/lit/ - Literature

How it started vs. How it's going anyone?

>>21614908
I'm the OP from the last one. Thanks for making this, I was too busy to check the thread today until now.
>>21614913
I am still getting filtered by 3.6, at the least it makes more sense when I reread it.

>>21614913
Not much has changed, though Neoplatonism seems more demystified now. I'm kind of treating these threads like a lecture class without lectures or essays.
>>21614941
Np
thanks for starting all this.

>>21614913
I think it's slowing down now in terms of frequency of posting. It's definitely a fascinating world view though.
>>21614913
What's the issue with III.6?

I really liked III.8.10 the whole tractate was interesting.
>The potentiality of the Universe: the potentiality whose non-existence would mean the non-existence of all the Universe and even of the Intellectual-Principle which is the primal Life and all Life.

>This Principle on the thither side of Life is the cause of Life- for that Manifestation of Life which is the Universe of things is not the First Activity; it is itself poured forth, so to speak, like water from a spring.

>Imagine a spring that has no source outside itself; it gives itself to all the rivers, yet is never exhausted by what they take, but remains always integrally as it was; the tides that proceed from it are at one within it before they run their several ways, yet all, in some sense, know beforehand down what channels they will pour their streams.

>Or: think of the Life coursing throughout some mighty tree while yet it is the stationary Principle of the whole, in no sense scattered over all that extent but, as it were, vested in the root: it is the giver of the entire and manifold life of the tree, but remains unmoved itself, not manifold but the Principle of that manifold life.
III.8.10

You guys should really do Proclus' Elements of Theology and then all of Pseudo-Dionysius (in the Classics of Western Spirituality edition) next, it will cement all the work you did with Plotinus and present it in a programmatic fashion that makes it easy to remember.

You could also do Iamblichus' On the Mysteries between Plotinus and Proclus, since it's easier. Elements of Theology is hard, but it's actually an ideal starting place because it's so programmatic and straightforward, as long as you know some necessary core concepts of Platonism. But after reading the Enneads it would be almost easy to read, and bridge you into later Platonism, especially as the Western tradition received it.

>>21615332
If this general were to continue we should read something both shorter and simpler next. Right now I'm hoping at least three people make it to the end of this one.

>>21615332
How do you feel about Pseudo-Dionysius and Proclus divergences from Plotinus? I'd say the former two are closer to each other than to Plotinus. Same with Iamblichus.

Even though Neoplatonism seems incredibly ascetic I still associate it with Renaissance imagery and thus a sense of decadence. Is there any correlation to this or am I just being schizophrenic?

>>21611502
3.7 Time and Eternity

I felt like my head was going to explode reading this. I thought Taylor was pretty good in some places but his section numbers skipped ahead of MacKenna, so maybe that was a typo.
..
1 We must believe that old philosophers found the truth
Eternity termed "the Exemplar", an integral of Time/a representation in image of Eternity
First 7 sections primarily discuss eternity, then time after that

How to identify Eternity? Several possibilities:
- substance of intelligibles
- Repose, or that Eternity participates in Repose
- Repose of the divine Essence
- unity without interval

2
Taylor:
- Is Eternity and perpetuity the same?
- Eternity is denominated with essence, life, motion, permanency, sameness of energy, without interval or change
- That which in to be, it is that which it is, which neither was, nor will be, but alone is, stably possessing its being, is eternity

3
Eternity means Ever-Being
Eternity is not the Substratum of the divine or IP(Intellectual Principle), but a radiation of this Substratum
Taylor:
- Eternity is denominated from that which always is

5
Perpetuity is not enough to be considered Eternity, you also need a Nature-Principle which guarantees no future changes will occur
- only things with Being can be eternal

T:
- Eternity as infinite life, without past/future, all things at once (Proclus in "On the Theology of Plato", and Boetius in lib. 5, "De Consol. Philosoph", apparently agree with this conception of eternity)

6
Being is the same as Everlasting Being, the quality of "always" differentiates being from essence and should be understood with the word's definition
Eternity can have no contact with quantity

T:
To distinguish being from essence, being is conjoined to the quality of always (aion)
eternity abides in one, not the highest ineffable one, but the one of being or summit of the intelligible order (t. Plato)

7 Starting discussion of Time
We exist in Time, but have some share of Eternity in us

T: Time is thought by the ancients to be either motion, that which is moved, or something pertaining to motion (motion for MacKenna is translated as Movement)

8
Movement takes place in Time, and movements can come to rest while time occurs without stopping, so they aren't the same
- What if Time was just the Movement of the All/heavenly circuit? The latter is continuous and eternal, so can be considered the same as Time?
No, the heavenly circuit takes place in Time

Movement can be measured with space and the extent of it's continuity(time?)

