RELIANCE ON PUNNING.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Plotinus and Guthrie, Kenneth Sylvan
Punning has of course a hoary antiquity, and even the revered Plato was an adept at it—as we see in his Cratylos. Moreover, not till a man's work is translated can we uncover all the unconscious cases of "undistributed middle." Nevertheless, in an inquiry as to the permanent objective validity of a train of reasoning, we are compelled to note extent and scope of his tendency. So he puns on aeons;753 on science and knowledge;754 on "agalmata";755 on Aphrodite, as "delicate";756 on Being;757 on "koros," as creation or adornment";758 on difference in others;759 on idea;760 on heaven, world, universe, animal and all;761 on Vesta, and standing;762 on Hexis;763 on inclination;764 on doxa;765 on love and vision;766 on "einai" and "henos;"767 on "mous," "noêsis," and to "noêfon";768 on paschein;769 on Poros;770 on Prometheus and Providence;771 on reason and characteristic;772 on "schesis" and "schema";773 and "soma" and "sozesthai";"774 on suffering;775 on thinking, thinkable, and intellection;776 on "timely" and "sovereign."777 It will be noted that these puns refer to some of the most important conceptions, and are found in all periods of his life. We must therefore conclude that his was not a clear thinking ability; that he depended on accidental circumstances, and may not always have been fully conscious how far he was following others. This popular judgment that he was revamping Numenius's work may then not have been entirely unfounded, as we indeed have shown.
Nevertheless, he achieved some permanent work, that will never be forgotten; for instance:
1. His description of the ecstatic state.
2. His polemic against the Aristotelian and Stoic categories.
3. His establishment of his own categories.
4. His allegoric treatment of the birth of love, the several Eroses, Poros and Penia, and other myths.
5. His building of a Trinitarian philosophy.
6. His threefold spheres of existence, underlying Swedenborgian interpretation.
7. His aesthetic theories.
8. His ethical studies of virtues and happiness.
9. His restatement of Numenius's arguments for the immateriality of the soul.