/lit/ - Literature

>>16027148
the whole "mission" of Platonism from Philolaus to Olympiodorus has been to affirm multiplicity in face of the real existence of the One. They all as a whole contradict Shankara.

SOCRATES: Let us be very careful about the starting point we take.
PROTARCHUS: What kind of starting point?
SOCRATES: Let us make a division of everything that actually exists now in the universe into two kinds, or if this seems preferable, into THREE. PROTARCHUS: Could you explain on what principle?
SOCRATES: By taking up some of what has been said before.
PROTARCHUS: Like what?
SOCRATES: We agreed earlier that the god had revealed a division of what is into the UNLIMITED and the LIMIT.
PROTARCHUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Let us now take these as two of the kinds, while treating the ONE that results from the MIXTURE of these TWO as our THIRD kind.

This simple section is the TL;DR, of Damascius Problems and Solutions.
But I won't handhold you through the way.

what Socrates refers to earlier is:
SOCRATES: It is not very difficult to describe it, but extremely difficult to use. For everything in any field of art that has ever been discovered has come to light because of this. See what way I have in mind.
PROTARCHUS: Please do tell us.
SOCRATES: It is a gift of the gods to men, or so it seems to me, hurled down from heaven by some Prometheus along with a most dazzling fire. And the people of old, superior to us and living in closer proximity to the gods, have bequeathed us this tale, that whatever is said to be consists of one and many, having in its nature limit and unlimitedness. Since this is the structure of things, we have to assume that there is in each case always one form for every one of them, and we must search for it, as we will indeed find it there. And once we have grasped it, we must look for two, as the case would have it, or if not, for three or some other number. And we must treat every one of those further unities in the same way, until it is not only established of the original unit that it is One, Many and Unlimited, but also how many kinds it is. For we must not grant the form of the unlimited to the plurality before we know the exact number of every plurality that lies between the unlimited and the one. Only then is it permitted to release each kind of unity into the unlimited and let it go. The gods, as I said, have left us this legacy of how to inquire and learn and teach one another. But nowadays the clever ones among us make a one, haphazardly, and a many, faster or slower than they should; they go straight from the one to the unlimited and omit the intermediates. It is these, however, that make all the difference as to whether we are engaged with each other in dialectical or only in eristic discourse.