9
Is Time the measure of motion?
How can Time be a measure of movement if it shares in the movement?
- Time as a measure must either be the movement measured by magnitude, the measuring magnitude itself, or something using magnitude to measure movement

>>21615809
9
T:
Time is more than how number measure motion according to prior and posterior (As believed by Aristotle and Plato in Timaeus)
- how can there be number about time if time is eternal?
-This is the effect of Time, not the cause of it

11
T:
Time is contained in differentiation of Life, the ceaseless forward movement of Life
The Soul left eternity and clothed itself in Time to create the cosmos
Is Time, then, the Life of the Soul in movement?

Time according to Proclus (Taylor footnote): "a medium between that which is alone the cause of motion, as soul, and that which is alone immoveable, as intellect...hence it is a certain proceeding intellect, established in eternity, but flowing into the things which are guarded by it"

12
If a Soul withdraws from life, no longer accomplishing Act, it must enter into eternity (this reminds me of the phenomenon of when time seems to speed up for people with boring lives)
The universe and Time are created together by the Life of the Soul as with the Cosmos. Time is it's activity(energeia), the universe is it's contents

T:
That which is measure by circulation(circulation is "Spheral Circuit" for MacKenna), viz which is manifested, and not generated by it, will be time

13
Time is omnipresent in the Cosmos, though it's reality/coherence is disputed
The mere succession of earlier to later is not Time

T: Time is not the measure of motion, rather it is measured by motion

>>21615805
Initiatic clubs are certainly decadent. Opium dens of the soul.

>>21615842
What?

>>21615805
Probably because it was lost for like a thousand years and only came back when it was translated by people during the Renaissance. Ficino was the main guy I believe.
>>21615332
I'd like to do Proclus Elements of Theology I think. >>21615525 it's shorter than the Enneads but I don't know about simpler.
>>21615951
I think he's trying to suggest that there some association between initiatic clubs like the Freemasons that he thinks arose during the Renaissance and Neoplatonic thought. I'd don't think there is much weight to this.

>>21615951
>>21616045
You realize Guenon's iniatic clubs were places where he'd literally smoke heroin, right? There's a lot of decadence and downright degeneracy in these secret clubs.

>>21615332
>Pseudo-Dionysius (in the Classics of Western Spirituality edition)

isn't that known to be a garbage translation and the best is still the old Rev. Parker translation?

>>21615805
I feel like Platonism lets you easily build your own religion/cult with more or less solid theoretical underpinnings. The open ended nature of the dialogues along with the hyper authoritarian stance Plato posits of how people who have "The Good" should behave toward their followers can perhaps be linked in some unconscious, overarching "spirit of the times" way with some of these 'clubs' which hid themselves from Christians. But nothing from Plato's/Plotinus' work or their lives makes me believe they were decadent in particular.

>>21616111
Weren't we talking about the Renaissance? And yeah I realise that. Masons are notorious drinkers.

> Plotinus’ doctrine that the soul is composed of a higher and a lower part — the higher part being unchangeable and divine (and aloof from the lower part, yet providing the lower part with life), while the lower part is the seat of the personality (and hence the passions and vices)
How does this square with modern science? It sounds like Plotinus believes that we're animated by some mystic force from above (like what the Chinese call chi), while biology suggests an upside down model in which life springs from matter and rises upwards to the intellect.

>>21616717
Biology doesn't even remotely suggest that.

>>21616722
What about abiogenesis?

>>21616738
It's frankly absurd in my opinion. I don't know how any reasonable person can look at the amazing order, harmony, diversity and structure in nature and believe that by random chance matter was capable of producing such nature.

