/lit/ - Literature

>>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

Is it true that when Pythagoras said that a bean will turn into a vagina if it is buried for 90 days?

>>18354284
No that was actually Porphyry relating what Pythagoras had allegedly taught.
I'm pretty sure it's some coded allegory about transmigration because that's typically how these things work. Pic related.
[Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie - The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library]

>>18354277
bump

>>18354291
>>18354284
Early fleshlights.

Is the republic really worth reading? Ive been reading a bunch of dialogues and enjoying them but I dont really give a shit about politics since they are cringe.

>>18354844
The Republic isn't really a political text, its an allegory for the soul.
Read the Republic alongside Ficino or Proclus' commentaries and you'll get the most out of it

>>18354867
Ye but should I read parmenides first?

I have mostly read late dialogues in translation (I still have to start learning Greek), and like the other anon I pretty much avoided political (apart from Laws) and early dialogues. Have I missed out?

>>18354887
absolutely
>>18354887
yes because none of the Dialogues that are "political" are exclusively political, even when they are talking about political matters it always relates back to the soul in some manner

>>18354796
>head of an infant
>early flesh light

b r u h

bump

>>18354277
how has no one posted this yet

Socrates in phaedo helped me look at yin yang differently:

Pain and pleasure, there is a two headed animal within us and we oscilate between the two, with some variables in between

>>18355985
woke take
the Phaedo Dialogues' discussion on pain and pleasure often just gets seriously overlooked in favour of the main point of the dialogue - the soul and its immortality

I found this on baraag earlier today...not where I expected to encounter a reference to Plato.

>>18354277

>>18356652
Discord niggers really are the most insufferable bunch of morons in the whole internet

>>18354277
What would Plato's historicism be? We know he didn't just conceive of reality as linear but with a second dimension, order, as well. Could we have avoided a lot of tragedies if Plato had developed a historicism from his metaphysics?

How do modern platonists address the fact that some aspects of platonic ontology e.g. the theory of forms are outdated?

>>18356821
It's not outdated it just wasn't formalized. You can accept a metaphysical realist conception and it informs universals downwards (the form of good can derive forms of truth etc).

>>18356821
https://journals.openedition.org/etudesplatoniciennes/462

Before declaring it outdated, understand it.

>>18356687
idk i have a feeling Plato himself would've been fairly ahistorical
Neoplatonists are definitely cyclical of sorts
>>18356821
>outdated
No its just that its the most butchered theory in the history of philosophy.
There is no "realm" of hypostasised "forms" of perfected "things".
The spatial metaphor is just that - a metaphor because if it were a real spatiality, the forms would be assimilated to bodies which defeats the entire thing.
It being "old" is no reason for anything to be necessarily untrue.
Plato anticipated every single serious critique of forms in the Parmenides and all Aristotle and the analytics did was just repeat those objections he crafted.

>>18356993
>Plato anticipated every single serious critique of forms in the Parmenides
But did he address them?

>>18357015
Some yes some no
The Neoplatonists however did address them - most of them took Plato's critiques of himself rather as launching points for metaphysical discourse rather than decisive arguments.
If you want to see a systematic examination and resolution to the critiques that Plato, and also other non-platonists propose, I'd suggest reading Proclus' Commentary on the Parmenides and Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles.

>>18357042
Thanks.
Maybe I have a poor understanding of the forms in the first place. I don't see how they aren't intrinsically dependent on subjective perception, for example there is no such thing as "redness" for someone who's been blind his whole life

>>18354887
Not necessary. You don't need commentary either imo.
>>18355131
Nah. Its good that you have the ambition to learn greek though.
>>18355985
Interesting. I think you can see the cross over easily enough see here: https://www.egreenway.com/taoism/ttclz42.htm
I've often thought the first part of this chapter reflects western cosmo-theologies like Plotinus and Nicean Christianity, we can also read yin and yang as Gaia and Uranos potentially.
>>18356687
Well, maybe for Plotinus at least, A: the contemplation of the divine-mind. I think for Plato there can be no simple answer. It could potentially have just been their irrationality. I think that kind of historicism is a flawed modern way of thinking. It seems to imply a linear framework thats unstable.
>>18357052
Interesting point. I'm interested to see how others respond. I'd say, is it possible for the blind man to conceive of colour in general? Or alternatively it could be argued that just because someone can't comprehend an Form/Idea doesn't mean anything in regards the Idea, it just means that someone is a troglodyte.

>>18354277
I'm so happy i started the first thread

>>18358018
>Or alternatively it could be argued that just because someone can't comprehend an Form/Idea doesn't mean anything in regards the Idea, it just means that someone is a troglodyte.
This. The value of pi is the same whether you know math or not, whether you can calculate all digits or not. "Redness" is a thing whether you can see or not, even if no one could ever see, as long as it was a possible property in reality.

>>18358096
Doesn't that imply that there could be forms we do not know of, and cannot know of, because human beings simply are not equiped to perceive them?

>>18354277
If you had to choose ONE of those books, which would it be

>>18358112
possibly

>>18358202
So how do we know that the Good is the highest of the forms and that there isn't an ineffable form that supercedes it?

>>18358209
I think if there was a higher form, that one would then be the form of the good or the one. But I'm not that sure on that.

>>18358018
Time can be multiple dimensions but every circular time is derivative of the same linear time. Either way, we clearly perceive a linear time so whatever that is should be formalized properly

>>18354277
>all things are part of a monad, an imperson super-essence
>all distinctions are nominal, imagined, illusory
>we navigate the world through distinctions, through recognizing that thing A is distinct from thing B
>if all of existence is actually part of a monad then all of these distinctions we use to navigate the world are false
>we derived our knowledge of the monad from this illusory world and its illusory distinctions
>by affirming monadic metaphysics, you have made it impossible for man to know anything

>>18354277
Plato is a faggot. Read pre socratics

>>18358266
Name them

>>18354277
1. Is /pg/ becoming a target to the discord trannies that started posting humor threads a while a go?
2. Why do you keep replying to their posts? They already killed every bit of discussion in the /sffg/.

Plato in his dialogues advocates for a relatively balanced life where the enjoyment of material existence is interrupted by contemplation, yes?
So am I right in assuming that Platonist praxis is not ascetic? If so, why were some of the Neoplatonists ascetics?

>>18354277
>all these secondary sources
Go back

>>18358314
no u

>>18358443
We should honestly start emphasizing the reading of primary texts. No one gives a flying fuck about Dr Giovanni's latest argument showing that Aristotle composed the Problemata five months before we originally supposed it to be written. See pic related

>>18359552
>We
Go back

>>18356821
>the theory of forms are outdated?
I never knew mathematics were outdated

>>18359765
>go back
To where?

>>18358256
>you have made it impossible for man to know anything
Only if illusions are the same as nothingness, which they aren’t; ergo if you can only know illusion then that’s not the same as not knowing anything whatsoever, you are still knowing the appearance or illusion. Moreover, who’s to say that the illusion cannot guide us to our own noetic realization of the non-illusory Monad, One, etc? We find in the world that we can use a reflection (appearance) in the water to help us find where the source of that image is.

>>18358245
Feels like this post is full of assumptions.

>>18358256
1.
>part, distinction, thing.
But there is only The One.
2.
>I am going to explain to you why I have such an evil name. When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is the interpretation of this riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would be against his nature....
>the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing.

>>18360464
The circular time of earth, seasons, are fundamentally just linear time but with (I think according to Einstein's gr, time is warped by gravity) it caught in gravity of earth and sun in the way it is. In that cyclical times can be expressed linearly.

>>18358058
you've done a great service anon!
>>18358113
Eric D. Perl - Thinking Being
>>18358256
>all distinctions are nominal, imagined, illusory
This is where you fucked up
but also neither are things "part" of a monad because the monad is above and independent of the series.
Monism simpliciter is definitely wrong, and for there to be a real multiplicity of eidos necessitates monism to be false. But neither can we have dualism, nor can we have pantheism and regular theism fails too.
So we have instead a kind of folded ontology, at least this is what we get from the works of Proclus and Dionysius.
All things are pre-existently contained simply in the Godhead but the Godhead is not the same as all things, but all things unfold from the Godhead. The One is all things and none of them - with all things but independent as not being within the set of all things as it is not "a thing" due to it necessarily being unconditioned.
Platonic epistemology requires determinate and limited things to be real, but requires the unlimited to be that which all depend upon for existence.
It's "explicatio" and "complicatio" - "theophanic" metaphysics. "Non-dual" but not monistic.
>>18358266
yea we did and then when beyond the Pre-socratics, Plato and Aristotle and moved onto the Neoplatonists try to keep up anon
>>18358332
>Is /pg/ becoming a target to the discord trannies that started posting humor threads a while a go?
Somewhat
>Why do you keep replying to their posts? They already killed every bit of discussion in the /sffg/.
Allows for a good excuse to bump the thread while nothing else goes on - its a last resort to keep the thread alive
>>18358443
As I said in the earlier threads, the Platonic Dialogues are like Scripture - if you try to interpret them yourself you're gonna fuck up really bad. Not only is there an unwritten doctrine (as we know from the Letters) most people's literal understanding of Plato takes his various mythic allegories as actually what he believed, resulting in retarded ideas like the notion that Plato believed in a "two worlds" theory etc.,
While it's not absolutely necessary to read all the secondary works, it is helpful especially when sketching out how the tradition develops

>>18361017
continue to seethe, cope, and dilate, anon.

>>18361076
seethe, cope, dilate etc., over what exactly?

>>18360680
Linear time, as I see it (a straight line from "creation" until "apocalypse", whatever you want those concepts to imply, big bang to heat death or what have you), seems ridiculous. If its happened once: 1. Why? 2. Why wouldn't it happen again? If it couldn't or doesn't 2.1. Why? If he have to posit some cause either causing it to become or to cease to recur, that seems to me to imply a cause outside the line, thus something eternal, thus cyclical. Whose to say though...
>>18361017
What you say about commentators is fair. My own sympathy for the anti commentator argument is that we are better of sticking to ancient commentators like Proclus than contemporary ones. Or at least that there should be a chronological order to ones reading. Otherwise your liable to fall into other's mistakes. Imo, better to eventually find out I was wrong that never to find out someone else's dogma was wrong.

Have anons read Sallustius' 'One the Gods and the Cosmos'? Not necessarily Platonic- I don't think I'm advanced enough to say either way- but it seems to lean that way to me. Great little manifesto almost of classical polytheism with something like monist undertones. Reckon a few here would enjoy. Greater intro text for ancient thinking.

>>18361448
'On the Gods and the Cosmos' that is.

Do any Gwenanons know Guenon's attitude to Platonism? I seem to remember him making mention of Plato but can't recall the context. I haven't read everything by G either.

