/lit/ - Literature

>>21552286
Schedule:
.1 - "What is the Living Being and What is Man?" 9/1
I.2 - "On Virtue" 10/1
I.3 - "On Dialectic [The Upward Way]." 11/1
I.4 - "On True Happiness (Well Being)" 12/1
I.5 - "On Whether Happiness (Well Being) Increases with Time." 13/1
I.6 - "On Beauty" 14/1
I.7 - "On the Primal Good and Secondary Forms of Good [Otherwise, 'On Happiness']" 15/1
I.8 - "On the Nature and Source of Evil" 16/1
I.9 - "On Dismissal" 17/1

18/1 - Break / Discussion

II.1 - "On Heaven" 19/1
II.2 - "On the Movement of Heaven" 20/1
II.3 - "Whether the Stars are Causes" 21/1
II.4 - "On Matter" 22/1
II.5 - "On Potentiality and Actuality" 23/1
II.6 - "On Quality or on Substance" 24/1
II.7 - "On Complete Transfusion" 25/1
II.8 - "On Sight or on how Distant Objects Appear Small" 26/1
II.9 - "Against Those That Affirm The Creator of the Kosmos and The Kosmos Itself to be Evil" [generally quoted as "Against the Gnostics"] 27/1

28/1 - Break / Discussion

III.1 - "On Fate"
III.2 - "On Providence (1)."
III.3 - "On Providence (2)."
III.4 - "On our Allotted Guardian Spirit"
III.5 - "On Love"
III.6 - "On the Impassivity of the Unembodied"
III.7 - "On Eternity and Time"
III.8 - "On Nature, Contemplation and the One"
III.9 - "Detached Considerations"

7/2 - Break / Discussion

IV.1 - "On the Essence of the Soul (1)"
IV.2 - "On the Essence of the Soul (2)"
IV.3 - "On Problems of the Soul (1)"
IV.4 - "On Problems of the Soul (2)"
IV.5 - "On Problems of the Soul (3)” [Also known as, "On Sight"].
IV.6 - "On Sense-Perception and Memory"
IV.7 - "On the Immortality of the Soul"
IV.8 - "On the Soul's Descent into Body"
IV.9 - "Are All Souls One"

17/2 - Break / Discussion

V.1 - "On the Three Primary Hypostases"
V.2 - "On the Origin and Order of the Beings following after the First"
V.3 - "On the Knowing Hypostases and That Which is Beyond"
V.4 - "How That Which is After the First comes from the First, and on the One."
V.5 - "That the Intellectual Beings are not Outside the Intellect, and on the Good"
V.6 - "On the Fact that That Which is Beyond Being Does not Think, and on What is the Primary and the Secondary Thinking Principle"
V.7 - "On whether There are Ideas of Particular Beings"
V.8 - "On the Intellectual Beauty"
V.9 - "On Intellect, the Forms, and Being"

26/2 - Break / Discussion

VI.1 - "On the Kinds of Being (1)"
VI.2 - "On the Kinds of Being (2)"
VI.3 - "On the Kinds of Being (3)"
VI.4 - "On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole (1)"
VI.5 - "On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole (2)"
VI.6 - "On Numbers"
VI.7 - "How the Multiplicity of Forms Came Into Being: and on the Good"
VI.8 - "On Free Will and the Will of the One"
VI.9 - "On the Good, or the One"

7/3 - Final Discussion

>>21552286
Nice. Nice. Nice.

Have a small bump. keep making these threads.

It's a shame it's so body-hating. Incessant whining about how the body is evil and getting rid of it (dying) is good.

>>21553559
It's only a shame for crypto-materialist sentamentalistfags who are too attached to materiality

>>21553559
The body is evil and getting rid of it (attaining super-material states, the opposite of dying) is good.

>>21553594
>>21553615
lmao

>>21553559
The body is not evil. But it is not you.

>"why should there be any difference as a given star sees certain others from the corner of a triangle or in opposition or at the angle of a square?"
>tfw another schizo rambling in the academy for the past 3 hours
>tfw can't throw him out because its one of Timaeus' students

test

This tractate is actually kind of interesting, was considering skipping as his description of celestial phenomena is boring but his thoughts on stars actually emitting currents of energy that effect people's lives is actually intriguing if only to see how they viewed astrology/astronomy back then

>>21553559
The body is not evil, but matter being the most antithetical to the One because it is unintelligible, and beings being spontaneously attracted by the principles at the origin of their generation, it is normal that man, as a compound of form and matter, tends with all his being towards the intelligible and ultimately towards the One, and must therefore succeed in mastering the body in order to order it to the contemplation of the Good. Matter is kind of evil in Enneads however.

>>21554028
a pretty influential idea also, it would get refined by ficino later.

Here's a question for the read-along: how legitimate do we think is the claim that the Plotonian system is a genuine continuation of the Platonic project/system?

>>21553559
Suicide is not Plato approved funnily enough.

>muh hemlock

Socrates was tried and convicted. He didn’t choose to sue.

>>21550238
1.3 Are the Stars Causes

That the stars indicate or cause future events

Do the planets cause poverty, wealth, health sickness, ugliness, beauty, vice, virtue?
Are the planets ensouled?
Do they act under the stress of their position under collective figures?
- The stars have absolutely no main function in our regard (they don't get happy/sad/cheerful/angry)
4. We can't attribute stars as being like humans

The stars are serviceable to the universe the way the gall serves the body
- Mars and Venus don't commit adulteries, they are just planets
- Those who believe otherwise also don't believe in any One Being, all is made over to the stars singly

Riches and poverty are caused not by the movement of the stars but by 'combinations of external fact'

In the Timaeus, it is the stars, not God, that infuse impulse, desire, pleasure, pain, and personality in people

A Soul is only fate-bound if it binds itself to a body
The moment and conditions of the Soul-body forms are determined by the cosmic circuit
As parts, the Soul is present in proportion to the degree of essential reality held by such partial objects
The soulless parts of the All are instruments effected by external compulsion

Of ensouled people, some are "better" than others in that they can correct themselves by their own reason
- The others still participate toward the general purpose of the Good, but haphazardly, and need constant correction
- A 3rd class of people are totally passive and soulless

Power/fame/marriage/offspring/wealth may come by virtue or vice depending on the context
15.
The Spindle of Necessity (the Loom spun by the Fates) have no power over the Lots and some form of choice when determining human conditions
- physical frame/place and time/parents/moment of a living being's conception (I'm guessing he is expanding on the last part of Republic X where souls in the afterlife are all picking new lives)
- some people enter life as victims of others who have mastery over Life/Death/what is outside even the Soul

The part of the Soul which enters the body is that which overflows from the Good/it's creative puissance

Evil and vice are good things whose function is not understood (ex. snake poison)
..
>>21555032
He's definitely a Platonist but it seems like he just builds on a few branches of metaphysics. It seems like a lot of wrestling with the mind-body detaching stuff. It's like the reason it keeps getting mentioned is because he doesn't have a real answer for why he's saying it, just that through enough context maybe it will stick right.
I wish there was more said about like Plato's Republic, the 5 different constitutions in a city-state and individual soul, the 'idyllic' state of a city/person before justice, the 3 parts of the Soul in the perfect city and each individual, the Euthyphro argument, stuff from Gorgias/Meno.

Didn't Plotinus claim to have experienced union with the One a few times in his life?

>>21555032
Brah. I remember asking that myself in the first iteration of the thread. I really like the description of neoplatonic theology in the introductory essay in the MacKenna penguin edition by the Jesuit. He says it combines Platonic, Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions of God. I think that is an innovation but it's justified- for want of a better term. Og Plato did seem to have few different theological accounts. I think early Platonism had a more earthly focus that became more metaphysical as he got older. I don't think neoplatonism's asceticism contradicts platonism's more balanced attitude towards action and contemplation but I tend to think it goes too far away from action.
Take this with salt though as I'm a babbling rtard.

>>21555203
Thanks Macca. Almost sounds like he's using the classic gnostic division of pneumatic, psychic, hylic here for a bit.
I'm put in mind of stoicism as well. Obviously there are larger factors governing why we are born into certain circumstances but we become free to the extent we use our reason to separate ourselves from attachment to externals and accept our fate. This is really the ultimate dunk on astrology and all kinds if superstition: to say, with Plato, nothing that happens to a good man is evil.

>>21555239
Porphyry makes this claim for him I believe. Why do you ask?

Section 18 is choice. Can I get someone else's translation of:
>Rightly, therefore, is this Kosmos described as an image continuously being imaged, the First and the Second Principles immobile, the Third, too, immobile essentially, but, accidentally and in Matter, having motion.
How else can "image... imaged" be translated here.
Also I wanted to say this is the farthest I think I can follow him in the "metaphysical existence of evil" idea. How do you think Plotinus would respond to the allegedly epicurean objections to god, i.e. pic rel?

>>21555497
>pneumatic, psychic, hylic
Oh that's interesting, I'd wager they're sharing the same idea then. And yeah this section was pretty much just putting away astrology, though somehow Timaeus' zodiacal stuff made it all the way to Instagram/tinder bios for zoomers and the backpage of most newspapers. Not to put down Plotinus though, his writing and influence in kind of 'secularizing' matter probably aided western science, along with Aquinas/other Christians later saying matter is 'good' (in so far as it is in potency for form).

>>21555160
Stoics, however, absolutely love killing themselves when the opium runs out.

>>21555032
I remember hearing that everything seems a lot more continuous when he's read with the middle platonists in mind. However I obviously haven't done that and we unfortunately don't have that much directly after Plato to make a 100% call.

>>21555503
Does he ever write directly about his experience? I'm curious about how similar or different his experience was from others who claimed to have had mystic experiences.

>>21557505
I would say that what we get in the Enneads reflects his experiences quite beautifully. Pic rel is from On Beauty I'm pretty sure.

II.4.5:
>Those that ascribe Real Being to Matter must be admitted to be right as long as they keep to the Matter of the Intelligible Realm: for the Base there is Being, or even, taken as an entirety with the higher that accompanies it, is illuminated Being.
This is what I'm about. I've felt uneasy about the dualism and it's implied acesticsm as you've no doubt seen. This kind of illuminated stoicism is to me pure Kino. I can accept what he goes on to say about the movement and differentiation as obviously this reality is ephemeral. But to me the change is illusory. Maybe it's because at times I've been deep into advaita but this idea of Illuminated Being really strikes a cord, sans the bifurcation. Would you agree that the differentiation he talks about in the latter part of 5 is thought itself? Such that the differentiation of though creates motion. This is very: our thoughts make the world buddhist stuff.
Anyway 5 really gets me. The passage I quote above puts me in mind of this kind of enlightened animism where the intelligibility of the cosmos coheres and coordinates with its divinity, i.e. such that it is and is knowable it is divine.

Call me retarded but this (II.4.11):
>In other words, we have something which is to be described not as small or great but as the great-and-small: for it is at once a mass and a thing without magnitude, in the sense that it is the Matter on which Mass is based and that, as it changes from great to small and small to great, it traverses magnitude. Its very undeterminateness is a mass in the same sense that of being a recipient of Magnitude- though of course only in the visible object.
sounds like he's describing dark matter.