>>21616755
>amazing order, harmony, diversity and structure
But inorganic matter DOES have those qualities. Frankly it seems like these ancient metaphysicians underestimated the fecundity of minerals. On the other hand there's Paracelsus who held to many of those Empedoclean ideas but had a magical materialist system that's relatively more compatible with modern scientific theories about the origins of life

>>21616717
I think the mystic force Plotinus has in mind translates well into more modern arguments for the universe having intelligent design or that it was designed with a level of sophistication that humans are incapable of comprehending fully (insofar as we are a product in and of it). I don't think this necessarily implies there is an outside designing entity responsible, in fact that could be an anthropocentric bias. The opposite of this idea is that existence developed at random, which just does not make sense to me.

>>21616910
Oh I think I misread the question. If you mean how life came about, I don't have much of an answer. Maybe there is some kind of energy omnipresent to existence, which I think is more likely than soul's being distributed from a central soul repository in heaven. I think science will come to have a better explanation but it will be more complex than something like natural selection or how molecules just floated around in water long enough and eventually rammed into each other and became peptide chains due purely to the ocean current, then proteins, then the proteins made bacteria.
There was an experiment like that done (I can't remember which one) which strove to prove how the creation of a peptide bond could occur "at random", or by proximity in water, but the statistical likelihoods of creating complex structures as purely caused by proximity was impossibly low.
There's just nothing satisfying in that kind of reasoning that is different than saying we were bacteria once, then became animals eventually from random chance. Why should I be an absurdist-inductivist on that logic? I think the explanatory power of attributing "intellect" to existence is more compelling theory to me, but it's likely imo that further science will find relationships in nature which could explain life in some quantum-like way.

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?

Sneed

>>21616899
>inorganic matter DOES have those qualities.
Okay, but why? The point is that the order in the universe is the result of something more than the universe, for everything within the universe to be as it is without "external impetus" (I'm simplifying platonic metaphysics here), without some telos guiding each process, I find absurd. And no we shouldn't all therefore be absurdists.

>>21616045
>Ficino was the main guy I believe.
Ficino was the main influence on Neoplatonism (or even Platonism in general)'s resurgence in the Renaissance. But even though I've read Ficino's commentaries on Plato I can't imagine him seriously promoting a system that is as ascetic on paper as Neoplatonism while partaking in Renaissance culture and Renaissance magic and all that seemingly decadent shit. Just like I can't imagine Ficino being so enamored with astrology and magic while also being a Catholic priest. Ficino is such a contradictory, impossible-to-read figure to me despite reading him and liking him.

>>21616188
Plato/Plotinus are very ascetic, non-decadent writers. Despite this, their ideas weirdly flourished in very decadent contexts (late antiquity, Renaissance) while being irrelevant in more austere eras (early Rome, Middle Ages)

>>21617210
Is it that ascetic though really? As I've pointed out before, in the Symposium it's recounted that Socrates cannot drink anyone or not imbibe at all. I was thinking about this the other day. I reckon at a certain point asceticism is just a species of pride and pomp. I highly doubt anyone of the Socratic/Platonic milieu would have not advocated "nothing in excess" which I don't think is a statement that supports asceticism.
It's interesting about Ficino. I think something to keep in mind is a lot of what, as I see it, is being advocated by the Platonists is more about mental purification- or that has a greater emphasis as a means towards theoria or eudaimonia. Take for instance the famous section from the Phaedo 67 where they talk about the souls purification and separation. That is also talked about by Plotinus at III.6.5:
>The purification of the Soul is simply to allow it to be alone; it is pure when it keeps no company; when it looks to nothing without itself; when it entertains no alien thoughts- be the mode or origin of such notions or affections what they may, a subject on which we have already touched- when it no longer sees in the world of image, much less elaborates images into veritable affections. Is it not a true purification to turn away towards the exact contrary of earthly things?

>Separation, in the same way, is the condition of a soul no longer entering into the body to lie at its mercy; it is to stand as a light, set in the midst of trouble but unperturbed through all.
I mean of course this doesn't mean you can be a hedonistic degenerate. One still has to exercise moderation as you have to do your duty.

>>21616991
Fuck off.

>>21617312
*can out drink anyone

>>21617312
I mostly associate Platonism with asceticism due to Platonism's influence on Gnosticism through Timaeus (despite Neoplatonism's repudiation of Gnosticism in both Pagan and Christian contexts).

