Theoria in Plotinus (Enneads)

This document contains numerous references to both the noun theoria (contemplation) and the verb theoreo (to contemplate) as found in Plotinus' most influential work, The Enneads. The list is important in that it gives a better understanding of how Gregory of Nyssa uses these terms in a Christian context. Refer to another document on this Home Page entitled References to Theoria in the Writings of Gregory of Nyssa.

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And soul's power of sense perception need not be perception of sense objects, but rather it must be receptive of the impressions produced by sensation on the living being; there are already intelligible entities. So external sensation is the image of this perception of the soul, which is in its essence truer and is a contemplation of forms alone without being affected. 1.1.7.14.⁽¹⁾

What, then, is each particular virtue when a man is in this state [free from disturbance, aplektos]? Wisdom, theoretical and practical, consists in the contemplation of that which intellect contains; but intellect has it by immediate contact. 1.2.6.13.

For it [reason] cannot be the study of these primary natural needs which perfects reason; its perfection is something else, and its nature is different, and it is not itself one of these primary natural needs or of the sources from which the primary natural needs derive; it does not belong to this class of beings at all, but is better than all these. 1.4.2.47.

One can find a great many valuable activities, theoretical and practical, which we carry on both in our contemplative and active life even when we are fully conscious, which do not make us aware of them. The reader is not necessarily aware that he is reading, least of all when he is really concentrating. 1.4.10.23

As for his speculative activities, some of them which are concerned with particular points will possibly be hindered by circumstances, those for instance which require research and investigation. 1.4.13.4

Intellect is not the sort one might conceive on the analogy of our so-called intellects which get their content from premises and are able to understand what is said, and reason discursively and observe what follows, contemplating reality as the result of a process of reasoning since they did not have it before but were empty before they learnt, though they were intellects. 1.8.2.12

One will contemplate it [evil] with the contemplation which belongs to absolute evil, and participate in it when one becomes it: one enters altogether into "the region of unlikeness"⁽²⁾ when one sinks into it and has gone falling into the mud of darkness. 1.8.13.15

But if this is so, they do not look any differently at ugly or beautiful ways of life, or beautiful subjects of study; they have no contemplation, then, and hence no God. For the beauties here exist because of the first beauties. 2.9.17.24

Suppose we said, playing at first before we set out to be serious, that all things aspire to be serious, that all things aspire to contemplation, and direct their gaze to this end-not only rational but irrational living things, and the power of growth in plants, and the earth which brings them forth-and that all attain to it as far as possible for them in their natural state. 3.8.1.2⁽³⁾

And it is likely that, whether a child or a man is playing or being serious, one plays and the other is serious for the sake of contemplation, and every action is a serious effort towards contemplation; compulsory action drags contemplation more towards the out world, and what we call voluntary, less, but, all the same, voluntary action, too, springs from the desire of contemplation. 3.8.1.14

But we will discuss this later: but now let us talk abut the earth itself, and trees, and plants in general, and ask what their contemplation is, and how we can relate what the earth makes and produces to its activity of contemplation, and how nature, which people say has no power of forming mental images or reasoning, has contemplation in itself and makes what it makes by contemplation, which it does not have. 3.8.1.18

How then, when it [forming principle] makes, and makes in this way, can it attain to any sort of contemplation? It stays unmoved as it makes, and stays in itself, and is a forming principle, it must itself be contemplation. For action must take place according to a rational principle, and is obviously different from the principle...If, then, it is not action but rational principle, it is contemplation; and in every rational principle its last and lowest manifestation springs from contemplation, and is contemplation in the sense of being contemplated; but the manifestation of the principle before this is universal, one part in a different way, the part which is not nature but sou; the other is the rational principle in nature, and is nature. Then is this itself, too, the result of contemplation? Yes, it is altogether the result of contemplation. But is it is because it has itself contemplated itself, or how? For it is a result of contemplation, and something has been contemplating. But how does this, nature, possess contemplation? It certainly does not have the contemplation that comes from reasoning (logos) 3.8.3.1

So by being contemplation and object of contemplation the rational principle, it makes in so far as it is these things. So its making has been revealed to us as contemplation, for it is a result of contemplation, and the contemplation stays unchanged and does not do anything else but makes by being contemplation. 3.8.3.20

That what comes into being is what I see in my silence, an object of contemplation which comes to be naturally, and that I, originating from this sort of contemplation have a contemplative nature. And my act of contemplation makes what it contemplates, as the geometers draw their figures while they contemplate. But I do not draw, but as I contemplate, the lines which bound bodies come to be as if they fell from my contemplation. What happens to me is what happens to my mother and the beings that generated me, for they, too, derive from contemplation, and it is no action of theirs which brings about my birth; they are greater rational principles, and as they contemplate themselves I come to be. 3.8.4.6

That what is called nature is a soul, the offspring of a prior soul with a stronger life; that it quietly holds contemplation in itself, not directed upwards or even downwards, but at rest in what it is, in its own repose and a kind of self-perception. 3.8.4.16

Nature is at rest in contemplation of the vision of itself, a vision which comes to it from its abiding in and with itself and being itself a vision; and its contemplation is silent but somewhat blurred. 3.8.4.27

For there is another, clearer for sight, and nature is the image of another contemplation. For this reason what is produced by it is weak in every way, because a weak contemplation produces a weak object. Men, too, when their power of contemplation weakens, make action a shadow of contemplation and reasoning. 3.8.4.30

Everywhere we shall find that making and action are either a weakening or a consequence of contemplation; a weakening, if the doer or maker had nothing in view beyond the thing done, a consequence if he another prior object of contemplation better than what he made. 3.8.4.41

If the prior must always be differen