2.3*
>>21555203
2.4 Matter

Most agree that matter is a recipient of Form-Ideas
Some schools believe body-forms are the Real-Beings or incorporeal
If Matter is derived it has a source, if it is eternal, there is some Primal Principle involved
Compounds exist in the Intellectual and physical order

In the Intellectual/eternal sphere, Matter is immutable, and without parts, but there are a variety of entities which are variations of a unity
- archetype
In the physical sphere, Matter is constantly changing into different compounds
- image

The ultimate of every partial thing is it's Matter which is it's darkness
- The Mind as the Reason-Principle only sees the Reason-Principle in any particular object
- Everything else is in the order of Matter, since it is unintelligible

Divine Matter has a defined, intellectual life
- it isn't alive, but is like a "dead thing decorated"
- Divine Ideas/Matter have beginnings, but not in Time since they are eternal, "eternally derived"

6 Bodies must have a substratum different in nature to themselves

Through the changing of solid->liquid->air, there must be a stable element without it
- it is either a form, primal matter, or a compound of these

7 Refutations of Anaxagoras/Empedocles/Anaximander/Democritus beliefs about matter

There are no atoms, all body is divisible endlessly

Matter is the stuff of the sense-world, incorporeal, a simplex, void of quality, of later origin than the forming power, classed as without quantity, indeterminate, a multiplicity

We must conceive of Matter (like Plato) as spurious or unreal to understand it
- It is a base which can receive things like color
- How is this different from someone without intellection conceiving of it?
-- there is still an experience/conscious awareness that Matter is formless/a phantasm

11 Preference of the term "phantasm of mass" to describe matter over "The Void"
- it hints the indefiniteness into which the Soul spills itself

bodiliness is a phase of Reason-Principle, so it is different than Matter

13 Dialogue style counter-arguments + rebuttals all the way down
Is there a substratum for Matter?
Is Matter's Alienism a quality?

14 Is Matter just the Privation of a determinate thing?
Is this privation just a non-existence?
- privation is relative to what the subject lacks/refers to
- direct reference to Matter as the substratum is a different definition

Does Matter not have have attributes defining it? (Indeterminateness, boundlessness)
- for something to take indefiniteness as an attribute, it must be definite beforehand, and Matter is eternally indefinite in itself
- any attribute to any subject must be a Reason-Principle, but Indefiniteness is not a Reason-Principle, and only Definiteness(the Principle) or defined things may take it as an attribute

Matter is surely evil/ugly/disgraceful
..
In the highest spheres near the Good there can be nothing indeterminate but only Form, so why does Plotinus claim there is Divine Matter in the higher sphere?

I'm behind a day. In 2.3 it seems like he's saying that the lower soul is connected to the universal soul, almost like that is one single unified soul that we (the upper soul) have to partake in as part of our existence in the world. This is nice for him because it lets Us become godlike, able to have active actions that effect the world in the same way (or more than) the stars do. I wonder how much of this is influenced by the Roman experience of men like Caesar and the like.

>>21558393
>why does Plotinus claim there is Divine Matter in the higher sphere?
I think it's no simple thing what he means by divine or intelligible matter. Do you think it's correct to try and understand it as: the substance of which the Idea-Forms are "made" (eternally, or perhaps 'perpetually thought'). It seems to me like it some sort of altogether different dimension.

I had more thoughts on P's thoughts on intelligible matter. It reminds me of the distinction I've heard between materia prima and materia secunda. The former is equated with prakriti or universal substance, or pure potentiality. The latter is substance in the mundane sense. This comes from Guenon I believe in Reign. I wonder how closely Plotinus' position is to this? I would be surprised if Guenon hadn't read Plotinus but I don't remember the former mentioning the latter. I'm kind of shocked how little Guenon dealt with ancient western thought in retrospect. I guess orientalism was the vogue and he has a kind of antirationalist bias towards esoteric initiaticism.

>For in Matter we have no mere absence of means or of strength; it is utter destitution- of sense, of virtue, of beauty, of pattern, of Ideal principle, of quality. This is surely ugliness, utter disgracefulness, unredeemed evil.
This reminds me of entropy.
>Matter is therefore a non-existent.
This very much feels vedic to me.

>>21559092
>the substance of which the Idea-Forms are "made"
I think that would fit but I don't remember if he said it or not. This post is related >>21557723 , he also wrote divine matter being more determinate than physical matter somewhere near the end.

Also does anyone have a good (present-day) explanation for dark matter?

>>21560199
It's a theoretical substance proposed to satisfy physicists perplexity that there isn't more matter in the universe based on observations about gravitational forces that seem to have no mass to produce them. As far as I understand it. The comparison doesn't bare much weight though. I made it last night before I'd finished the chapter. Maybe if you take the more stoic view I outlined but not the Plotonian one, imo. Also a lot of this stuff >>21557723 that I posted is pretty inconsistent with what he actually says by the end of the tractate. The whole tractate is very interesting though imo.
It's funny I've learned about this kind of distinction between intelligible matter and mundane matter before but it never cease to give me that "wow" sensation when I remember it.
Pic rel is me listening to Bach's partitas and thinking about The Intellect and The Good, and what the christianity took from us. Thank the heavens that we still have what we do though.

>>21560801
>christianity
Christians copied a lot of this until the scholastics took too many Aristotlepills. I curse the Arians every day for killing Boethius before he could translate Plato into Latin.

>>21561220
Why? We got Plato anyway. You just want Boeboe's Latin kino?
It makes me sad because there must be so much that we can't even imagine that hasnt come down to us. It's a whole world-view that really can't be properly revived.

>>21555032
its an innovation rather than an elaboration of plato, but i do think plato is more of a neoplatonist than most of his readers assume. if you take the endings of all his dialogues together, theres a kind of empty implication which points towards something along the lines of what plotinus is saying about the one. i would describe plato's metaphysics as a regular trapezoid that projects a full triangle, whereas plotinus' metaphysics are explicitly triangular

>>21555032
I see it the same way the ancient Platonists did. Plotinus is an exegete and elucidator of what are essentially divine, noetic revelations. If you notice the followers of Plato all choose their names after him (variated usually), like any initiatic tradition. Plato is an inheritor of the divine Tradition passed down by Pythagoras, the Orphics, and by extension the Egyptian priesthood (who the Greeks revered and compared themselves to in religious matters deeply deprived).
The concept of 'philosophy' being some linear-time oriented 'development' would be interpreted as a facile insult by a divinely assimilated man like Plato and Plotinus. All the successor Platonists saw themselves as reflections of their master, along with their contemplative exegeses.

>>21558393
2.5 Potentiality and Actuality

Potentiality exists in the sense-realm

potential things must have a definite character, like bronze has potentiality since it can become a statue
- potential does not become the actual, the latter should be understood as taking it's place
- The actualized entity is a compound of Form-Idea upon Matter

Form is an actuality (the actualization of a thing) though not the principle of Actuality in itself

No Potentiality in the higher/Intellectual sphere
- what about Divine Matter?
- The Matter there is Idea, the same way as Soul is like a Matter to a higher Being
-- does Soul have Potentiality then?
-- no, Soul in the higher sphere is unchanging

That which possesses unchangeable identity is an actualized entity (the highest entities)

Matter is excluded from the entities founded upon it, it is strictly Potentiality, Non-Being/Authentic Non-Existence, it's existence is "like an announcement" of a future compound

>>21561781
The Latin west only had an incomplete translation of the Timaeus until more Greek speakers started arriving after that one crusade. The only Latin that knew Plato was Eriugena and that's just because he somehow learned Greek and could read Dionysius. You're right about the later stuff though, and I think some Byzantine guys tried to bring some stuff back (but failed obviously).

>>21555032
Procluts - The theology of Plato.

>>21552286
Bump

>first day of astronomy class
>professor begins his lecture on the "solar system"
>notice his presentation is filled with "memes", no doubt to appease his lower soul, that consist of materialist humor and stoic philosophy
>doesn't mention heavenly fire
>claims planets are "inert matter"
>I ask if matter and privation are one or two (very easy, almost epicurian tier question)
>mfw he just stares at me before launching into an explanation of "atomic forces"

Do we have any evidence for a soul?

To be more specific, the sci. method works on the physical. Do we have any properties that map from the metaphysical to the physical (with information loss like how a cube's shadow is 2D) that we can investigate using science?

>>21563452
Unlikely. The scientific method is highly limited. Its like asking if you can detect oxygen with a metal detector

>>21563452
Isn't there no physically observable difference between the matter of a living and that of a dead body?

>>21561781
Besides Timaeus, the rest of Plato was not in Latin and widely available until the 1500s Earlier translations would have changed the course of philosophic inquiry.

>>21563401
Yes, the neoplatonists were wrong on that. Ha ha. Gregory Sadler actually has a good article on why the inaccurate physics does not matter to their philosophy.

>>21563989
Too late, I already blasted his soul away with my KamehaPlatomeha attack.

>>21563989
>the neoplatonists were wrong on that
No, they werent.

>>21564075
Go ahead and explain how physical bodies of rock and dust are actually divine fire

>>21563971
Interesting to speculate about how it would be different. My guess is the Church would have had much less impact potentially.

>>21563452
I heard something on the radio once about an experiment which scanned old people and the space above them with infrared/radio/microwave/x rays as they died. Don't know everything about what they concluded but one thing was that nothing floated "up" out of the body. I don't think of "soul" as a very formal explanatory word though.

>>21564111
>potentially
Matterbros... let's not get actually...

>>21564091
>he doesn't know

>>21563452
Quantum physics, nigger.

>>21564437
>tfw Newton's 1st edition of Principia was only read by like 50 people
>tfw you will never be smart enough to progress the frontiers of present-day quantum research let alone understand it

>>21564514
Science is for pseuds

Passages from Quality, section 1 I thought were interesting or important:
>The truth is that while the Reason-Principles producing these entities contain nothing but what is of the nature of Reality, yet only in the Intellectual Realm do the produced things possess real existence: here they are not real; they are qualified.

>And this is the starting-point of an error we constantly make: in our enquiries into things we let realities escape us and fasten on what is mere quality. Thus fire is not the thing we so name from the observation of certain qualities present; fire is a Reality [not a combination of material phenomena]; the phenomena observed here and leading us to name fire call us away from the authentic thing; a quality is erected into the very matter of definition- a procedure, however, reasonable enough in regard to things of the realm of sense which are in no case realities but accidents of Reality.

>Then how do we assert the rising in the Supreme of what we have called Reality from what is not Reality [i.e., from the pure Being which is above Reality]?

>The Reality there- possessing Authentic Being in the strictest sense, with the least admixture- is Reality by existing among the differentiations of the Authentic Being; or, better, Reality is affirmed in the sense that with the existence of the Supreme is included its Act so that Reality seems to be a perfectionment of the Authentic Being, though in the truth it is a diminution; the produced thing is deficient by the very addition, by being less simplex, by standing one step away from the Authentic.

Okay. How are other translator's rendering ή ούσιά in II.6.2? MacKenna renders it Reality. Sure Being (το ον) is the level if Intellectual-Principle, that makes ούσία World-Soul, right?

>>21565106
*Surely
*of

>>21552286
Feels like Hermetic Alchemy is the natural next step.

>>21555032
A very good and tricky question. We know through Aristotle and quotations of Speussipus and Xenocrates that the latter two heads of the Academy departed self-consciously departed from Plato's view, apparently, of the Form Numbers, and the latter two in quotation also argue that Aristotle misunderstands or misrepresents Plato's views; that the Academy between then and Cicero's time became more skeptical leaning makes it hard to establish just what the dogmas or traditions of the school were. Numenius, who Plotinus read (but didn't necessarily take as the final word) seems to combine views of both the early and skeptical school by claiming Euthyphro was written to criticize popular Athenian religious practice uing the ridiculous Euthyphro as a proxy.

Porphry's bography seems to admit that there's innovation in Plotinus, but it's not clear what he thinks the full extent of that is:

>"Plotinus’ writing is concise, but packed with meaning; brief and more abundant in ideas than in words, inspiring and passionate about almost everything; a *combination of personal insight and respect for tradition*. Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines are blended into his writings, though they are not obvious; and it contains the concentrated essence of
Aristotle’s Metaphysics."

