/lit/ - Literature

Do yourself a favor and read the Patristics instead. The good parts of Gnosticism are orthodox and became part of orthodoxy.

Pic related is good. So is William Harmless' Mystics and his book on Augustine.

>>23494238
>Incel black pilled.
>"I am totally beyond stupid ideologies bro."
Let me help you with this bro.

>>23313968
Schindler is an extremely interesting guy. His life's mission seems to be to bring forward the classical/medieval tradition and make it speak to modern issues. Outside of the Hegel book, he has two books of freedom that are extremely good, "Freedom From Reality: The Diabolical Nature of Modern Freedom," and "Retrieving Freedom," which follows up the first books' diagnosis of the problems in the modern conception of freedom (largely looking through Locke and then comparing it to Plato and Aristotle) with a tour of freedom in the classical tradition (covering Plotinus, St. Augustine, Boethius, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, St. Aquinas, and ending with the begining of the "problems" in Ockham). Those are certainly great books and definitely interesting in terms of Hegel, who in many ways is extending the Platonic tradition (there are a lot of similarities between The Philosophy of Right, The Republic, and The Laws).

He also has "Love and the Postmodern Tradition," which is the only accessible, modern-oriented treatment of the very interesting but obscure scholastic Doctrine of Transcendentals (which has pride of place in Aquinas, Eckhart, etc. — the convertibility of the Good, the Beautiful, and the True with Being qua Being).

Only problem is he can be a little preachy on the negative sides of modernity, and I don't think he properly appreciates the way in which modern economies and political systems actually do a lot to enable the kind of holistic freedom he is looking for. That is, he diagnoses the diseases in modernity well, but not how parts of it actually empower humanity in new ways if the misology and nihilism is cut away. That and he has the tendency so common in academia to present positions in controversial ways that really aren't that radical when explained, but which catch people's attention. I think this is more prone to turn people off then draw them in though.

Talking about him reminds me of Robert M. Wallace's "Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and Today." That is also a really excellent book, although it focuses on Plato a good deal more than Hegel. But it's quite short and really nails making some of the harder ideas in them accessible. It is though, strangely not really about mysticism lol. More the metaphysics of freedom and the relation to the Good. His Plato also strikes me as maybe a bit more the Patristic version of Plato than Plato himself, but that's not too big of a detraction. The Patristics don't get nearly enough attention because modern phil is allergic to Jesus references so greats like St. Maximus don't get the play they should and even Augustine loses purchase.

>>23310398
Plato's work is really great just on literary merit but it's also much easier to get the wrong idea of what Plato is talking about because of this. At times, he has Socrates advance bad arguments on purpose and a lot of the dialogues are left pretty open ended.

Aristotle is a lot drier. Not all of it is polished literary works, some is lecture notes compiled by his students. It's easier to not get anything out of Aristotle but confusion, but generally easier to avoid completely misunderstanding him.

The big thing with Plato is to not end up in a place where you think he is just saying "the body is bad, everything is determined by magical forms that float free or the world in their own magic space." It's a lot more nuanced, complex and beautiful than that.

Pic related has one of the more succinct explanations of the Forms I've seen. It also has the benefit of being quite accessible for most of it.

St. Augustine is a joy to read. St. Thomas can be a slog. One thing that helps is jumping to the response and then flipping back and forth between the objections and responses instead of reading it straight through.

Definitely don't miss Boethius, at least the Consolation of Philosophy. It's a work of art and a great attempt at synthesizing Plato and Aristotle. It wasn't the most copied book outside the Bible in the Middle Ages for no reason. Its a great description of the Platonic ascent.

Man was created for a purpose. Man's end is what all men by nature strive for. All men by nature strive to be happy/lead flourishing lives. This is ultimately perfected in the contemplation of God and immutable things. (Aristotle, St. Aquinas)

Why? You can always lose external goods like money or sex or food or even friends and family. Loving the Good is a fully internal Good, a grasp of the immutable.

This is why Saint Paul, Saint Ignatius, Boethius, etc. can write so sublimely even as they face gruesome deaths/are already being tortured. No external ill can displace their happiness in God.

But with external, created goods we are never fully pleased. Elon Musk for instance does not seem to be a happy man for all his money, kids, women, etc. God created us for God and we are restless until we rest in God (St. Augustine).

The highest good is mystical union with the divine, which God invites us to. The purpose of the liturgy and sacraments is ultimately to draw us to this union, theosis, and diefication.

