Suggestions of a Neoplatonic semiotics: Act and potency in Plotinus' metaphysics
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Curtis Hancock
Abstract
In Four ages of understanding, John Deely identifies four stages of progress toward a science of semiotics. The first of these ages is “preliminaries to the notion of sign.” This is the age of ancient classical and Hellenistic philosophy (600 BC–400 AD). A prominent figure in this age is Plotinus (205–270), the founder of the Neoplatonic school. A laconic description of Plotinus' philosophy is that it is a mystical monism. For a monist, to be real is to be one. A mystic, Plotinus asserts, is someone who knows ultimate reality in a way that is beyond being and intelligence. Central to unfolding Plotinus' mystical monism is the way he adopts the act (energeia)/potency (dynamis) distinction from Aristotle. This distinction explains that Plotinus is not an ontologist, because reality (unity) transcends being (unity-in-plurality). Ennead II, 5 (25) is Plotinus' definitive work on act and potency. Once one explains how these principles operate in Plotinus' metaphysics, one can suggest what a philosophy of signs or “semiotics” looks like in Neoplatonism.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Articles in the same Issue
- Why read Deely? Introduction to the Four ages special issue
- The integration of Thomistic intentionality theory and contemporary semiotics
- The history of philosophy as a semiotic process: A note on John Deely's momumental Four ages of understanding
- Suggestions of a Neoplatonic semiotics: Act and potency in Plotinus' metaphysics
- Two steps toward semiotic capacity: Out of the muddy concept of language
- Relations: The true substrate for evolution
- The church of pragmatism
- Is modernity really so bad? John Deely and Husserl's phenomenology
- Deely, Aquinas, and Poinsot: How the intentionality of inner sense transcends the limits of empiricism
- From sémiologie to postmodernism: A genealogy
- The inferential and equational models from ancient times to the postmodern
- Four Ages of underrating: Philosophy and zoösemiotic issues
- Cosmic semiosis: Contuiting the Divine
- Understanding the four ages of thought
Articles in the same Issue
- Why read Deely? Introduction to the Four ages special issue
- The integration of Thomistic intentionality theory and contemporary semiotics
- The history of philosophy as a semiotic process: A note on John Deely's momumental Four ages of understanding
- Suggestions of a Neoplatonic semiotics: Act and potency in Plotinus' metaphysics
- Two steps toward semiotic capacity: Out of the muddy concept of language
- Relations: The true substrate for evolution
- The church of pragmatism
- Is modernity really so bad? John Deely and Husserl's phenomenology
- Deely, Aquinas, and Poinsot: How the intentionality of inner sense transcends the limits of empiricism
- From sémiologie to postmodernism: A genealogy
- The inferential and equational models from ancient times to the postmodern
- Four Ages of underrating: Philosophy and zoösemiotic issues
- Cosmic semiosis: Contuiting the Divine
- Understanding the four ages of thought