Aristotle's commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias takes Aristotle and Plato to be opposed, but Plotinus seems to take them as either harmonized or harmonizable; the treatise on Potentiality and Actuality are clearly focused on Aristotelian nomenclature, though perhaps with adjustments or corrects to fit them to what Plotinus takes to be Plato's views or an innovation acceptable to such (for Plato on Potentiality, cf. Theaetetus and Sophist).

There's also some kind of acknowledgement of having to grapple with texts, presumably including the Platonic corpus, but also a suggestion of how to read:

>"For three days I, Porphyry, questioned his account of the sense in which the soul
was ‘in’ the body, and he patiently went through the arguments. Someone
called Thaumasius, who was studying universal propositions, joined the
seminar and wanted to hear Plotinus speaking on texts: he could not stand
Porphyry’s responding and questioning. However, Plotinus said: ‘But if
we cannot solve Porphyry’s difficulties when he asks them, how will we be
able to say anything at all when faced with a text?’"

There's some sense that he's not merely reiterating the teachings passed down to him:

>"I decided to set out this letter to substantiate the claim that there were those who, during his lifetime, thought that Plotinus made his reputation by passing off Numenius’ doctrines as his own." (But compare "On another occasion, Origen appeared at a seminar. Plotinus blushed deeply and wanted to leave. Origen asked him to keep speaking, but he said that all desire to do so is crushed when the speaker sees that he is speaking to those who know what he is going to say.")

(Cont.)

>>21566349
Innovation seems to have also occured between Plotinus and Neoplatonists like Iamblicus and Proclus, who both introduce more theurgic practice. With Proclus, his biographer Marinus says both:

>"He went through all the writings of previous authors
and whatever he found that was fruitful he would select and combine . . ."

And

>"Proclus himself was the originator of many previously unknown doctrines in natural, intellectual and even more divine subjects.
He was the first to claim that there was a genus of souls who were able to
perceive many Ideas at one time and who occupied a middle position between the Nous which knows everything at once . . . and those souls
who can concentrate upon only one Idea at a time. Anyone who wishes
to, may learn of his many other innovations by going through his works, which I cannot do now, since it would prolong this biography too greatly
to mention all of them."

Further, one would have to make some sense of why Proclus' Platonic Theology is separate from his own Elements of Theology, which suggests a deep relationship, but also some kind of differences.

>>21562326
2.6 Quality

Being is a substance stripped of "all else", while Reality is Being with other principles like Movement, Rest, Identity, Difference

Whiteness of snow is said to make up the constitutive reality of it, while the whiteness of a man is an accidental differentiation of Reality (Plotinus/MacKenna wants to attribute whiteness of a man as a quality at first but changes direction and uses the term activity instead)

Constitutive elements means for something to belong to the Reason-Form of the thing, qualities are superficial

Only in the Intellectual Realm are things with real existence, constituents of Reality. Outside of this we can observe qualities and activities

In our inquiries we often let realities escape us and rely on mere qualities

Warmth, glow, and lightness, do not make up the essence of of fieriness, they are activities of fire since they are not accidental to fire
- A warm object (cooking pan) can have the quality of warmth since it is warm accidently

Acts, emanating from the Reason-Principles, are able to appear a Reality in one place and figure as a quality in another
- the "burning" of fire is an Act
- the Archetypes of all qualities are Activities of the Intellectual Beings
..
What's the difference between activities and "Acts"? This sentence seems to imply it's the same term but it's weird to see uppercased nouns sometimes used with lowercase in plural form.
>the warming and lighting and other effects of fire will be it's Acts
>warmth, as a concomitant of the specific nature of fire...may...be an Idea-Form belonging to it, one of it's activities

>>21566425
It looks like "Act" and "activities" are both translations of energeia, Aristotle's word, alternately translated "activity", "actuality", "being-at-work" in translations of Aristotle.

If it helps, it's literally "en" (in) + "ergeia" (work).

>>21566499
I see, thanks. Does Aristotle use that word in a same/similar way?

>>21566534
Cheers. It's been a while since I've read the relevant Aristotle, but Plotinus' account strikes me as agreeing with Aristotle, though I might be missing subtleties.

Not gonna lie I'm getting filtered here. As soon as he started talking about potentiality vs activity, act, being versus reality, I started losing him. Is this my penalty for not having started with Aristotle?

>>21566720
Those two tracts are very heavily Aristotelian. Actuality and Potentiality are treated in the Physics (but come up a lot in the Metaphysics and De Anima too), and Quality and Substance are both treated in the Categories and Metaphysics (but with different accounts of Substance).

>>21566720
The sections are pretty short as well. I want to disagree with Plotinus in his treatment of activity when he says something like the "warmness" of fire not being a quality of fire but just an activity. I'm also assuming he has something completely different in mind with actuality, as being like final causes or "end states" of what precedes it.

For anyone wanting to read the thing he's writing about today
>http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/categories.1.1.html

bump

WHY can't evil be a substance? So what if that implies that the One is it's origin?

>>21568369
I think it's because he identifies evil as something totally without order, hence why he works so hard to prove matter as True Non-Being. If it is part of the emanation from the One, then we have to ask why the One would emanate evil when it is the Good. I think he wants to avoid as much dualism as possible unless it's for the creating forces in the intelligible world.

>>21568369
I don't know how it could fit as well into the overall theory. If the Good/One is the only creative/emanating force then all Intelligibles are good also. Evil is either something not understood correctly (I think he gives the example of snake poison in 2.3.15) or a result of someone's "not knowing any better"/acting without regard to Reason-Principle (since people are thought to be a compound of Soul/body they are capable of performing evil).

Though Plotinus seems to also want to separate body from matter in some sense. I don't know what that is, he calls bodiliness a "phase of Reason-Principle" in 2.4.11.

>>21565106
The glossary of my edition (Gerson) renders it as substance. I'll write out the entry here:
>Substance (ούσιά ): also substance, Substantiality, substantiality. Term with both Platonic and Peripatetic provenance. When used Platonically, Substance refers to Intellect or to any distinct Being in the intelligible world; Substantiality refers to the essence of Intellect or of any distinct Being. Intelligibles, that is, Platonic Forms, are variously referred to as Substances or the Subtantialiy of Intellect. When used Peripatetically , the term 'substance' refers to an individual 'this something'; 'substantiality' refers to the essence of a substance, that is, its core reality or being. For Plotinus, true ontological primacy is found in Substance and Substantiality, not in substance and substantiality. Nevertheless, Plotinus follows Aristotle in making a distinction between Substance and Substantiality in the intelligible world which reflects Aristotle's distinction between substance and substantiality in the sensible world. The adjective substantial, Substantial usually indicate and implicit contrast. Thus, Substantial Numbers are contrasted with quantitative (i.e., non-substantial) number.

>>21569162
>Substance (ούσιά )
>Martin Heidegger said that the original meaning of the word ousia was lost in its translation to the Latin, and, subsequently, in its translation to modern languages. For him, ousia means Being, not substance
what the fuck was his problem?

>>21569259
Gotta be head of the university somehow. Seriously though I read his lectures of the Cave Analogy (a bloomsbury publication) and he makes quite interesting arguments. I can't remember how valid they were, it was a long time ago. But it's worth taking a look at if your interested. Heidegger's existentialism is boring shit but his thoughts on the greeks should be separated from that I think.

>>21568369
Because it is simply lack of the Good and not a force created from the Good.

have a bump. the Greeks are on my radar but i'll likely only be able to get started on them next year at the soonest

>>21564091
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9n-3xXBTkNk

>>21569000
But surely there are people who knowingly commit evil and like it.

>>21569623
Does that mean the world is, when uninterrupted, naturally evil?

many questions regarding Plotinus' views would be answered by the reading of the small book "Plotinus" by A. H. Armstrong which contains the principal parts of the enneads.

>>21569259
>>21569426
I asked chatGPT. Basically it claimed Heideggers idea of ousia mostly came from Aristotle, and the meaning of ousia changed during Plotinus' era several centuries after the latter.

>The meaning of the word "ousia" has evolved over time in the history of philosophy. Originally, the word "ousia" comes from Greek philosophy, and it was used by the pre-Socratic philosophers to refer to the underlying substance or essence of things. The concept of ousia then developed further in Aristotle's work, where he defined it as the "whatness" or "quiddity" of a thing, which is the set of characteristics that make a thing what it is.

>In later Hellenistic philosophy, particularly in Neoplatonism, the concept of ousia took on a more mystical and metaphysical meaning, where it was understood as the ultimate reality or ultimate being, which is transcendent, eternal, and unchanging. It's also important to note that the word Ousia has been translated to "Being" by Heidegger in his work, and he developed the concept of Dasein, or human existence, as the way to understand Being.

>>21571042
>I asked chatGPT.
I asked my cat and he said meow

>>21570921
I think we'll find out in 2.9, but I'd guess that since everything is an emanation from the One, being is good while real non-being, matter, is evil. So the world isn't evil, it's just that evil is there and a part of it.

>>21566425
2.7 Complete Transfusion

Is the mixture of two bodies just an addition, or can one substance fully integrate with another?
- Some argue that two parts which make a whole can merely just be identified as those two parts
- Others hold that the two bodies may fully penetrate into each other

The first school argues that because two substances mixed together will always occupy a space greater than either substance can alone, there is only mixture of two bodies, not one body existing solely afterward
- However, we can observe that when a person sweats, on this theory there should be holes left behind where the sweat exits
- We can also observe that water and fire turn into air, and the resulting mixture no longer occupies space

2. (I kind of skimmed this section. It kind of has a similar 'wrong' argument but tries to make sense of some basic chemistry stuff)

3. Body is a compound made up of Matter and an indwelling Reason Principle
- both Matter and Reason Principle are immaterial, one is pure Idea, the other is indeterminate

>>21570712
Start with either Hesiod or Aesop. It's start the greeks after all not. Some contemporary academic. What's holding you back?

>>21570897
According to Plato/Plotinus, people doing evil are just not thinking correctly, as no one would commit evil willingly. I personally don't think anyone willingly wants to commit evil, even if others think what they do end up doing is.
Plotinus/Plato I don't think have much strength in ethics because they just name something "The Good" without really elaborating on what that is. The epistemic mechanics on how people think about what they believe to be good is a step more derived from that, which I think they argue more compellingly, but everyone will still end up having their own version of the Good. Plato thinks the perfect ideal city should be ruled under the direct autonomy of a philosopher king after all.

>>21572166
>2. (I kind of skimmed this section. It kind of has a similar 'wrong' argument but tries to make sense of some basic chemistry stuff)
This section deals with peripatetics, who say only qualities blend. Plotinus is pointing out that if matter is intersecting with matter, mass with mass, and quality with quality, then why do only qualities blend?

>>21569259
>>21569426
>>21571042
From what I recall of one of his 20s courses on Aristotle, the usual early use of ousia was "property" in the sense of physical stuff that belongs to one; that's actually how he comes to authenticity and inauthenticity in Being & Time, through considering Aristotle's use of a term for property for Being.

(And it's worth observing that the most notable use of ousia in Plato, in the Republic, might pun on the "property" meaning.)

>>21573044
>everyone will still end up having their own version of the Good.
I don't think this right. The Good is One. We don't have different ideas about what 'one', 'two', a perfect circle, an equilateral triangle etc are. We have correct ideas or mistaken ones. Your introducing a relativism it seems that Plato wouldn't allow. Also,
>Plato thinks the perfect ideal city should be ruled under the direct autonomy of a philosopher king after all.
Hard platonists would say he demonstrates it.

