/lit/ - Literature

Plotinus on the age old question -- is there a form of a chair?
>In the intelligible world, then, are there products of the crafts and the crafts themselves? Actually, among the crafts, such as the mimetic ones - painting and sculpture, dance and mime - the construction of which, I suppose, is done here by the use of a sensible paradigm, that is, by imitating forms and motions, and transferring the symmetries that they see, one would not reasonably refer to the intelligible world, unless it were to the expressed principle of human being. But if human beings had some disposition for examining the symmetries of beings generally apart from those of individuals, it would also be a part of that ability to examine and to theorize the symmetry of everything in the intelligible world.

>Further, we could say the identical thing for the study of harmony and rhythm in the case of music generally, too, insofar as matters concerning rhythm and harmony have a conceptual basis, just as intelligible Number has as well. And so, too, those of the crafts that produce sensible objects, such as architecture and carpentry, to the extent that they make use of symmetries, would have their principles in the intelligible world and their thought processes there, too.

>But insofar as they are mixed with something sensible, they are not as a whole in the intelligible world, except within the human being. Indeed, there would not be farming, which contributes to the growth of the sensible plant, nor medicine, which considers health in the sensible world, nor the craft which is concerned with strength and good conditioning. For there is another power in the intelligible world and another health, according to which all living beings are undisturbed and have sufficient means.

>But as for rhetoric and strategy, economics, and the craft of kingship, if some of these share in that which is beautiful in their actions, and if they contemplate that, they have, by having this scientific understanding, a share of the scientific understanding that is in the intelligible world. Geometry, being concerned with intelligibles, should be classified as being in the intelligible world, as should theoretical wisdom, which at the highest is concerned with Being. And this is what needs to be said about the crafts and about things produced by them.