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Steven K. Strange Department of Philosophy Emory University April 24, 2009 Friday, 4:00pm-5:30pm Wardlaw College, Room 126 Plotinus' idea of nous or intelligence, the immediate product of the activity of the One or first principle, is also the locus for Plotinus of the Platonic Ideas. Plotinus explicitly identifies this intelligence with the cosmic creator or Demiurge of Plato's Timaeus, so that it plays the roles in his Platonism of both the efficient and the formal/paradigmatic cause of the cosmos. Also very important here is Plotinus' use of Aristotelian cosmic nous, which Aristotle identifies with God. Plotinus clearly thinks that in this part of their cosmologies Plato and Aristotle are talking about the same entity, and Professor Strange will attempt to explain why and how this is so. Professor Strange will try to show how all this casts light on two aspects of Plotinian Intelligence that at first blush do not seem to be at all Platonic or Aristotelian, namely the identity of the cosmic nous with its intentional objects (the Platonic Ideas) and the so-called theory of emanation, which is supposed to explain how the totality of both material and spiritual reality flows from the activity of the first principle and of nous. The hope is that this discussion may serve to bring out some of the broad lines of Plotinus' very influential yet little-understood version of Platonism, and the way that it is essentially a fusion of Platonic and Aristotelian themes. |
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