/lit/ - Literature

>>21638469
>Whether the Stars are Causes"
Well? What's the verdict?

>>21638480
They can influence our world, but not nearly to the extent that the astrologers claim they do. They're only causes for retards.

>>21638480
>That the circuit of the stars indicates definite events to come but without being the cause direct of all that happens, has been elsewhere affirmed, and proved by some modicum of argument (II.3.1)
>We may think of the stars as letters perpetually being inscribed on the heavens or inscribed once for all and yet moving as they pursue the other tasks allotted to them: upon these main tasks will follow the quality of signifying, just as the one principle underlying any living unit enables us to reason from member to member, so that for example we may judge of character and even of perils and safeguards by indications in the eyes or in some other part of the body. If these parts of us are members of a whole, so are we: in different ways the one law applies.
>All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another, a process familiar to all of us in not a few examples of everyday experience. (II.3.7)
>This ultimate phase, then, is the Maker, secondary to that aspect of the Soul which is primarily saturated from the Divine Intelligence. But the Creator above all is the Intellectual-Principle, as giver, to the Soul that follows it, of those gifts whose traces exist in the Third Kind.
>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.
>For as long as divine Mind and Soul exist, the divine Thought-Forms will pour forth into that phase of the Soul: as long as there is a sun, all that streams from it will be some form of Light. (II.3.18)
So no. God is the ultimate cause of everything. Things like stars are a factor in causation but they're not ultimately final causes.

>thread archived
A horror of the things to come
Is anyone reading ahead? Tomorrow is 30 pages and the day after is 40, gonna be kind of a slog. I feel like plotinus repeats himself a lot about things

>>21638717
So people are dropping out?

>>21638717
I'm going to try and read as much as possible tomorrow so I don't fall behind over the weekend (again).
>>21638736
Usually the mackenna guy posts his notes around this time but I figure he's still reading.

>>21624439
4.1/4.2 On the Essence of the Soul (Part 1 & 2)

The Intellectual sphere has Authentic Existence, Souls, and the IP (Intellectual Principle)

How is the Soul indivisible if it can split up and give souls to the lower realm?

Formed from the undivided essence and the essence divided among bodies

The Soul which knows partition is parted without partibility

4.2

Qualities such as magnitude are a condition to any one mass, but do not consitute it's Essence
- Essence = Real-Being
- Very near to the impartible
- present at every point of the recipient, but indivisible as dwelling in the entire in any point

Essence is present to all mass
Partition occurs in bodies
There is a continuity to the soul which ensures it is one throughout the multiplicity of body

If Soul were impartible or a completely perfect unity (as opposed to being both divisible and indivisible), it could not ensoul body

Theory of Impressions as progressing toward the Leading-Principle (this is a theory purported by critical opponents which Plotinus disputes)
- the Leading-Principle in unintellective objects or things is their unity
- Leading-Principle in composites (soul/body) is the "one-and-many" soul

>>21638751
I'm still here. I'll read ahead if I can. The next week or two I may be in and out because I'm travelling right now. Kind of happy that the old copy of this book I have is going to see some natural beauty after being heavily studied from around 1960-1990 (It came from a university library that closed last year).

>>21638480
It's another way of phrasing "is astrology true"? Plotinus doesn't fully disagree though.

>>21638717
Already read ahead bro. Just wait.
>>21638827
Well its true its possible to read things from them but its not true that they are causes.

In furtherance of this post >>21635395
>The All-Soul would always remain above, since essentially it has nothing to do with descent or with the lower, or with any tendency towards this sphere: the other souls would become ours [become "partial," individual in us] because their lot is cast for this sphere, and because they are solicited by a thing [the body] which invites their care.
>The one- the lowest soul in the to the All-Soul- would correspond to that in some great growth, silently, unlaboriously conducting the whole; our own lowest soul might be compared to the insect life in some rotted part of the growth- for this is the ratio of the animated body to the universe- while the other soul in us, of one ideal nature with the higher parts of the All-Soul, may be imaged as the gardener concerned about the insects lodged in the tree and anxiously working to amend what is wrong; or we may contrast a healthy man living with the healthy and, by his thought or by his act, lending himself to the service of those about him, with, on the other side, a sick man intent upon his own care and cure, and so living for the body, body-bound.
IV.3.4 More to follow [1]

[2]
>When some animal rots and a multitude of others spring from it, the Life-Principle now present is not the particular soul that was in the larger body; that body has ceased to be receptive of soul, or there would have been no death; what happens is that whatsoever in the product of the decay is apt material for animal existence of one kind or another becomes ensouled by the fact that soul is nowhere lacking, though a recipient of soul may be. This new ensouling does not mean, however, an increase in the number of souls: all depend from the one or, rather, all remains one: it is as with ourselves; some elements are shed, others grow in their place; the soul abandons the discarded and flows into the newcoming as long as the one soul of the man holds its ground; in the All the one soul holds its ground for ever; its distinct contents now retain soul and now reject it, but the total of spiritual beings is unaffected.
(IV.3.8)
>Imagine that a stately and varied mansion has been built; it has never been abandoned by its Architect, who, yet, is not tied down to it; he has judged it worthy in all its length and breadth of all the care that can serve to its Being- as far as it can share in Being- or to its beauty, but a care without burden to its director, who never descends, but presides over it from above: this gives the degree in which the kosmos is ensouled, not by a soul belonging to it, but by one present to it; it is mastered not master; not possessor but possessed. The soul bears it up, and it lies within, no fragment of it unsharing.
>The kosmos is like a net which takes all its life, as far as ever it stretches, from being wet in the water, and has no act of its own; the sea rolls away and the net with it, precisely to the full of its scope, for no mesh of it can strain beyond its set place: the soul is of so far-reaching a nature- a thing unbounded- as to embrace the entire body of the All in the one extension; so far as the universe extends, there soul is; and if the universe had no existence, the extent of soul would be the same; it is eternally what it is. The universe spreads as broad as the presence of soul; the bound of its expansion is the point at which, in its downward egression from the Supreme, it still has soul to bind it in one: it is a shadow as broad as the Reason-Principle proceeding from soul; and that Reason-Principle is of scope to generate a kosmic bulk as vast as lay in the purposes of the Idea [the Divine forming power] which it conveys.
(IV.3.9)