This requires metanoia, a total turning around of the person, transcending current belief and desire for what one thinks is truly good (seen in Plato even before the Patristics)

Man is also called to freedom. We are not free when sin rules over us, when we are controlled by desire, instinct, passions, and circumstance. (Romans 7). Instead we have a civil war in the soul (Republic book 4). Only the Logos, reason, who is Christ and our position in the divine image can harmonize the appetites and passions and make us ruled over by ourselves. Only the truly transcedent nature of reason is what allows man to go beyond what he currently is and knows and in doing so become self-moving and self-determining. Reason is ecstatic (Phaedrus) (D.C. Schindler)

A meaningful life entails freedom. Man's free moral act, following natural law, is the rational agents' participation in eternal law (Aquinas).

Through rejecting created things we cease to be a mere effect of causes external to ourselves and come to be led by what we think is truly good. The world is a sign pointing to the ultimate good (St. Bonaventure).

Love is also transcedent, making one identify with what one is not. Only in love are we not determined by what lies outside of us. Love is perfection. Ultimately, we want to love all creatures only on account of God's love for them (St. Bernard of Clairvaux).

This requires that we start is ascetic discipline and metanoia (Origen, St. Maximus, Evargrius). But we are illuminated with grace and ultimately justified by faith never works. All man's works are the product of grace since we are not self-creating (Bonneventure, Aquinas)

Pic related is quite good, although a bit secular.

>>23195400
Yes, William Harmless' Mystics. Absolutely hands down the best I've seen. Harmless is fantastic at letting authors speak in their own words through the use of skillfully selected excerpts and he has a gift for succinctly explaining thinkers and their context. IIRC, the work covers William James and Gerson's definition of mysticism, Thomas Merton, Hildegard, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Bonaventure, Evargrius, Miester Eckhart, and then Rumi (Sufi) and Dogen (Zen) who are nice comparison studies.

His book on St. Augustine is excellent as well, as is the book on the Desert Fathers, but Mystics takes the cake.

The compilation Light From Light, which has many of the same figures but also St. John of the Cross, St. Augustine, St. Francis, Origen, and the Cloud of Unknowing is very good too but the introductions aren't as good.

Both are on Libgen. I think Harmless' book might be out of print unfortunately.

Pic related is also quite good, although not focused on Christianity at all. But it's a good explanation of the philosophical side of mysticism that heavily influenced Christianity.

>>23083604
>the universalism of christniggers stops at anyone who refuses to be a christian

No it doesn't. The universalism identified by Tilich in Origen, Erasmus, etc. rather states that all such revelations of Logos in history stem from the one and the same Divine Word. For Augustine's semiotics for example, the Trinity is involved in the knowing of the pagan as much as the saint.

Romans 1:20 lays the foundation for natural theology. Thus, Abelard was able to argue that Socrates and Plato were saved, while Dante at least spares them, and the great Arab thinkers Avicenna and Averoese from the fires of Hell. All knowledge, all truth, leads back to its source.

>>23056806
For the a good definition of reflexive freedom and what it takes to truly become an agent.

>>23055536
No. There is a very similar thing going on in Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity. On the one hand, there is the total denial of the self, the apophatic separation from the sensual, but this doesn't entail indifference to others.

I think this explains it well. The idea is to become like the divine, theosis. To be indifferent to something is still to be defined by what one is not. Love is transcendent in that it is the identification of the other with the self. The truly transcendent must fully embrace what it is not so that it has no limit.

Saint John of the Cross. Also pic related and Thomas Merton.

>>22904862
I really like this book too, although I think it misses our by skipping over the Neoplatonists and Patristics. In terms of the pragmatic aspects on how to live and the overcoming of disorder in the soul, it's a shame the author doesn't get into Augustine.

>>22873206
...the idea that rocks and atoms have experienced, then conciousness seems like an awfully good candidate for strong emergence. Strong emergence works fine in process metaphysics, and physics itself has abandoned the idea of sui generis substances for the most part anyhow, replacing them with fields and process, so there is even more reason to make this switch.

>>22873177
You seem to be assuming that there is either libertarian acausal free will or there is no free will. But most philosophers embracing free will would say this is simply a false dichotomy.

Determinism is a prerequisite for free will, both so that our choices are determined by our prior thoughts and our identity, which exists prior to choices, and so that our actions can have determinant effects we can predict. Freedom is about how much our actions are determined by our concious awareness, our goals and preferences, on the one hand, and on the other how well the "rational part of the soul," can unify the person. The latter is important because the big risk to freedom, per the ancient philosophers and Patristics, is being ruled over by desire and instinct. When this happens, we become divided, at war with ourselves.

Shaping ones enviornment is a huge part of freedom. Just consider how our mastery of technology, techne, enhances our causal powers. We weren't free to cross the planet in a day until we invented jets, etc.

There are plenty of good arguments why rationality is the place to look for self determination, but they are fairly complex so I will just leave pic related here, which isn't so much about "mysticism" as it is about Plato and Hegel's definition of reflexive freedom .

