/lit/ - Literature

>>18339253
Bros you inspired me to give my teacher a book list of ancient-medieval-renaissance philosophy, incorporating some of your suggestions. He seemed really interested

>>18339253
Based platonists

>>18339288
Based. Ascend through the spiral of death my brothers

What do you guys think of Parsifal? Does it express a Platonic worldview?

Apparently Wagner took a strong interest in Platonism and Medieval mysticism in his old age, and Jung referred to it as Wagner finally going up again "to the sublime spirituality of Parsifal".

here are your platonists bro

>without gods, without oracles, a philosopher has no place. - Damascius
Friendly reminder to be a Platonist is to be a polytheist. Simple as.

Christian platonism? A contradiction in terms.

>>18339343
Low quality post.

>>18339343
What Gods do you worship then?
Do you worship them because they are Gods or are they Gods because you worship them?
Do you worship all Gods or just a few of them?

>>18339343
Absolute dogshit. Plato wouldn't have agreed with any part of this post. Sage in all fields

>>18339343
>missing the point of that quote that badly

>>18339253
>Socrates is a fat wop

>>18339410
>Sage in all fields
What? Did that single post ruin the thread completely?

>>18339463
>>18339432
>>18339410
>>18339357
>>18339352
holy seethe

>>18339460
He was a fat greek. Try not to get focused on such trivialities.

>>18339410
Cut someone who thinks Socrates/Plato wasn't devout polytheists and a person that hasn't read Plato bleeds.

Why are you trying to derail the thread? Explain why Platonism is NECESSARILY polytheistic, or leave.

>>18339352
>>18339410
>>18339432
>muh bible niggers seething
you've been stealing philosophical thoughts for ages shut up

>>18339548
This post has already been made, why make it again?

>>18339548
>stealing
Why be so reductive about the history of Western philosophy/theology just because it's of a different religion?

>>18339535
Because monotheism was refuted by Parmenides and Plato was expanding on Parmenides. Parmenides made it clear that ontology is greater than theology. Any described god is distinct and so merely one among many. Whatever cope posting by Christians you can dig up throughout history trying to position their god as the broad metaphysical principle merely leads to it forever being sublated into Eleatic Being.

The box of Eleatic Being forever swallows up whatever you may throw at it, and Christianity will forever be incoherent because of it.

And so... for me? Yeah I think it is gonna have to be the old gods, thank you very much.

>>18339672
fire and brimstone

>>18339343
HOLY BASED

do we have any badiou fans in here? just about to start being and event and can't tell if its going to be brilliant or painful

>>18339672
Why are the old Gods not swallowed up by the box of Eleatic Being?

>>18339672
plato literally refuted this nondual, indistinct being, read plato for fuck's sake you illiterate poltard

Let's keep the thread civil please, the discussion has been great so far. Don't ruin it by the third thread.

>>18339548
then platonism stole the forms from egyptians, hesiod, homer stole their works from mesopotamians, greeks stole mythology, agricultural practices, institutions, from these. you are really dumb and should read more about history, mythology, anthropology and science

>>18339732
I agree, for this reason we should ban the /pol/tards that will always derail not only PG threads but literally every thread that touches on paganism, monotheism, ancient greece, rome, christianity, judaism.

>>18339721
They are. But polytheism does not become incoherent because of it.

How much of Neoplatonism is actually believable or possibly true? For example, I think Plato's tripartite soul is bullshit on a metaphysical level but it may be a good psychological description of our "soul" thus he can establish that justice is good for the "soul" and orders the soul". However, much of what he says (and many people adored by this board) is completely unbelievable and if it is not beneficial why should I bother reading it outside of interest in this history of philosophy?

>>18339253
>When reading Plato's Dialogues, a good practice would be to read them alongside Proclus' or Marsilio Ficino's commentaries.
What books do you recommend?

ITT: people seething for clear baits.
>highest IQ board btw

>>18339253
>Max Tegmark's Mathematical Universe is a great read too.
Is this related to neoplatonism?