[3]
> I think, therefore, that those ancient sages, who sought to secure the presence of divine beings by the erection of shrines and statues, showed insight into the nature of the All; they perceived that, though this Soul is everywhere tractable, its presence will be secured all the more readily when an appropriate receptacle is elaborated, a place especially capable of receiving some portion or phase of it, something reproducing it, or representing it, and serving like a mirror to catch an image of it.
(IV.3.11)
>Thus it comes about that this kosmos, lit with many lights, gleaming in its souls, receives still further graces, gifts from here and from there, from the gods of the Supreme, and from those other Intellectual-Principles whose nature it is to ensoul. This is probably the secret of the myth in which, after Prometheus had moulded woman, the other gods heaped gifts upon her, Hephaistos "blending the clay with moisture and bestowing the human voice and the form of a goddess"; Aphrodite bringing her gifts, and the Graces theirs, and other gods other gifts, and finally calling her by the name [Pandora] which tells of gift and of all giving- for all have added something to this formation brought to being by a Promethean, a fore-thinking power. As for the rejection of Prometheus' gift by after-thought, Epimetheus, what can this signify but that the wiser choice is to remain in the Intellectual realm? Pandora's creator is fettered, to signify that he is in some sense held by his own creation; such a fettering is external and the release by Hercules tells that there is power in Prometheus, so that he need not remain in bonds.
>Take the myth as we may, it is certainly such an account of the bestowal of gifts upon the kosmos as harmonizes with our explanation of the universal system.
(IV.3.14)

[4]
>The punishment justly overtaking the wicked must therefore be ascribed to the kosmic order which leads all in accordance with the right.
>But what of chastisements, poverty, illness, falling upon the good outside of all justice? These events, we will be told, are equally interwoven into the world order and fall under prediction, and must consequently have a cause in the general reason: are they therefore to be charged to past misdoing?
>No: such misfortunes do not answer to reasons established in the nature of things; they are not laid up in the master-facts of the universe, but were merely accidental sequents: a house falls, and anyone that chances to be underneath is killed, no matter what sort of man he be: two objects are moving in perfect order- or one if you like- but anything getting in the way is wounded or trampled down. Or we may reason that the undeserved stroke can be no evil to the sufferer in view of the beneficent interweaving of the All or again, no doubt, that nothing is unjust that finds justification in a past history.
>We may not think of some things being fitted into a system with others abandoned to the capricious; if things must happen by cause, by natural sequences, under one Reason-Principle and a single set scheme, we must admit that the minor equally with the major is fitted into that order and pattern.

Wrong-doing from man to man is wrong in the doer and must be imputed, but, as belonging to the established order of the universe is not a wrong even as regards the innocent sufferer; it is a thing that had to be, and, if the sufferer is good, the issue is to his gain. For we cannot think that this ordered combination proceeds without God and justice; we must take it to be precise in the distribution of due, while, yet, the reasons of things elude us, and to our ignorance the scheme presents matter of censure.
(IV.3.16)

[5]
>All the souls, then, shine down upon the heavens and spend there the main of themselves and the best; only their lower phases illuminate the lower realms; and those souls which descend deepest show their light furthest down- not themselves the better for the depth to which they have penetrated.
>There is, we may put it, something that is centre; about it, a circle of light shed from it; round centre and first circle alike, another circle, light from light; outside that again, not another circle of light but one which, lacking light of its own, must borrow.
>The last we may figure to ourselves as a revolving circle, or rather a sphere, of a nature to receive light from that third realm, its next higher, in proportion to the light which that itself receives. Thus all begins with the great light, shining self-centred; in accordance with the reigning plan [that of emanation] this gives forth its brilliance; the later [divine] existents [souls] add their radiation- some of them remaining above, while there are some that are drawn further downward, attracted by the splendour of the object they illuminate. These last find that their charges need more and more care: the steersman of a storm-tossed ship is so intent on saving it that he forgets his own interest and never thinks that he is recurrently in peril of being dragged down with the vessel; similarly the souls are intent upon contriving for their charges and finally come to be pulled down by them; they are fettered in bonds of sorcery, gripped and held by their concern for the realm of Nature.
(IV.3.17)

[6]
>May we think that the mode of the soul's presence to body is that of the presence of light to the air?
>This certainly is presence with distinction: the light penetrates through and through, but nowhere coalesces; the light is the stable thing, the air flows in and out; when the air passes beyond the lit area it is dark; under the light it is lit: we have a true parallel to what we have been saying of body and soul, for the air is in the light quite as much as the light in the air.
>Plato therefore is wise when (Tim. 36DE), in treating of the All, he puts the body in its soul, and not its soul in the body, and says that, while there is a region of that soul which contains body, there is another region to which body does not enter- certain powers, that is, with which body has no concern. And what is true of the All-Soul is true of the others.
(IV.3.22)
>The lower soul must be always striving to attain to memory of the activities of the higher: this will be especially so when it is itself of a fine quality, for there will always be some that are better from the beginning and bettered here by the guidance of the higher.
>The loftier, on the contrary, must desire to come to a happy forgetfulness of all that has reached it through the lower: for one reason, there is always the possibility that the very excellence of the lower prove detrimental to the higher, tending to keep it down by sheer force of vitality. In any case the more urgent the intention towards the Supreme, the more extensive will be the soul's forgetfulness, unless indeed, when the entire living has, even here, been such that memory has nothing but the noblest to deal with: in this world itself, all is best when human interests have been held aloof; so, therefore, it must be with the memory of them. In this sense we may truly say that the good soul is the forgetful. It flees multiplicity; it seeks to escape the unbounded by drawing all to unity, for only thus is it free from entanglement, light-footed, self-conducted. Thus it is that even in this world the soul which has the desire of the other is putting away, amid its actual life, all that is foreign to that order. It brings there very little of what it has gathered here; as long as it is in the heavenly regions only, it will have more than it can retain.
>The Hercules of the heavenly regions would still tell of his feats: but there is the other man to whom all of that is trivial; he has been translated to a holier place; he has won his way to the Intellectual Realm; he is more than Hercules, proven in the combats in which the combatants are the wise.
(IV.3.32)

>>21638954
>As for the rejection of Prometheus' gift by after-thought, Epimetheus, what can this signify but that the wiser choice is to remain in the Intellectual realm?
I read this and was put in mind of the mythical wisdom of Silenus: that the next best thing to never having been born is to die quickly. But I think that represents more of a despairing Epicurean way of looking at things. Two sides of an interesting coin.

The comparison of soul to light helped a lot in my trying to understand how he means divisible but indivisible. How it all (at least appears) as one but still partitions into different bodies

>some of them remaining above, while there are some that are drawn further downward, attracted by the splendour of the object they illuminate. These last find that their charges need more and more care: the steersman of a storm-tossed ship is so intent on saving it that he forgets his own interest and never thinks that he is recurrently in peril of being dragged down with the vessel; similarly the souls are intent upon contriving for their charges and finally come to be pulled down by them; they are fettered in bonds of sorcery, gripped and held by their concern for the realm of Nature.
Very interesting section that seems to mesh really well with the chapter on tutelary deities.

