Primum sentire, deinde filosofare: Plotinus

The title is Latin and the outrages I can alone imagine, but the translation is simple, it is a small modification of an old Latin motto attributed to Thomas Hobbes, that press for the practical life, and after the intellectual busies; but in ancient times, when the philosophy was a science, Plotinus(a.Ch.204-270) has used the soul and that we, today, identify as sensations, a tool necessary to know; the origin of sensationalism, this is that philosophical address that consider the sensations necessary and uniquely instrument for knowledge; we can consider Plotinus as the first sensationalist in the history of philosophy, in the principal book of Plotinus, that it is a collection of his short texts, this is the Enneads, he gives the principal motive in philosophy of sensationalism: “Who is the owner  the passions, opinions and the thinks?”, it is rhetorical question that Plotinus answered: “Pleasures, pains, dreads, aversions and suffering who is the owner? Or to alone the soul or to soul that uses the body…”, it is the inception of sensationalism; Plotinus uses the soul, or sensation, for the knowledge, that is derived directly from sensations; but Plotinus considered as a dual participation both the mind and the soul: “The first thing, regard to soul, we must detect if other is soul or other to be of soul. If it is so the soul is mixed, and it isn’t absurd that it receives to its, and try, through the agreement of mind, those passions and receives good and wicked custom”; this step is important because allows us to identify and understand that the sensations are alone an instrument necessary to know, but the first analysis is through the mind, because Plotinus, could not consider the sensations alone to detect the goodness or wickedness of an action or think, because the sensations are personal, and various, hence he has enclosed also the mind, that is no alone a emotive analysis, but the true cold rationality, and not certainly the momentary pleasure or dislike of something. In other step repeats this concept: “It needs say that the living or is the living body or the whole of soul and body. To every case or the soul keeps itself because impassive, although it is the cause of passions, or it suffers gather to the body…”, we can consider that Plotinus considers the soul an instrument to receive sensations that after the mind must consider. The same valor to the sensation is given from Etienne Bonnot de Condillac(1714-1780), French philosopher and author of Traité des sensations, that is appraisaled, from the philosophy, as the father of sensationalism, a step is necessary: “Let us consider a man at the first moment of his existence. His soul first has different sensations, such as light, colors, pain, pleasure, motion, rest those are his first thoughts.”, we can consider that it is alone Plotinus translated in French language, that Condillac could translate, very easy, because he known the ancient Greek, hence he has took Plotinus and has reused for to found the Sensationalism; the actual philosophical critic doesn’t consider the contribute of Plotinus to Sensationalism, why? I not clue, may somebody is going to write a book of the lacks of philosophical critic, but I think that duty could ask an army of philosophers, therefore this duty here is begun and here is ended. Anyway more clear is the following words of Condillac: “Let us follow him in the moments when he begins to reflect on what the sensations occasion in him, and we shall end that he forms ideas of the different operations of his soul, such as perceiving and imagining those are his second thoughts. Thus, according to the manner in which external objects affect us, we receive different ideas via the senses, and, further, as we reflect on the operations which the sensations occasion in our soul, we acquire all the ideas which we would not have been able to receive from external objects.”; I want not outrage the French, but it is the Plotinus with French citizen; the concepts are similar or superimposable, The following words are further superimposable to the dynamic process to understand, that Plotinus has unified between mind and soul: “Thus the sensations and operations of the soul are the materials of all our knowledge, materials that are employed by reflection as it explores the relations they contain by making combinations of them.”, It is same process of Plotinus, that we have read above, above all in the words: “…the relations they contain by making combinations of them.”, it is a mention of Plotinus. After these resumptions, some fail is, because the sensation that isn’t rationalizable, because tied to irrationality of feel   : “Let us conclude that there are no ideas that have not been acquired: the first

come directly from the senses, the others from experience and increase in proportion to the capacity for reflection.”, it is fall because the source of knowledge we can recognize perfectly, today as the then, whereby it is a wrong think.

 Alessandro Lusana