>>18339253
OP from previous /pg/ here
thank you for the thread desu
>>18339343
>without Gods
Psalm 136:3 | "For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and accepting no bribe."
>>18339343
>without oracles
Which is exactly what personal revelation is. Dionysius and Eriugena alongside many many other Patristics referred to revelation itself as "the oracles".
You want to see an example of a Christian Neoplatonic seer? St. Hildegard von Bingen.

>>18340290
>>18339253
I'll make some paste bins for the following lists from the previous thread:
>>18320313
>Pre-socratic prereading to Plato
>>18325754
>A comprehensive introduction to Platonism
>>18314054
>Who does the Platonic tradition include?
>>18315469
>The order of Plato's Dialogues
>>18318678
>Essential Neoplatonic texts

>>18339253
bumping with a prayer from Eriugena:

John Scotus Eriugena’s First Periphyseon Prayer [650B]

O God, our salvation and redemption,
Who bestowed nature,
grant also graces:
Send forth Thy light upon those who grope in the shadows of ignorance in search of Thee; Recall us from our errors;

Stretch forth Thy right hand to us feeble ones who without Thee cannot reach Thee;
Show Thyself to those who seek for nothing but Thee;

Shatter the clouds of empty phantasies,
which prevent the glance of the mind from beholding Thee in the way in which Thou grantest,
Thine invisible self to be seen by those who desire to look upon Thy face,
their resting place,

their end beyond which they seek for nothing,
for there is nothing beyond, their superessential Supreme Good:
none but Thee, O Lord.

Amen.

Islam/Quran:
>anamnesis is frequently repeated in the Quran, to remember God
>God 'breathes' soul into Man, 'breathing' sounds like a continuation - the Ruhr situated in the Heart being the highest, supra-rational intellect (noetic intellect)
>verses about that 'signs' are inherent in the visible world - beauty - that inspire wonder that turns the intellect to contemplation of the divine signature behind them all, like in Phaedo where Socrates points out the cycle of day/night, opposites feeding into each other, life after death, all mentioned by the Quran
>'fitrah' is the primordial knowledge
>Eden is the realm of pure Being, and Adam falls alike to the soul that loses control of its chariot horses as spoken of in Phaedrus
bros....................

>>18339253
bump

>>18339763
What do you mean it's "unbelievable"? I have a feeling you're misunderstanding metaphysics and are judging Plato using your own modern physicalist metaphysics as a measuring stick. Not only is this incorrect since it's a given that what Plato teaches is incompatible with a modern empirical worldview, but Plato gives good reasons why such a view is wrong to accept in the first place. The ancient philosophers were acquainted with the concept that the world might just simply be the sum of its material parts but rejected it for reasons that modern materialists try to handwave away. Namely there is no "correct" way to live in such a system meaning ethics are worthless and everything reduces down to feelings and relativism. Any modern atheists would get torn to shreds by basic socratic questioning because to try and justify the way they live with what they profess to be true about the world is simply impossible unless they're actually Stirner type egoists.

>>18339253
Reminder that "the theory of forms," "platonic metaphysics", "idealism" &c. are found nowhere in Plato's actual works, and that all these things are made up by faggot academics to keep you from focusing on the actual purpose of the dialogues intended by Plato himself, which is to guide you in becoming a virtuous and just being so that you can enter politics and influence matters of the state.

>>18342684
Go on then.

>>18342707
If you are not on your way to becoming a literal statesman you shouldn't call yourself a Platonist, sorry it's the rules.

>>18342714
Platonism =/= agreeing with every exoteric statement of Plato.

>>18342684
shut up anime nigger

Plato was a government plant who sockpuppeted Socrates, a man who was murdered for questioning the state, and falsely attributed beliefs about supporting pederasty (the desire of statesmen in Athens according to Aristotle) and believing the most good government was the most powerful one to him.