>>18361017
>the Platonic Dialogues are like Scripture - if you try to interpret them yourself you're gonna fuck up really bad
>NOOOOOO, YOU CAN'T JUST READ PLATO AND THINK FOR YOURSELF, YOU HAVE TO READ MUH COMMENTARIES

>>18361489
Well yea I mean go ahead and read him for yourself. Fine, but don't expect know actually grasp what truth is contained in the dialogues. You are guaranteed not to understand him, especially if you can't read greek lul
>>18361448
Yea I think just the bare minimum of modern commentary is necessary if you can't speak greek lul otherwise, sticking to Proclus, Ficino and the like is the way to go.

How is scripture "hard" to interpret?

>>18361503
>You are guaranteed not to understand him
An unwarranted presupposition on your part. A deeper reading of a text would do just fine, and the big benefit coming from reading him in Greek would be primarily philological, not philosophical.

>>18361503
I think its important to emphasis that the classics must come before the commentaries though, dont you? I would suspect that anyone who reads philosophy in translation should be conscious of the pitfalls of translations. This is something most translator and editors mention in their intros. Tangentially, whats the opinion on MacKenna's Enneads? I find it digestible enough to use.

>>18361448
Well your example isn't to say. There's a clear degradation of causation through order. The creation power of life in the primordial stew and electricity is of a higher order than the life power of two squirrels fucking. Squirrels can't provide for their own food so even in a safe environment squirrels are a lower, more particular form of food.
More complex chemicals have shorter life spans and break down into hydrogen. The more complex something gets, the less existence it implies in all things versus the more atomic things.

So this implies there's no infinity. Anyways you would have to show how linear time is founded by cyclical which then founds cyclical in seasons or whatever. Even if you assume we're in the infintesimal part of a circle that it looks linear (along with everything we can see in a microscope) you have to show how cyclical time founds other cyclical ones or how they're in a particular order.

>>18361503
Just because you can't understand Plato without copious amounts of secondary sources spoon-feeding what they believe to be the best interpretation of Plato, which is based on their interpretation of the World, doesn't mean that others can't.

>>18361542
Never said to read copious amounts. I mean I am assuming that anyone in this thread is seriously looking to tackle "platonism", which means the diachronic progression of Plato and his dialogues as they were then apprehended and basically treated in exegetical manners by later platonists.
>>18361528
I'd agree with this
I've so far not seen any glaring problems with MacKenna's Enneads, you should probably be fine with it
>>18361522
It's not unwarranted when every single translation of one of Plato's most crucial doctrines - the forms - is utterly butchered by every single English translation.
Every single English translation misses the point of the ocular IE-root to εἶδος leaving the modern reader with the impression that Plato is ennunciating a kind of subject-object dualism.
Moreover, no English translation adequately conveys one of Plato's most crucial doctrines: the conjugal union of thought and being [συνουσία] (read: synousia). Again this is in part due to the rendering in English of the εἶδος and its various counterparts as hypostasised objects rather than the very intelligible whatnesses of the things-in-themselves.
Plato's Dialogues is the prime example of how philology and philosophy go hand in hand. This is also why I point to Scripture as an example.
Knowing the Greek or even Latin likewise opens up a whole new dimension to Biblical interpretation, and such is the case in a similar manner to Plato in Greek.

>>18361511
There are four levels of Scriptural interpretation that we get from the Church Fathers.
1] Literal/Historical - this is dead simple
2] Allegorical
3] Moral
4] Anagogic/mystical

The first level is already compromised for the very fact that translations into English kill the illocutionary force of what was written initially in the Greek that was a translation of Aramaic.

>>18361823
>literal ripff of PaRDeS
BRAVO CHURCH FATHERS

>>18361017
holy fuck this is cringe

>>18361837
bro they literally just inherited that scheme for the very fact the NT succeeds and fulfils the OT which PaRDeS was a hermeneutic for

>>18361855
>>18361837
PaRDes only came to a term used for this manner of exegesis in the 13th Century. Did it exist in the Jewish tradition prior to it? I mean Philo definitely was doing something like this but he get excommunicated so I'd if he's exactly orthodox by Jewish standards.
Otherwise, that scheme definitely is evident as far back as Clement of Alexandria.

*TING TING TING*
Good afternoon gentlemen,
A reminder that Hypatia was a whore and that it was a good thing that the Pagans murdered her

>>1836184 1

>>18361533
I cant really understand what your saying. I think it's a fairly settled interpretation of plato that Being and Soul (apropos phaedo) are eternal.
>In many interpretations of the Timaeus Platonism, like Aristotelianism, poses an eternal universe, as opposed to the nearby Judaic tradition that the universe had been created in historical time, with its continuous history recorded.
Parmenidies also posits a eternal Being, does it not?
A basic argument could go:
Given that Being is (exists), it either always has or has come into existence- from where? Nothingness? How can nothing produce something? Nothing is nothing and can do nothing, i.e. there is no conceivable way of thinking 'before the line of time'. I would appreciate criticism of this btw from platobros.

>>18362012
You could get rid of time as a sole measurement of cause and effect. Logic instantiates math by math being a part of logic. This metaphysical causation narrative allows a genesis of material instantiation and it can talk about immaterial things.

Either way, we can say matter is never created nor destroyed and it just becomes different parts of matter and we can measure that linearly. That aligns with a predicational monism of Parmenides.
Either way there clearly is a linear movement of time, whether that's the whole of time or not is a separate question. You would sorta need to prove linear time doesn't exist.

>>18362304
>>18362304
I reckon Zeno's paradoxes make it necessary to prove linear time does exist. It makes more sense to me to affirm the absolute unity of being and time a la Parmenides et al. In monism.

I'm reminded of the old zen saying: neither the wind nor the flag moves, it is the mind that moves.
I reckon Plotinus might agree.

>>18354887
You can read Parmenides as the first dialogue of Plato. Just to get a glimpse of the depth of Plato.
Then once you've read all the others, read it again.

>>18362467
To Plotinus Time is the Mind (Psyche) itself. Dianoetic thought is sequential.

help me out anons. ive read Algis Uždavinys - Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism and Deirdre Carabine - The Unknown God but i understood maybe 30-40% of both those books. where do i begin to lay a solid foundation for starting out platonism?
do you anons believe this is the truth? i still am unclear about the relation between christianity and platonism.

>>18362467
>>18362508
You can read mourelatos and actually dive into different interpretations of Parmenides. Parmenides wasn't formal so there is a bit of building it to be formal. I think predicational monism is a more appropriate interpretation. You can even interpret Zeno's paradoxes through them in that a half of something isn't a unit of measurement.

>>18362467
>>18362539
You can affirm being is tied with time in a predicational sense. Starting from existence we can eventually derive a mathematical masspoint (or mathematical existence) and we can use mathematical existence to derive a physical existence in speed = distance * time or speed/time = distance and set speed = 1 and time = 1/distance. So you can have them equal each other in physics but only through a predicational monist sense.

>>18362527
Read Plato's First Alcibiades, then Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman, and Book X of Laws, then Phaedrus, Symposium. Then whatever, the order isn't that important if you suspend judgment until you've read most of him. The important axiom about Plato is that he's a whole not a disjointed bundle of contradictions, if there's a contradiction then it's your interpretation that is flawed.
You have to read Plato alone before reading exegesis of him, just don't hold your first interpretation of him as some divine revelation.
Read Aristotle's Organon, will be the least fun part, but half of late Platonism is a discussion of the Harmony between Aristotle and Plato.
Simplicius is a great Introduction but also very dense since he covers ALL major thoughts between him and the Presocratics.
the first two dozen propositions of Proclus Elements of Theology is a nice primer too.
You can also start with Plotinus as long as you don't project some Advaita shit on him because he says that "all is one", as if there's only one type of oneness or one type of plurality.

>>18362574
any good translations? preferably looking for epubs or pdfs for my kindle

>>18361817
>Every single English translation misses the point
No, just because some favorite term of yours does not come with a full dictionary definition and etymological history, it doesn't mean the translation is "shit". A good lexicon will cover that, if needed. You're not some philologist, so stop pretending.

Kek OP is the biggest brainlet I've ever seen

>>18361503

Taking you for your word, how do you understand them though secondary sources if you claim them incomprehensible? Obviously, you cannot compare the secondary to the primary, since it is incomprehensible, so how do you know that the secondary source is correct?

>>18361503

Taking you for your word, how do you understand them through secondary sources if you claim them incomprehensible? Obviously, you cannot compare the secondary to the primary, since it is incomprehensible, so how do you know that the secondary source is correct?

>>18362574
>Book X of Laws
Why that one specifically?

Is Plato and the Foundations of Metaphysics any good? What about Reale's history?

>>18362859
The only way to understand Plato is to read him by yourself with no secondary sources. After doing that and building a proper understanding of Plato, you can read secondary sources to see what others thought and if you missed some things. If you do like pseud OP suggests and read Plato along with secondary materials, you never get to make your own mind and understand Plato yourself: you'll just copy the way others understood it. It's helping wheels for the mentally handicapped who have no business reading philosophy (e.g. most modern philosophy students). OP is very low IQ and he's projecting his incapability of grasping philosophy onto others.

If you have a brain, read Plato by yourself and consider secondary sources as additional optional reading. If you don't have a brain, find a different hobby.

>>18362859
The secondary sources give you a schema, a specific lens to sift through the English translation of Plato which make it far more intelligible. That's their entire purpose.
>>18362929
A proper understanding of Plato is one that is diachronic. You don't read Plato to know what the man "Plato" said, you read him to find out what truth there is in the writings. Thus to know him better, you acquaint yourself with his most erudite expositors - Proclus, Damascius, Ficino etc.,
This is why you absolutely must read Aristotle, for an example, to understand Plato. Aristotle knew Plato's unwritten dialogues.
Should you attempt to read and consider Plato's Dialogues on their own? Go for it. But it's not going to be anywhere near as fruitful.

To make matter even worse for anyone trying to do the "hurr durr think for your self" meme - this ethically Kantian faggotry is totally anathema to Plato. You learn and grow through tutelage, your words/language/concepts/the very things in themselves which they are referents for as such, are not your own. Your thoughts are not your own. Language is due to the nomosthetes (Cratylus). The forms which they gesture towards are under the stewardship of the divine mind (Timaeus) which is governed by the Good (Philebus, Republic, Laws).

Getting an idea of Plato "for yourself" is to create a new platonism for an interiority - which is to say, in making this innovation, generating falsehood. Learn some humility, and learn from the best.

>>18362929
This is, of course, dumb idiot advice.

"Reading Plato" is an impossible task for most everyone in this thread as Plato wrote in Ancient Greek, more than 2000 years ago. Reading him as you would Harry Potter is bound to lead to misunderstanding. Translations and commentaries of people who spend their professional lives understanding Plato are not optional if you too wish to understand him not starting from scratch.

>>18362964
This. People really have the nerve to whinge and complain about Hegel, Derrida, Wittgenstein being hard to understand and then decide that for some reason Plato is just an easy hill to climb. A ladder to be easily scaled and kicked away.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

>>18362959
>anyone trying to do the "hurr durr think for your self" meme - this ethically Kantian faggotry is totally anathema to Plato.
This is singlehandedly the most retarded sentence I have ever read on /lit/ holy shit

>>18362508
Yea this is also the general Neoplatonic advice it seems, but in the inverse. The Parmenides is the essential Platonic Dialogue for them, so in Proclus' school it was the last to be read.
Perhaps its a different case for us, perhaps not, but it's centrality of significance remains.