>>21573250
>Your introducing a relativism
Yeah, that's just what I thought personally about it. He does have some principles about courage/appetite/reason/justice, and some description about the perfect city description but it's not a satisfying argument about what the Good is imo, it ends up sounding relative to me when I read it

>>21573436
>ends up sounding relative to me when I read it
Then frankly I think your misunderstanding it. Firstly relativism is a self contradictory position. If you admit all prepositions with truth claims are equally valid (relativism) my claim that: "it is true that relativism is false" is necessary as valid as the claim that relativism is true, i.e. you have to admit that my statement that relativism is false is at least as true as yours that relativism is true. Its a garbage position only useful in sophistry and lawyering.
Secondly, observe pic rel. We admit that the truths of mathematics are not relative. The Good, The One, True Being is above this in terms of intelligibility. As the sun allows us to see the world with the eye, the principles of maths and geometry allow us to understand eternal truths with the light of the mind, so to The Good is the eternal Truth of Intellectuality that allows understanding of anything whatsoever. Now I don't claim this a perfect explanation of what The Good is but I'm damn sure it's not something relative. Other anons might contribute and clarify any mistakes I've made if they're willing and able.

>>21555032
>how legitimate do we think is the claim that the Plotonian system is a genuine continuation of the Platonic project/system?
Why is that even important? Plato himself didn't write down any systematic explanation of his own philosophy. He wrote dialogues that present a dialectic and let the reader reach their own conclusions on the matter based on the arguments. They're made to be extrapolated. Plotinus exegetes Plato in the same way Christians exegete the Bible and the result is a beautiful flowering of the themes Plato touched on.

If you're going to be an autist then it's not likely Plato thought everything that Plotinus ascribes to his philosophy but that's only because Plotinus takes Plato and builds his works into a full fledged holistic philosophical worldview. Plotinus transcends Plato and in that regard whether or not he's adhering to Platos own personal philosophy is irrelevant.

Would Plotinus and Shankara agreed on some matters?

>>21573507
>If you're going to be an autist
I am. Thank you for making a sane point though.

>>21573644
I think it's not impossible. They seem to sharee the opinion that matter is essentially nothing. I wouldn't be surprised go find the snake/rope analogy in Plotinus.

>>21570921
The inferior world is inherently evil outside the One. You want to leave behind the mortal coil for the immortality of the One.

>>21572281
oh i'm still working through Nietzsche. it's babby's first philosophy, so i'm sticking to what got me interested in the first place. after that, Freud, Jung, Emerson, Thoreau, a smattering of introductory works in existentialism, and only then do i start from the Greeks. much as i appreciate foundational curricula, i think it's good to read based on some kind of instinct or congenial sense. i'm not a fast reader, and based on my pace i think it would probably take at least a year before i finish their basic works.

>>21572166
2.8 Why Distant Objects Appear Small

As objects get further away, light concentrates down proportionate to our pupils
- things further away are more form than matter, since they appear stripped of qualities
- some other possible explanations

Is magnitude similar in size and sound?
- as objects and sounds are observed further away, size and sound both weaken

Maybe because there is more variety of forms at a further distance, the eye makes the greater volume of things appear simple to process everything

Close up, more volume of an object can be observed since there is less form and space involved

2 the explanation by lesser angle of vision as reducing appearance
- can't explain things that are bigger than we can see, like the sky
..
The long paragraph before 2. almost sounded sollipsistic, but honestly I thought it was a very interesting kind of phenomenal account. We don't perceive things in 6 dimensions or 7, we process phenomena the way its relayed through SPs and their extention through science instruments. It kind of seems productive in some sense to say stuff like "the eye makes the volume more simplistic close up because there are less forms". I can't put my finger on it exactly but it sounds like the precursor of some spatial theory that isn't atomistic at its core. Or it could also be nonsense.

>>21571108
I asked chatGPT to summarize yesterday's section and it was completely off. I don't think its read enough philosophy to give reliable information so far.

>>21574216
>Freud, Jung, existentialism.
Fair enough. But this is just intellectual garbage imo. They're just professors lecturing at you, self aggrandising. Plato will actually teach you how to think at but those thinkers into a context that's historically grounded. Otherwise you'll be looking at the greeks through a distorted lens. Do you though, you can't do anything else.

>>21573507
>He wrote dialogues that present a dialectic and let the reader reach their own conclusions on the matter based on the arguments.
That is one side of him, another side is Socrates saying you need the Good and hearing in reply "yes certainly that must be so!" like every page.
Ni-chan mentions something similar to this in Twilight of the Idols
>The true world, attainable for the wise, the devout, the virtuous—they
live in it, they are it.
>(Oldest form of the idea, relatively clever, simple, convincing. Para-
phrase of the assertion, “I, Plato, am the truth.”)

just finished reading this article:
>The Flight of the All-One to the All-One: The φυγὴ μόνου πρὸς μόνον as the Basis of Plotinian Altruism
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/flight-of-the-allone-to-the-allone-the-as-the-basis-of-plotinian-altruism/B2989D80357D8CC33D593CE6D298B61B

i recommend it. It shows how the individual ascension of the 'solitary' is not 'individualistic' as it is in its nature the overflow of abundance (just like the One's love) between one and his neighbor.

Bump as tomorrow's reading is the /lit/ shitpost reading

>>21576147
Thanks statuebro.

>>21576757
Gnostics prepare to get btfo

>>21577141
Christbros he's attacking our new earth in 2.9.5....

>>21577006
did you finish it? did you like it? helps if you know plotinus already

>>21577349
Haven't finished. I don't agree with the criticism that Plotinus' soteriology is narcissistic anyway. It's just a slight cast against it by people who don't like freedom of thought it seems.

>>21577573
Did these scholars skip Porphyry's biography or something? Sure he was stinky but he wasn't some self obsessed shut in.

>>21577641
Christians will go to any length to discredit competing systems of thought.

>>21577664
If you read the article you'll see it is actually christian plotinians (rist, Armstrong, author himself etc) defending plotinus from accusations of lack of charity

>>21577573
>I don't agree with the criticism that Plotinus' soteriology is narcissistic anyway
"Only the intelligent can achieve salvation. Which means me of course"
I mean...It kind of it. It certainly doesn't promote humility like the Christian theology of grace does

>>21578396
The ascension through gnosis can lead to that impression, but I got the impression that in some passages Plotinus speaks of ascension as if it was like grace.

The issue is always that of pelagianism.

>>21573644
I think it's possible they would agree on some matters.

>>21575928
>>Freud, Jung, existentialism.
interesting that you left out Nietzsche. it's the popular thing on /lit/ to say he's not philosophy. does he stand up to the Greeks well even after your reading?
>But this is just intellectual garbage imo. They're just professors lecturing at you, self aggrandising.
potentially yes. nonetheless, they lived in the same age as we do now, so i find that even if their answers are wrong, or worse, simply bad, it would still do me good to have that frame of reference, if only to fight against it. i'm not planning a deep reading of Freud, Jung and the existentialists, really just the introductory works and from there i'll see if there's something worth digging into more. i find the modern writers to be more like toolmakers. if all you have is a hammer, etcetera... but i would rather have a hammer than nothing at all, if you get my meaning. whereas the Greeks teach you how to build the tools yourself; modern writers just hand you a few tools along with the focusing but limiting properties of those tools. perhaps at this point in my life, it is quicker to "buy" a tool than learn to make my own, and i can think of a few places that benefit from the efficiency of having them at hand.

>>21578437
Pelagianism is more true thoughever

I should've started this chapter yesterday but I got obsessed with talking to chatbots. This is going to take all day lol

>2.9.9
>so what that you got murdered, I thought you hated the sensible world ;)

>>21579777
I liked the tortoise metaphor

Plotinusbros, does anyone here know how Plotinus defines
1) a substrate
2) a being
And how he differentiates between them? I feel like I vaguely understand this, intuitively, but I am not sure I can defend the distinction logically so I need your help. So, matter is a substrate and it exists as a substrate within the Forms; the "material matter" is a kind of raw material, like clay. But from a human perspective, how do you distinguish between this substrate and between beings which also have form? Taking the example of clay, we can all distinguish between raw clay and a vase, but how do you describe and justify this distinction logically?

Today's section is commonly associated with Sethian Gnosticism, which holds Seth and Christ to be important. It's the one that has the lion head on a snake at all that. By this point they were a separate group from the established Christians that kinda larped as platonists.

Also lol at these autists
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Seth

>>21580248
I took out the Taylor translation to help me with this chapter. He had an interesting footnote at the beginning of some opponents of Plotinus' day also (t. Porphyry)
>viz. the followers of Adelphius and Aeylinus... in possession of the writings of Alexander, Philocomus, Demostratus, and Lydus, exhibiting the revelations of Zoroaster, Zostrianus, Nicotheus, Allogenes, Meses
absolutely cannot stand these niggas

>>21578493
Psychology and existentialism make you into a tool- quite literally. The Greeks will teach you how to use tools. And yes Nietzsche is also garbage.

>>21580049
>how do you distinguish between this substrate and between beings which also have form
How do you make any distinction, with the faculty of judgement, i.e with your mind.
The clay has been imprinted with the form of a jug?

>>21579887
Turtles Did Nothing Wrong

>>21574967
2.9 Against the Gnostics

I read 10/18 sections, I'll post the rest in a few hours. The stuff in parantheses comes from Taylor. From this section I kind of hate his translation but his footnotes are interesting, only have it because that theoria apothesis guy on youtube shills him hard.

..
1 The Good is completely simplex
- 3 principles of the higher sphere, Good, Intellect, Soul

G: there is Potentiality (capacity)/Actuality(energy) in the immaterial domain
- no, only Act, since IP is unchanging and perfect in form
G: Thinker and Thought are one (there is an intellect and an intellect which is aware of it's own intellect)
G: Suggestion of an intermediate between IP and Soul which mediates them
- this is superfluous and makes the Soul rely on an imperfect image of reason
2.
Low/mid/high soul
- (This is a dogma of Plotinus which Proclus argues against in Elements of Theology)

4.
G: The Soul "declined" from goodness and caused the creation of the Universe, and this is bad
- Plotinus asserts creation is proof of the Soul's steadfast hold (the Soul's tendency of not declining), not it's decline
G: The world is evil in origin because there are many evil things in it

5.
G: The sun is not more intellective than humans
- Plotinus asserts this is false
G: Human souls are divine, the cosmos is not divine, there is another Soul formed by elements
- They hate our world and imagine a better one waiting for them in the afterlife
- Why would they want to escape our world for a new archetype/image world of a world they hate
- Why did the Demiurge make the intermediate world if there were already a higher intellectual realm available?

6.
New Forms
G: Exiles (transmigrations), Impressions (repercussions), and Repentings (repentences)
G: fallen souls are punished when contemplating images of beings rather than beings in themselves
- They stole all of this from Greek philosophy without crediting it
- The Demiurge came from Timaeus

G: 3 kinds of intellect
G: restful intellect which does nothing, intellect which studies the first intellect, 3rd intellect which plans the universe (Soul/Demiurge)

7.
If you opppose the universe you get injured, like a turtle in a beautiful chorus

8.
G: universe has a beginning/creator god and will end someday

9.
G: wealth disparity is an occurrence of evil in the world
- wealth disparity isn't a problem for philosophers
- philosophers don't care to own many things or attain political power to improve their life
- everyone that isn't a philosopher/mere populace should support philosophers/the better sort of person

- Anyone can be divine/perfect, not just one person, though many people believe otherwise, often believing in the greatness of one person over all others and the gods

G: God loves you
- then why is he indifferent?