>>21638820
It'd be nice if you guys archived the notes at the end (assuming you get there) so you produce something useful for others in the future

>>21639607
It should be all available in 4plebs and the reply chain is continuous so far. I can dump it all in a pastebin later too.

This is the stuff I expected from Plotinus. Very glad to have read the three preceding sections.

>>21638945
The metaphor for soul as gardener to the body reminds me of the original platonic academy being a grove of olive trees.

Bump

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?

>>21642481
Thode guys were revivalists. Considering Plotinus didn't even want any pictures of himself made I doubt he or any of his friends were very decadent.

>>21638469
oh shit late to the party
I wanna get into the group too am I fucked? do I have to wait for the next group to open?

>Porphyry just cuts a sentence in half
What the fuck was his problem?
>>21642746
You might as well start here if you want to. I don't think we'll be doing a reread, plus we'll be able to answer questions you might have along the way.

HEY ANON-FAGS!

Post a Copy of Commentary 2 (That got published recently)

Pleezeeee Frog-Bros!

>>21638820
4.3 Problems of the Soul (1)

Arguments against those who hold that we have individual souls, not a modality of the One Soul of the universe

2 it is reasonable to conclude that souls are all perfect copies of the divine
They aren't separate

All souls are alike but of one nature, including the cosmic/ineffable soul

We carry the cosmos within us since it is the exact copy of the world soul(but not separate from it)

4 similar to how light is divided on earth but still remains a continuous, unified thing

4 Our lowest soul is like the life of an insect, our highest soul is like that of a gardner

The succession of souls in the link to the intellectual principle is the Logos or expression of the IP

The soul which abides in the Supreme is the Logos of the IP

6
If the All Soul produced a cosmos, why hasn't the Soul in ourselves done the same?
- analogy of how people of similar knowledge differ widely in political power
-all soul has the IP to inform it, while our souls correspond to bodily part

The secondary or tertiary soul is understood in terms of closer or remotely position to the Supreme

7 on the "soul parts" portion of the Philebus

All that is soul cares for all that is soulless -phaedrus
Every reason principle is a unity of multiplicity

When animals decay and become a future animal, soul abandons the discarded and flows into the new

Metensomatosis
-frame to frame soul transfer

The all soul generated matter so it could descend into it

10 in soulless entities, the inner act is dormant
Their efficiency is to bring to their own likeness whatever is amenable

The depth of descent in which Soul ensouls body depends on the recipients affinity of condition

14 pandora myth
- the gods gifts upon her which created her from the mould prometheus made
- like how the IPs ensouled the cosmos
Souls can be "heavy and forgetful" which descend into lower corporeal forms

16 there is no cosmic justice involved when bad things happen to good people
Just an accident sometimes

17 souls from the intellectual first stop by heaven

Heaven is the furthest extremity of the intellectual and is ensouled first, then earth
Earth is the lowest and remotest postion from the all in the cosmos

Celestials and Daimones use speech since they are animate beings, but no intellectual in the higher
No need to think when everything is perfect

20 refutation of soul in body as an object in space, as body's substratum, part to whole, as science or skill to body
Its more Iike light to air
Air is in light, body is in soul, but they don't coalesce

22
Some powers of the soul is denied to the body

24 the Soul leaving the body cannot escape divine law
-it will punish evil with passed out sentences of duration and kind of suffering

25 Memory
Doesn't belong to what is outside time or experience
Soul alone is responsible for memory when in body, and body often impedes memory

Where is sensation located?
-the couplement

>>21643476
28 separate memory faculties according to various qualities like passion
"Desiring faculty"
-refuted

29 is memory the same faculty as SP?
-no

31 if memory and image act as one, in which faculty is the memory vested?
-whichever is stronger

The lower soul must be striving to attain memory of the higher, who remembers it easily and passively

The loftier soul desires for a happy forgetfulness of all that reaches the lower
The good soul is forgetful and seeks unity by discarding all entanglement, and is light footed and self connected

Why would the soul leave the intellect in the first place (pretend I worded this in a way to meet Plotinus' criteria of soul being eternal)?

>>21643777
Same reason light emanates from the sun, it is in it's nature to do so.

>>21643802
I want to see what other platonists have to say about this

>>21643777
Nta but he also uses the term Necessity, and the phrasing that the creator deemed it necessary

>>21643802
>>21644661
I'm just confused as to why the soul would descend from contemplating the Intellect, remember it's memories, and go back to Earth. I can understand why the shade of Heracles would do it, but not why the upper soul of Heracles would.

>metaphysics came to me in my dreams, now we should make teachings out of it
Who still falls for this meme?

>>21643777
Originally is by choise, to animate the world.

Would Plotinus have enjoyed the Fate series?

>>21645751
He'd HATE anime

>>21645179
>>metaphysics came to me from God
ftfy

>>21643476
>The all soul generated matter so it could descend into it
Remember he had show matter was eternal. I think you could say Soul conditions matter giving rise to body, which it then inhabits (ensouls).

>>21645154
The upper soul doesn't descend. It's does stay in contemplation. Personally I think this is how people can claim things like they've experienced past lives. They're just connecting with their (our, the) upper soul which is all life and animation. As for why the lower soul decends. It is because it is in it's nature to do so. I think it's because it has a desire to replicate what it sees in the Divine-Mind but because of time and matter it can never do so.
Personally I think descend is kind of a wrong way of thinking about it. It's more turning away or towards. Qua the image Plotinus uses of the circle. The soul can never move outside the circles circumference but when it's oriented outwards towards the circumference it could be said to be in the mode of ensouling, when oriented towards the centre it is in contemplation. Now soul occupies and fills all points in the circle so where each of us as individuals is in the circle doesn't change, only whether we face outwards or inwards, look to Matter or contemplate the Diviner things.

>>21646578
>the upper soul doesn’t descend.

I’m not sure how accurate this is. In order to enter in civic excellence one must engage in conscious reasoned action (logos). That would mean that the reasoning faculty of soul, which is with us, can be participated of at any given moment.

>>21646955
Yes. As I understand it, to say the upper soul descends would mean that the individual whose upper soul descended would become incapable of acting according to reason. It is the upper souls remaining in the proximity of the Intellectual-Principle that allows us to act reasonably. The reasoning faculty is a function the soul has because of its association with the Intellectual-Principle, the descent of the soul I read as it's dividing into the many life giving principles that animate biological life. I could be misreading though

>>21647100
Ok, that makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying.

