{"collection":"Sacred Texts: The Classics","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_cla_plotenn_enn526_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_cla_plotenn_enn526_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_cla_plotenn_enn526_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/cla/plotenn/enn526.htm","summary":"This is a passage of ancient Greek philosophical prose \u2014 almost certainly from Plotinus's *Enneads* \u2014 working within the Aristotelian tradition of the Categories. It investigates the metaphysical relationship between Action and Passion (activity and passivity) as modes of motion and change, asking whether a single motion can simultaneously belong to both categories or must be assigned to one.\n\nThe central puzzle is whether an alteration \u2014 rubbing, imparting whiteness, conferring beauty, teaching \u2014 is properly classified as Action (proceeding from an agent) or Passion (received by a patient), and whether these are in fact two distinct motions or one motion viewed from two angles. The author proposes that a single motion is Action insofar as it proceeds from an object and Passion insofar as it bears upon another, without thereby becoming two separate events.\n\nConcrete examples drive the argument: rubbing involves counter-rubbing; a swan may be white from birth or grow white; copper gains beauty as tin deteriorates; a learner receives an Act that becomes their own. The learner example is particularly distinctive \u2014 the author denies that learning is analogous to being struck, insisting it involves genuine acts of apprehension and recognition on the learner's part, complicating the passive/active binary.\n\nThe perspective is notably Plotinian in pressing Aristotelian category-theory toward questions about how a simple, unified Act can be both given and received without fracturing into duality \u2014 a concern with ontological simplicity characteristic of Neoplatonism.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Enneads of Plotinus: THE SIXTH ENNEAD: FIRST TRACTATE: Section 20","tradition":"Sacred Texts: The Classics","translated_text":null,"word_count":501}