Title: CONTEMPLACIÓN Y PRODUCCIÓN DE LA NATURALEZA EN PLOTINO
Abstract: My purpose is to examine the Plotinian conception of nature, the lower portion of the soul, whose function is to inform and give life to the sensible world. As Plotinus insists, especially in the treatise III 8 [30], “On contemplation”, nature produces by contemplation, that is, by a kind of cognitive activity that is different from those of the intellect and the higher soul. This cognitive activity, which excludes all reasoning and deliberation, consists of a certain type of self-perception or consciousness. Nature produces because it is logos, a rational formative principle that transmits to what is inferior the intelligible forms it receives from the higher soul, whose archetypes are the contents of the intellect. Nature is a logos that produces other logos, last and devoided of productive power; it is a productive power that contains, deployed, the formal principles that it transmits as reflections or images on matter, thus shaping sensitive entities, without becoming immanent to them.