>>18362959
>>18362964
You're both dumb. Do everyone a favor and stop posting these retarded threads. The OP is simply embarrassing.

>>18362986
>>18362981
Stop samefagging

>>18362994
You're embarrassing

>>18362997
>wow mom look i can use the airbrush and the colour picker

>>18362997
This kid is legit retarded

>>18362997
fake

>>18363002
>the secondary sources autist is also a schizo
Not surprised

>>18363007
You know what here's a little advice, take it or leave it:
Read the Parmenides and then read Proclus' Commentary on it. Tell me what you find in some later /pg/ thread I'll be around.

>>18362959

How do you know that the "lens" will yield the correct interpretation?

>>18362986

You sound upset!
Did you shit and piss your pants?
... Are you crying!?

>>18363016
>Proclus
I'm all for reading secondary sources from the ancients, anon. But your OP is full of 20th century books or even 21st century books. Then you make it worse by telling people to not even read Plato by themselves first and directly use secondary materials. This is so dumb I can't take you seriously.

>>18363039
Yes! Yeah!
Everyone *knows* you have to start with Porphyry's Isagoge!

*shakes my head, knowingly*

>>18363039
This. There's like 0 primary sources under Christian Neoplatonism. He could've included someone like Marius Victorinus or Aeneas Gazaeus, but instead he chose some literally who academics

>>18363039
>>18363118
This is why we have general threads. For anons to share information and hopefully build a good framework of study for the subject.

>>18354284
>>18354796
i m thinkin about those beans

Quick question anons, I've seen this book in my local book shop, wondering if its worth a cop?

>>18355992
Its probably over looked because of how briefly Plato covers it. This is something I've been noticing a lot when reading Plato, he'll say something really profound and then move on, most people seem to forget about it then.
>>18358266
You start with the pre-Socratics and then move onward. Don't see your point.
>>18358431
Plato doesn't argue that balancing material pleasures with contemplation is the way at all. He thinks you should literally just sustain the body's needs so you can think more about philosophy. Exercise would be allowed and encouraged too since that can sharpen your soul. But be aware that if you're exercising for attention or superficial reasons then it doesn't matter, everything you do needs to be done in order to enhance your connection to the soul.
>>18361017
>if you try to interpret them yourself you're gonna fuck up really bad
This guy really missed the point of the dialogues. I think these threads need to start being more focused on the reading of primary sources.

>>18363407
>just sustain the body's needs
Weren't Socrates and his pals as depicted in the dialogues quite far from that level of asceticism?

>>18362595
I use the Cooper collection, not perfect but ok I suppose. Follow the sticky. >>18363039
It's actually a humbling experience to jump head on into Proclus with zero preliminary knowledge. It will set you straight forever. I did that, had no idea wtf was going on, changed my very thought process.
>>18363407
Plato was no damn stoic, Platonism follows the golden mean more strongly than Aristotelians, since it originates in Plato, his Laws specifically. It's there you find the inspiration for Cynics, like how soldiers should always walk barefooted.
Pleasure is not a sin, hedonism is, the transcendent vision is even described as a pleasure by some.
>>18362983
Why I agreed to read Parmenides first is similar to why I sometimes suggest that you should read the first five books of Laws before all else. Since modern men have no idea what friendship between men once implied, Plato was a hardcore homophobe, since gay sex is, in some sense, the ultimate hedonism. For it is a barren activity, it begets nothing but the desire for more of itself (if you have that predilection), the willpower of a celibate Homo (which one could argue Socrates was) is awe inspiring, Symposium proves that Socrates never gave in to Alcibiades advances. And whenever he proclaims the beauty of some ""boy"", it ALWAYS refers to their soul and the greatness of potential that they could achieve through midwifery.

The pleasure part is also why Plato uses pseudo-sexual language, to give birth in soul is a unparalleled pleasure, it's an inner catharsis whose only physical analogue is the sexual orgasm. The relief of conquering yourself is bliss.

>>18363039
>But your OP is full of 20th century books or even 21st century books
oh lmao that why this:>>18354280
was here
next thread will have pastebins of primary and secondary sources sorted

>>18363118
see:>>18318678
which I posted earlier

>>18363581
soild reply
espeicall considering Parmenides

>>18363581
And in Platonism conquering yourself is not subduing your emotions into some pathetic ataraxic asceticism.
It is to throw yourself into pain, and darkness, and triumph over all suffering, not to belittle why you suffer or to deny the reality of shame or guilt or grief. I think that here it is that Plotinus genius falters the most, all the divine grieves for every soul that is astray.
Of course it is likely he means a lower kind of emotion, and isn't denying a higher pathos since he says of the One to be Love, so like love (that there is a higher and lover Eros) though he is silent, he doesn't deny higher "feeling".
The divine in their providence is anything but unattachment, yes you should not love objects, but true objects seen properly are windows to the divine, the fields of flowers, the sea and all heaven and every living being, it is all symbols of the One.

>>18363440
>>18363581
Let's look at the Phaedo. Plato makes a distinction between the "variable" and the "invariable". In order words, the physical and the invisible, things that belong to the "glorious, pure and invisible", for example wisdom, belong to the invariable.
With this in mind, Plato makes Socrates point out that the further one removes one's self from the variable (bad food, ornamentation, money - these are all examples from Platonic doctrine) the better a philosopher they will be, which is the divine mission Plato believes we're set to be on.

Thoughts on Stoicism? In the Late Republican/ Early Imperial it surpassed the Academy to become the dominant school.
It seems there was an interesting interplay between the schools with certain Middle Platonists being accused of "Stoicising" their doctrine and vice versa.
While the Neoplatonists attacked Stoicism, you could argue their World Soul was basically the Stoic god placed under the Hypostases of Soul, the Intellect and The One.
And the fact that the Neoplatonists used Epictetus as a moral instructional manual and wrote commentaries on him speaks to the high regard they had for Stoic ethics as a practical guide for everyday life.

>>18363440
>Weren't Socrates and his pals as depicted in the dialogues quite far from that level of asceticism
Not at all, with Socrates in particular it was quite the opposite. Recalling the Phaedo again we can look at when Socrates talks about the masses criticising him for "not really living" because of how much he is avoiding these apparent pleasures, he completely rejects this idea that "really living" is a life full of self indulgence and approval seeking - life is a preparation for death and you prepare for death by becoming closer to it and ignoring these temptations.
For more on this you should also look at the Crito.

>>18354277
Would any of you French niggas please scan this book and upload it to LibGen? It's Damascius' commentary on Plato's *Parmenides*, please I can't find it anywhere

>>18363772
I think this only really applies if you have the choice and don't bitterly "reject" the pleasures of life just because of sour grapes, which seems to be the case of a lot of people on this website

>>18363626
I can't see the people I named there

>>18363630
>>18363581
although I forgot to say why for Parmenides.
Parmenides bitch-slaps anyone who thinks Plato hadn't "already thought about X" as regards to the forms or logic, every common critique of him are all dispelled by Laws and Parmenides, same with his Theaetetus and Sophist. The dichotomy Monism and Dualism, One and Many, are half of the whole ordeal of Plato's works; Platonism is the very overcoming of BOTH of them. If you call yourself a 'monist', without a clarification of what exactly you mean with "monism", you are not a Platonist; for the statement 'the One is All' or 'All is One' is NOT the negation of the true differences and multiplicity of that Allness; it's not who you are that is an undivided distinction to the One it's who you could be.
The self and infinite plurality of selves are not dissolved or fused in the One.

§4.3.5. But how will one soul still be yours, another this person’s and
another another’s? Will its lower part still belong to an individual, and
its higher part not to that individual, but to that which is above? If that is
the way it is, there will be Socrates whenever the soul of Socrates is in
a body, but he will perish exactly when he comes to be in the best state.
In fact, no Being perishes, since even in the intelligible world the
intellects there, just because they are not divided as bodies are, are not
lost into a unity, but each abides in its own identity in differentiation
from the rest. So, the same applies to souls, too, in their turn, depending
as they do each on an intellect, being expressed principles of the intel-
lects, and being more diffused than they are, having in a way become
much from little, and being in contact with the little which is, in each
instance, less divided than they are. They want to be divided, even
though unable to proceed to a full state of division, preserving as they
do both identity and difference, and so each remains one, and all
together are one.

>>18363780
That wasn't really my point. Once you realise what "the pleasures of life" are worth as compared to philosophy, you wouldn't want to partake - I think that's what Plato is getting at in his dialogues, knowledge leads the way.

>>18363780
There are times where Plato even talks about how bodily functions and needs get in the way of philosophy and this is used to strengthen his argument that the body is a prison. It is clear that Plato didn't hold anything relating to the body in high regard!

>>18363767
Stoicism is watered down Platonism, academics, or "experts", likes to say Plotinus' ethics is Stoic when stoic ethics are mostly Platonic, I guess they never read Laws.
>>18363772
In Laws festivals and drinking parties a state enforced, with he wisdom and acceptance that wine consumption inevitable leads to "madness" the longer they go on, the Sage is not exempt from these duties.

>>18363795
>>18363805
It seems then, on the basis of the magnitude of its number, that the
image of tyrannical pleasure is a plane figure.
Exactly.
But then it’s clear that, by squaring and cubing it, we’ll discover how
far a tyrant’s pleasure is from that of a king.
It is clear to a mathematician, at any rate.
Then, turning it the other way around, if someone wants to say how
far a king’s pleasure is from a tyrant’s, he’ll find, if he completes the
calculation, that a king lives seven hundred and twenty-nine times more
pleasantly than a tyrant and that a tyrant is the same number of times
more wretched.
That’s an amazing calculation of the difference between the pleasure
and pain of the two men, the just and the unjust.
Yet it’s a true one, and one appropriate to human lives, if indeed days,
nights, months, and years are appropriate to them.
And of course they are appropriate.
Then, if a good and just person’s life is that much more pleasant than
the life of a bad and unjust person, won’t its grace, fineness, and virtue
be incalculably greater?
By god, it certainly will.

Virtuous living is pleasurable, and it can only be pleasureable for one who is Good and Just, and appreciating this joyous pleasure is not a sin, for it is born out of love.

>>18363807
Friendship is considered a virtue in platonic theory as well, this would make sense to have celebrations where friends can chat and socialise.
Plato criticises the drunkard throughout his canon, this is not a sufficent defence for me.

>>18363795
>>18363805
>>18363837
Pleasure is indeed a proper criterion in the arts, but not the pleasure
experienced by anybody and everybody. The productions of the Muse
are at their finest when they delight men of high calibre and adequate
education—but particularly if they succeed in pleasing the single ind-
ividual whose education and moral standards reach heights attained by no
one else.