Okay, [1] in furtherance of this post >>21635395 again. This tractate is really all interesting and there's pretty much no section that doesn't have something interesting in it. I'll just give what stood out to me.
>But those whose descent from the Intellectual is complete, how is it with them?
>They will recall their memories, of the same things, but with less force than those still in the celestial, since they have had other experiences to remember, and the lapse of time will have utterly obliterated much of what was formerly present to them.
>But what way of remembering the Supreme is left if the souls have turned to the sense-known kosmos, and are to fall into this sphere of process?
>They need not fall to the ultimate depth: their downward movement may be checked at some one moment of the way; and as long as they have not touched the lowest of the region of process [the point at which non-being begins] there is nothing to prevent them rising once more.
(IV.4.5) This "point at which non-being begins" sounds kinda dire. I wish he would have elaborated on it. Anyone got any insights about it?
Sections 9 and 10 deal with Zeus's roles as governor, guardian etc and how memory applies to God. 10 elaborates on Zeus's role as demiurge.
>But there is a difficulty affecting this entire settlement: Eternity is characteristic of the Intellectual-Principle, time of the soul- for we hold that time has its substantial being in the activity of the soul, and springs from soul- and, since time is a thing of division and comports a past, it would seem that the activity producing it must also be a thing of division, and that its attention to that past must imply that even the All-Soul has memory? We repeat, identity belongs to the eternal, time must be the medium of diversity; otherwise there is nothing to distinguish them, especially since we deny that the activities of the soul can themselves experience change.

Can we escape by the theory that, while human souls- receptive of change, even to the change of imperfection and lack- are in time, yet the Soul of the All, as the author of time, is itself timeless? But if it is not in time, what causes it to engender time rather than eternity?

The answer must be that the realm it engenders is not that of eternal things but a realm of things enveloped in time: it is just as the souls [under, or included in, the All-Soul] are not in time, but some of their experiences and productions are. For a soul is eternal, and is before time; and what is in time is of a lower order than time itself: time is folded around what is in time exactly as- we read- it is folded about what is in place and in number

[2] Above section is IV.4.15
>The total scheme may be summarized in the illustration of The Good as a centre, the Intellectual-Principle as an unmoving circle, the Soul as a circle in motion, its moving being its aspiration: the Intellectual-Principle possesses and has ever embraced that which is beyond being; the soul must seek it still: the sphere of the universe, by its possession of the soul thus aspirant, is moved to the aspiration which falls within its own nature; this is no more than such power as body may have, the mode of pursuit possible where the object pursued is debarred from entrance; it is the motion of coiling about, with ceaseless return upon the same path- in other words, it is circuit.
(IV.4.16)
>But do variations of judgement affect that very highest in us?
>No: the doubt and the change of standard are of the Conjoint [of the soul-phase in contact with body]; still, the right reason of that highest is weaker by being given over to inhabit this mingled mass: not that it sinks in its own nature: it is much as amid the tumult of a public meeting the best adviser speaks but fails to dominate; assent goes to the roughest of the brawlers and roarers, while the man of good counsel sits silent, ineffectual, overwhelmed by the uproar of his inferiors.
>The lowest human type exhibits the baser nature; the man is a compost calling to mind inferior political organization: in the mid-type we have a citizenship in which some better section sways a demotic constitution not out of control: in the superior type the life is aristocratic; it is the career of one emancipated from what is a base in humanity and tractable to the better; in the finest type, where the man has brought himself to detachment, the ruler is one only, and from this master principle order is imposed upon the rest, so that we may think of a municipality in two sections, the superior city and, kept in hand by it, the city of the lower elements.
(IV.4.17) Strong echo's of the Republic here.

[3]
>Now it is the soul's character to be ever in the Intellectual sphere, and even though it were apt to sense-perception, this could not accompany that intention towards the highest; to ourselves when absorbed in the Intellectual, vision and the other acts of sense are in abeyance for the time; and, in general, any special attention blurs every other. The desire of apprehension from part to part- a subject examining itself- is merely curiosity even in beings of our own standing, and, unless for some definite purpose, is waste of energy: and the desire to apprehend something external- for the sake of a pleasant sight- is the sign of suffering or deficiency.
(IV.4.25) 26 and 27 have interesting things about magic and prayer, also about the earth having a soul and Demeter and Hestia.
>Their knowledge of our prayers is due to what we may call an enlinking, a determined relation of things fitted into a system; so, too, the fulfillment of the petitions; in the art of magic all looks to this enlinkment: prayer and its answer, magic and its success, depend upon the sympathy of enchained forces.
(IV.4.26) More later.

[4]
28 is all about passions. Interesting insights into anger being dependant upon a vegetative principle within us.
31 deals with the supposed causative power of the interstellar realm (cosmic circuit):
>An immensity of such examples might be adduced, all leading far from any corporeal quality that could enter the body and soul of a living thing from the elements: and it is equally impossible that the will of the stars, a doom from the All, any deliberation among them, should be held responsible for the fate of each and all of their inferiors. It is not to be thought that such beings engage themselves in human affairs in the sense of making men thieves, slave-dealers, burglars, temple-strippers, or debased effeminates practising and lending themselves to disgusting actions: that is not merely unlike gods; it is unlike mediocre men; it is, perhaps, beneath the level of any existing being where there is not the least personal advantage to be gained.
(IV.4.31)
33 has a beautiful image of the cosmic circuit acting as dancers in a play.
40 deals with spells, explaining their efficacy.
41 deals with prayers again.
43 and 44 deals with how the Sage (Proficient) is unaffected by magic.
45 is an interesting summary I suppose. It deals with cosmic or metaphysical (or in the correct sense of the term: psychological) justice you might say.
>Thus this universe of ours is a wonder of power and wisdom, everything by a noiseless road coming to pass according to a law which none may elude- which the base man never conceives though it is leading him, all unknowingly, to that place in the All where his lot must be cast- which the just man knows, and, knowing, sets out to the place he must, understanding, even as he begins the journey, where he is to be housed at the end, and having the good hope that he will be with gods.
>The punishments of wrong-doing are like the treatment of diseased parts of the body- here, medicines to knit sundered flesh; there, amputations; elsewhere, change of environment and condition- and the penalties are planned to bring health to the All by settling every member in the fitting place: and this health of the All requires that one man be made over anew and another, sick here, be taken hence to where he shall be weakly no longer. (IV.4.45)

>>21647100
Nta, but his observation about political excellence and your response incline me to ask: do you suppose political activity would therefore be irrational?

>>21645179
Where does he say this?

>>21645179
No one, but I could be wrong.

