/lit/ - Literature

>>14506785
>His lectures are littered with offhand repetitions of scraps from fictionalized ancient biographies (e.g. "Plato was a member of the Pythagorean order,"
But he was member of the order.

>tl;dr: platonism is a traditionalism

>>13621056

Neoplatonism was the definitive expression of Egyptian metaphysics.

>>11601861
I'm still trying to figure this one out.

>>11588769

>>11436239
>rituals weren't metaphysical

read pic related

>>11427854
>
I believe that the proper way to evaluate anything is to consider the intentions of those seeking to create something, rather than by my own personal preferences. In the case of Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth, Uzdavinys seems to have been concerned with constructing an irrefutable argument that ancient Egypt (i.e. Kmt) is the root of Western philosophical traditions, especially those expressed by the ancient Hellenes (i.e. Greeks). He has exhaustively accomplished this feat. If what you want from a book is a perfectly formed map of the evidence demonstrating the borrowing/plagiarism of Kmtian beliefs by Hellenes, then this is the book. Uzdavinys' work here is likely to serve as the source material for anyone wanting to reestablish the preeminence of Kmtian thought and its influence that is clearly still with us in the modern world, via reference.

Why are modern scholars and academics so quick to dismiss magic and mysticism as "superstitious nonsense"? Do they really assume the ancient mind is so easily duped?

>To turn the actors of the cosmogonical ritual, be they gods, daimons, or miraculous forces, into mental categories means to separate the living flesh from the dead bones and present the purified bones as the logical structure of being. This translation is a painful hermeneutical procedure which, at the dawn of Hellenic philosophy, or rather of rational and emancipated philosophical discourse, was a purely esoteric undertaking supported by dreams of power.

This book argues, by appealing to literary evidence (i.e. historical accounts), comparative religious studies and Egyptology, that philosophy in Hellenic Greece sprouted from a cultural osmosis that originated in New Kingdom Egypt with the popularization of Old Kingdom beliefs and practices. What was originally a liturgical society, comparable to the Vedic period, centered around hymns, rituals, mock-poetry debates, etc. with a technical priestly caste as the sole authority of beliefs, became popularized and pantheistic for the later generations after some social and cultural upheavals pressured loss of antiquated practices, similar to the growth of Hinduism and Vedanta. Those pantheistic beliefs were picked up by the arcane currents of Orphism and Pythagoreanism and eventually sprouted philosophy as a discursive science of the natural world once technical terms and neologisms became conventional in a removed and abstracted discourse.

Plato was one of the few who remained true to his Pythagorean heritage by making philosophy inseparable from religious praxis and purification. And all of those elements that are found in most religious traditions, e.g. patronage to the deity (i.e. Socrates' Apollo), philosophical "pederasty" (i.e. Symposium), orator pedagogy (i.e. the dialogues), etc., are exemplified in his works the most. Aside from the theurgical Neoplatonic current some hundreds of years later, philosophy in the manner of post-Aristotelian logic gradually became independent and speculative. Platonism itself, removed from a ritual and religious context, became interiorized and taught a belief in the immortality of the soul and philosophy as a way to separating the soul from the debased world. This legacy was inherited by Christian Platonism.

Some of its implications are that the history of Western thought are total fabrications or distortions, seen as a kind of linear progression to enlightened rational thought, that the Cartesian subjectivity is a secularized version of an antiquated reinterpretation of ritual hymns and rites in a "barbaric" civilization, that is, the immortality of the soul and dualism of the body, and that philosophical speculation is a discursive fantasy, that there are no technical solutions to philosophical problems because they are articulated in a mere linguistic play.

It's a shame more of his works aren't translated from Lithuanian. It's a really interesting read.