>>18363840
ATHENIAN: Our argument has done its level best: we have to consider
whether it has succeeded in its original intention of showing that our
defense of Dionysus’ chorus was justified. A gathering like that, of course,
inevitably gets increasingly rowdier as the wine flows more freely. (In fact,
our initial assumption in the present discussion of this business was that
such a tendency is unavoidable.)
CLINIAS: Yes, it is unavoidable.
ATHENIAN: Everyone is taken out of himself and has a splendid time;
the exuberance of his conversation is matched only by his reluctance to
listen to his companions, and he thinks himself entitled to run their lives
as well as his own.
CLINIAS: He certainly does.
ATHENIAN: And didn’t we say that when this happens the souls of the
drinkers get hot and, like iron in a fire, grow younger and softer, so that
anyone who has the ability and skill to mold and educate them, finds them
as easy to handle as when they were young? The man to do the molding
is the same one as before—the good lawgiver. When our drinker grows
cheerful and confident and unduly shameless and unwilling to speak and
keep quiet, to drink and sing, at the proper times, the lawgiver’s job will
be to lay down drinking laws which will be able to make this fellow willing
to mend his ways; and to do battle with this disgraceful over-confidence
as soon as it appears, they will be able to send into the arena, with the
blessing of justice, this divine and splendid fear we have called ‘modesty’
and ‘shame’.
CLINIAS: Exactly.
ATHENIAN: The cool-headed and sober should guard and co-operate with
these laws by taking command of those who are not sober; fighting the
enemy without cool-headed leaders is actually less dangerous than fighting
drink without such help as this. If a man cannot show a willing spirit and
obey these commanders and the officials of Dionysus (who are upwards
of sixty years of age), the dishonor he incurs must equal or even exceed
that incurred by the man who disobeys the officials of the god of war.

>>18363853
Yes, I see your point. Let's refer back to what I said a few replies ago when talking about the variable and the invariable.
Pleasures of the body are not worth shit and will hold you back, pleasures of the soul (wisdom, philosophy, virtue) however are the way to happiness.
If we also consider some themes in Gorgias where Plato talks about the difference about "thinking you know" and actually "knowing" it is now clear why this could get mixed up.

>>18363407
>if you try to interpret them yourself you're gonna fuck up really bad
>>This guy really missed the point of the dialogues. I think these threads need to start being more focused on the reading of primary sources.
Seconded.

>>18363783
Absolutely incredibly based.
The critique of platonism as "reductive monism" is sheer nonsense.
Same with the idea that Platonism is "annihilationist" as regards the soul - which a whole bunch of vedantist retards in the previous threads were trying to argue.

>>18363879
Also that was also a direct quote from Laws, just to let you know.
And we aren't christians who think 'sex' is some sinful aberration done reluctantly, the pleasures of sex with your wife in the joint creation of life is virtuous; likewise physical "pleasure" can relieve the strained soul, or rather physical relief from pain and evils is itself a pleasure, and it isn't a sin, as long as it follows virtue. To always strive upwards, in body and soul, for Body is Soul's offspring, the physical is her garden and she will never let it decay. Hence the philosopher and king should be strong and healthy.

>>18363914
I don't think we really disagree all that much. All i'm trying to do is illuminate the differences between real and fake pleasure Plato so clearly did believe in.

>>18361480
From what I hear, he thought Plato was someone who perverted western Tradition, and Aristotle was closer to it, but he largley misunderstood Plato, and I personally feel the synthesis of Neoplatonism is closer

I heard in the previous post that Plotinus's teaching is basically the Unwritten Doctrines of Plato. How is this possible? If anyone knew Plato's unwritten teachings, it is Speusippus and Aristotle. Plotinus came 500 years after Plato, so how are we justified in saying that his system is the system of Plato's unwritten teachings?

>>18363941
Good question, im interested to hear too.
I personally think Plotinus built on Platonic ontology, not explained what it was.
Plato and Plotinus for me are still quite seperate

>>18363581
>Pleasure is not a sin, hedonism is
1. How should we be thinking 'sin'? As in: detrimental to eudaimonia and the approach to Divinity?
2. How to draw this line? When does (or should) pleasure be regarded as Hedonism? Is it a matter of approach, i.e. turning away altogether from the sophian life, or of specific instances like unnecessary indulgence.

>>18363921
>he thought Plato was someone who perverted western Tradition
As I understood it he thought it was more that Plato was just a transmitter of various Egyptian/oriental ideas and that Aristotle marked the emergence of the western take on tradition.

>>18363969
I have heard totally conflicting opinions on his thoughts. The opinion as you described would be be my impression of his view given what I have read of him

>>18362861
Not him but from what I remember that one is about the gods and trying to disprove atheism.

>>18363907
>Platonism is "annihilationist" as regards the soul
Well aren't the ego and memories discarded upon death?

>>18363677
The idea that Stoicism is just "pathetic" emotional suppression is a midwit meme.
Read Cleathes' Hymn to Zeus if you want to see some pathos.

how accurate is this?

>>18363795
>compared to philosophy
Is the only meaning of life just to do philosophy?
Why is everyone born with their specific circumstances then? Are there not things we're here to do as individuals, things we're meant to live, experience and achieve aside from acquiring knowledge?

>>18364026
They are "discarded" because all of time becomes immanent, you will be wholly present to every moment of every life. Which might be overwhelming, since you will feel what all life feels through eternity.

>>18364554
Not sure I understand, is the afterlife Plato posits one where you are every life that ever was/will be, which implies there is only one soul and no individual souls? Or are you the sum of several lifetimes your soul went through, which you recollect all at once when you die?
Furthermore, if time doesn't exist in that plane of existence, what is the significance of metempsychosis?

>>18363941
>>18363960
It was not only Speusippus and Aristotle who wrote about the unwritten doctrines.

>>18363919
sure

>>18363941
Aristotle's Metaphysics expound most of Plato's unwritten doctrines (all of which can be derived from his dialogues and letters).

>>18364273
individual soul doesn't begin at the lower soul, since the ontic 'identity' is intellectual for Plotinus

Is Platonism relevant these days?
I'm thinking of getting into it but I don't know why I should.

>>18365055
Depends on what you mean by relevant. To 4chan - it seems to be I guess, to academia - no (or academic caricatures as op says) lol. It's definitely worth a study and people do still do research and write on ancient philosophy but it is usually under the realm of the history of philosophy or of use in comparative philosophy -- there's nothing groundbreaking or novel about Platonism.

Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy have inspired Western thought for thousands of years so its of course worth giving their respective works a read, but idk what this pseudo-religion Platonism stuff is about. More religious larping about muh secret doctrines and wacky esotericism. Just read Plato's dialogues yourself and if confused consult commentary (academic commentary will probably help you understand better), there's no reason to follow 4chan Platonism.

>>18364585
Soul and Being are both omnipresent, and not just spatially or temporally. The One of the 'Soul Hypostasis' is One and Many; people really struggle with this thought, Soul's manyness is its very simplicity (when talking about Plotinus system). To be blunt and shallow and present myself to petty retorts: an analogy is a "hive mind", a mind of minds; but there's no subservience of will in soul. This all necessitates understanding Freedom and Good, and true slavery; "the virtuous knows no master".
Soul is One the way an army with unbreakable morale is one, but the general is 'the Whole' of the army, "for a whole is greater than the sum of its parts". In a way, every true 'sage' is the crown of Soul; quantity has no meaning here.
If you contemplate true empathy you might get closer, true empathy is the pain of another soul within your own soul, two experiences of a single pain, but there's only one wound and your pain is not illusory nor imitation—so what is it?

>In fact, we have this even though it transcends us. But we have it either collectively or individually, or both collectively and individually. We have it collectively, because it is indivisible and one, that is, every-where identical; we have it individually, because each one of us has the whole of it in the primary part of the soul. We have the Forms, then, in two ways: in the soul, in a way, unfolded and separated, but in Intellect ‘all together’.

And perhaps the most awesome statement by Plotinus:

>Moreover, the primary, secondary, and tertiary things are determined by rank, power, and differentiae, not by their places, for nothing prevents different things from being all together, such as soul and intellect and all sciences, both the major and the derived ones. For the eye sees the colour, and the nose smells the scent, and the other senses sense their different objects that all come from the identical thing, although they are all together, and not separate from each other.
>Does this, then, make the intelligible world variegated and multiple? In fact, the variegated is simple, too, and the many are one, for an expressed principle is one and many, and all being is one. For that which is different is in it itself, and Difference belongs to it, since it certainly could not belong to non-being. And being belongs to unity, which is not separated from being, and wherever being may be, its unity is present to it, and the One-Being is again in itself, for it is possible to be present while being separate.

So what's the solution to the Third Man Argument?

>>18365184
Once you catch with the flower of your soul the meaning of Simple and yet ineffably Variegated, even though this is only Unity/One-Being/Unified, it steps into the void of the One before he arises like the dawn for yourself as all the worlds.
All of our own human minds are absolutely simple spatially, yet they contain infinite noetic "space", and endless field without material scale; this too is an analogy of That.
Or the pupil that looks up at the starry dome of night, this is what 'Simple' means.
Also Platonism staunchly rejects the law of the excluded middle.

>>18365055
now more than ever

I suspect that Plato’s connecting οὐσία and ἀλήθεια is because he is using the latter term in the sense of “ontological” truth. This is what the Idea of the Good is said to provide to οὐσίαι in Republic . Truth here is a relational property of intelligibles. It is that which makes them perspicuous or transparent to an intellect. It is what makes intelligibles “attainable.” By comparison, that which is unintelligible is that which is opaque to an intellect. That is why, in Timaeus, the “Receptacle” is only graspable by a sort of “bastard reasoning.” 86 Therefore, without attaining to οὐσία, there is no cognition of anything intelligible. Without intelligibility, there can be no thought. “Semantic” truth as a property of propositions is just the expression of the ontological truth that is attained when being is attained.Thought is the only way to attain being as opposed to becoming and so the only way to attain truth.
The close connection between relativism and nominalism in Theaetetus is made evident in the argument against the claim that knowledge is sense-perception. That is, if relativism is true, then knowledge could not be possible since relativism only attains to what is ἴδιος whereas knowledge attains to what is κοινός. If nominalism is true, then the judgments that have been shown to be possible and to disqualify sense-perception from being knowledge would not be possible. Relativism, nominalism, and skepticism understood as the denial of the possibility of knowledge are in this dialogue mutually implicating.

>TL;DR without Platonism knowledge is not possible, to deny it as true that Forms do not exist necessitates the eternal Form of that Truth (that they, including itself, does not exist). Without the forms, whatever they are, true statements cannot be made.

>>18365184
I think your effortpost is wasted on me, I'm not familiar enough with the terminology, or maybe too dumb to get much of what you said, though I think I understand what you mean by "one and many" and your reference to empathy.
But in a more practical sense I still don't get what Plato makes of the ego in relation to the immortality of the soul.

>>18365269
similarly, I have no idea what easterns mean by 'ego'

>>18365328
I'm not making a reference to any eastern belief systems. I'm using "ego" as a way to talk about your sense of identity. It's a tricky thing to define though.

>>18365350
that's what a platonist means by 'soul', our higher soul or our intellect/nous is just the crown of our singular soul.
Guess you have to read Parmenides and Sophist.

