/lit/ - Literature

give back me trips

Can someone translate this into English?

>>16355007
It was never meant to be 007, also nice work on the thread.

>>16354998
Platonism is some dichotomous midwit Indian philosophy. Read Steven Pinker

>>16354998
>>when that repetitive autistic bald fat fuck who can't take a jokeo on the tube thinks Platonism is monistic or advaitic
Then what is it if it is not non-dual or monistic?

>>16354998
Why do you say One-Being? As if there could be more than one Being.

>>16354998
Platonism is just Pythagoreanism for aristocrats

>>16355100
more like peven stinker, pee-yew!

>>16355121
Because there's some sense of a centre, contrasting with someone like Heidegger or Husserl.

>>16355121
In Neoplatonism One-Being is used to distinguish the principle of Being from the "true" One, the One-before-Being, or using the prefered Neoplatonic jargon, superessential (hyperousios).

>>16354998
this is the same position of Pierre Grimes. he insists on Plato's One being related to the Self in the original greek and that all translations excised this self.

one for neoplatonism

bump

>>16356347
holy based.. I guess Coomaraswamy was right all along that Advaita and Platonism aligned and that Gersonfag/Damasciusfag misunderstood the tradition whose banner he had taken up on /lit/

>>16357333
Alhamdulillah

>>16355373
Just use the one/one-many/one-and-many distinction (or one/being-intellect/soul).

>>16356347
Pierre Grimes is a good introduction to stuff but he's no genius.
>>16355112
Triadic. Both, neither. Ineffable.

>>16355112
The one doesn't cause mixture.
The Dyad doesn't cause unity.
Ironically the Limited and Unlimited would only lead to infinity, the latter into endless multiplicity, and the former making each of these distinct, it would lead to Democritus' infinitesmal atomism.
Damascius realized that the third entity can't be posterior these two and must be a principle in itself. Which he calls the Unified, this Unified is mentioned by Proclus and is what Plotinus most calls the One, for this is the Good of the One; but Plotinus is multi-interpretable, he in one way say that the One-Being is the One, and in another sense not. That which brings all into harmony, and is the superessential demiurgos. He who brings himself into Being (literally) from 'himself'.

>>16358545
The chora is by all accounts a One.

So Platonism is just "spiritual" solipsism?

>>16358655
The Chora is the Indefinite Dyad, and she is The One when beholding the triad as One, but it is Life (rhea) when observed as the act of emanation itself, this is the Contentless meta observer before the soul makes any distinctions as Indefinite Dyad, the pupil 'before' it sees. This is undivided multiplicity, where, in a way, this is the One when viewed as the potency of all things. She is realized as Life simultaneously as God is self-realized as Nous. But this triad pre-exist their differentiation as the One. This is how there's only the One yet only Being-Life-Intellect, because you can't truly divorce the manifest from the unmanifest.
The reality of Mone/Rest, Proodos/Change, and return/the Instant?. Demands their Ineffable existence as the One. This paradox of Triadic absolute simplicity collapses into the purely Ineffable. But it wouldn't be Ineffable if these three merely existed conceptually. Even if there's simultaneous true that the One is one, it is also true that the Unlimitedness is real and truly distinct from the Limited, likewise the 'Mixer' is not a quality of the Monad or Dyad (since these two alone only leads to atomism not harmony of opposites), thus there are three necessarily three and not only two distinct but Undivided Arches of Being.

>>16359207
This is also how the One is nonexistent, and/or super-existent.
One-all (Monad, cause of individuality), All-one (Dyad, cause of difference, without itself being different), and the Many/Mixed/Unified (cause of Unity/Harmony between the One and the Many, simultaneously different from the One as Being and identical to the One as One-Being, aka One and Many in the Absolute sense, the Bridge and Chasm between the One and Being). Proclus could observe in his mind the reality of it but his "rationalism" refused a one to be both something and not that something.
This is how Platonism defends true distinction, plurality is not virtual. Oneness and Multiplicity are not a black and white this or that. But we must as Plato did in Sophist, when it comes to Rest and Change, cry out for both, and as we do reality cries out for the third. The hidden and the revealed. This is who we most of all call God.

Also Pierre Grimes has read Damascius if you watch his post-2010 videos.