>>22787275
We live in a fallen world. I love Saint Augustine but Augustinian genetic original sin isn't anywhere in the Bible and it's a place where the Eastern Church gets more right.

We don't see God telling Adam that his nature is cursed. Indeed, we continue to see the Bible refer to man as "little below the angles," and "fearfully and wonderfully made." Rather, the fall of man's innocence, replicated for each person in the passage to adulthood, results in God saying "cursed is the ground because of you."

The Hebrew isn't "knowledge of good and evil," but rather "good and bad." This should be compared with the first creation story where God created through divine speech instead of forming from dead Earth and breathing into it.

The two creation stories contradict each other. In the first, the Earth "puts forth grass" on Day 3. In the second, there are no plants before man is made, only potential waiting for rains. People trying to merge these two stories miss the point. In the first, man and woman are both created at the same time in an image of God. The things are created on Earth/heaven in order of how much freedom of motion they have. Man is the crown in being rational and most self-determining.

So the two stories tell us different things. The Logos of the world as divine speech and man as a mirror for this, free and given the duty to rule. The second man as living dirt who immediately disobeys his maker and begins revaluing things for himself. The fall is the result of man taking on the role of God for himself.

The rest of the story is how God allows man to mature such that he can freely choose God and achieve divine union with him. "God became man that man might become God." Christ is a bridge, the Spirit becomes our spirit.

People err by focusing too much on individuals. This is the biggest problem is with Reformed theology, it is hyper individualistic. But the Bible has a very corporate vision for how many develops and is saved, saved through being part of an organic Body of Christ.

Our own limited free will is a fractal microcosm of historical mankind, who loses his innocence and must collectively come to freely choose God. Hence all th dialectical churn and schism in the Church. Our whole world is full of fractal recurrence. Our race is like a rebellious adolescent at this point in history.

Check Romans 7, it's a powerful formulation of positive, reflexive freedom, freedom as unity and self determination. Only the Logos can ressurect us to personhood from death in disorder, as w are ruled by instinct, desire, and circumstance. Plato had a similar glimpse of freedom. See pic related, but the Patristics get this more right.

>>22777743
If you read this, you'll see that the claim that "all the guys before me were life denying dogmatists!" is just unsupported dogma itself.

Hegel was a beer hall guy with close friends who drew big crowds, had a happy marriage with a younger woman, and had four sons. He had an active social and church life. He comes off a lot less "life denying" than Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, both of whom had misanthropic tendencies in different ways and both of whom seem to have their view of women colored by varrying degrees of inceldom.

I think the other big contrast would be Saint Augustine and "the good life." He's a very life affirming guy and his biography shows you a worldly guy who always had close friendships and lived to the fullest. He had a brilliant career started in the imperial capital and gave it all up to start his own monestary after giving up his family's wealth. He isn't plagued by the resentment you see in some thinkers. Bad stuff happened to him. His son died, he had to break up with he defacto wife. But the Confessions is not the biography of a "life denying" man.

Nietzsche's critique of Christianity gets some things right, but he makes it a universal critique despite it being based on a knowledge of the 19th century Protestant pietism of an an increasingly irreligious laity. In the object being critiques, you don't see the apophatic infinity of Saint Dennis' "darkness above the light," or Saint Bonneventure's overflowing love. Nietzsche would have found many kindred voices preaching the "love of fate" he proclaims if he had dug deeper. It's impossible to have actually read Saint Bonaventure, the philosopher of love par excellence, and come away with the idea that he is "life denying." The same is true for Rumi or the bombastic aesthetics or Hildegard. Even Eckhart and Boehme, who might superficially fit Nietzsche's critique in some ways, don't fit on closer example much at all.

He does a bit better throwing rocks at the over intellectualization of the Origens and Erasmuses of the tradition, but even there he is missing.

But where his critiques do land on target they are great. I tend to agree with Kaufman, Nietzsche is a great diagnostician. He errs in critiquing what he doesn't know, but when he talks about what he does know he is solid. But he's also not a great system builder. It's easier to attack arguments than build up, and that's why I think his reputation is a bit over blown. What he assets positivity is muddy.

Now, given his vision of the ideal human life, of the ideal philosopher, of a overcoming resentment, I think this is a problem. What he wants to be, what he elevates, and what he ends up being (largely a critic chopping things down) end up at odds with one another. You can forgive poor readers in thinking the point was to simply dispense with all values, because a concrete vision never emerges about "what should be." In this, I think it's fair to critique Nietzsche got who his followers have been, BAP, etc.

I don’t know if it’s *radically* original but I found this book quite illuminating and not like any academic text I’ve read in how it rigorously draws a thread between Platonism, mysticism, Western philosophy, and science all without a shred of woo or handwaving. Incredibly underrated.