>>18364983
No, Plato explicitly tells how his most important doctrines remain unwritten, so they cannot be derived from the dialogues. But there are many suggestions to them in the dialogues.

>>18365449
>Parmenides and Sophist.
I'm planning to but since they're more complex I wanted to start with the early dialogues like Euthyphro.
>that's what a platonist means by 'soul'
So your identity is immortal? Then the reason why we don't perceive our consciousness and identity to be a continuous stream between lives is because incarnating in the material realm creates a veil of forgetfulness that's progressively lifted by anamnesis and eventually completely lifted at death. Unless I misunderstand.

Does the holographic principle in physics lend support to the existence to Plato's Forms? Basically it means that the observable universe is a projection of an underlying data structure that encodes it.

>>18365532
It has to do with what Bohm will call the implicate order, has it not? If I can recall well he even comments something about ''pleroma''.

>>18365552
Hell if I know. All I can tell is that there is at least a superficial analogy between Platonic Forms and the holographic universe theory. That's enough for my almonds to start activating.

>>18365567
https://youtu.be/vp1JBUc8LbM?list=LL
It can help to give an overview of what it is all about.

Is /Platonism/ a Wagnerian or Nietzschean general?

>>18365917
Wagnerian.

>>18365917
What even is wagnerism

>>18364640
Yeah, sure, but I'm pretty they're the two most important ones, with one being his nephew and the other his best student

>>18366068
But this is kind of not the issue, the point is that the tradition of the unwritten doctrines was kept alive and thus reached Plotinus (and us now).

>>18366107
Dude, how? You have to assume there's some sort of line of transmission between the Academy and Plotinus, as it is improbable that these teachings were spread publicly to the uninitiated. So supposedly there must be a connection between all of the scholarchs, starting from Speusippus and ending with Philo of Larissa. Then, there's Antiochus and Cicero, and it is with them that the Academy is destroyed. So how do you establish a link between Cicero (or Antiochus, who supposedly knew the unwritten teachings) and Ammonius Saccas + Plotinus?

>>18354277
>platonism general
>posts pythagoras

I follow mostly Stoicism. Looking at the anons debating on pleasure, isn't the Platonic view somewhat similar to the Stoic one?

Here is Musonius Rufus:
>Men who are not wantons or immoral are bound to consider sexual intercourse justified only when it occurs in marriage and is indulged in for the purpose of begetting children, since that is lawful, but unjust and unlawful when it is mere pleasure-seeking, even in marriage

Feeling pleasure while having sex with your wife for the sake of reproduction = good
Having sex for the sake of pleasure = not good

>>18365974
High Platonic mysticism.

You guys should check out Islamic neoplatonists. They are criminally underrated in western circles.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/suhrawardi/
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mulla-sadra/

>>18365917
Wagner is a Platonist via Schopenhauer.

>>18366619
It is due to the indirect tradition. There is no continuous line between Plato, middle platonists and late ''neo''platonists. But yes, Aristotle was the main point of reference for the unwritten doctrines. If I'm not wrong, I remember reading he had written a commentary on Plato's lecture On the Good.

>>18364026
sure memory and ego are accidental but the soul doesn't dissolve into the the Godhead/The One like say in most forms of vedanta
>>18366664
Plato was a Pythagorean, so where all the neoplatonists
>>18366944
Islamic neoplatonists were epic
Brethern of Purity are definitely we worth looking into
>>18366729
>Feeling pleasure while having sex with your wife for the sake of reproduction = good
I'm surprised is such a close 1:1 not specifically with Platonism, but with Catholic sexual ethics.
>>18365917
Wagnerian absolutely

>>18363941
It's suspected that the Unwritten Doctrines of Plato were largely akin to what he had learnt through Orphic initiation.
Given that the Orphic cults were still around, its not unlikely that either Plotinus or Ammonious Saccuss were initiated. There's also Aristotle himself as well to consider.

>>18367064
Can you quote anything attesting for Plato's orphic initiation?

>>18367050
He wasn't a pythagorean. His doctrine of the soul is at odds with that of pythagoreanism. Also his meta-mathematical and protological doctrines were not pythagorean in the strict sense, there were some essential differences. But still yes, Plato was deeply influenced by Pythagoras (as much as he was by Heraclitus and Parmenides).

>>18366954
Wagner is a Platonist via Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Plato himself.

>Without embarking on an inquiry into the mystery just mooted, we yet must call to mind the distinction between the modern culture poet and the naive poet of the ancient world. The latter was in the first place an inventor of Myths, then their word-of-mouth narrator in the Epos, and finally their personal performer in the living Drama. Plato was the first to adopt all three poetic forms for his "dialogues," so filled with dramatic life and so rich in myth-invention; and these scenes of his may be regarded as the foundation nay, in the poet-philosopher's glorious "Symposium," the model unapproached—of strictly literary poetry, which always leans to the didactic. Here the forms of naive poetry are merely employed to set philosophic theses in a quasi-popular light, and conscious tendence takes the place of the directly-witnessed scene from life.

>>18366729
Glad you found the debate interesting.
I'm not sure this example with sex is really relatable to Platonism. For Plato, whatever it is you are doing should in some form or another improve the state of your soul.
I think exercise is a good example. Plato believes people who exercise to appear to be strong-willed (in other words, for attention) or to gain higher social status etc. are in fact chasing corporeal pleasures which are absolutely contemptible and harmful for the soul.
However if a lover of wisdom is studying philosophy and chooses to exercise and refine his body for HIMSELF and HIS SOUL, there can be nearly nothing more virtuous.
When thinking about Plato + pleasure, ask yourself "does this improve the soul?"

Note: Plato's idea of soul is fueled by philosophy, virtue and wisdom..

Note ii: The issue of sex i don't think is actually explored properly in Platonic writings, this is not a bad thing. Plato used his dialogues to promote thought experiments in his readers, apply the aforementioned information to this scenario and we can start to wonder how/ where it fits. This is one of my favourite things about Plato.

>>18367303
Going to give myself a try at fitting the sexual stuff into this little Platonic framework.
Let's first assume that there are ways in which sex can harm the soul and another which can improve the soul's condition.
Let's start with the bad and give some potential reasons as to why this could be so
1) Hookups/ one night stands: The risk of STD's is quite high, this would damage the body and make you ill. This sickness will decrease your overall performance including philosophy.
2) Forceful sex: Platonic theory in the Gorgias states there is nothing worse than to do wrong on another person. Rape is illegal and punishable by law, this form of sex would be most harmful to the soul.
3) Loveless sex: Sex for the sake of sex is nothing but an abuse of this faculty. Love and friendship (we can apply friendship romantically) are Platonic virtues. Sex for the sake of sex is similar to drinking for the sake of drinking, which Plato rejects.

Now, lets try imagine some good reasons.
1) Loving sex: Passionate love is a Platonic virtue and therefore good for the soul. This would presumably be safely executed with a long term partner in which a bond or friendship is already well established.
2) Sex for procreation: This depends on if the intention is set to raise a child and are prepared to teach him virtue and to be an upstanding member of society, this would be completely virtuous.

That was fun, please add some more if you feel like you could on either end.

>>18363969
This is what I thought.
>>18364478
It seems to me that the meaning or purpose of life is to do what it does. Its just that, given the awareness of having ascended out of the cave, we are capable of realising that the sophian life is the best life producing the greatest eudaimonia and preparing the soul for reintegration with eternity in the most thorough fashion. Ultimately The One's (Mind &/ Soul's) purpose(s) are its own, not necessarily beyond our ability to contemplate but perhaps beyond our ability to know concretely as I conceive it- He knows best who knows he knows not much after all. I was applying to it last night Campbell's idea of the monomyth. The One emanates Mind that emanates Soul for the purpose of an infinitely spiraling ascent and return (descent?) through all the possible stages of manifestation. Each individual soul's perspective throughout each of its transmigrations (and all the possibilities within an individuality's "range of being"- hard concept to communicate, see pic related, maybe parallel universes could be another way of communicating what I mean-) being another instantiation of the total higher Soul's activity of contemplation of the Divine Mind (which is the "container" and activating principle of Soul's emanation and "journeying"). Don't take this for much though. I'm not that well read into Platonism yet.
>>18364585
>is the afterlife Plato posits one where you are every life that ever was/will be, which implies there is only one soul and no individual souls?
The individuality of each soul is what constituents the unity of Soul. An analogue that comes to mind for me is coral. Ive heard that each point of it has an individual experience but the life of the organism pertains to the entire being taken as a singularity. Maybe it could also be thought of as 'each instant constituents total Time. I suppose its a matter of part and whole. Each individual soul is a part that constitutes the whole as Soul, that collective (super(?)) Soul (and please correct me if I'm wrong here- I'm just riffing) emanates individual souls like rays from the sun that are capable during life of contemplating return (reintegration- not annihilation, I look at it more like relinquishing-) to the Soul-Mind-One which will happen more or less after birth depending on ones degree of preparation during life. The relinquishing part is certainly interesting to contemplate. What this anon says: >>18365184
>there's no subservience of will in soul.
I think makes sense. No longer are we confined by individuality and individual wills but are harmonised with supreme, Divine will, of which each:
>true 'sage' is the crown (Keter lol) of Soul; quantity has no meaning here.
But quality may do. Hence the importance of the idea of heros becoming Divine in hellenic culture and "becoming a God".
All this could just be more confusing and I could be way of the mark but its fun the speculate on nonetheless. Please to correct me if I'm off the mark.

>>18365055
It will be relevant as long as humans exist as they do today. I look at it as a framework of understanding for the fullest flourishing of the individual, at least the western individual. I see similarities with Buddhism in this respect but it seems more active, affirmative and positive. I was into buddhism for a long time but it never stuck, i think bc of the limited feeling it projects of "just eacape suffering".
You can look at it as a pathway to harmony and self unfolding. Or as a narrow self interested tool you can milk for academia. You'd be selling yourself very short though imo.

>>18365218
Oneness is infinitely great? I dunno. I'd like to hear something on this.

>>18365461
I feel like they're not written explicitly in the dialogues but one can interpret them from them and they lead one in that direction if one reads closely. The dialogues seem designed so that the greater detail we analyse them in the more we get out of them. I don't imagine Plato to have ever settled his views and to have become dogmatic such that one set of doctrines are all we are trying to find. I think we are trying to uncover the fullest possible range of things he may have thought and Plotinus did great work in this field.

>>18365465
I reckon your getting it. The death at the end of this life is inferior to the remembrance. The latter leads harmonising with Divinity, physical death could just be transmigration and reset though if the prison of the body is not escaped, so to speak.

>>18365532
Damn. Mad brah.

>>18366729
>Feeling pleasure while having sex with your wife for the sake of reproduction = good
I'd debate this. Thats an external that I'd say your over valuing to say it is good. Reproduction (and raising a virtuous family) is good in the sense of civic virtue, i.e. acting justly towards the community, giving back, doing your duty etc. Look at it this way, its good to do the just thing of continuing life, but its bad to be caught up in the pleasure that is a byproduct of the process. Just like its dangerous to fall into pride when you do social good and people celebrate you for it and it feels good. Not tha I don't agree with the general thrust of your argument.