>>16359264
what are your thoughts on his take on platonism commented here >>16356347 (which is still the his take noawadays)

>>16355000

>>16359292
That's not wrong since as I said the One is the three, the three are the One. They do not compose the one, but you can't deny their true reality in the fact that all Being possesses these three qualities. Everything is One and many, the one doesn't admit the many multiplicity doesn't admit oneness, without unity you could only have one them, thus there is third Arche that is both what is one and many but also the cause of how everything can be one and many. And not just absolutely simple or infinitely infinite.
The Platonism that Pierre Grimes accept is the simplified Platonism that Simplicius and Olympiodorus and sort of Proclus (in paradox) defends. Damascius and Iamblichus and Plotinus 'sometimes' all agree that this how reality is structured. That is: the transcendent absolutely simple Monad atop Being with increasing difference and plurality ending with Unintelligible Matter. But nobody calls the One the Monad, rather they admit the two Principles of Limit and Unlimited that exist after the Ineffable One which then together composes Being (aka Being, Life, Intellect). But how does two opposites unite? There's a real difference between causing individuality and plurality, likewise these are extremes. What Damascius finally accepts is the 'Inbetween', like the Golden Chain of Zeus that allows "all to be one yet separate".
He also calls this the Abyss since it is so hard to see yet its effect is more evident than all things' oneness or plurality (the fact that all things are one AND many), it is what makes knowledge and manifestation possible, for the Monad admits no distinction and the Dyad accepts no unity. But the Mixed is that very arche of Unity of Opposites.
But you can as Simplicius do simply collapse these into the One, as they all do. But that collapses the One itself into the Ineffable that you can't even call One, but this is maddening "heresy", which Proclus in silence understood but couldn't accept (therefore the silence).
Which is also what Damascius tells us to do, since it is incomprehensible yet logic/reason demands it given the state of What Is (Being). If we say the One is all there is then we dishonor him his infinite power and deprive Being of Life.
Reading Sophist and Philebus demands this interpretation, even Proclus talks about the Unified as coming directly from the One buy somehow it slips his mind that this makes it equal to the Limited and Unlimited, not secondary to them. Not making these equal leads to an infinite regress, because the Limited and Unlimited requires the Mixed to not infinitely be in conflict, but how can the higher be dependent of the lower. And you can't say in this system that the One unites the two principles, since this makes the One the Mixed but not the Limited and Unlimited, but that leads to another conundrum, one being that the One becomes twofold. Again Proclus in his Commentary to the Parmenides admits all these things, but Damascius completes the puzzle.

>>16359428
As in, Proclus and Plotinus says the same thing in writing/in hypotheses, but when most people (and Proclus himself) reconstructs their systems in scholastic ways they overlook this issue. Iamblichus was the first to confess "two" Ones. The second being manifesting, the first the Ineffable ummanifested, the manifesting causes the One-Being (aka the Manifested, the edge of Knowledge).
Something completely understandable isn't beyond being, you can't have an unparadoxical and completely effable entity be called Ineffable.
Words cannot properly express the Henads of the One, who each are the One absolutely yet distinct from eachother, and the One is not Composed.

>>16359428
>Everything is One and many
is it the same thing as Proclus saying in the second or third proposition of Elem. of Theol. that all things are one and not-one? By this I understand that all things are like the One for being unified and unlike the one for being distinct, individual, being what they are. This also recalls the idea of Sameness and Difference. But the Third, this Arche you mentioned, I can't envisage. Where in Plato does he hint at it? Who among the later platonists will develop this further?

>Principles of Limit and Unlimited
I find these terms to be a little misleading sometimes but I understand their purpose. The Limit is also unlimited and the Unlimited limited because the former will not be distinctly limited as individual partiuclar things and the latter will not be infinite, or indefinite, but will have limited proportions so to speak. So Limit and Unlimited both penetrate each other? And this is only possible as you said through the Arche, the Mixed? Which is what Plato hints at in Timaeus in the constitution of the Soul?

>collapse these into the One...
Because all of this ''process'' is what the One is in himself without extending out of himself?
> If we say the One is all there is then we dishonor him his infinite power and deprive Being of Life.
Denying his power is denying his will too since he passes willingly what he is to what he manifests and so denying his perfect Goodness (for being the perfect Good and passing it into others)?

Now turning back to Pierre Grimes's point about One as Self, I would say that we are not the Self itself, not the One himself, but his image, his reflection.

>>16359594
>>16359428
>The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.

>>16359594
>Where in Plato does he hint at it? Who among the later platonists will develop this further?
The entirety of Philebus really. He uses pleasure and pain as a medium to reveal the higher realities.