>>18342734
>>18342757
Plato literally spells it out for you sedentary ruminants: the first work you are given by Plato is Alcibiades I, in which you are confronted with a mirror, A STATESMAN WITHOUT VIRTUE; the final work of the dialogues isn't named after some gay ontology concept like "ideas" or whatever, it's called THE LAWS. DO YOU GET IT YET? THE LAWS OF A STATE, CRAFTED BY A VIRTUOUS STATESMAN, IN WHICH YOU _LIVE_ AND _ACT_

>>18342800
ok

>>18342800
Explain how the Timeaus relates to Statesmanship

>>18342684
The word "Metaphysics" was 'coined' by Andronicus of Rhodes, the word to which the term 'form' refers to (ideia) is something that goes back to Homer, and calling Plato an idealist traces back to Leibniz. This is what happens when one does not know Greek.

>>18342800
>sedentary ruminants
Im a sitting goat?

>>18339253
I'm scared of being forced to come back here or ending up in an even worse place after I die, which dialogue should I read?
What makes you guys believe Platonism to be the truth?

>>18343110
>which dialogue should I read?
The Phaedrus, it deals with the immortality of the soul

>What makes you guys believe Platonism to be the truth?
Because it meshes with ordinary human experience, matches up with with other philosophies around the world (Taoism) and is beautiful in its ability to wrap up ethics, metaphysics and epistemology into an entirely coherent whole where each reinforce and support the others. In that regard it's the complete opposite of materialism where its ethics, epistemology and metaphysics are always in conflict since affirming one means rejecting the others.

>>18343160
>The Phaedrus
Thank you.
>opposite of materialism
But Platonism is not the only school of idealism, right?

>>18343110
>18343160

>The Phaedrus, it deals with the immortality of the soul

No, that's not right... you're thinking of Phaedo, which deals with the immortality of the soul, not Phaedrus.
Read Phaedo, not Phaedrus. It is honestly one of the most spiritually potent things I've ever read, period. I cried at the end of my first reading.
My advice, read it carefully and write down each and every theory Plato presents, they all unify at the end and its great to have them simplified in a notebook.

>>18343174

>>18343160

>>18343166

Sorry guys, fucked that up bad.

>>18343174
>read it carefully and write down each and every theory
Thanks, I will. It makes definitive statements and isn't an aporetic dialogue, right?

>>18342331

>>18344293
He already posted this in the previous general.

>>18339253
hey thread, a long time ago I saw a Plato reading order that was arranged in 2 columns with "Republic" in the middle. Does anybody have it saved?

>>18342800
>sedentary ruminants
kek’d.

>>18343166
There are nominalist forms of Idealism, but any Idealism which is realist about universals is basically Platonic.

This gets more complex once you are redpilled on the Proclean reading of the Parmenides Dialogue

>>18346643
Why is nominalism wrong?

>>18346643
what is a form of nominalist idealism?

>>18346797
Leibniz's Monadology

>>18339253
how essential polytheism is to platonism ?

>>18339460
Yes. You thought he was a feminine blond sissy? These guys were into fighting.

>>18339313
See Jung's interpretation of Parsifal:

>From this point of view [that of the Taoist solution to the problem of opposites] it is not so difficult to see what the primordial image was that helped to solve the problem in Wagner’s Parsifal. Here the suffering is caused by the tension of opposites represented by the Grail and the power of Klingsor, who has taken possession of the holy spear. Under the spell of Klingsor is Kundry, symbolizing the instinctive life-force or libido that Amfortas lacks. Parsifal rescues the libido from the state of restless, compulsive instinctuality, in the first place because he does not succumb to Kundry, and in the second because he does not possess the Grail. Amfortas has the Grail and suffers for it, because he lacks libido. Parsifal has nothing of either, he is nirdvandva, free from the opposites, and is therefore the redeemer, the bestower of healing and renewed vitality, who unites the bright, heavenly, feminine symbol of the Grail with the dark, earthly, masculine symbol of the spear. The death of Kundry may be taken as the liberation of libido from its naturalistic, undomesticated form (cf. the “bull’s shape,” par. 350, n. 93), which falls away as a lifeless husk, while the energy bursts forth as a new stream of life in the glowing of the Grail. By his renunciation of the opposites (unwilling though this was, at least in part), Parsifal caused a blockage of libido that created a new potential and thus made a new manifestation of energy possible. The undeniable sexual symbolism might easily lead to the one-sided interpretation that the union of spear and Grail merely signifies a release of sexuality. The fate of Amfortas shows, however, that sexuality is not the point. On the contrary, it was his relapse into a nature-bound, brutish attitude that was the cause of his suffering and brought about the loss of his power.