>mfw have only read Plato and not Plotinus, but am still responding and engaging with posts ITT

Anyway being as an act of intellect? Most people aren't inclined to intellect, but they still ARE.

>>21642481
Why are you quoting my post from the last thread

>>21647826
No. The classic Platonic attitude to politics is that if you fail to partake in it you'll end up being ruled by your inferiors. What makes you think it would be irrational? Because it's not contemplation?

>>21647996
Being is an act of God's intellectual, not human intellectual

>>21648234
I had in mind what was said at >>21647100:

>As I understand it, to say the upper soul descends would mean that the individual whose upper soul descended would become incapable of acting according to reason.

Maybe the anon is phrasing it more strongly then they intend? There does seem to be a constant and taut tension in Plato, at least, between somehow concerning oneself with the polis, while acknowledging that political understanding is dimmer than philosophical understanding.

>>21648244
We are all always capable of acting according to reason, this is what makes us human. Most people just don't though because they are ignorant of the fact it is to their good to act according to reason. The upper Soul does not descend. People always can act reasonably, virtue can be taught. Its incumbent upon the wise to teach the ignorant- this is a political and moral necessity, but I'm going beyond Plato with this last statement.

>>21642481
You don’t make any sense.

>>21638469
>>21638480
>>21638544
>>21638717
>>21638751
>>21638736
>>21638820
>>21638827
>>21638913
>>21638939
>>21638945
>>21638954
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>>21643482

Look at This - >>21648644

Bump

What would Plotinus think about the super bowl? Does he ever mention the sports of his day?
>>21646578
>>21647100
This clears up some things for me.

Is today's reading on sense perception or problems 3?

>>21648727
And?
>>21650395
Probably wouldn't he all that keen desu.

Did anyone else think what he said about sound and hearing was strangely accurate?

>>21643476
4.5 Problems of the Soul (III); or, on Sight

Seeing/SPs can only occur in the medium of a bodily substance
Vision does not imply that what intervenes between seen and seer must first experience the object and be shaped to it
Light is required for vision as an intervening substance

The air isn’t affected or passed onto us in a progression of impression of our seeing an object
-Air in itself is a dark substance
-If air didn’t exist there probably would be no need for light
-Air is a barrier that must be overcome by light
-If air were required for vision, the stars would not be able to be seen

The light which acts as a medium for our sight is unmodified by our seeing an object

5 Sound
Hearing requires air as a medium
-We can perceive air is modified by noises as vibrations
If air is the determinant of sound, what accounts for differences in voice, or of different bodies banging against each other?
-The production of sound must be due to solids and their percussion, so air does not intervene in causation of sound
6 Can there be light without air?
-Yes
-Space is “all that light needs”
If this is the case, no other object can possess light

Light is not a mode of air
-Air would have to change to produce the new mode, out of it’s characteristic darkness
-Air maintains it’s character
-Light is a self-existent

7 Does light perish or return to it’s source?

Light is continuous in it’s travel, as long as nothing blocks it’s path
Two kinds of activity can be distinguished of light

-Wellspring light (the sun)
-Light as a surface, outer image of the inner content (gleam of an animal’s eyes)
-Light here shows outside the animal’s eyes, but have an inner fire in darkness upon expansion

Light is always incorporeal

8
Can we perceive a solid mass without any sympathetic relation to it?
-Sympathetic relation = part of our universe and belonging to the same ideal category as the organ of vision
-There could still be unperceived objects under the supposition of perception by sympathy

The theory of knowledge by likeness is untrue (that the organ by which perception occurs is in the likeness of the object perceived)
-Perception of an object appears not as itself but as something related to itself
-This confuses everything and is certainly not true

..

I read about half of 4.4, I'll finish and post those notes soon I hope.

>>21646500
Good catch
This sounded similar to a gnostic position he insulted much earlier so I was confused

>>21651993
He keeps saying stuff that sounds like it'll lead to gnosticism before switching to a much more Platonic conception of the world. He really did a good job of removing any contradictions or false avenues in his thought.

>>21652232
What is Platonism but a form of Gnosticism with substance?

Bump

>>21651879
Old natural philosophy is still very relevant to our current understanding of things.

>>21647459
>(IV.4.5) This "point at which non-being begins" sounds kinda dire. I wish he would have elaborated on it. Anyone got any insights about it?
In "On Matter", he designated Matter as "true non-Being". I don't think it's that dire as I can't envision something flipping out of the chain of being into true non-being. Especially soul.

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>>21654640
Yeah it's hard to imagine but the context:
>as long as they have not touched the lowest of the region of process [the point at which non-being begins] there is nothing to prevent them rising once more
seems to suggest that some sort of threshold can be crossed at which point there is no possibility to rise again. Maybe he means something like materialism or physicalism. If you think there is nothing but matter, what chance could there be of your soul rising? You've basically entered into the realm of nonbeing as that point.

>>21654701
IIRC he discusses some way of thinking yourself into understanding matter, obviously the words thinking and understanding being stand-ins for some method of anti-contemplation. Maybe he means something like that. But I find it hard to believe the upper soul could ever fall so far as to essentially annihilate itself, as that would mean Being is being annihilated.

Great section here (IV.7.10):
>Let us consider a soul, not one that has appropriated the unreasoned desires and impulses of the bodily life, or any other such emotion and experience, but one that has cast all this aside, and as far as possible has no commerce with the bodily. Such a soul demonstrates that all evil is accretion, alien, and that in the purged soul the noble things are immanent, wisdom and all else that is good, as its native store.

>If this is the soul once it has returned to its self, how deny that it is the nature we have identified with all the divine and eternal? Wisdom and authentic virtue are divine, and could not be found in the chattel mean and mortal: what possesses these must be divine by its very capacity of the divine, the token of kinship and of identical substance.

>Hence, too, any one of us that exhibits these qualities will differ but little as far as soul is concerned from the Supernals; he will be less than they only to the extent in which the soul is, in him, associated with body.

>This is so true that, if every human being were at that stage, or if a great number lived by a soul of that degree, no one would be so incredulous as to doubt that the soul in man is immortal. It is because we see everywhere the spoiled souls of the great mass that it becomes difficult to recognize their divinity and immortality.

>To know the nature of a thing we must observe it in its unalloyed state, since any addition obscures the reality. Clear, then look: or, rather, let a man first purify himself and then observe: he will not doubt his immortality when he sees himself thus entered into the pure, the Intellectual. For, what he sees is an Intellectual-Principle looking on nothing of sense, nothing of this mortality, but by its own eternity having intellection of the eternal: he will see all things in this Intellectual substance, himself having become an Intellectual Kosmos and all lightsome, illuminated by the truth streaming from The Good, which radiates truth upon all that stands within that realm of the divine.