10.
Description of interaction with the Demiurge and Sophia/Wisdom
G: both declined into the lower world
G: Demiruge is lower than his mother(Sophia), and creates the cosmos after their separation

>>21580839
>- wealth disparity isn't a problem for philosophers
>- philosophers don't care to own many things or attain political power to improve their life
>- everyone that isn't a philosopher/mere populace should support philosophers/the better sort of person
Plotinus finally proposing something I can get behind, funded NEETdom

>>21581039
You need to actually be able to teach others something worth there while.

Here's a question for the thread: what art form helps the mind to ascend closest to the Beautiful? I think it's is music. But I think maybe the argument could be made that it is too nebulous and not simplex enough to lead us straight to the Beautiful. I suppose one could say dialectic is an art, or say the Plato's dialogues are art which I suppose obviously trump music.

>>21581086
*their
*it

>>21581039
Plotinus got me fucked up with that one. I want to try to be nice to him though so what he might be doing is disputing the universality of the claim "the cosmos is fundamentally evil because of wealth disparity". So if you can find one example of where wealth disparity isn't a force of evil in your life (either because you're rich and oppressing the poor or vice versa) then you can't use wealth disparity as evidence of the fundamental evil of the universe. But if you can escape this reality by being a Sage why can't everyone do that, since you need "populace" to slave away for them?

>>21581548
I think the idea is saved with reincarnation, as eventually they will get the opportunity to be a sage, but I'm not too sure. As you said, I'm willing to assume he could just be disputing.

>>21581701
Also I don't know if we should think of this as a salvation, Plotinus could say that those people are in their ordered place. He wasn't very receptive to the idea of a new Earth and elsewhere he compared thought of evil with the mystery of venomous snakes having a point.

>>21581086
>what art form helps the mind to ascend closest to the Beautiful?
Closest? Strictly, probably nothing, since all art is particular, but a rung down from that might be some kinds of instrumental music, I suppose, which tends to exist in a strange middle ground of evoking beauty without necessarily being as attached to particularity.

>>21552286
You guys should be reading Master Eckhart and Paracelsus instead

>>21581548
>>21581701
This is very Platonic as an attitude. The Platonic philosopher's love of truth differs from the modern virtue of probity, the latter tending toward evangelism of truth (because probity is a lingering Christian virtue). In Plato's case, there's no automatic necessity to share the truth, if, for example, the philosopher perceives that someone has a disposition or character such that the truth might somehow make them worse.

Porphry backs this attitude up in Plotinus' biography when he notes as an aside the latter's reluctance to share his writings until he'd figured someone's character out.

>>21581740
Where do you start with them?

>>21580839
What stands out about Taylor's translation?

>>21582703
I think he's very hit and miss, emphasis on miss. He did help me understand parts of the text (Repercussions over Impressions in 2.9.6 I think works better) but the vast majority of what was useful for me was in MacKenna. Also really enjoy his footnotes.

>>21581086
What if Plotinus went to a Pantera concert? Personally, I think he'd hate it.

>>21581740
Nope.

>>21581548
>the cosmos is fundamentally evil because of wealth disparity
Surely this is a troll position. Does or did anyone really believe this? It's such lazy teenager thinking. Obviously it's greedy idiots creating wealth inequality, not some feature of the cosmos. Am I missing something here?

>>21583983
You might feel differently if you lived in Rome during the crisis of the third century. It was not a fun time to be a peasant.

>>21584016
>Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, dand know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble
Apology, 41 c-d.

Where's that anon that told us we'd become gnostics once we "grew up" like 2 threads ago?
Wya

A few days ago there was a thread on here where some anon was acting as if he was some kind of Platonic sage, and another anon asked why actions (I think his example was laying down or sitting or something) don't have Platonic Forms that they participate in. The pseud couldn't answer this and got really butthurt about how everyone was retarded for thinking that laying down was "intelligent".

So, why IS sitting down, or lying, or singing, or some other action not something that has a Form? I don't see how the argument about universality doesn't apply to actions. If every piece of bacon is participating in the Form Of The Bacon, why isn't every act of singing? I don't see how any argument against every act of singing being different doesn't just apply to every piece of bacon.

If it's a problem of "nouns vs verbs", what if we "nominalize the verb"? Like how we can treat wars or governments as objects despite the fact at they're obviously not a physical thing.

>>21584844
>actions don't have Form
Where are you reading this? I think 2.6 has something about activity/"Act", Plotinus at least did seem to grant them some sort status in the intellectual sphere.

>>21584870
I haven't read it anywhere, I'm asking people who do read Platonic stuff because I've seen people say before (including the aformentioned incident) that only objects (physical, some spiritual, and some mental) have Forms, but actions, activities, "processes", occurrences, etc, do not (so there's a Form of Lightning, but no Form of a Lightning Strike).

If that's wrong, I'd like to know why.

>>21584907
>>21566425
Some anon posted notes for that day. at the bottom there's a quote which likens warmth a "Form-Idea" of fire, and warmth and activity as well. Another anon also points out that activity here can also be considered "energeia" from Aristotle so maybe "actions" are something else. Also it could be that plato has the definition the way you described but idk personally.

>>21584824
You know, for all the scorn that's heaped on the term I don't think it's fair. When you look at it as purely descriptive rather than as a label for a specific group of believers in a specific time and place then lots of Hellenic thought is gnostic as is a lot of eastern thought. There's basically only three soteriological systems as far as I'm concerned, dogmatic, praxial and gnostic. I thunk Platonism falls into the gnostic category. Aristotelianism would be more a mixture of praxial and gnostic I think. Abrahamists are clearly dogmatists. Things like Shinto seem praxial I guess as would have been the mundane interpretations of classical Mediterranean polytheism. Anyway, yes I agree specific sects like the Sethians and such are silly but I think gnostic as a term gets a bad wrap. I always just think of it as liberation or salvation through knowledge. I think the different forms of yoga are analogous here and the rishis probably understood this long ago- although they have more forms of yoga.

>>21584844
Plato has a Form for Justice and Courage. So I think acts can have forms. I think perhaps there could also be a pure Form of Action in general? Or it could be that change/motion/action doesn't actually participate in any form but is the result of the emanation from The Good, i.e. the flow of the overflow is time and change/action/motion is the (illusion produced?) interaction of the shadows of the forms relating. Not sure though. Just giving you my intuition.

I am a master at achieving the opposite of my intended outcomes. Therefore I reason that if I train my mind to intend poor outcomes, I will inadvertently achieve favorable ones.

One time I took a math test without studying for it because I read in the dialogue Meno that we already know math, we just have to remember.
I failed the test.

>>21585163
My thought was that you could argue that "singing" takes place over time and thus because time is actually non-being and blah blah blah that actions are "less real" than objects as they literally be less (as they're a process). This sort of takes this beyond Plato, but you can say the same thing about objects. Living things are growing, changing, moving, etc, and even static things change over time, just very slowly. So, the rate of change through time of an action is larger than an object's, but objects still move through time.

I guess that one could argue that there's just a Form of Action, and then you have some kind of ancillary Form of some object, so "singing" is the Form of Action plus the Form of Song (because how can you have singing without an actual song?). Or, as you've said with the overflow that produces time, there are just Forms of objects observed over time (that is, singing is the Form of Song over time).

>>21584907
Well, the dialogues tend strongly to suggest that things have forms, but actions are derived from the soul, even if the soul is moving the body. However, there's some ambiguity, since speaking of virtue as a form or beauty as a form implies something "object-like" about actions, insofar as you can have virtuous activity or perform beautiful deeds. It's hard to say, but it seems left to us to work it out.

Neoplatonism’s weird obsession with hierarchy makes me think Plotinus was an incel. Any literature that confirms this hypothesis?

>>21585211
This makes sense. The Soul (anima) animates the Forms. Checks out with Plotinus as I see it as well.
>>21585198
So Ideal Song is animated by Soul as the activity of singing. What do we think?

>>21580839

11.
- Did the Soul descend or not?
- If it merely illuminated the darkness of matter, then it didn't descend
- Some Gnostics say it created rather than illuminated it, how could it do so without descending?

14.
- on the Gnostics contacting Supernal Beings through spells, songs, rituals
- on them curing disease with magic/Spirit Power (daemons), blood letting, (fasting)

15.
G: the standard answers for the ends of this life, which are usually either virtue or pleasure from Epictetus, are both pointless
- However, they end up pursuing pleasures just to make due with life
- Why do they say to look to God if they have no concepts of virtue?
16
G: hate the Mundane Gods (Gods), but we should love the Intelligible Gods
- The Supreme God more than likely watches over the entire cosmos, why would they claim he deserted us?
- If the Supreme God were absent from our lives, then you shouldn't make so many assumptions about him since it's probably impossible to know him, let alone claim to being able to make contact with the Supernals

- If you know the harmony of the Intellectual Realm, how could you find ugly the order/symmetry/eloquence of the universe? A mathematician, for example, surely loves the pattern and simplicity of their renowned theories

17
- How can the world be ugly and bad, if it descended from the Firsts (Soul)?
- If you hate the world so much, you must also hate the company of women and youths (boys).

18.
G: Neoplatonism argues to detain the Soul in the body, while we aim to free it
- That part of the body which hinders us can be overcome through virtue

- They believe they can become more than Celestial Powers which can't stand outside the material universe (They believe they can lay aside the body when they die)
- Souls in heaven are not permitted to abandon their bodies

>>21585828
>- They believe they can become more than Celestial Powers which can't stand outside the material universe (They believe they can lay aside the body when they die)
>- Souls in heaven are not permitted to abandon their bodies
Why is Plotinus saying this? I thought he wanted mind-body separation?

>>21585848
That guy's translation is different than mine but
1. Think about his analogy of the two men with equal houses
2. The cosmos is our sibling.

>>21585848
>>21586283
Is it that individual souls are "assigned" in some sense the bodies they animate, perhaps more like we would think of daemons or guardian angels being assigned us? While we live our soul will be with our body, but the soul remains in the Heavenly realm. The individual soul is just the conjunction of body and soul. When the body dies that soul remains as it were assigned to that body.
So on re reading: gnostics seem to think their salvation comes with death and a kind of liberation. Plotinus is saying liberation is to become simply ensouled body then death becomes irrelevant. I think the main contrast is gnostics believe in separate freed soul after death which is a misconception. Plotinus is saying on death individual soul is going to remerge with All Soul, and that freedom is to be reasonable i.e. ensouled body and not mistakenly identifying oneself with the body.

III.1.10:
> To sum the results of our argument: All things and events are foreshown and brought into being by causes; but the causation is of two Kinds; there are results originating from the Soul and results due to other causes, those of the environment.

>In the action of our Souls all that is done of their own motion in the light of sound reason is the Soul's work, while what is done where they are hindered from their own action is not so much done as suffered. Unwisdom, then, is not due to the Soul, and, in general- if we mean by Fate a compulsion outside ourselves- an act is fated when it is contrary to wisdom.

>But all our best is of our own doing: such is our nature as long as we remain detached. The wise and good do perform acts; their right action is the expression of their own power: in the others it comes in the breathing spaces when the passions are in abeyance; but it is not that they draw this occasional wisdom from outside themselves; simply, they are for the time being unhindered.