The ideal of the mental/higher world being better than the physical world begins with Plato's rejection of Heracleitus and reaches its philosophical peak in the Cave allegory and its narrative peak in the death of Socrates. I can't imagine escaping the cave, or having your soul chariot reach the heavens while being tied down by lust and liquor.

>>21617336
>I can't imagine escaping the cave, or having your soul chariot reach the heavens while being tied down by lust and liquor.
Of course not. What I'm trying to introduce here is a little peripatetic good sense and say it's as wrong to think you're suppose to go all the way into asceticism as to go all the way into hedonism. Moderation is key. Maybe platonism looks ascetic from the point of view of an epicurean society but it's not, it's a moderate view. The real ascetic position is cynicism. I've read that Plato said Diogenes was Socrates gone mad and I think that's the way he would have look at anyone who overemphasised that misreading of Platonism. It's not that we need to mortify our bodies so the soul can go free, it's that we need to free it from false opinions that keep it oriented downwards looking at the shadows. The body is not what leaves the cave, it is the soul and what binds it is false opinions like 'pleasure is the only good' that need to be broken through mental/spiritual inquiry/dialectic and purification. If you're mortifying the flesh but internally moaning to yourself about what a horrible thing it is to be alive and how you can't wait for death, that's a big error imo, possibly worse than the moderate hedonist who is at least tries to be virtuous, do good for others and try's to keep in mind the Good.

>>21616738

What is the basic principle of "life" I ask here. Random atoms bumping into each other in a certain configuration? Or an inherent principle of potentiality of self-replication which is intrinsic to the universe due to a very particular interference of "cosmic" forces (or physical laws if you prefer that term)?

>>21616717
>pic
Weirdly appropriate for this thread. The ending of the manga was fairly unclear about what the dark and light gods really were but the way the soul was treated in the story is sort of reminiscient of Plotinus' concept of the individual soul and World-Soul.

Join De Monarchia to discuss about literature, philosophy, religion, poetry and other related subjects. https://discord.gg/NMRSjYRQ

>>21616975
I got the strong impression from On Love that he departs from what Plato does in Symposium and Phaedrus.

>>21617312
>>21617336
I agree with these takes. Socrates had children, after all, one of whom was a toddler when Socrates was executed. Maybe something of this (that Socrates doesn't drink often, but when he does, he drinks everyone under the table and remains collected; he has children; he pops an erection at the beginning of Charmides but exercises restraint) is what is meant by Diotima's ladder at the first rung; it's a necessary step to appreciate the beautiful and eventually move to the next rung in appreciating and practicing beautiful deeds. It can't be skipped.

Was Plotinus White?

III. 8 starting tomorrow? I will start from there which was where i stopped before this group was formed

>>21618673
No, he was Greek

>>21619002
Greeks are white my melanated friend.

>>21618963
That's todays reading, feel free to join us. If these threads stop I might just read the tractates Taylor chose since he only translated 14 of them (though not his translation in particular, which I think is kind of bad):
>I. On the Virtues (II. ii.)
>II. On Dialectic (I. iii.)
>III. On Matter (II. iv.)
>IV. Against the Gnostics (II. ix.)
>V On the Impassivity of Incorporeal Natures (III. vi.)
>VI. On Eternity and Time (III. vii.)
>VII. On the Immortality of the Soul (IV. vii.)
>VIII. On the Three Hypostases that rank as the Principles of Things (V. i.)
>IX. On Intellect, Ideas, and Real Being (V. xi.)
>X. On the Essence of the Soul (IV. ii.)
>XI. A Discussion of Doubts relative to the Soul (IV. iii.)
>XII. On the Generation and Order of Things after the First (V. ii.)
>XIII. On Gnostic Hypostases, and That which is beyond Them (V. iii.)
>XIV. That the Nature which is beyond Being is not Intellective, etc. (V. vi.)
>XV. On the Good, or the One (VI. ix.)

>>21615809
3.8 Nature, Contemplation, and the One

What is contemplation in humans, trees, vegetation, etc.?
How does contemplation relate to labour and productiveness on earth?
How can Nature harbor Contemplation if it is held to be devoid of reason or conscious representation?

