Arquivo para March 27th, 2024
The light and the truth
There is a single and true light, although we know that light can unfold into various colors that we see from red to violent, and that we do not see as infrared and ultraviolet.
We are increasingly getting closer to the idea that the beginning of the universe had something like light, today according to Standard Physics Theory, the photon was already theorized by Einstein as particles or small “packages” that transport the energy contained in electromagnetic radiation, photons at rest they have zero mass.
Thus, the light that emanates from the origin of the Universe, although not confused with its intention (to radiate light), is at the origin of all electromagnetic radiation from the Big Bang.
The Neoplatonists, like Plotinus (205 – 270), believed in monism and in this radiation of light, there is a one or a god (it was not the Christian God) from which emanates a divine source that radiates throughout all creation, in this one light that Augustine of Hippo will rely on denying the Manichaean dualism that he had previously believed in and from there his turn towards Christianity will take place.
Plotinus’ texts were compiled by his disciple Porphyry and written in the work the Six Enneads (actually nine parts, as ennea in Greek is 9), in which the question of the union of the soul and the intellect stands out, it is based on this idea that the Truth dwells in man.
Thus the soul of the world proceeds from a creative power (not from power, as it does not define it), contemplating the Nous and multiplying itself in all the particular beings of the sensible world, without dividing itself (this is the interpretation of Fritz- Peter Hager in his 1962 book).
The truth thus dwells in the soul and interior of each man, it is this interiority that some critics define as the idealism or intimacy of the Neoplatonists, but today there are several works on the issue of the Contemplative Vitta, Hannah Arendt and Byung Chul Han remember it, but other authors have already started to mention Barthes’ Rumor of the Language mentioned in the previous post.
For Christians, this manifestation of truth occurs ontologically in the Incarnation, Passion and death of Jesus, death because it is part of human life and should be lived as an “Easter” passage that opens eternal life to men, without this passage life fullness is not realized and we perish as matter, this aspect is also problematized by Plotinus.
In the photo, Peter Paul Rubens’ work on Saint Augustine’s Anti-Milleranism, which did not accept the literal reading of Revelation 20:1-10.
Plotinus, Enéadas, (2021) transl. by José Seabra Filho and Juvino Alves Maia Junior, Brazil: Editora Nova Acropole (volume 6 was published this year, completing the work).
Augustine, Saint. (1999). A cidade de Deus (The city of God), trans. Oscar Paes Leme. Brazil, Petrópolis, Editora Vozes.