>>21580839
>>21585828
3.1 Fate

1 What is caused and what is fate/destiny?

The Firsts of the Eternal Existents cannot be referred to outside Causes
Acts are caused by Essence
Things of Process/Eternal Existents whose Act is not eternally invariable are caused by the earlier Firsts

"causelessness is inadmissible"

2
Fate isn't coherent at all in atomistic theory
Atoms may be able to explain material realities, but certainly not the soul or intellect

4
Prime Mover argument
- too vague and deterministic
- there must be thoughts and acts which are our own

5
Augury/the Phora
- causation by one's relationship with heavenly bodies
- also makes our choices, wills, states, evils in us, etc. pointless

6
Causes are found in one's following of it's own kind
- horses come from the Kind of horse

8
There should be causation in the individual Soul
- the Soul does not have unrestricted sovereignty
- causation of the nobler Soul is greater(insofar as it acts with regard to Reason-Principle)
- The more wise a person is, the more they change others more than others change him

10
There is causation of the Soul and of the environment

Fated acts occur due to unreason

Bump

It is dead as fuck today. 3.1 was very ordinary sounding, maybe that's why.

>>21589552
3.2 is particularly long too.

>A gang of lads, morally neglected, and in that respect inferior to the intermediate class, but in good physical training, attack and throw another set, trained neither physically nor morally, and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh?

>And surely even the lawgiver would be right in allowing the second group to suffer this treatment, the penalty of their sloth and self-indulgence: the gymnasium lies there before them, and they, in laziness and luxury and listlessness, have allowed themselves to fall like fat-loaded sheep, a prey to the wolves.

>But the evil-doers also have their punishment: first they pay in that very wolfishness, in the disaster to their human quality: and next there is laid up for them the due of their Kind: living ill here, they will not get off by death; on every precedent through all the line there waits its sequent, reasonable and natural- worse to the bad, better to the good.

>This at once brings us outside the gymnasium with its fun for boys; they must grow up, both kinds, amid their childishness and both one day stand girt and armed. Then there is a finer spectacle than is ever seen by those that train in the ring. But at this stage some have not armed themselves- and the duly armed win the day.

>Not even a God would have the right to deal a blow for the unwarlike: the law decrees that to come safe out of battle is for fighting men, not for those that pray. The harvest comes home not for praying but for tilling; healthy days are not for those that neglect their health: we have no right to complain of the ignoble getting the richer harvest if they are the only workers in the fields, or the best.

>Again: it is childish, while we carry on all the affairs of our life to our own taste and not as the Gods would have us, to expect them to keep all well for us in spite of a life that is lived without regard to the conditions which the Gods have prescribed for our well-being. Yet death would be better for us than to go on living lives condemned by the laws of the Universe. If things took the contrary course, if all the modes of folly and wickedness brought no trouble in life- then indeed we might complain of the indifference of a Providence leaving the victory to evil.

>Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled: and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.
Holy fucking based. (III.2.8)

If I become a Neoplatonist do I have to worship planets? It sounds kind of silly. Plotinus ranted quite a bit in the treatise agains the Gnostics against the fact that the Gnostics didn’t worship the planets. Apparently he thought it was a big deal.

>>21589918
You don't have to, you GET to.

>>21552286
So what exactly is the Demiurge of the Timaeus? Is it the World-Soul? The One? The Second (Intelligence)? Which is it?

>>21589695
That's mean, I can't help being an ADHD retard...
Plotinusbro... why did you betray me like this... and here I thought the path of wisdom was the finest path to tread, but you're telling me I need to be healthy, rich and strong too? Not fair...

>>21590144
He's telling you to be active instead of waiting for other people to help you.

>>21590144
That's the way the crustala crushes tard. Seriously though if you're actually wise:
>What more is called for than a laugh?
It's as Diogenes allegedly used to say when confronted with misfortunes:
>Thank you Tyche for thusly giving me the opportunity to train in virtue.

>>21590347
*crustula

>>21590059
The craftsman is how my Zeyl/Hackett translated it

>>21590389
Okay but which is it? Whether you call it Demiurge or the English translation word is less important than what it actually is in the Plotinian framework.

>>21590347
My impression was that this is a mocking laugh rather than the dismissive laugh of a Buddhist monk or something like that. I feel like that's probably the more likely interpretation. I can't rule out yours either, though.

>>21590452
The Diogenes line stands by itself. If you know anything at all about Hellenic philosophy you'll know that it is worse to commit evil than to suffer from it and you'll pity the hoodlums.

>>21590413
I think it's the world soul. There isn't exact correspondence though.

>>21590492
I think you're probably right.

>>21552286
I have no idea what he's trying to say in 2.3.3 And is the middle of the soul like the meat of a sphere?

>>21591020
He's just dunking on astrology. Where does he talk about the middle of the soul? In 2.3.3.?

https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plotenn/enn105.htm

>>21590413
>>21590492
I don’t want to spoil your exploration and interpretation of Plotinus with an “authoritative” answer, as this sounds like new and exciting to you, but this is an established point in Neoplatonic scholarship. I’ll put it in spoiler tags in case you want to ignore it and figure it out for yourselves. There is a one-to-one correspondence between Plato’s demiurge and one hypostasis and the demiurge is the nous. Plotinus and the other neos synthesized Plato and Aristotle and identified Plato’s demiurge with Aristotle’s Nous, but with a twist: the Ideas or Intelligible world that the demiurge looks to as a model for the sensible world are within himself, just like Ari’s Nous is “thought thinking itself”. It also makes sense when you remember that in the Timaeus the demiurge also creates the world soul. But in Plotinus’ case the Nous actually emanates Soul.

How much did Plotinus, or other neoplatonists influence later Kabbalism? In particular, if it did, how did The Enneads do so? I can't help but see certain parallels in kabbalistic/later hermetic ideas when reading this.

That part about listening to the sensible universe speak and it giving that speech was pretty good.

>>21591472
Cheers.

>>21590487
Socrates does say that in Crito I think but he also contradicts it in Hippias Minor.

>>21590144
>>21590331
He's advocating collective action against a decadent upper class. Join a gang, poorbros.

Is the republic all I need to understand Plato? I'm only allowed to read one work from each critical philosopher

>>21593476
What would happen if you read more than that?

>>21593605
My head would explode.

>>21593605
Plato himself says the key to wisdom is moderation in Rival Lovers therefore by his own logic to gain true knowledge of his philosophy you must only read a moderate amount of his work.

>>21593617
Why would he write so much then?

>>21593632
To keep himself occupied or alternatively it is up to you to pick and choose the scant few dialogues you are to read.

>>21593607
As a subhuman, I do not think you can be happy, you should commit suicide.
>>21593644
These are insufficient considerations! Surely all of them should be read.

>>21593677
Anon, I am ending our correspondence.
I find you are a brash ruffian speaking at the height of unreason.

>>21593605
>>21593607
>>21593677
im being serious give me a break

>>21593397
Use your brain and stop just being a dogmatists. Of course it's better to suffer evil than to do it. Doing evil would make you evil. Suffering evil with strength and without complaining indicates wisdom.

>>21593822
Socrates says the opposite in Hippias Minor. He says doing evil shows genuine understanding of the Good in your complete rejection of it.

>>21593476
>>21593734
>I'm only allowed
Did you mean able? Seems more likely. Probably esl.

Anyway I really enjoyed these tractates on Providence. Helps me alot in finally getting a clear picture of the free will determinism debate. This passage (III.3.5) I find really illustrative:
>The act of the libertine is not done by Providence or in accordance with Providence; neither is the action of the good done by Providence- it is done by the man- but it is done in accordance with Providence, for it is an act consonant with the Reason-Principle. Thus a patient following his treatment is himself an agent and yet is acting in accordance with the doctor's method inspired by the art concerned with the causes of health and sickness: what one does against the laws of health is one's act, but an act conflicting with the Providence of medicine.
Honestly I'm glad we did this bros.

>>21593856
I'm not esl. I mean allowed

>>21593826
>more dogmatism
Think for your self bro. Your better than this or your just casting dog shit bait.

>>21593860
Explain yourself. Btw: complete trial and death of Socrates Dialogues, Protagoras, Symposium, Republic would probably be sufficient imo.

>>21593856
>infinite shots at life
>can't remember my lines

>>21593875
I am only allowed to read one work from each critical philosopher

>>21593893
Read Critias cause it's the shortest.

>>21593893
This isn't an explanation. WHY are you only allowed to read one work from each critical philosopher? Are you giving yourself this rule? If so, sure Republic. Good luck with that tism tard.
>>21593886
What do you mean by this? I sense a misunderstanding. Or maybe you were just made to be a troll?

>>21593898
I don't have ADHD
>>21593925
It's not my rule. It's forced on me. Why are you being mean? So republic is all I need to read?

>>21593925
>What do you mean by this? I sense a misunderstanding. Or maybe you were just made to be a troll?
I'm making a joke about his actor analogy, and how the poor actors get dismissed or assigned to inferior plays.

>>21593929
By who? Providence?
>>21593935
It's kinda more tragic for the shitty actors I guess. Justice is just though habibi

>>21593929
You better not be reading all those philosophies anon.

>>21593954
It's a rule. My Prof is forcing me
>>21593957
I'm not an idiot.

>>21593963
What's the punishment for extra reading? Just read more if you want to. If you want to bitch out to the establishment only read the Republic.

>>21593864
Nta, but having read Hippias Minor, that is a result of the dialogue with Hippias (their argument is over whether Achilles or Odysseus is the better hero). I don't know what your issue is with anon merely noting this.

>>21587070
3.2 Providence pt. 1

1 Intelligent Design is inherent in the Universe
- Is there a creator, or a natural process which has this Intellect? Is the creator good or evil?

2 The lower Cosmos exists as parts of the whole, and exists due to the "necessity of a second Kind"

The lower Cosmos is our universe, which only participates in Reason/Intelligence (as opposed to the higher sphere, which is it)

Necessity has the characteristic of non-reason

3
The world is a product of Necessity, "not of deliberate purpose"
- a higher Kind engendered the world in it's own likeness, which was a natural process
- even if our world were planned, it wouldn't be a disgrace to its maker
- as a part to the whole, it may seem ugly, but when seen from the point of view of the totality of existence it is surely good

4
Reincarnation is true
Sometimes souls enter into the one Soul, sometimes they enter new bodies

Someone who tries to look outside of their own values to follow a law (just on the basis that following the law is good) will fail, and will be wronged in the future
- Acting in regard to your personal values will sometimes lead to good, sometimes to bad

5
Evil can be useful in stirring people to doing good

Why people do evil is scarcely worth investigating

Good men can be ugly, and bad men handsome

8 Humanity is full of divine, neutral, and brutish people
- most people are neutral
- brutes/wrong-doers commonly tear at the neutral category of people
- The victims are "no doubt better than the wrongdoers, but are at the mercy of their inferiors in the field in which they are inferior"

"Bad men rule by feebleness of the ruled: and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just"
- those who are neither strong nor good should not be helped or defended by the gods
- evil-doers are guilty of their evil-doing, but don't suffer as much as those they've oppressed

11
We shouldn't censure dramas to make everyone a hero, but include servants/rustics/clowns also (Plato wanted this)

13
To the good poverty isn't a problem, due to Karma

Adrasteia is that "awesome word" which is Karmic justice
- for example, "A man that murders his mother will become a woman and be murdered by a son; a man that wrongs a woman will become a woman, to be wronged."

15
On warfare between terrible people
- It is the necessary means of transmutating living things which can't keep their forms
- human intentions are plays in a game, death is no big deal, dying in war just makes you respawn faster
- Those who can't think take frivolities seriously because of their frivolous character

Music is a product of Reason-Principles (Harmony)

"desire often destroys the desired"

each person's existence in life is like an actor in a play, "though it be to utter in Darkness/Tartarus the dreadful sounds whose utterances there is well"
..
What is Necessity in the context of the "second Kind" description? Why is it responsible for evil? I thought Matter was the source of evil?