2 some indwelling efficacy in artists should exist in nature for it to manifest its creative acts and bodies
This nature principle is an Ideal Form

Nature does not contemplate in the sense of planning, since planning for a thing implies a lack of it, and nature lacks nothing

Production in Nature is also a contemplation
4 Nature is a Soul, so it has a vision in itself
Words like perception and understanding aren't completely applicable to Nature

The origin of things is a contemplation
Action is set toward contemplation and its object

The Soul has more content than Nature, so it is more tranquil
7
Nature, Soul, IP = advancing stages of contemplation

Knower and what is Known are identical in the IP

pure objects of intellection must be Life Absolute

All life is some form of thought

The IP is the earliest form of life

10
The highest One as a potentiality of the IP
Once you have uttered the Good, further considerations will disparage its meaning

11
The IP as a Seeing
implies duality

The Source of all things can't be an Intellect

>>21619002
He wasn’t Greek.

>>21620403
The part about how action is a kind of fallen species of contemplation and a way of creating vision despite a lack of Intellectuality was fascinating.
>human beings, when weak on the side of contemplation, find in action their trace of vision and of reason: their spiritual feebleness unfits them for contemplation; they are left with a void, because they cannot adequately seize the vision; yet they long for it; they are hurried into action as their way to the vision which they cannot attain by intellection. They act from the desire of seeing their action, and of making it visible and sensible to others when the result shall prove fairly well equal to the plan. Everywhere, doing and making will be found to be either an attenuation or a complement of vision-attenuation if the doer was aiming only at the thing done; complement if he is to possess something nobler to gaze upon than the mere work produced.
>Given the power to contemplate the Authentic, who would run, of choice, after its image?
>The relation of action to contemplation is indicated in the way duller children, inapt to study and speculation, take to crafts and manual labour. III.8.4
This is so many men I find.

>>21620828
I think I missed this, but it makes sense. Thanks

Anyone point me to a good introduction to theurgy? Also, how does one engage in platonic contemplation or meditation?

1
>It might be argued that the Intellectual-Principle is the Contemplator and therefore that the Living-Being contemplated is not the Intellectual-Principle but must be described as the Intellectual Object so that the Intellectual-Principle must possess the Ideal realm as something outside of itself.

>But this would mean that it possesses images and not the realities, since the realities are in the Intellectual Realm which it contemplates: Reality- we read- is in the Authentic Existent which contains the essential form of particular things.

>No: even though the Intellectual-Principle and the Intellectual Object are distinct, they are not apart except for just that distinction.

>Nothing in the statement cited is inconsistent with the conception that these two constitute one substance- though, in a unity, admitting that distinction, of the intellectual act [as against passivity], without which there can be no question of an Intellectual-Principle and an Intellectual Object: what is meant is not that the contemplatory Being possesses its vision as in some other principle, but that it contains the Intellectual Realm within itself.

2
>The Intelligible Object is the Intellectual-Principle itself in its repose, unity, immobility: the Intellectual-Principle, contemplator of that object- of the Intellectual-Principle thus in repose is an active manifestation of the same Being, an Act which contemplates its unmoved phase and, as thus contemplating, stands as Intellectual-Principle to that of which it has the intellection: it is Intellectual-Principle in virtue of having that intellection, and at the same time is Intellectual Object, by assimilation.

>This, then, is the Being which planned to create in the lower Universe what it saw existing in the Supreme, the four orders of living beings. (III.9.1)
What are the four orders? Gods, men, animals, plants? Also I just enjoyed this passage and thought we could do with bump.

>>21622596
>What are the four orders?
Aquatic, terrestrial, aerial and “gods” (planets), after the four elements (Platonists thought the planets were fiery), as per Plato’s Timaeus.

um... i just realized my version of the enneads is the penguin abridged one. i wont be able to follow this thread daily. after III. 8 the next text is IV. 3

>>21614908
Paleoplatonism sucked enough, do we really need a neo as well..?

