/lit/ - Literature

Ok, so evil is a privation of good. But why does it exist in the first place? And why don't the God(s) do something about it?
I am assuming the Demiurge and the Gods are omnipotent and omnibenevolent.

>>19789877
you only need
>Ethics
>Politics
>Poetics
>Rhetoric
Everything else... unless you want to bash your head, just get a decent secondary source to summarize everything. I would also recommend Melzer's "reading between the lines" book about philosophy.

Also, you don't need to read Aristotle to read Heidegger. In fact, contrary to the memes, all you need is a solid familiarity with Western philosophy in general before you read Heidegger, which you can get through a quality history of philosophy book.

Read Being and Time, bang your head through it, get a secondary source or two to help interpret it, then read the Wikipedia article on ontotheology. Now go back and read anything you want, but I recommend (if you haven't already):
>exoteric Plato
>Aristotle
>Plotinus
>esoteric Plato (Strauss, Tubingen School)
>Lucretius (he's the best counter to everything I just presented)
>The Bible
>St. Augustine
>Maimonides
>St. Aquinas
>Dao De Jing
>Neiye
>Zhuangzi
>Guenon
>Evola
Then live life, meditate, pray, exercise, find God, and then you will understand the truth. You can read other people after that, but I promise you that this is the core.

>>19786429
I'd fuck you better than that Bataille-reading simp ever could. And it's because I'm vrilpilled. Anyway, I'm going back to reading my esoteric books. I don't have time for this shit.

What exactly did Plato mean by the Light/Sun outside of his Cave allegory? Was it meant to be the virtues of justice, wisdom, and temperance? Could it perhaps have been a detachment from senseless traditions (shadows) in which we find comfort but not Truth? Or was he leaving "Truth" up for discovery or to interpretation? Discuss

"Read" Plato's Parmenides, Philebus, Sophist, and Book 10 of Laws. This will blow the fuck out of the water all Eastern thought, and this is just the beginning. Although these four are also where you'll return at the end.

Good books where the reader is the protagonist?

SMOOTH OPERATOR because im a SMOOTH OPERATOR

PEW PEW PEW

Platon.

>>16499584
To elaborate. The more virtuous an individual is the more powerful this individual is (as an individual), the same with a group. Of course the delusion of today brought about short-sighted perspectives is that evil gets you prosperity. But in the grand scheme this is false. The most prosperous nations are those with highest Trust inbetween all its citizens and has respect from other nations, powerful armies arise from duty bound and loyal soldiers, from courage and wisdom. The true competition of history is won by the most virtuous (wisdom is a virtue) group and individual, being an individual without a group is not fully virtuous, it's a dictum in Platonist that one with friends and ease of friendship is a quick measure of virtue and wisdom.
Thus Good = Power, and we return to the conundrum of how a being further from the Good has more Power than the Myriad Souls it captures. Ergo. Death should liberate us, and we are also the true captors of ourselves, we are the true cause of our being chained in the cave. And this is the heart of the Narcissus myth. Don't be so enamored with your image reflected in the waters of the indefinite that you fall in entirely. Lost in what only could be.

>>16343655
The past and future, all change and all rest, plurality and oneness, are all simultaneously present in the eternal, in the One-Being. Aka Beauty, aka Love, aka Harmony, aka God. Being-Life-Intellect.

>>16335347
Ergo, Happiness/meaningfulness is not pain or pleasure, but the reaching of your most valued goals. Pleasure is a side effect. Anti-nats literally can't grasp this. The universe shall will your consciousness into existence again and again until you fulfill your duty. Only then will you have relief.

The joy of dialectics as Socrates points out, is a pleasure in itself.
The Endless Discourse of Philebus.
The inaccessibility of gnostic certainty for the highest truth—in Theaetetus.
Only faith, hope, and love, can reach beyond Olympus

>>16113613
You start with the Greeks

>>16099067
It's a retarded amalgamation of Zurvan, Serapis, Phanes/Orphic Zeus, and various myths Egyptian myths.
For example in the night journey of the soul after death, I think in spell 355 of the Coffin Texts, you'll meet a great daemon, who'll you'll have to recite the spell against.
There are accounts like these and literlist bugmen midwit Gnostics take this as an external entity and not the fact that everything in the Night Journey is a struggle with the Soul and itself, the "the evil spirit" is the same inclination that made you peer into the mirror and fall into becoming, as in Narcissus and Dionysus myth. Just as when people think the Titans in the Dionysian myth are literally evil gods and not also workers of higher Providence.
This is made most obvious in one of Proclus Hymns.
God I hate Gnostics.

It just dawned on me.
The political ideas in Republic were mostly Socrates' ideas, since it is said that he supported the thirty tyrants. But Plato's was more along the lines of Laws and Statesman, so he used Socrates politics as a way to explain the Soul and heaven.

The best translaton is Thomas Taylor's Prometheus Trust Edition of the Complete Works of Plato Vol. I
It's perfect intro to philosophy by having Alcibiades I first with excellent commentary by Olympiodorus and Proclus, then Proclus comments on the Republic. Plus Taylor's ingenious understanding of Platonism, one can only call inspired, a torch in the dark of enlightenment and thousand years of flawed Christian ontology.

Intuition is above reason and emotion.

>>15813288
>>15813521
God Will Forgive Israel
14 Shepherd Your people with Your staff,
The flock of Your heritage,
Who dwell solitarily in a woodland,
In the midst of Carmel;
Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead,
As in days of old.

15 “As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,
I will show them wonders.”

16 The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might;
They shall put their hand over their mouth;
Their ears shall be deaf.
17 They shall lick the dust like a serpent;
They shall crawl from their holes like snakes of the earth.
They shall be afraid of the Lord our God,
And shall fear because of You.
18 Who is a God like You,
Pardoning iniquity
And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?

He does not retain His anger forever,
Because He delights in mercy.
19 He will again have compassion on us,
And will subdue our iniquities.

You will cast all our sins
Into the depths of the sea.

According to the more based church fathers, the fires of gehenna is identical to God's grace. It is your disposition towards God before that determines how the light/fire will feel. Your own hatred burning away opening up your heart to guilt and shame for all your sins. The sins you wore as clothing and armor in your degeneracy are burned away from you and thrown into the sea.

>Hence both the arguments taken from compression and those taken from the analogy of Being lead to this One that is seated above Being. For just as Being is the first intelligible among beings, so also the supersubstantial One is the first intelligible among supersubstantial beings. Therefore that which transcends them would be unknowable. As for that spurious argument taken from negation and from analogy, as well as the syllogism which forces its conclusion through logical necessity, to the effect that someone knows what he does not know––all of these belong to the thought that walks on the void, a thought that claims that it knows some things on the basis of others.
There is no sun behind the eclipse.

There is no motion in a determinist universe, thus there is no cause and effect to be determined, thus determinism doesn't exist.
Why? No object is an objective category, only a free subject have presentations, otherwise these are illusions like the intuition that you have free will.
Since we've all read Plato's Sophist this is all obviously self-evident, and we're just bantering, haha!

Get Thomas Taylor's five volumes of Plato. Full with divinely inspired neoplatonic comments.
Like 4 times more expensive but entirely worth it.
In fact get the whole catalogue for 800.

CRITO: What was your dream?
SOCRATES: I thought that a beautiful and comely woman dressed in white approached me and said:
>"Socrates, may you arrive at fertile Phthia on the third day."
CRITO: A strange dream, Socrates.

Before you ask that question shouldn't you first establish whether or not it's possible to escape in the first place?

Take the leap of Intuitive Faith.
Step into the void of the One.