>>21594207
It's not that he's noting it. It's that he's following Plato/Socrates authority without critical thought or comparison between the Dialogues. Your right though just noting it isn't a problem. But this contrariety that just gives counter examples is pretty empty and can lead people futher astray as easily as it provokes further inquiry or critical engagement.

>>21594515
I agree, but I would think that observing such, either seemingly or real, contradictions are a helpful way into thinking through the problems. As noted above in the thread, Plotinus and Plato aren't egalitarians who believe everyone is capable or ready for philosophy, on the one hand, and on the other, such problems have good pedagogical value for that rare person who wants to resolve the matter. And after all, isn't it closer to dogmatism to be unnerved at pointing to contradictions between the dialogues?

>>21594537
Mm. Fair. It's just seems so evidently disingenuous to raise apparent contradictions with statements taken out of context from other Dialogues that it irks me. My problem.

>>21594370
>Why people do evil is scarcely worth investigating
Very much disagree with this. Knowing people's motivations and why they behave the way they do can be extremely useful, it helps you know what is good by contrast and helps you defend yourself. And knowledge of that would be part of "the Good" surely since it is part of total understanding overall.

Imagine a modern Plato academy

>>21595006
If they're behaving badly in any given way, it's just the given mode of ignorance, or the correlate absence of knowledge of the Good. I look at it the opposite way. Once you know the Good, all behaviour which doesn't approximate it in some way is in that way ignorant of It. Trying to figure out how people are ignorant kinda seems like searching for a black cat on a moonless night. *How* they are ignorant is they have an absence of knowledge of the good which manifest in the orientation of their actions towards the "less-than-good".
I do get what you mean about the contrast. It's kinda true. Looking at the shadow doesn't tell you what the sun is like though. Nor do you even get an idea of the thing casting the shadow. Interesting point.

hey I don't know if this is the right thresd but I don't want to make a new one. Is the whole skill of amazing statues and sculptures still a thing? I've only been exposed to the sculpture found in colleges and that seems something totally different. I'm really just amazed at being able to depict the human form in stone or metal. This also extends to Italian Renaissance stuff too. I'm not art educated or trained so I don't really know.
Is there somewhere I can go to learn this or at least what it involves?

Anyone else keen for "On our Allotted Guardian Spirit"?

>>21595006
All you have to know is how to detect them, so you can exile or summarily execute them.

A book I’ve not seen get much discussion is ficino’s commentary on the Parmenides dialogue, any of you read it or have any thoughts on it? I enjoyed it.

>>21595315
My thoughts. Yes I'm interested in reading it. I don't know much about Ficino. Would it have much of a Catholic colouring?

>>21594370
3.3 Providence pt. 2

1
The Universal Reason-Principle does not engender evil but encompasses it

Contraries build into unities, unities unfold into contraries
- this is the apparent harmony in the world

2
Free will is like an individual soldier following the command of Providence, the general (or later, the analogy of a patient and the providence of medicinal science is used)

3
Your personality doesn't come from outside the universal scheme, it and your being is part of it

Should you be responsible for your failings? Or are people like plants and animals in that regard?
- If mankind fails in improving when he could do so "by bringing from his own stock something towards his betterment", then he is answerable for his inferiority

Inequality is inevitable not only for different Kinds but also within one's own Kind

Why can seers foresee evil events if evil is not part of the Reason-Principle?
- To know yourself is to know the Form and Matter which makes up your composition, so the Reason-Principle is aware of both
- only someone trained in divination could understand both what is good and evil/subject to Necessity

Every form of divination uses correspondences
- inferior with inferior, superior with superior, as the higher so the lower
- Trees are like the All

>>21595315
I haven't but Taylor references him in his footnotes sometimes.

>>21595308
I've always wondered if that's supposed to be some George Bailey shit

>>21594515
On the contrary, it is you not I who is being dogmatic on a perceived true reading of Plato which does not exist.
>Plato believed this
>”Well actually it is a complicated matter and Plato wrote many ideas contrary to one another which he debated in the various dialogues.”
>autistic screeching

I don't want to read philosophers what Greek poets and playwrights and writers can I read instead to understand and refute this disgusting philosophy

>>21597369
Aristophanes the Clouds is about Socrates. Of the surviving playwrights that is the closest you will get to philosophical discourse.

>>21597365
I think your being deliberately facetious and contrarian, but I'll admit I'm the one stating the true dogma.

I got filtered but the line about brothers was kino.

>>21597375
this is nonsense
Homer hesiod aeschylus lucretius they all get into this.

>>21597756
They talk about Platonic philosophy?

>>21597756
>this is nonsense
How? Explain why.

>>21597756
Only one of those men were playwrights

>>21597821
Notice how I did not exclusively say playwright

>>21597821
However none of them referred to Platonic or Neoplatonic philosophy which is the theme of the thread.

>>21597861
They literally do though. If Homer and hesiod did not exist Plato's republic wouldn't either

>>21597862
They do not “refute this disgusting philosophy” though arguably they do help understand it. You win this argument I guess though I did not see that as what that guy was implying to read those things for.

>>21597870
if you read those works you don't need to read Plato as you can simply derive the same conclusions as Plato

>>21597861
Lucretius was an atomist and was necessarily replying to Plato and Aristotle. Cope and seethe atomist fool.

>>21597876
That’s an assumption.

>>21597369
Refuting Plato ain't free. Platonism and the Socratic method gotta be littered with the canon of western civilization.

>>21597513
Most of Socrates and Plato’s irl disciples (the thirty tyrants and Dion of Syracuse) seemed to believe the latter however. It is about results.

>>21597974
Believe whatever distorted version you want. Your only hurting yourself.

>>21555642
From the Cambridge translation:
>This cosmos, then, is plausibly said to be an image, always remaining dependent on its source. The first and the second principles are at rest, and the third is itself at rest but is also accidentally in motion in the matter.

>>21552286
Plotinus pbuh

Anyone around here familiar with Proclus? How is Dodd's translation of the Elements of Theology?

The tutelary deity chapter was interesting. Not as stimulating as I imagined but revealing nonetheless. The image I get of levels of the soul and each of us as an 'intellectual cosmos' is fascinating.
I know I'm early but next up on love is looking wonderful. I don't know why I've never seen the Enneads but in the "bloomer" meme:
>Does each individual Soul, then, contain within itself such a Love in essence and substantial reality? (ie as the way there is a Heavenly God of Love)

>Since not only the pure All-Soul but also that of the Universe contain such a Love, it would be difficult to explain why our personal Soul should not. It must be so, even, with all that has life.

>This indwelling love is no other than the Spirit which, as we are told, walks with every being, the affection dominant in each several nature. It implants the characteristic desire; the particular Soul, strained towards its own natural objects, brings forth its own Eros, the guiding spirit realizing its worth and the quality of its Being.

>As the All-Soul contains the Universal Love, so must the single Soul be allowed its own single Love: and as closely as the single Soul holds to the All-Soul, never cut off but embraced within it, the two together constituting one principle of life, so the single separate Love holds to the All-Love. Similarly, the individual love keeps with the individual Soul as that other, the great Love, goes with the All-Soul; and the Love within the All permeates it throughout so that the one Love becomes many, showing itself where it chooses at any moment of the Universe, taking definite shape in these its partial phases and revealing itself at its will.

Bump

I'm confused, is our upper soul able to stand apart from the universe, becoming the divisible soul that pops up around bodies (plants that create clones like aspens or maggots growing in decomposing animals) or was that a different soul?

>3.4.3: "What, then, is the spirit [guiding the present life and determining the future]? The spirit of here and now. And the God? The God of Here and Now. Spirit, God; this is an act within us, conducts every life; for, even here and now, it is the dominant of our Nature. That is to say that the dominant is the spirit which takes possession of the human being at birth? No: the dominant is the Prior of the individual spirit; it presides inoperative while it secondary acts"
Reminds me a lot of the saying in the Upanishads and Bhagavad-Gita about the Atman/Over-Soul being like that of a silent bird watching another bird on a tree branch; the silent bird is the Atman and the other bird going about it's business is the "we"-ness, or ego principle, etc.

>infinite shots at life
>my soul used it's current life to make a goon cave
This is really weighing me down

[21601011]
Chris/Blake you're trying too hard. no (you).

>>21594370
>>21596254
3.4 Out Tutelary Spirit

Absolute Unity and the IP are Existents
- Some of these Existents stay at rest while their Hypostases come into being

The vegetative principle in humans
- These people are worse than those living life guided by Sense
- They only gratify themselves with food and procreation
- A singer (who doesn't observe civic/secular virtue) is someone living by Sense, and are more like a songbird than human. Kings whose only vice is unreason are like eagles, futile/flighty visionaries are high-soaring birds

A tutelary spirit is our Rational Being, provided to us by the Spirit of the here and now
- the one Spirit is a Prior of the IP
- spirits are responsible for guiding our lives
- The more you live according to reason, the higher quality your soul becomes, as will be your next life
- Our personal intellects/higher phase of the soul are a combination of our own acting force + tutelary spirit

Timaeus refers to the tutelary spirit as 'the power which consummates the chosen life'

For the souls which attain the highest quality/grade after their life, some live in the world of Sense, some in the higher sphere
- Those in the Sense world inhabit the sun or other planets (heaven?)

Some tutelary spirits are evil or foolish, which is how evil people may appear good, or good people appearing evil

>>21600994
At first I thought he was going to talk about tulpas, but instead thought it was more like indwelling with the holy spirit. I wonder if Christians were borrowing Platonism again with that.

>>21555160
Well, Plotinus doesn't approve of it either. It's been a while since I read it, but I think it's I.9 that says "if there is a given time for everyone, it would not be wise [to exit the body] before that time, unless it is necessary".

>>21598335

>This cosmos, then, is plausibly said to be an image, always remaining dependent on its source.

Reminds me of Timaeus, it's almost a direct quote that Kosmos is the "moved picture of eternity", meaning that eternity and cosmos are in the same relationship as the Idea and Appearance.

>>21601011
>a goon cave
I didn't need to know what this is. Gross.

>>21600993
>is our upper soul able to stand apart from the universe
I think it can stand apart from the material universe and enter the All-Soul, but some stay in the "heavens" or the planets if they're of high quality
>the divisible soul that pops up around bodies
I think he's referring the World/All Soul here

>Material entities exposed to all this onslaught may very well be under compulsion to yield to whatsoever the atoms may bring: but would anyone pretend that the acts and states of a soul or mind could be explained by any atomic movements? How can we imagine that the onslaught of an atom, striking downwards or dashing in from any direction, could force the soul to definite and necessary reasonings or impulses or into any reasonings, impulses or thoughts at all, necessary or otherwise? And what of the soul's resistance to bodily states? What movement of atoms could compel one man to be a geometrician, set another studying arithmetic or astronomy, lead a third to the philosophic life? In a word, if we must go, like soulless bodies, wherever bodies push and drive us, there is an end to our personal act and to our very existence as living beings.

>The School that erects other material forces into universal causes is met by the same reasoning: we say that while these can warm us and chill us, and destroy weaker forms of existence, they can be causes of nothing that is done in the sphere of mind or soul: all this must be traceable to quite another kind of Principle.

Materialists BTFO.

>do we not recollect how we said that the rulers, male and female, in dealing with marriage-unions must contrive to secure, by some secret method of allotment that the two classes of bad men and good shall each be mated by lot with women of a like nature, and that no enmity shall occur amongst them because of this, seeing that they will ascribe the allotment to chance? Timaeus: We recollect
(Timaeus 18d,e) brah. Sounds like dating sites.