>>21620403
3.9 Detached Considerations

The Creator judged that the Ideas indwelling in the Intellectual Realm should also exist in the lower Realm

Intellectual Object is the same substance as the IP, but for the distinction that the IP is the observer, or that the Int. Object is the IP in repose

- four orders of living beings

Intellectual Object->Intellectual Principle->Soul

In Science, the reduction of Knowledge into separate propositions does not affect the unity of the total idea

Body went into soul, not soul into body

4
Unity becomes multiplicity by it's omnipresence--it is everywhere and nowhere

The Primal is a potentiality of Movement and Repose, so it is above, beyond, and prior to them
The Primal lacks intellection (Primal=All-Soul/ineffable One?)

dualistic knowledge is deficient by nature

The First is beyond Being

The IP contains the Authentic Existents

Intellection is not the transcendently venerable thing--neither Intellection in general or of the Good

>>21623495
yes we do. read some of this neoplatonik.com.ua you'll def understand it

>>21622726
Cheers

>>21621959
So I'll ask this instead:
I'm most accustomed to Ganana meditation (counting breaths). Do you think this is a good way of achieving the aims set out in III.6.5? I've come to think that all though it might not be ideal from a platonic point of view, it at least helps the mind/soul detach from bodily thoughts and sensation. Thoughts? Also general thoughts about the relation or comparisons of buddhism and Platonism? I think the later is definitely more akin to the Mahayana (with notions like Buddhamind), although they do both share the idea of reincarnation..

>>21617497
The biological definition of life
>Life is defined as any system capable of performing functions such as eating, metabolizing, excreting, breathing, moving, growing, reproducing, and responding to external stimuli.
This definition has it's problems, like with how we say viruses are not alive. Personally, I just use a the Platonic stuff and don't tell anybody that's what I think as I'm a biologist.

>>21617048

The point is exactly the other way round, it's simply that your feelings are wrong. In one sense, it is a kind of human arrogance to need, to insist on some creator to make sense of the world. god remains a cope, and the human need for some sort of story is our peculiar defect. Whence the fallacious and unsatisfying proofs.

>>21626075
>some creator to make sense of the world.
You seem to completely misunderstand Platonism as far as I can tell. God doesn't create the world, the world is that Divinity. Matter is also always here. The world fundamentally makes sense because it's fundamentally necessary and reasonable. Humans are just a small part of this nexus of Divine reasons that are affecting matter. I can't make you leave the cave if you don't want to anyway.

So if you don't want to engage with Plotinus or Platonism you are welcome to leave and be a nihilist or hedonist or whatever in another thread. Btw, personally I do think humans need a story and this does explain all mythology. If we don't we become the sort of utterly cringe atheifags who come into threads that are way out of their depth and spout garbage they have no idea about. But Platonism isn't this sort of story. It's actually a system of enquiry and explanation, it's scientific I think- in the sense of looking for truth, before the term science degenerated into denoting an empty materialism/physicalism. If you want proofs go read the work. I make no claim to have the ability to convice you. If you don't look you won't see.

Anons, Part 2 of Commentary is OUT!

https://www.amazon.com/Enneads-Plotinus-Commentary-2-ebook/dp/B0B9FDB43P

Begging of a PDF/EPUB - Pleeeazeee Anooon!

Post a Copy Sweaty.

I find Neoplatonism’s obsession with and normalization of rigid hierarchies concerning and indicative of repressed sexuality.

>>21627473

what's y'all's opinion on schopenhauer and where do I go from him assuming I have understood him 100%?

>>21627570
Both Platonism (Paleo and Neo) and the philosophy of Schopenhauer tend to exhibit mysoginistic and anti-democratic tendencies, so yeah, very problematic. Refrain from reading both if you don't want to become a school-shooting incel.

In 3.7, is Plotinus also saying that the sensible Universe is eternal because of it's creation by the Demiurge and then became "in time"? I know that the debate over the eternity of the world was a big debate around this time between the Platonists/Peripatetics and their Christian counterparts.

>>21627570
I've mostly heard bad things. I don't know anything about his beliefs other than his reputation for misogyny.
>>21627586
Platonism was more progressive than almost every other philosophy of it's time.

>>21627570
Have you read the greeks anon?

>>21628262
There's both. Time is the reflection of Eternity. Time is striving to replicate the Ideals that permanently exists in a state of fixity in the eternal mind of the Divine but because of Souls inhabiting matter in order to try achieve this the replication can never be perfect.