>>18367204
Couldn't we say platonism is a development of pythagorianism, perhaps?

>>18366944
Doesn't Neoplatonism require the one, the intellect and the soul to generate everything else? Aren't Muslims completely against anything that even resembles the Christian trinity because God is 1 and indivisible or something like that? How do they mix Neoplatonism with Islam then?

denounce monism in all its forms

>>18367360
I think the only way it can be spiritually beneficial is if its engaged in dispassionately (not to say robotically) but not motivated by pathos but, in a sense, logos. As I said already, its a duty and its just to contribute to the community and improve it as it has helped foster your improvement. I'd be wary of giving passion any room to be beneficial in the platonic system. Passion is irrational and we want the rational cultivation of the soul, do we not?

>>18361480
He said the Platonic dialogues amount to 'banal conclusions' and preferred Aristotle. He also said in a letter that Plotinus was 'badly iniatiated' because he claimed impermanent union with the One, rather than the jivan-mukti LARP of saying you've permanently attained union with the One in this life.

>>18367701
This is how ismailis do so at least

Um...Plotinus looked like THIS?

>>18367733
Interesting. Sounds like he may have underestimated the power of the Platon.

>>18363941
it's a larp, my dude

>>18367737
Ok, so they think God is only the one, and the universal intellect and universal soul are something else below God, makes sense. Thanks.

>>18367757
No problem anon

I hate to say it, but Lloyd Gerson is counter-initiation. He can't be trusted.

>>18367768
make makes you say that anon? his version of the enneads is the one I see most commonly recommended. should we use the mackenna version then? and if so, what about mackenna makes him not counter-initiation

Threadly remember.

>But one should be aware that Plotinus takes a new step when he also calls the "One" epekeina noeseos (beyond all thinking), and when he takes all being and all thinking too as a pointer into transcendence. In the context of the Republic, in contrast, the good is presented as the unifying one of the many. In other words, the good is articulated precisely in respect to the inner duality and dialetical function of the one which Plotinus' double "beyond" [beyond being (ousia) and beyond thought (noesis) is specifically intended to exclude."

>>18367737
>>18367701
What's the problem? Ismailis and Ibn Arabi just steal Plotinus' metaphysics. If anything it fits more with neoplatonism. The trinity is a hindrance to neo-platonism, hence why Augustine rejected it ultimately, and why guys like Dionysius the Areopagite and Meister Eckhart place the One above the trinity (inb4 they don't - nice cope, bro).

The Gospel of John is a direct refutation of neo-platonism and a move toward theism and personalism.

>>18367747
Guenon, Schuon, and Coomaraswamy were peak skim-readers. Don't read them for actual insight and deep textual analysis. They just repeat their one-trick dogma over and over again and pretend like ignoring crucial differences is "trad."

>>18367724
You could say you are improving the community by engaging in fulfiling sex with your partner which would strengthen your friendship and of course Platonic friendship is important to cultivate.
This is not to say this is mindless passion at all - there is clear distinction. This type of sex fosters friendship and good nature with your other and will make your community happier because of it. Refer back to my harmful examples of sex, this is what i would consider harmful and passionate and leads to the destruction of community and degradation of soul.

>>18367801
>The trinity is a hindrance to neo-platonism, hence why Augustine rejected it ultimately, and why guys like Dionysius the Areopagite and Meister Eckhart place the One above the trinity
This

>>18367587
This is complicated indeed and I agree that reading closely we can find many vestiges of what he preserved for oral teaching. But from all accounts, including direct disciples, middle and later platonists, Plato did establish a certain doctrine. And you are right about Plotinus, Proclus even called him the greatest exegete ''of the Platonic revelation''.

>>18367679
Well, it draws a lot from pythagoreanism indeed and seeing how Plato dedicated himself to correct, adjust and adapt other doctrines like Parmenides' and Heraclitus' teachings, I think we could say it is, in a sense.

>>18367813
>>18367724
If we think about Plato's views on drinking my theory on sex will hopefully make more sense?
Plato often criticises the drunkard, yet he promotes and encourages drinking with friends at occasional festivals.
Apply this to healthy sex with a Platonic partner and it is pretty much the same.

>>18367781
Not the other dude, but i think the sense in which we speak about initiation was perhaps above MacKenna. He was a journalist not an academic after all. I don't imagine him being familiar with the likes of Guenon and that mode of thinking. I.e. he himself may have not been initiated but he was probably not counter-initiation. Btw, wouldn't counter-tradition be a better phrase for this idea?

>>18367788
Meh. Moderns.

>>18367801
There is a strong implication of a triadic principle, instead of dyadic, in Plato's protology. This is why Damascius will hypostasize the Mixture and make the Principle Three.

>guys like Dionysius the Areopagite and Meister Eckhart place the One above the trinity
Blatantly false.
From Dionysius Divine Names:
>But the transcendent unity defines the one itself and every number. For it is the source, and the cause, the number and the order of the one, of number, and of all being. And the fact that the transcendent Godhead is one and triune must noe be understood in any of our own typical senses. No. There is the transcendent unity of God and the fruitfulness of God, and as we prepare to sing this truth we use the names Trinity and Unity for that which is beyond every name, calling it the transcendent being above every being.
I swear this revisionism of neoplatonicism is so retarded it mars even what Plato taught.

Gerson seems very big on the monistic union interpretation of Plotinus.

>>18367860
Of course, but im just wondering what about Gerson the original anon thought was counter-traditional (which is indeed a better phrase as you say), and why MacKenna (or anyone else he might recommend for the enneads instead) is immune from this.

>>18367869
Is that why?

>>18367867
shut the fuck up and go back to your guenon thread

>>18367867
Not that poster but what do you think Gadamer misses there?

>>18367823
Whats the source on that pic? Catholic? Ver interesting.

>>18367883
It represents Eckhart's thinking. I forget where it came from sorry

>>18367801
>What's the problem?
I started reading the Enneads (Gerson) and it seems to me like Neoplatonism's version of God is basically the One, the Intellect and the Soul. Meanwhile what little I know of Islam is that they have 1 God who is indivisible, and below him you have angels, djinns, humans and the rest of the creation. So I was thinking that they would have to either say that the One is God and the Intellect and the Soul are below them but still above everything else or somehow claim that God is still only 1 while being the 3 things. Seems from the pic of the other anon that they went with the first option. Now I could be completely wrong of course.

>>18367868
I'm not going to argue about Dionysius. There's some very smart Christian theologians who see him as trinitarian (Lossky, Balthasar come to mind). I would very much like this to be the case.

But who is the revisionist here? The guy writing after Proclus and claiming to be the disciple of St. Paul (pbuh)?

>>18367896
intellect and soul ain't God...or rather, the Intellect is God and the One isn't. Take your pick.

keep reading

>>18367909
This was common in christian tradition. We have the Gospels (both gnostic and orthodox), the Clementine literature. I don't know why this is so difficult for platonists to understand without thinking it is all a christian conspiration to appropriate everything true from the others.

>>18367925
Give me another example of a LARP and a plagiarism so flagrant.

>>18367827
Roger.
>>1836787 8
Want some fries with your salt
>>18367880
I don't think its a new step. I more align with the unwritten doctrines thesis. I.e. Plotinus draws out, explains and demonstrates the inner, more spiritual esoteric aspect of Plato. Just my two cents. It feels like hes making distinctions that he doesn't comprehend. The Good (The One), at least as I understand it is beyond thought and being and it does unify multiplicity.

>>18367942
What larp? And what is this even more absurd claim of plagiarism? I literally showed you how pseudepigrapha is intimate to the christian tradition. If you think methodological and hermeneutical tools are plagiarism, then the whole platonic tradition crumbles.

>>18367945
But I thought Gadamer espoused quite well the very unwritten protology of Plato, that is, the dialectical correlation between One and Dyad. But here we find interpretative divergences. If the One is the Good and above the Dyad, why would it need to determine and limit the (unlimited) Dyad? Because it is Good. Then it is by reason of The One limiting the Dyad that the One is Good? The dialectical necessity and determination is insurmountable.

>>18367988
I look at The One much more transcendentally. We can't really say anything about it but that's its one. I was more objecting to the idea that Plotinus introduces a new step. I think it might be a matter of the way Gadamer interprets
>epekeina noeseos (beyond all thinking)
To me thats to say we can think about it but that it transcends our ability to know or comprehend it totally. We can think about it but "where" it is (using a spatial metaphor- its obviously everywhere) there is no thought. That is to say where we approach The One we lose multiplicity and duality of thought, thought becomes one with The One. Just spit balling though. I'm not that well steeped yet.

>>18367602
>reset
There is no progression between lives? You would think that transmigration implies some level of progress so that every life gets the soul closer to being finally freed from the body.

>>18365246
>>18365184
Are you that platonist anon? By the images I suppose so. What do you make of this difficulty: >>18367988, which kind of recalls the critique of Aristotle against Plato's One and Dyad as principle.

What does /pg/ think about Leibniz's Monadology? Can it be seen as a continuation of Platonic/Neoplatonic ontology?

>>18367050
Platon was a Philolausian

>>18362816
holy shit fuck off pseud

>>18368871
True. Perhaps I should have said forgetting. Thats more what I meant. I think this accounts for precocious youth as well.

Rate my Platonism shelf /pg/

>>18367360
>Forceful sex
To cause someone pain isn't really to that one wrong. Platonism isn't pain avoiding, suffering through pain and overcoming it is one of the purposes of embodiment, for such wisdom can only be had on an individual basis by direct experience. Likewise sex is a microcosm of the whole dance of Eros and Aphrodite that is the Cosmos. Thrusting is also by definition forcing, it's impossible for sex to not be forcful, and for the masculine (peras) to subdue the feminine (apeiron) is not some evil. In the play of intercourse the whole Dynamis of reality plays out culminating in union and emanation (offspring).
It's extremes if every quality that is a sin, all qualities are good in control doses and all qualities are bad in uncontrolled doses. This even includes paradoxically excess and control itself, sometimes even though it produces little good the knowledge and growth from experiencing something bad knowing it's bad strengthens our wisdom, this is in a way what "post-nut wisdom" signifies, we just lack the wisdom to see it later. There's this wisdom after every sin.

>>18367719
you seem pretty dogmatic about it desu

>>18368871
The progression is in innate wisdom that you carry "subconsciously", and in hades/meadow at the "choosing of lives", I believe you know all your past lives there, your most recent one most intensely.

>>18363941
Plotinus' writings are just Aristotle with Plato stacked on top of it

>>18367873
Gerson is one of the most traditional modern Platonists, he's proven beyond doubt that Proclus was correct in claiming that Plotinus was the greatest exegete of Plato.

>>18369568
this man knows

I am rereading Phaedo and the account of the shape of the earth that Socrates provides (rivers and hollows and Tartarus) baffles me. What did Plato mean by this? Was he providing a natural theory of the earth or is there something more about it?

