Modes of Knowledge and the Transcendental

Download or read book Modes of Knowledge and the Transcendental written by Henri Oosthout and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The philosophy of Plotinus is usually depicted as a quest for the absolute, outside and beyond the world of human knowledge and experience. Yet in the late treatise Ennead 5.3 [49], Plotinus shows himself a philosopher of the transcendental, rather than of the transcendent. Starting from a critical analysis of the idea of self-knowledge, he develops a world-view in which central notions of his metaphysics are represented, not as different “hypostases” or transcendent beings, but as limiting cases of reality as we human beings know it. Fundamental to this world-view is Plotinus' assumption that a close analogy can be established between the psychological and the physical description of man.