/lit/ - Literature

>>23515908
The Neoplatonic contemplative ascent is like coupling with Goodness, Beauty, and Truth itself. Vastly superior.

This one was good, although I'd include Proclus' Elements, Aristotle, and some Aquinas. Not sure what I'd sub out. Boheme probably for one.

>>23299868
All creatures need an end or else they would never start doing anything and would be indifferent to all acts. Happiness is man's final end. Happiness consists in divine union, for this is what man most ardently strives for by nature, according to the desire for the Good, the Beautiful, and the True (practical, aesthetic, and theoretical reason).

Now, post fall, man's reason is defective, so men do not always realize what their ideal final end is. We roam restlessly and are restless until we rest in God.

There is no daylight between man's telos and divine union, or happiness and theosis. To consider otherwise is a gross misreading of the scholastics, so this difference carries no weight.

It might be said that their arguments for man's final cause cannot be supported by natural theology/natural law alone, that it needs the introduction of revelation/divine law, but it is simply not the case that they make the mistake of implying that worldly happiness is man's final end or cannot explain why St. Paul and St. Peter, bruised and awaiting execution, are fulfilling their end and have achieved eudaimonia.

The error here seems to be conflating modern materialist notions of happiness and flourishing grounded in biology with the Scholastics or even Aristotle's conception. Aristotle allows that men can achieve some measure of eudaimonia outside the contemplative life, but this is less perfect.

As he points out, all for which man toils, the wars he fights, etc. are to buy him time for leisure. And leisure is most perfect in contemplation. The basic desires in men "all men by nature desire to know," point to our happiness in God. Likewise, all the things of the world point upwards to the first cause, so the search for understanding is ultimately a search for God, as is the search for beauty. The world is a ladder handed down by grace for the ascent of the soul (St. Bonaventure), the flow things from the unity of Logos into the logoi of creation, and their eventual return (St. Maximus, St. Denis).

>>23299688
The practical reason set. Here is the theoretical reason one. I should make an aesthetical reason one, but it's harder to think of what to include. The Divine Comedy for sure. Maybe Hildegard.

ready to ascend?

The peak of the ascent, or am I missing something?