>>18367988
>>18368876
The One proceeds and precedes. It informs its own formlessness as the other, different and the same as itself. The One in relation to the Dyad is the Dyad itself to itself (the Dyad is the Limited and Unlimited); the One through the Dyad begets himself as God as the First Intelligible Triad.
The greatest error is confusing the Limited/Monad solely with the One, even if it is he: he is more than it. To speak boldly, the One is what Remains and Proceeds and Returns. But Mone never proceeds for it is all that is, and Proodos is an eternal outflow without a source or end, and Epistrophe ascends ever higher beyond sameness and difference, beyond limit and limitlessness.
Yet none of this captures his identity.

>>18367737
Where can I learn more about Ismaili philosophy?

>>18369561
>the "choosing of lives",
What if I want to choose not to come back?

Brainlet Euthyphro question here.

Presuming that God is morality itself, and this morality is not subject to change;
If something is necessarily God-loved, isn't it the case that it's a necessarily-God-loved thing therefore God necessarily loves it
AND
God necessarily loves it therefore it's something that's necessarily-God-loved simultaneously?
Or does the necessity of a thing being God-loved come from God himself because he created said thing?

Am I being retarded? Does anyone understand what i'm getting at or am I too far gone down the path of the brainlet? Thanks.

>>18367801
Dionysius and Eckhart didn't place the Godhead over the trinune persons, this problem was solved with Perichoreisis/Circumcession.

On Eckhart and this common misunderstanding of his doctrine: https://sensuscatholicus.jimdofree.com/2020/03/24/der-gnostische-trinitarismus-des-meister-eckhart-hinter-dem-gott-hinter-gott/
>>18368949
this is somewhat more accurate
>>18369634
think of "earth" here as the element furthest from the spiritual, the ring furthest from the centre
the centre is stability the Godhead, the further out you go the more rapid change becomes to the point of non-being - hence the rivers, and hell and absence
>>18369939
Solution is in the Laws - God himself is the measure of all things. So the standard isn't distinct from him because he is The Good itself.
Don't fret, if you haven't gotten to the Laws or become familiar with Augustine or Plotinus there would be no reason to accuse you of being a brainlet.

>>18369368
Socrates says in Gorgias to assault somebody in random is wrong. He says that the only time it is okay to hurt somebody is if it is because justice is being enforced on them and this actually isn't really hurting them, either. It cleans their soul.
One of Plato's main ethical notions is that it is wrong to do another person wrong.

>>18369999
>because justice is being enforced on them
Does this include carrying it out yourself? Self defense for example.

>>18369747
They have quite a few books, there are a few on this chart. I found 'The Assassins of Alamut' to be a good introduction to the views of the Nizari Ismaili, they do a chapter summarising them. Look on the Institute of Ismaili Studies for particular topics that interest you. They have alot material there

>>18369999
Exactly. Forceful sex perpetually reestablishes the dominance of the male over the female, the feminine wants to be lead, she challenges the masculine eternally such that he can justify his place as the masculine. This is why Hera always antagonizes Zeus, to be subdued; like Zeus threat of the golden chain from heaven, likewise a stranglehold on a woman is a pleasurable reminder of the safety and authority that he provides her.
But if the pain you cause is sadistic (where the pain itself is sought not that which it symbolizes, ala authority and action) then it is indeed sinful sex.
It's similar to disciplining a child with roughness.

>>18370198
You couldn't just rape anybody in Athens, it was illegal. What happened between husband and wife was different because of societal customs of the time.
>>18370005
I don't know but I think Socrates/ Plato would rather you wait until after and then go to an expert on justice, just to be sure that what was happening to you was actually unjust and they can then unload justice on to this criminal (I mean a judge or the courts when I say expert in justice.)

>>18370247
>just to be sure that what was happening to you was actually unjust
This would make sense if 1. courts in most countries weren't completely ineffective and 2. there weren't situations where justice is unambiguous enough that you can carry it out yourself. Like if you get mugged while minding your own business for example.

>>18370247
>rape
is that what you think i'm fucking talking about?

Help me out

What does aristotle say is the property of truth and where does it come from

>>18370162
retarded mish-mash of books the creator of this chart never read

fuck off guenonfag, and tell your dad I said he's a loser

>>18369974
>On Eckhart and this common misunderstanding of his doctrine: https://sensuscatholicus.jimdofree.com/2020/03/24/der-gnostische-trinitarismus-des-meister-eckhart-hinter-dem-gott-hinter-gott/

>Read this blogpost, he's smarter than the Catholic church and 99% of people who read Meister Eckhart.

aight

>>18370371
not guenonfag, and just posted the chart for some of the ismaili stuff on it, most of which I have read. It is filled with crap, as well as good books

>>18370371
What's the general consensus on Guenon here? Is he worth reading and are his ideas valuable at all?

>>18370396
Worth a read in my opinion, but not to be taken dogmatically, as he has several misunderstandings, particularly in regards to plato and platonism.

>>18369974
thanks anon

>>18370417
Is he right about counter-initiation and perennial philosophy/religion (tradition being necessary and all that)? I don't like that view but it does seem to make sense.

>>18370426
Read it and make your own educated judgement. Always better than being force fed here

>>18370270
Socrates held the Athenian justice system to high regard. See the dialogue Crito

>>18370276
It clearly was what I was talking about
Don't project your own meaning on my replies and you won't feel misunderstood.

>>18370162
Thanks. Any primary source you would recommend?

>>18370426
the "how to" reestablishment of a new priesthood and cult (as in "church") is set out in Plato' Laws, the existence of living truly genuine mystery traditions (I doubt there is, definitely no western ones) is basically irrelevant.

God will guide a new colony/city that has the will and goal to praise the Gods, all we need is the will to lay the foundations and the world will begin to glimmer like gold again.
>It doesn’t matter whether he’s founding a new state from scratch or reconstructing an old one that has gone to ruin: in either case, if he has any sense, he will never dream of altering whatever instructions may have been received from Delphi or Dodona or Ammon about the gods and temples that ought to be founded by the various groups in the state, and the gods or spirits after whom the temples should be named.
>After these remarks, our law on the subject should run like this, with Heaven’s blessing: God is now re-establishing and re-founding Magnesia,

Guenon's points about some living cult literally, as Plato says, doesn't matter.

>>18370470
Check out the book 'Ismaili Literature: A Bibliography of Sources and Studies by Farhad Daftary'. It gives a list of primary sources and the best books to find them in

>>18370449
rape isn't the only form of forceful sex, but perhaps you have no knowledge of that

>>18370477
Thanks anon, I will. A bit off topic to the thread, but if I may ask, are you an Ismaili yourself? I am a Twelver Shia but Ismaili philosophy does seem intriguing to me.

>>18370487
No, I am a Twelver Shia as well, but I agree and am fascinated with many aspects of Ismaili theology

>>18370479
No lol. You knew exactly what I meant, read my original message again. What in god's name is your problem??

>Platonic metaphysics
>Neoplatonism
>Western Spirituality
Is it the Middle Ages again? I hope you're all reading this as a hobby and not because you take it seriously.

>>18370505
What do you take seriously?

>why yes I take platonic metaphysics, neoplatonism, western spirituality 100% seriously

>>18370510
Shit that actually makes sense within the paradigm of current year philosophy and science.

>>18370503
rape was mentioned after a full stop, like it could be an addition or implying that all forceful sex is rape, my first response to that makes it obvious I was not talking about Rape but the first half of your statement.

>>18370510
White Fragility is a good example of great modern social commentary. For philosophy, Pinker and Zizek are amazing. For poetry, give Rupi Kaur a fair chance one day. There are so many great things right now that only an incel would waste his time on this ancient bullshit.

>>18370519
Such as?

>>18370524
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_quantum_mechanics

Here is a lifetime of infinitely more relevant reading material for you.

>>18370534
Oh so you're retarded, alright then.

>>18370534
Yikes

>>18370517
this

>>18370505
without Platonism, and the real ascent to the vision of the Good and Truth and Beauty and Justice, knowledge is literally and absolutely impossible.

>>18370537
Says the guy still talking about medieval spirituality. There are hundreds of works in philosophy, science, anthropology, psychology, etc. from the last 200 years alone that would be a better use of your time to read.

>>18370534

>>18370476
Taking a quick look at that pic
>reincarnation makes us forget why we're here
>souls are immortal
>we are here to learn things, become wise, and eventually ascend
Why are modern esotericists so autistic about new spiritual movements when they all pretty much co-opted platonic metaphysics and cosmology and just added some bullshit on top?
Guenon was notoriously opposed to things such as new age which he considered inversion and literal traps for the soul for example.

>>18370547
>old bad, new good
Jesus just shut the fuck up midwit

>>18370547
Anon you're dumb. This is ok. Don't be too upset about it.

>>18370560
>>18370565
So you idiots actually take this more seriously than a hobby? If you said you were academic historians that would also be acceptable. I can only imagine that you're poor, malnourished, and/or from a third world country.

>>18370572
(you)
Go seethe elsewhere bugman

>>18370498
Good to see a fellow Shia. Assalam allaikum, brother. There is a most intriguing book of theirs that I've found, called Umm al-Kitab. Apparently it is supposed to be their "secret book" that they don't even talk about. It is a dialogue featuring Imam Baqir. It is very kino but hardly understandable. Have you heard about it?

>>18370572
Anon, r*ddit is a better place for you

>>18370505
>>18370519
>>18370522
>>18370534
>>18370547
>>18370572
>falling for this bait

>>18370579
>Umm al-Kitab
Wa alaikum as-salam. There are so few of us here. No I havent heard of it. I will have to look it up. Tell me about it if you can

>>18370581
The white fragility post is a straw manning false flagger, not me.

>>18370555
"Yet since the wise should know all that is to come, it is right
that you should not be ignorant of something else. A time will
come when it appears that the Egyptians have worshipped God
with pure mind and sincere devotion in vain. All their holy
worship will turn out to be without effect and will bear no fruit.
For the gods will withdraw from earth to heaven and Egypt will
be deserted. The land which used to be the seat of religion will
be abandoned by the gods and become void of their presence."
>As the whole of nature is akin, and the soul has learned everything, nothing prevents a man, after recalling one thing only—a process men call learning—discovering everything else for himself, if he is brave and does not tire of the search, for searching and learning are, as a whole, recollection. We must, therefore, not believe that debater’s (Guenon) argument, for it would make us idle, and fainthearted men like to hear it, whereas my argument makes them energetic and keen on the search.
By seeking, like the Righteous Sufferer, all the gates shall be opened.
>‘‘No, no! It is I myself who fashioned a vessel to cross to the precinct of God; And there, I shall launch the thousand-foot ship and sail to the Staircase of Fire!

I'm not talking about Protestantism or your own (idiotes) truth but the death and revival of rites and theurgy (humanly guided initiation), the intellectual tradition is perfectly alive in the PERFECT preservation of Plato's works and the Exegatai, and all the doctrines of the Gods are persevered in stone and the inspired books. To read Plato and the Enneads and all the Platonists is even itself the greatest Initiation, and to do exegesis is prayer, for God will guide he who directs his eye to the heart's most deepest intuition. Like, wtf do you think Teletarchs are Guenon? Imhotep was not initiated by a man, nor was Orpheus or Zoroaster.