Socrates
And if we were to say that we are now in the vestibule of the good and of the dwelling of the good, should we not be speaking the truth after a fashion?

Protarchus
I certainly think so.

Socrates
What element, then, of the mixture would appear to us to be the most precious and also the chief cause why such a state is beloved of all? When we have discovered this, we will then consider whether it is more closely attached and more akin to pleasure or to mind in the universe. [64d]

Protarchus
Right; for that is most serviceable to us in forming our judgement.

Socrates
And it is quite easy to see the cause which makes any mixture whatsoever either of the highest value or of none at all.

Protarchus
What do you mean?

Socrates
Why, everybody knows that.

Protarchus
Knows what?

Socrates
That any compound, however made, which lacks measure and proportion, must necessarily destroy its components and first of all itself; [64e] for it is in truth no compound, but an uncompounded jumble, and is always a misfortune to those who possess it.

Protarchus
Perfectly true.

Socrates
So now the power of the good has taken refuge in the nature of the beautiful; for measure and proportion are everywhere identified with beauty and virtue.

Protarchus
Certainly.

Socrates
We said that truth also was mingled with them in the compound.

Protarchus
Certainly.

Socrates
Then if we cannot catch the good with the aid of one idea, 65a] let us run it down with three—beauty, proportion, and truth, and let us say that these, considered as one, may more properly than all other components of the mixture be regarded as the cause, and that through the goodness of these the mixture itself has been made good.

Sophist, Parmenides, and as you said, Timaeus, covers the same.
Being/Intellect is the mixture that has been 'made' good. The third Henad, is the third principle that does this, aka the principle of Epistrophe. While the Monad is the principle of Mone/Remaining, and the Dyad of Proodos/Proceeding. The One shines as these three, knowledge of the One can only be attained as any one of these at the time (all together makes it Ineffable). The One IS absolutely simple beyond being who's utterly inaccessible, the One IS the pure actualizing power of emanation into all things, the One IS the Telos draws all to it and whom all will return to. It is the Undivided white light, and the prism that Divides, but reverse this process it is the prism that returns the all back into unity.
(One problem with pure monism is that it denies teleology.) As distinct "colors" we are all each One, but not the One Yet. And we are each many in that if we can be infinitely further divided.
...

>>16359594
>So Limit and Unlimited both penetrate each other?
Yes the Monad/Limited/Sameness wills for all to be One, and itself to be the One that it unwillingly is distinct from. Because the Unlimited/Dyad/Difference is differentiating the All that preexist in the One which in fact itself. The Monad is also all things in the way that it brings all things together into itself like the zero deminsional center of a sphere (singularity) that you draw all lines into.
Thus the Unlimited and Limited are the same processes in reverse order to each other. The third is then the fulcrum of these simultaneous opposites. Or one could say it is also the mirror giving arise to the mirrored, but you can't say that either of the Monad or Dyad is the original image, or even whether the mirror is the originator of the two (which is also the case, all three are the original state); there is no before the other even if we ontologically start with Mone from which Proodos is proceeding, since the three are not themselves what they emanate as one (each is a absolutely simple Henad).
>Denying his power is denying his will too since he passes willingly what he is to what he manifests and so denying his perfect Goodness (for being the perfect Good and passing it into others)?
Yes. No one is wrong to say that all is One, you just have to immediately say the opposite. Or rather repeat the same sentence with different emphasis:
>ALL IS one
>all is ONE
All-one and One-all. Distinct but Undivided, different yet the same. "Everything partakes of likeness and Unlikeness, thus everything is One through likeness and infinite through Unlikeness. The One is both, or beyond both as Ineffable, or child of both as One-Being.
Being is where these are made differentiated. >>16359207 picture.
If you're familiar Orthodoxy perichoresis is a watered down version of this.

>>16359809
The Mixed is also expressed within time as the duration of any one life, of any object or thing. From nonbeing all bodies persist inbetween dissipation and dissipation, we are held together but yet not all collapsed into identicals, one might use blackholes as metaphors of excess of Limit (which is also unlimited in another way) and entropy and the expansion of space pulling all apart as signs of the Unlimited/Difference endless multiplying quantities; then like in the beginning 'the temporary', that things in-fact have some extended duration through time (identity over time) is a sign of the Mixed balancing Limit/Same and Unlimited/Different.