>Thus he will often feel the beauty of that word "Farewell: I am to you an immortal God," for he has ascended to the Supreme, and is all one strain to enter into likeness with it.

>>21654735
Yes. It wouldn't be the upper soul. Something more akin to the personality is what gets annihilated. Think about it. If what makes a person is their reason and they have abandoned reason completely and only adhere to material compulsion, their personhood is annihilated. What better word for them at that point than hylic?

>>21654735
In an earlier passage he describes what happensf, I think it was something like the soul descending inward until it goes to sleep and wakes up isolated(once again detached from body) like in this fantasy dreamland.

>>21655116
>>21655095
I found this in MacKennanon's notes, 1.8.13
>13. Vice and Evil are more than occasions of evil. Wehn a Soul attains vice there is some good, but Evil kills the Soul completely and twofold. While the body is sunk in matter, the Soul will leave the body to see a nether world, such as Hades is described, and sleep there (dreams?).

>>21655288
Nice. Good find. Thank you. I feel like you could study this work for years and still find interesting nuances.

>>21651942
4.6 Perception and Memory

Memory is not adequately explained as an impression upon the mind like a stamp engraving into wax

If memory is to accept imprints of the objects of our vision, it isn’t the objects themselves we see but the vestiges they leave within us, shadows; the things themselves are different

We should base our understanding of memory upon the capacity within the Soul
-Soul deals with both intellectual and sensible perceptions
Of the intellectual memory the Soul has an intuition which establishes certain identity with intellectual memories
Sense-perception memories
-The Soul provides a radiance from itself which gives for the sensible visibility

Children are better at remembering things because their attention is still limited and not multivaried
-Older people have experienced more things, so their memory is busier and can’t focus on one or another intently as commonly
Memory as seal-impressions on wax
-Passive explanation of memory
-Memory is an active activity, since someone has to sometimes focus hard to remember something, so should be thought of as a kind of fitness. We have to train ourselves to remember some things, so they aren’t just impressed seals
-A multiplicity of memories shouldn’t affect someone’s recalling of now trivial thoughts if they were all retained seals

Quick memory and quick wit is like runner and boxer

>>21655095
This makes sense to me, considering the discussion about what the upper soul remembers about itself. At least if I understood it correctly.

I’ve decided to read Plato for the first time. Why is Socrates such a statist? This retard died because he believed the laws of his city were divine mandates. Imagine someone in his position, living in the USA. It would be absurd for such a person not to escape if given the chance.

>>21657454
1) Plotinus is a Platonist, but this isn't a Plato thread. Start a new thread for your question.

2) "Statism" has nothing to do with the Crito; you're confusing statism and legalism, since even Socrates' enemies wanted the citizens to follow the laws.

>>21651942
It's sections like these that make me wish I paid attention in physics class, if only to see how our scientific ideas developed from philosophical theories.

>>21657454
Because the state is like your parents, believe it or not. It protects you and teaches you, even sometimes feeds you and houses you. The answers are in the texts. Read the Trial and Death of Socrates sequence.

Bump

>still on 4.4

>>21657454
Socrates just said that because he wanted to die. If you read the Apology he actually refused to bring Leon of Salamis to court to be executed even after the state ordered him to do that. In Crito, he wanted to die and it was his excuse.

>>21657454
Also when it comes to classical Athens the "laws of his city" changed every two years anyways.

>>21660731
This was during the Thirty Tyrants. He didn't want to commit injustice is why he refused. He died because he wanted to do what he thought was right- philosophize- rather than compromise his principles. You would know this if you had read the text.
>>21660739
I'm not great with ancient politics but I sense this is a misconception. Ancient cultures were a lot more conservative generally than we are today.

>>21660939
>He didn't want to commit injustice is why he refused.

That's irrelevant because in Crito he does not distinguish between unjust Athenian laws and just Athenian laws. It would be really inconsistent to not bring Leon for prosecution.

>>21656291
4.7 The Immortality of the Soul

Whether or not the human soul is immortal or wholly destroyed
As Form is to Matter, soul is to human

Whenever soul is in fire, air, water, or earth, the life generated is still borrowed
-There are no other forms of body but these four

3 Those who believe that atoms or other entities come to produce souls
-Bodily substances are repulsed from unification, soul is one, and things which cannot take the quality of part can’t produce body or bulk
-Body itself can’t exist if there weren’t Soul
-Everything would dissolve if it were made to depend upon the coherence of body

The Stoic pneuma
-Rarefied matter, ‘spirit’ in the lower sense, the nominal rank of ‘soul’ as air or fleeting breath
-Pneuma is the base of life and soul
-No Soul or God, “the lowest alone is”
If all were body, everything must grow the way body does. If the soul were body, how can the soul grow? If it were a soulless addition, would it not be a loss? If it were an addition of more soul, “whence and how does it enter, and by what process is it adjoined”? How to explain memories if there is no stably identical soul?

6 If Soul were a corporeal entity, there could be no SPs, mental acts, knowledge, or morals (Sophrosyne)
-No perception without a unitary percipient whose identity enables it to grasp objects as entireties. The sense of pain is explained by them as occurring in consciousness at the last. This transmission is not in the nature of the body to understand suffering in one part and knowledge of it in another.

8 Why intellectual acts are impossible if Soul were body
-Abstractions like circle, line, point, is not understood by flesh or matter, Soul or mind must separate itself form the material to understand it, similarly with beauty or justice as they are also without magnitude
-Concepts of geometry are eternal and unchanging, these cannot be like body

8^2 If Soul could mix with body, it will have lost that by which it is soul, like how sweetness disappears when mixed with bitterness

8^3 “These teachers” make the inferior precede the higher, and at the bottom have a term “Habitude”
God is thought by them as “engendered, deriving intellection from without”

8^4 Pythagorean school holds the Soul as belonging to the nature of a certain pattern or accord being orchestrated upon the body, like a song played on a lyre’s strings
-This is untenable since Soul is prior to body (accord is secondary to lyre)

8^5 Entelechy
-A theory of the nature of the soul
-Inseparable from the being of which it is the accomplished actuality
-How could an identical soul of one living being become another being if Soul were the Entelechy of one particular being?
-An Entelechy is not a thing of parts, yet is claimed to be a part in partible bodies

12 If Soul were dissoluble the universe ought to have ceased to exist long ago

13 The IP has appetite, and is “eager” to make and create, so it imprints itself on existence
-This is how the Soul enters body

This chapter seems aimed at whichever Stoics or Gnostics were arguing that souls weren’t immortal, souls were material or some kind of bodily substance, or part of body. Pretty unfamiliar with terms like Entelechy/Habitude/Pneuma/Pleroma, etc. I didn't think the stoics did anything other than ethics desu.