>>21603118
Indeed. I pity the troglodytae, but how to help them?

>>21602266
Plato already covered them years ago.

>>21603513
Plato wanted the state to decide who gets to have children with who, and the soldiers were to be a completely polygamous group who can't own property and with sexual relations again controlled by the state. If that sounds harsh at least he wanted the soldiers to all come from the very highest class of citizens so they'd know philosophy and be the most physically fit.

>>21603891
Yeah. I do think it's harsh from a conventional perspective but correct if you want the best quality citizenry for your guardian class. What I'm commenting on is how this secret method of allotment they will think is by chance so as not to cause resentment from the quoted section sounds comparable to modern dating apps, ie the people who control the apps could use them to achieve this end. I don't think it's actually happening because that wouldn't necessarily benefit the companies in question. I'm just saying that is a method that could be used in the ideal state.

>>21604000
>ie the people who control the apps could use them to achieve this end
1. People who use dating apps the most contribute a very small part of the birth rate.
2. Most kinds of "good men" and "good women" (not touching morality but pure social status and productivity/capability) don't use them at all - they are attractive enough and have good enough social circles to simply not need them.

>>21604022
Fair enough. What about the next few generations though? I'd like to think what you've said will remain true. I can imagine apps becoming more dominant though.

How are anons liking On Love? I thought it was an excellent treatise. Very uplifting.

Bump

>>21604255
I think people will just marry younger if at all. Everyone is very sedentary.

I know I shouldn't have expected much about sex with a hardcore idealist but is there really not more to it than love in the sense of admiring beauty in things and only for procreation(as long as you're beautiful)? I feel like he's addressing an audience of children in the hopes that they won't misbehave as much as he knows they're going to.
>>21606292
If zoomers can't adjust then birth rates are probably going into decline like in Germany.

>>21606320
For context here's opinions of some Pythagoreans:
It is necessary to search for those wives and children which will remain after a liberation from the present life. - Demophilus
Learn how to produce eternal children, not such as may supply the wants of the body in old age, but such as may nourish the soul with perpetual food. - Demophilus. These are from The Golden Verses and other Pythagorean Fragments.
From Diogenes Laertius on Socrates:
Some one asked Socrates whether he should marry or not, and received the reply, "Whichever you do you will repent it."
Sex and procreation with women really seems like a chore in the mind of the Platonically oriented Greek. And why not? It's only ever a shadow of love for the Good/the Beautiful/the One.

>>21601478

3.5 On Love

Plato thinks Love is a Spirit-being, as opposed to a state
The general opinion is that Love is either devotion of beauty in itself, or it's consummation in some vile act
- we should look for the source of Love in Beauty

Nature looks to the Good to produce the beautiful, so it can't procreate in the ugly
No problem enjoying earthly beauty if one has perfect self-control, just avoid carnality
As long as you understand beauty, and the less you desire procreation, the more enjoyable will be your love for the sake of Beauty

Two kinds of lovers
- one for the purpose of copulation, insofar as they perpetuate beauty
- the more nobler for the aesthetic ideal which reflects the Good

2
Love as a God
- Orphic teachers believe this
- Eros, child of Aphrodite

There are two Aphrodites, a higher and a lower
- higher heavenly daughter of Ouranos/Saturn/Kronos
-- Kronos is the Intellectual-Principle
- lower daughter of Zeus and the Dione

Love is a medium of desire and desire's object, it is the eye of the desirer

There is love for the All-Soul, a Love for the unmingled Soul, and a Love for the second Soul which presides over marriages

Each Soul has a form of Love
- responsible for giving people desire and their own Eros
- Aphrodite is considered the Soul, and 'we must conceive many Aphrodites in the all" which descend into the cosmos

5
Love in the higher Soul is divine/a God
Love in the lower Soul are celestial spirits (daimones)

Symposium covers this
- Love is thought to be homeless, bedless, and shoe-less

6
Gods are immune to passions
Celestials have passions and experiences
- Gods may preside from the Intellectual Realm to the moon, Celestials from the moon to the world

Each Soul entering our cosmos generates a Celestial Spirit which is assigned to it
If a Soul is pure, it instead generates a God
- Aphrodite is a pure Soul, who generated the God, Love

Some order of celestial enters body, but not the air or fire as is commonly thought

7
Love can never be sated so long as it has that ill-defined, unreasoned, unlimited, and indeterminate nature in Matter
- Love has no resource in itself. It is poor after winning it's goal
- Good men only love the Absolute, Authentic Good, no following random attractions

Everyone has spirit guides

Plato calls Zeus royal in Soul and Intellect
- Zeus is the Intellectual Principle (not Kronos, as previously stated) and Aphrodite the Soul

We should Gods as intellects and Goddesses as souls, so Zeus' soul is Aphrodite
- other priests and theologians call her and Hera the same
- 'Venus' is known as the star of Hera

Love's parents (according to Diotima in Symposium) are thought to be Poros (Possession) and Penia (Poverty)
- (Aphrodite/Ares is another pairing, not mentioned)

>>21607132
Do you know of any later philosophers/Platonists influenced by all of the depravity happening in the Roman era? I know Plotinus lived in Rome for a long time so I had a small hope that he wasn't going to keep his writing PG.

>>21607318
where is this from ??

>>21552287
which book is this from

sorry Im new to /lit/

>>21607358
The Enneads by Plotinus

>>21607349
That guy's been posting his own notes he takes while reading. So I guess it came from the intelligible world.

>>21607336
Iamblichus and Proclus spring to mind.

>A temple, indeed, should be adorned with gifts, but the soul with disciplines. - Iamblichus
The Sentences of Sextus also which you can find in the previously mention book of Pythagorean Fragments (I recommend it highly, free pdfs easy to find.)
Apparently Proclus (I haven't read him, internet quotes you on know):
> A true philosopher is married to wisdom, he needs no other bride.

Thing is the more decadent the society the further you need to aim above it. Arguably the Roman era Platonist would have been more ascetic than Socrates who apparently could handle any amount of wine and bathed often and such. All things in moderation even asceticism though I think.

>>21607554
Thanks. I don't know much about the names you posted other than Iamblichus stressing that the Soul should stay in the body rather than detach itself like Plotinus wants. I have that uzdavinys book about it that got shilled here a lot. But I'm sure there were a lot of perverse Roman writers that were heavily censored by Christians (and later Roman Christians).

>>21607336
Read the first couple chapters of Dean Inge's lectures/book on Plotinus, they talk about this

>>21607358
If you don't want to jump into the full Plotinus try reading Uzdavinys' "The Heart of Plotinus," it's short and accessible

>>21607358
>sorry Im new to /lit/
Don't be ashamed. This general is too help people.

Bump

>>21607318
Does anyone know why Plotinus changes his designation of the intellectual-principle from Kronos to Zeus?

>If we agree that the activities, lives, and desires are not alterations and memories are not seal-impressions tamped on the soul or imaginative representations like imprints in wax, we must agree that everywhere in the case of all so-called affections and motions, the soul remains the same in substrate and substantiality and that virtue and vice do not occur as do black and white in a body or like warm and cold, but in the way we have described, in both cases being completely opposite in every respect.
Glad he put in a summary of all that.

Iamblichus and Proclus are much better. They also don't have any of that world-hating veganism that Plotinus has.

>>21610913
t. cryptohedonist

>>21607804
Thanks, I will look into that. Any papers or books you'd recommend?
>>21610893
It was a hard read at first but once I got into it it was easier upon rereading, it could have been made a bit shorter I think. What did he mean by Absolute Magnitude?

>>21607780
>Iamblichus stressing that the Soul should stay in the body rather than detach itself like Plotinus wants
No, Plotinus thinks that the soul is not in the body, it is like a transsmision.

>>21611131
ok depressed vegan

>>21607318
3.6 The Impassivity of the Unembodied

Feelings/emotions are not states, they are 'actions upon experience'
- states exist in the body, not judgments
- vice has no positive existence, it has no presence, it's the lack of virtue
- however, false judgments are positive, real things

2
How can the Soul possess emotions without being changed?
- Memories can be actualized from latent states, but aren't merely stored impressions
- change implies a share in Matter

The Soul is the actor of feelings/states, which only provoke changes in the body

How to explain the change from timidity to daring in the initiative faculty (I suppose this is an Ideal-Principle)?
- No change in the Soul, just a failure to actualize that Reason-Principle in good measure

Soul has nothing imported into it, it is unchanged in substance and essence
3
Likes and Aversions?

They do not change the soul, they are it's acts

4 Affective phase of the Soul
The Soul's affections, like pleasure, pain, fear, happiness, are caused by the Soul's 'affective phase' when stimulated by SPs or independently

An ideal form's nature is to be an activity(energeia)

5 Why stress the impassivity in the Soul?
"Philosophy's task is like that of a man who wishes to throw off the shapes presented in dreams, and to this end recalls to waking condition the mind that is breeding them"

6 Matter is also incorporeal, however, it is passive

Matter can host all variety of qualities, such as cold heat, etc. but does not change in itself

9 Cold has no positive qualities, it is the negation/absence of heat (this seems to be true in thermodynamics/energy theories)

Only qualities which are contraries can act on one another, not qualities like sweetness upon color

Matter brought to order in a composite must lose it's nature in the supreme degree, though it does not lose it's character

12 Plato uses the metaphor of golds poured into moulds to show how matter can participate in material bodies while being unchanged

13 Matter is the receptacle and nurse of all generation (created things)

14 As if there would be no reflection if mirrors didn't exist, there would be no reality at all if Matter did not exist

Matter is destitute of the Good, so it is constantly striving after something to fill/join it

17 Magnitude is an Ideal-Principle

Absolute Magnitude is not Matter
- Magnitude is an Ideal-Principle, and when combined with Matter, becomes mass with extension
- Magnitude is absolute when considered in itself (just the Ideal-Principle
- Magnitude is inherent "in each Ideal-Principle--that of a horse or anything else"

Pure Idea lets us perceive reality, but perceptible reality is false since matter is a non-existent
- Matter destitute of power, has no Act of it's own

Symbolic interpretation of Hermes as the generative Intellectual Principle, Mother the receptacle/Matter (though women do more than contain a baby, they also feed it. Matter does nothing more than hold Ideas as in material bodies)

>>21610913
>world hating veganism
>making other living beings suffer immensely for a brief bit of pleasure is world loving!

Is Plotinus arguing that the unembodied is always impassive? I'm assuming no since Matter is unembodied but completely passive.
Also holy Platonic virtue we are blowing through this. If we get to 6 there's pretty much no chance I'm putting it down.

>>21609756
He either uses that phrase sparingly to reference multiple entities, or is referring to different interpretations (himself with Kronos, Plato with Zeus, theologians/priests with Hermes). I was going to say another idea was that Zeus usurped Kronos in the mythology story but then he dropped Hermes at the end of 3.6.

>>21611508
>death is immense suffering

>>21611260
>Absolute Magnitude
Perhaps the idea of magnitude without any particular subject being measured. Possibly comparable to pure quantity which is the inverse of pure quality. Matter bereft of any form? Not entirely sure.

>>21611260
I was wrong. MacKennanon has got us.>>21611502
>Magnitude is an Ideal-Principle, and when combined with Matter, becomes mass with extension
>- Magnitude is absolute when considered in itself (just the Ideal-Principle
>- Magnitude is inherent "in each Ideal-Principle--that of a horse or anything else"

You brahs look what I found: https://youtu.be/M_qp568WG2s

>>21552286
Who was Neoplato?

>>21612078
Plato with a leather trench coat

>>21612078
Google it.