>>21628262
Also I'm not sure about the sensible universe, but matter is Eternal but not sensible as it only exists eternally as a sort of "substratum" of nonbeing without qualities. When matter is met with qualities (takes on form) because of Soul's act it becomes sensible body which is the process of the striving towards the Ideals in time that I mention here >>21629410

This song has been in my head for over a week.
https://youtu.be/pHerUutWSvE

>>21630064
Would Plotinus rank Messi or Ronaldo higher?

>>21629396
I've read Plato's symposium and the apology of socrates (including phaedo and two others). I've also read the Odyssey pretty much every surviving text of the pre socratic philosophers but that's it

>>21630573
If you've read the Republic I'd move onto the Tragedians. You can intersperse them with Aristophanes if it gets a bit much, or something like Aesop or Hesiod.
Thing is after Schopenhauer philosophy just goes to shit in my opinion. You better of sticking with classics. I haven't read it but yet but On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History sounds excellent if you want something more modern. If you want more pessimistic bullshit then reassess your whole existence. If you want more about the will-to-life read the upanishads.

Bump

In the Timaeus it seems that Plato thinks there are both 'esoteric' and 'exoteric' elements. For the latter, did he think that fire was literally made of microscopic pyramids? That's wrong.. isn't it?

Is the soul which he writes about here the universal soul or our souls? If a soul can be in multiple bodies and still have unity, does that mean we all share a soul or at least part of a soul?

>>21624439
IV.1 - "On the Essence of the Soul" was half a page long so I'm just going to post with tomorrow's notes.
>>21632352
Iirc he argued that the smallest unit of matter was triangular in nature. I don't think it was a strong opinion for him though.
>>21632356
He's at least not talking about the One prior to the Intellectual Principle, so probably world-soul. I'm not sure where his logic was going with trying to say a soul was indivisible and able to divide itself. It could be like you said, I read it like our souls are complete/a perfect image of the higher phase, our soul "maintains its integral nature", so we aren't just a "part" in that sense. Then the part of the world-soul that "holds its ground" is it's complete form also.

>>21626864
Thanks for telling us.

>>21626864
>>21632515

Got a Copy Yet? Guys...

>>21632352
I was reading this the other day. Fire is upwards facing pyramids. Water downwards facing ones. Earth is cuboid. Air is neutral. Apparently ether is associated with dodecahedrons? As to whether it's esoteric or exoteric: it's just a model, something to think about. Plato is more about stimulating you to think imo.

>>21632356
We all share the higher part of Soul.

What did you guys think of the image he gives of the soul as radii and circumference of a circle. I love that because it says so much imo.

Why was Porphyry so into the number 9?

>>21633645
https://youtu.be/Q53GmMCqmAM

>>21632849
No, I do not.

>The nature, at once divisible and indivisible, which we affirm to be soul has not the unity of an extended thing: it does not consist of separate sections; its divisibility lies in its presence at every point of the recipient, but it is indivisible as dwelling entire in the total and entire in any part.

>To have penetrated this idea is to know the greatness of the soul and its power, the divinity and wonder of its being, as a nature transcending the sphere of Things. (IV.2.1)
Key section in this chapter imo. The mundanity of our corporeal mindset is what prevents us from acknowledging the all-pervadingness of Soul. It seems to me that the Soul's ability to dwell entire in any part seems to prefigure Proclean hennads? I haven't read Proclus so I'd appreciate clarification from any anon that has.

>>21634241
Does Anyone Plan on getting the Commentary Volume II?

These next two "problems" chapters are axial for the work it seems to me. I've been through them a few times and picked out some of, what I consider, the more interesting parts. I'll be posting then tomorrow at some point. I'm guessing the Soul's journey and nature etc was the hotbutton issue of the day.

bump

>>21618203
Note to everyone don't join this server, the guy who made it does this thing constantly where he makes a religion server, vets people, then deletes the server.

>>21636678
is discord worth it at all? never used it.

>>21636678
I remember seeing the advert several years ago.
>>21636709
This anon has a good description of discord /lit/ servers >>21520396
>People always start talking about going to the grocery store and what porn they like -- not the actions of a happy man!

>>21617210
>neoplatonism
>decadent magic
but anons you know that theurgy is actually an inherent practice of a neoplatonism