>>21660948
I'm not convinced. I think your misreading the text, deliberately so. Socrates even says he pays no attention to death which contradicts your claim that he wanted to die.
>When the oligarchy came into power, the Thirty Commissioners in their turn summoned me and four others to the Round Chamber and instructed us to go and fetch Leon of Salamis from his home for execution. This was of course only one of many instances in which they issued such instructions, their object being to implicate as many people as possible in their crimes. On this occasion, however, I again made it clear, not by my words but by my actions, that the attention I paid to death was zero (if that is not too unrefined a claim); but that I gave all my attention to avoiding doing anything unjust or unholy. Powerful as it was, that government did not terrify me into doing a wrong action. When we came out of the rotunda, the other four went to Salamis and arrested Leon, but I simply went home.
Apology 32 c-d.

>>21661020
Strict Stoics had a sense of the soul as mortal. I think it was a more eclectic school in practice though.

>>21638480
>>21638544
What I got from my reading of it was, start merely signify, they don't cause. This allows Plotinus to claim there's something to astrology, but now what vulgar astrologers believe (namely, that the stars are causes).
In another treatise (or perhaps more than one, don't remember which) Plotinus relates that he believes in correspondence theory (as above so below), so that's his take on astrology (in sympathetic magic as well, btw): events above reflect and signify events below and vice-versa, in a cosmic harmony under Soul and Intellect).
Now as someone who believes "there's something to astrology" myself, I'm sympathic (no pun intended) to Plotinus' view.

>>21658925
>>21660939
>>21661481
Nta, but two points re: Crito.

1) The argument on behalf of the personified laws only has standing if the laws, like the gods, are eternal and unchanging. They aren't, and that we know they aren't at a minimum for Athens is because Socrates experienced *at least* four changes of regime, which is accompanied by four changes in laws: a) the oligarchic coup of 411, b) the restoration of the democracy, c) the oligarchic coup of 404, d) the restoration of the democracy in 403. It should be recalled that the laws only have force by the action of the any who are criticized at the start of the Crito.

2) Does Socrates owe anything to Athens for raising him? This question is addressed in the Republic. In the first place, obeying law is a phantom of true justice (443c), and in the second place, while the hypothetical philosopher of the hypothesized city of the Republic owes something to his city insofar as it reared him *as* a philosopher (520a-b), this isn't true of Athens. Ergo, the reasons for allowing Athens to put him to death, while still mysterious, are not those expressed in the Crito, which is an argument for a non-philosopher (see Crito's lack of participation in Phaedo, and his incredulity throughout the Euthydemus towards Socrates).

As for his paying attention to death, he clearly in that passage means with respect only to whether he would be put to death, since, as per Phaedo, philosophizing is practicing death and dying.

>>21662040
>by the action of the any
*many

>>21657454
I didn't read any other posts but from what I remember my favorite interpretation was that Socrates was getting old and decided to martyr himself for philosophy by making a mockery of the court system.

>>21661577
Yeah. There's definitely something to it.

>All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another, a process familiar to all of us in not a few examples of everyday experience. (II.3.7)

In this sense there's no level of reality that doesn't have some sort of symbolic significance. But it doesn't make sense to say there is any one particular causal factor like stars apart from the One.

>>21662040
>the reasons for allowing Athens to put him to death, while still mysterious
I don't think so at all. The basic idea is expressed very well by the Delphic maxim: follow God. This is what the God placed before him for doing his duty, he obeyed. I appreciate your scepticism but I think the text speaks for itself. I don't think it pays the dividends either Socrates or Plato would have wanted to look at the events of the trial and death as somehow obscure when they are, at least to me, quite obviously full of moral lessons: stick to your principles, have courage in the face of adversity, speak the truth uncompromisingly, don't worry about what others think -but pursue virtue at all costs etc.

>>21663649
This is a fitting Xenophontic presentation of the Apology, but Plato's corpus puts innumerable brackets around that dialogue that make what appears a straightforward morality tale much less straightforward.

I have to observe that you've moved from making an argument in favor of a certain reading of Crito to making an argument in favor of a certain reading of the Apology. It's not clear to me how you address what I point to in Republic and Phaedo.

>>21664002
Well I wasn't concerning myself with any particular dialogue, just the claim that >>21660731
>Socrates just said that because he wanted to die.
>>21662040
As regards 443 in the Republic, obeying law is an image of the inwards justice of the soul. Phantom makes it seem a bit false. It is just to obey law, but true justice is an inwards disposition that keeps one's soul in harmony with all the virtues. I regard the Republic as a later work which elaborates on the character of Socrates as opposed to a truly Socratic dialogue like the Apology. So in your second point I think your applying the ideal hypotheticals of the Republic to Athens is a false equivalency. I think it's easy to see that we don't just owe the state by virtue of the state helping us to become philsophers, but by virtue of helping us to be at all. As Plato writes in the section mention 520:
>it is only just that anything that grows up on its own should feel it has nothing to repay for an upbringing which it owes to no one.
But nothing grows up on its own. Therefore everything has some form of community it should justly repay for having helped bring it up.
Philosophising as preparation for death. Yes. By engaging in philosophy Socrates has prepared for,
>not by my words but by my actions, that the attention I paid to death was zero (if that is not too unrefined a claim); but that I gave all my attention to avoiding doing anything unjust or unholy
this is preparation for death. He speaks of paying death zero attention here in the sense that the thought of it has no ability to impact his principles of acting justly and piously, precisely because he has prepared for it by using philosophy to realise that death is no something to be feared bit compromising virtue is.
Apparently he would have died around this time of the year. His death day was apparently the 15th this month.

NP bros where do I begin with the works of the Daemonic Aristotle?

>>21664518
>>21664518
He's not so bad. I like the Nicomachean ethics. I think go with what your interested in. Cool pic by the way, whose that gazing on 'Stot's bust?

>>21664560
painting is titled Aristotle with bust of Homer.

>>21664195
>As regards 443 in the Republic, obeying law is an image of the inwards justice of the soul. Phantom makes it seem a bit false.
The word in Greek is eidolon, which primarily means "ghost", and secondarily means "image, likeness" (compare as "eikos", which means primarily means "likeness"; this is the word Timaeus uses when he says he's telling a "likely story"). I take it Plato intends us to have both connotations in mind, since "eidolon" is the word he uses in 516a for what the now-freed cavedweller is capable of looking at first (shadows and reflections in water of things).