>>18370629
I think what Guenon is criticizing is specifically the practice he refers to as "inverted" spirituality and which according to him, from what I understand, encompasses everything that isn't part of a genuine traditional lineage. Which is why he disliked everything related to new age so much, since they introduced practices independent of traditional initiatic methods and popularized them. He was critical of Jung for similar reasons as he thought his theories were an inversion and would guide the soul towards the underworld rather than heaven so to speak. The bottom line being that if you strayed from a preserved lineage, you would most likely condemn yourself by believing lower planes to be higher ones (what he calls pursuing psychic powers and what I assume means all the /x/ greenpill stuff like "astral projection") and that your soul would be stuck in these lower planes of realization. I'm no expert but I think Guenon's metaphysics were pretty much a matter of finding a legitimate preservation of tradition in order to be initiated and learn to strive towards the genuine higher forms of realization rather than being "fooled" by what he assumed to be lower, more dangerous ones.

>>18370600
It is a very short book, about hundred pages, very opaque, and apparently very important to Ismailis. It is said that is was written in Arabic first but the original version is lost, all we have is a Persian translation that Ismailis kept in secret. I tried to read it but I got filtered very quickly. It is very opaque but you can tell there is something important going on, which is why I got interested to learn about Ismaili doctrines, to understand what the book was saying. To make matters worse, there is no single commentary written on it, nor even an online discussion about it (aside from a post I made asking Frater about his opinion, kek). According to the academic who wrote the introduction the book is not even discussed in Ismaili literature. As far as I know only the first 20 pages have been translated to English (in "An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia Vol. 2"), but the Persian version can be found published in an academic journal which I was able to find on libgen.

>>18370682
My advice would be to read extensivley on ismaili thought, then maybe it will become clearer and you could unpack it yourself. I will do something similar. Hopefully it will get fully translated into in english. I did some research and it is translated into french or turkish if that is some help to you. I will have a read of it in the english that is translated, as you have piqued my interest in it.

>>18370678
those all ignore the Plato and Exegetai and read selectively. The irony is Guenon did this himself, thinking he was more right than Plato, there is no discourse higher than Plato's.

>>18370705
I do plan to do that. I will also ask your opinion if I bump into you again. Thankfully I am fluent in Persian but that did not really help with understanding it kek. I doubt it will get translated into English, as Ismailis seem very secretive of it for some reason, but if it does it would be great.

>>18370823
I will do the same if I intereact with you again brother.
>I doubt it will get translated into English, as Ismailis seem very secretive of it for some reason, but if it does it would be great
they are notorious for this, espcially the bohras, which is unfortunatley who probably hold the most authentic ismaili literature. They have not even translated thier main hadith book into english.

>>18370714
>ignore
Does the idea of inverted spirituality even make sense in a platonic context?
>Guenon did this himself
I don't think so, he constantly criticized the theosophists for their psychic practices for example.

>>18370841
Do you have any opinion on their imam? I was very surprised to find out that while we Shias are doing everything to oppose (neo)liberalism, they have comfortably integrated themselves in it, so much so that their imam is one of the wealthiest capitalists alive. I also watched one of his interviews and he did not strike me as a very spiritual, much less divine, man.

>>18370912
If you are refering to the nizari, I agree with your position, that thier current imam is practially a living refutation of thier lineage: he is a symbol of modernism, and his spirituality is deeply superficial. This is to be expected of them however, as, like the qarmatians, they do not feel that the sharia is nesscarry upon them. Its why I find the bohras much more interesting as a sect, while finding the theology of both (which are very similar) fascinating.

>>18370846
>inverted spirituality
Perhaps.

>But, then, transposing themselves from the universal plane to existing as a part and to being on their own, and becoming in a way weary of existing with another, they retreat each into themselves. When the soul actually does this over a period of time, and shunning the totality of things and standing apart in self-distinction, it ceases to look towards the intelligible; having become a part, it falls into isolation and weakness, and busies itself with trivialities and takes a partial view, and due to its separation from the whole, it fastens upon some individual body and shuns the rest of the totality, coming and directing itself towards that one individual; battered as it is in every way by the totality of things, it severs itself from the whole and turns to administering the particular with all the trouble that involves, fastening now upon this and putting itself in thrall to externals through its presence in it, and plunging itself deep into the interior of it.

>>18370943
I find these esoteric ideas of Ismailis interesting to study, but ultimately not much of value when they go against the Qur'an, or the sayings of the Prophet and the Imams, peace be upon them all. I have even heard that the Qarmatis, being a violent group, once attacked the Kabbah and damaged it, which goes to show how this Batiniyah stuff could backfire pretty badly. By the way, what do you think about current Shia leadership, specifically Khamenei? As time goes on I am liking him more and more.

New thread >>18371044

>>18371029
I agree with your first statement's sentiments. I feel that there is a fine balance between the esoteric and exoteric that must be reached, and too much of either will cause you to deviate. yes the qarmatians attacked mecca, and stole the stone for some time.
>what do you think about current Shia leadership, specifically Khamenei? As time goes on I am liking him more and more.
I support them, and I find the WF system acceptable, but I am not interested in politics as much as I once was. What interests my is increasing my proximity to the Divine.

>>18370678
>/x/ greenpill stuff like "astral projection"
Is this talked about anywhere else than in New Thought circles and is it harmful if I try to practice it?

>>18371070
Not him, but I have never heard it discussed anywhere outside of /x/. The advice that they give is to be very careful, because not all entities you will meet there will be benevolent

>>18370975
Here is looks like what is being described is those who are simply disconnected from spirituality ("honouring instead other things" etc) and admire worldly things instead of striving towards what is beyond the world. I wouldn't call it an inversion as much as a negation.
What is your greentexted passage from?
>>18371070
I think several esoteric practices like alchemy or tantra use it as a tool but I don't know much more.
>>18371080
>I have never heard it discussed anywhere outside of /x/
It's definitely a popular thing, especially nowadays. Out of body experiences aren't mysterious anymore, there are a bunch of youtube videos about such things. Although I'm quite curious about some of the testimonies.

>>18371112
>It's definitely a popular thing, especially nowadays
yeah, its very popular, particularly amoung new age as said before, but I am just refering to my own experiences, that I have heard the topic discussed in detail outside of /x/. I am not saying there is no one else who discusses it in depth.

>>18371127
>I have never heard the topic discussed in detail outside of /x/.
sorry I have a tendancy to type too fast

>>18370505
The metaphysics makes sense to me, some of the ethics too, and that is why I read this stuff. But then some people here are like:
>so now that I've proved the One and the Platonic forms and whatever else, it then follows that God talked to Moses as a burning bush and Jesus walked on water, and that is why we the current society is shit and we must return to tradition, and this is how I align my chakras to do my astral projection during my daily Muslim prayer...

>>18371127
I wish new age wasn't 99% garbage so it could actually be discussed on this board. I'm quite interested in some things I've read but it's usually dismissed as bullshit because it comes from that movement.

>>18371054
This is precisely what I like very much about Shia Islam, the emphasis on both zahir and batin. There is one thing about this that concerns me though. After reading Jung and some other authors I am very inclined to study occultism and alchemy, but as you might know most jurists have deemed their study impermissible, as there is narrations heavily condemning it. Do you have any thoughts on this?

>>18371145
I've never understood how people made the jump between platonism and christianity.

>>18371150
yeah I feel the same, there are aspects of new age that interesting, but they are buried in crap

>>18371153
>This is precisely what I like very much about Shia Islam, the emphasis on both zahir and batin

I am the same

>After reading Jung and some other authors I am very inclined to study occultism and alchemy, but as you might know most jurists have deemed their study impermissible, as there is narrations heavily condemning it. Do you have any thoughts on this?

My advice would be to do some deep self reflection in regards to your faith. If you truly feel it is strong, then study them. If you feel that is it is weak or at the very least might be swayed, then avoid it, at least until you have reached a point where you feel your faith is strong. I do not see a problem in using other Traditions to help us better conceptualise the cosmos and our relationship to the Divine, as long as it does not openly contradict our perspective.

>>18371186
With regards to my faith, I have to a position that I completely understand and agree with Jung when he said "I don't need to believe, I *know* God", so that is not my worry. But experience has taught me that whenever I've deviated from Sharia, even for just a bit, I have come to regret it, as there is always a good reason for the regulations. Though regarding this particular matter, from what I've gathered from the narrations, it seems that it is only ritualistic magic (theurgy?) that they are condemning, which I will avoid, but alchemy seems to be fine.

You did capitalize the the first letter of tradition; I take it that refers to Guenon's Traditionalism? Would you recommend studying him?

>>18371291
>experience has taught me that whenever I've deviated from Sharia, even for just a bit, I have come to regret it, as there is always a good reason for the regulations.
Yes, but oddly at the same time that guilt has made me feel closer to God, but that is unintentional on my part

>it seems that it is only ritualistic magic (theurgy?) that they are condemning, which I will avoid, but alchemy seems to be fine.
Correct. it is also in my opinion that studying things conceptually is not the same as applying thier methodolgies. The methodolgies found in the sharia are sufficent and should be discarded or augemented, but there is no harm in studying such things for conceptual purposes.

> I take it that refers to Guenon's Traditionalism? Would you recommend studying him?
Yes, but I just use the term 'Tradition' in such a context to distinguish a line of thinking that is distinct from that in Islam, even if they hold similarity. Islam is one Tradition, that is another. In regards to Guenon, he has been very influencial to me, as I recommend studying him, but just not to follow him dogmatically or trust everything he says as a factual truth, he does get certain things wrong, such as his views on Plato and a total disregard for the value of the mystical aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy. I personally do agree with the concept of the Primordial Tradition transcendent unity of religions.

>>18371341
>should not be discarded or augemented
>Primordial Tradition and transcendent unity of religions.
sorry

>>18371341
>Yes, but oddly at the same time that guilt has made me feel closer to God, but that is unintentional on my part
Same, my friend. Same

>Correct. it is also in my opinion that studying things conceptually is not the same as applying thier methodolgies.
True, studying them wouldn't be as bad as applying them, but it seems that the Fiqh also forbids even the study of theurgy.

>Guenon
What made me have reservations about him was his takes on Kant and Jung. He seems to have completely misunderstood both in his criticisms. Though aside that he does seem to have value and the subject he discusses is a subject very important to me, so I will read at some point.

>>18371542
This is what I mean by not taking him dogmatically. There are certain things that we find to be incorrect does not mean he or his opinions hold no value. Best of luck brother.

>>18369060
Seethe harder

"Why yes I am a neoplatonist who supports BLM, how could you tell?"

>>18371556
It has been a pleasure brother. Best of luck to you as well.

>>18371542
>He seems to have completely misunderstood both in his criticisms
you'll find this to be the case all the time