CONT.

>>18348967
>His seduction by Kundry was a symbolic act, showing that it was not sexuality that dealt him his wound so much as an attitude of nature bound compulsion, a supine submission to the biological urge. This attitude expresses the supremacy of the animal part of our psyche. The sacrificial wound that is destined for the beast strikes the man who is overcome by the beast—for the sake of man’s further development. The fundamental problem, as I have pointed out in Symbols of Transformation, is not sexuality per se, but the domestication of libido, which concerns sexuality only so far as it is one of the most important and most dangerous forms of libidinal expression. If, in the case of Amfortas and the union of spear and Grail, only the sexual problem is discerned, we get entangled in an insoluble contradiction, since the thing that harms is also the thing that heals. Such a paradox is true and permissible only when one sees the opposites as united on a higher plane, when one understands that it is not a question of sexuality, either in this form or in that, but purely a question of the attitude by which every activity, including the sexual, is regulated.

What do you make of Parmenides, is it a refutation of the Forms? What was Plato's intent there?

>>18343174
>the immortality of the soul
What do you make of the Buddhist argument of impermanence and the impossibility of the existence of an immortal soul? Their metaphysics are pretty solid

>>18339731
you misread him, retard

>>18340316
can you make a info-graphics one can save, would be useful

>>18339323
>wikikikes call St Maximus the Confessor a platonist
total bs

>>18339253
modern Greeks aren't even that dark. That's what liberalism does to your mind, USA is doomed

>>18346767
If abstract concepts are just social constructs then what meaning do they possess? The entire point of philosophy is to escape from solipsism, and discover reality outside of one's own mind.
Nominalism collapses everything - truth, ethics, metaphysics, math, language, etc - back into man's mind. To believe in nominalism is to board a bullet train that delivers you straight into solipsism.

>>18350181
>The entire point of philosophy is to escape from solipsism
Isn't it to uncover truth?

>>18350183
Things that men make up in their imaginations are not truth. If you can't distinguish between imagination and objective truth that stands on its own, apart from man's mind, then I don't know what to tell you.

>>18350190
I'm not being purposefully obtuse, but I'm still not convinced. Do you have any book recommendations that could make me see clearly why nominalism is an untenable position?

>>18350070
bump

>>18339253
>>Algis Uždavinys - Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism

I don't know what it is about this book but I can never really parse what he is trying to say. I recognize all the words he is using, but they never cohere in to comprehension.
I have read books by Guenon and Evola without any hassle, but this boog was like trying to grab and hold mist.

Fucking filtered, I guess.

>>18340316
Why would you read the Parmenides before the Republic?

>>18350070
Not him but it's just a matter of what your position is in relation to the problem of universals. If you think abstract entities like math or the "redness" of an apple exist beyond the particulars, then Buddhism makes no sense as suddenly they have a bunch of existing things that violate their rules of impermanence. On the other hand, if you think those are just human constructs, then it's Platonism that makes no sense as you suddenly can't have the forms anymore. As I believe in mathematical realism, I'm drawn to Platonism while thinking Buddhism is nonsense but I can see how you could think otherwise.

>>18351550
I don't know what the Buddhist answer to mathematical realism is, but I think the point regarding universals is that they are tied to dependent coarising, i.e. redness does not exist as an independent quality but is begotten by other qualities, which themselves do not exist in themselves, etc

Why is Platonic realism not reconcilable with subjective idealism