedsKindDoeSoulMatterFormShapesModelsIntellectBlueprints Author:Peter Adamson
“If you think about even very common examples like, say, something that you would build, like a clock or a car or a group of people trying to accomplish something, it fails when its unity breaks down. So when it stops having a single form, which is functioning all together, then it sort of falls apart into discrete elements.” PeopleIfsThinkingTryingTogetherFormFallCommonBreakFailingGroupsCarExampleElementsUnityAccomplishClockBreaking DownFalling ApartDiscrete Author:Peter Adamson