>>16359979
>child of both as One-Being.
but here the One is subsequent then. I think the only way is his being beyond sameness and difference, this being conditioned to the process that follows immediately from him. the first step out of himself, or the very apprehension of himself. and this reminds me of an image i am very fond: the Father entering into his own superessential abyss, self-beholding himself and his consciousness of himself is His Word uttered, that is his image (and Son), and the perfect correspondence of the God and its Image, Father and Son, is the Love of the Spirit.

>>16355165
>onomatopoeia
based

>>16360067
sure, Maximus the Confessor perhaps uses such language but it conflicts with christian doctrine (the three persons of the trinity are ontologically identical). The Henads are before/beyond any actual activity or process, the process is made manifest in the Intelligible Triad.
If go by Plotinus, there's the Indefinite that proceeds to the farthest extent of difference (matter), then turns back or is turned back (same thing in the ultimate sense) to the farthest height of Being, that is, the sun of the Intelligible world, aka the Good.

The Henadic "Triad" is the the unmanifest precondition for the whole process of all reality, it is simultaneously only One and paradoxically three that immediately becomes the Intelligible Rriad: Emanation and Return. Into the cave and out of the cave and back in again. Christianity does not see beyond the One-Being, they are in essence middle platonic in that they combine the One and Being, not really admiting a "divide" betweem essence and super-essentiality.
'Creation' is unnecessary for you, God did it, for all intents and purposes, "because why not"; he could equally just as well have willed to not create create and nothing would be worse or better for it. While creation in Platonism is an eternal consequence of the free-will of the plural that the One eternally wills to be infinite (willing and his being and his actualizing of this will that is his being are one quality).

>>16360251
Also Damascius doesn't just let the paradox of the threeness of the One pass him by ("muh god is above logic bro"), they, or rather we, ""fuse"" these distinctions into the true Ineffable (the Intellect can't conceive of this reality). Which leads into Silence at the 'last steps' of theurgic contemplation, you close the Flower of Intellect, the Eye of the Soul, into non-perception, into non-comprehension. All names fail at pointing, pointing fails at pointing, this includes apophatic ways, since denial is the mother of all assertions. The Ineffable admits of no assertions including this assertion that it doesn't admit any assertions (that's why the first step isn't silence but the last you do after having hailed God with all honorifics, apophatic. and kataphatic), not even the name One except as the being the greatest name to give,beyond Oneness, transcending transcendence, beyond sameness, beyond difference, beyond plurality, neaer to you than your soul, more inaccessible than the inaccessible.
You shall only say ἕν by subconsciously breathing (you utter this every time you breathe) not by actively willing to speak.

>>16360067
>Prior to the true beings and to the universal principles there is the one god, prior cause even of the first god and king, remaining unmoved in the singularity of his own unity. For no object of intellection is linked to him, nor anything else. He is established as a paradigm for the self-fathering, self-generating and only-fathered God who is true Good; for it is something greater, and primary, and fount of all things, and basic root of all the first objects of intellection, which are the forms. From this One there has autonomously shone forth the self-sufficient god, for which reason he is termed “father of himself” and “principle of himself”; for he is first principle and god of gods, a monad springing from the One, pre-essential and first principle of essence. For from him springs essentiality and essence, for which reason he is termed “father of essence”; he himself is pre-essential being, the first principle of the intelligible realm, for which reason he is termed “principle of intellection.” These, then, are the most senior principles of all, which Hermes ranks as prior to the aetherial and empyrean gods, and to the celestial ones; he has handed down, at any rate, a hundred treatises giving an account of the empyrean gods and a number equal to this about the aetherial ones, and a thousand about the celestial ones.
If you applied christian theology to the above, The Father would be the 'first god and king'; the 'other', here mentioned, that is "above" the First God, is the Ineffable 'One'. >>16360251 >>16360431
This revelation is already hinted at in Egyptian lore (Nun, Atum, Ra, Ptah, Amun) as the Coffin Texts reveal. Maximus the Confessor and Pseudo-Dionysius and some other non-doctors-of-the-church theorizing Christians, make the Divine Nature/Godhead into this 'non-entity entity'; but again excuse themselves with leaving it at the paradox instead of admitting that this hints at something beyond words yet distinct nonetheless. Because you are stuck with the trinity as the limit of your ontology (even if you say that the Father causes the son and spirit yet this isn't an act of his divine nature yet nonetheless clearly an act that the Son and Spirit do not perform in-spite of supposedly sharing all energia with the father; I suppose that only happens to be external energia and not internal acts, but i gusss your doctors have glossed over that part).