>I regard the Republic as a later work which elaborates on the character of Socrates as opposed to a truly Socratic dialogue like the Apology. So in your second point I think your applying the ideal hypotheticals of the Republic to Athens is a false equivalency.
We disagree very fundamentally on this point (I think we would only agree that Republic is written after the Apology), but settling it would likely be beyond any discussion we could have on this thread (unless you're interested, then I'll start a new thread instead of hijacking this one). So I'll offer a different tact:

Plato alludes to the trial in other dialogues, by either setting or foreshadowing in discussion (Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Phaedo all take place around the trial; Theaetetus, Gorgias, Republic, Meno all allude to the philosopher not being able to persuade the many in a court or the dangers philosophers might be exposed to). If Plato had wanted, for the purposes of maintaining any coherent set of teachings, he would've been able to rework passages from the dialogues, destroy dialogues, or offer something not far from commentary on dialogues via subsequent writings, keeping what he wanted and changing or ridding himself of what he came to differ with. The Republic passage I pointed to before can be set beside the claims at the end of Crito without any contradiction that Plato couldn't live with, such that the later writing elucidates the earlier writing.

>But nothing grows up on its own. Therefore everything has some form of community it should justly repay for having helped bring it up.
But Socrates isn't speaking of being brought up merely as a neutral human in a certain place at a certain time, but the rearing of a type of person, the philosopher, as he emphasizes right before the quote:

>"Well, then, Glaucon," I said, "consider that we won't be doing injustice to *the philosophers* who come to be among us, but rather that we will say just things to them while compelling them besides to care for and guard the others. We'll say that when *such men* come to be in the other cities it is fitting for them not to participate in the labors of those cities. For they grow up spontaneously against the will of the regime in each..."

(Cont.)

>>21664195
>this is preparation for death. He speaks of paying death zero attention here in the sense that the thought of it has no ability to impact his principles of acting justly and piously, precisely because he has prepared for it by using philosophy to realise that death is no something to be feared bit compromising virtue is.
This is not what he means by "practicing dying and being dead", and the context of the Apology quote makes clear he's talking about being put to death, not concern with death itself, of which he specifies in the Phaedo 64b-c:

>"For [the many] are unaware of this: in what way those who are truly philosophers are ripe for death and in what way they are worthy of death and of what sort of death. Let us then," he said, "talk amongst ourselves and bid those others farewell. Do we consider that there's such a thing as death?"
>"Of course," said Simmias, breaking in.
>"And is it anything but the freeing of the soul from the body?"

(I suspect you'll counter this by noting Phaedo is a later dialogue, but I would suggest that, if fictionalized to this or that extent, Plato couldn't have taken too many liberties with an event that so many of his still living peers were present for. )

>Apparently he would have died around this time of the year. His death day was apparently the 15th this month.
Huh, I didn't know that. Not a terrible day to discuss these things then.

>>21664720
>eidolon
Shadow or shade, yeah. Fair enough. I take it as suggesting that although it is not Justice pure as Idea, it is a derivative form of this idea called just behaviour that is cast like a shadow from the light of the Form of Justice.

I frankly don't even see what point your trying to make, other than simply contradict me. As I said my point was to try and argue that >>21660731 this isn't a correct reading. I gave what I think the text is trying to teach us here >>21663649
What you say about Phaedo I regard as a continuity. I think the Phaedo is probably closer to the actual events than the Republic. So,
>freeing the soul from the body
This is what his philosophising has taught him to do. This is why he is capable of giving no attention to death and only attending to doing his duty to the God.

>>21664518
1. Daemons aren't bad
2. Plotinus believed that Plato and Aristotle could be synthesized
But start with the Organon, or at least read the Categories, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Poetics if you're going to read nothing else from him.

>>21638469
>picrel
what's the second-to-last word in the second line? is it 'valente'? and what does the Latin mean altogether? something like "it had been more useful for us not to know the future; for I am compelled by the strong (one) having been angered to endure fate"? I know it's a bit clunky but I'm trying to cleary show my sense of what goes with what

>>21665268
I only know Valente as a surname, so maybe it's a guy. You could ask the people in the classical languages thread (I assume some people there know Latin).

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.

I'm a latecomer. Should I read all of Plato first and then all of plotinus ? Do translations matter

>>21666273
You should read all of Plato but most people here have only read the Trial dialogues and Symposium and the homophobic quote from Laws book 3 out of context.

>>21666273
The more Plato the better. Its a good foundation for the Enneads. Read what interests you.
>>21666042
I intend to read Proclus' Elements at some point after this, with or without lit. Possibly not for a while though as I'll have course work to read soon.

Having come through Abrahamic theology I find the vision of "repentance" (the ability of the individual soul to re-ascend) propounded in IV.8 very uplifting. Plotinus offers a soteriology that befits the grandeur and love of God that is espoused in the Abrahamic faiths but denied in their salvific schemes. Even though we might labor and suffer under the delusions of the value of the sense realm, we can always rise again by turning our souls sight back to the intellectual/Divine realms, memory of past sufferings as beung a motivating factor or the beauty and goodness in creation. It makes me wonder, given the decline of Christianity of late, if harsher forms of soteriology that involve eternal punishment are generally less stable, at least when in comparison with something more stable like Indian santana-dharma.

Isn't this just Christianity
Also lucretius refuted all this

>>21666391
It’s basically NT era Christianity but more laid back and without divine command theory.

Sorry if this has been asked already earlier on but are you guys planning to read Damascius, too? His main work, "Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles" has an English translation.

>>21666282
>Plato
>homophobic
All this stuff is gay though. There isn't even a single neoplato against it. What's wrong with these dudes

>>21666273
>Do translations matter
Yes they do.

>>21666432
don't be an ass

>>21666430
He said one homophobic thing in Laws Book 3 and you would think he was Westboro Baptist based on how /lit/ acts.

>>21666430
>there wasn't a single neoplato against it
I'm sick of people fagging up philosophy
Vita Plotini 15.6
> "The rhetor Diophanes read out a piece justifying Alcibiades as he appears in Plato’s Symposium, arguing that as a price for an education in virtue, a pupil should make himself sexually available if his teacher wanted it. Plotinus kept starting up to leave the gathering, but refrained from doing so. After the lecture broke up, he charged me, Porphyry, to write a counter-argument. Diophanes did not want to give me his text, so I based my response on my memory of his lines of argument. When I read it to a gathering of the same audience, Plotinus was so happy with me that in our seminars he would constantly add: ‘Shoot like this, if you want to illuminate men.’"

>>21666430
Did you miss the part where he said sex is for making new bodies and to be abstinent if you were capable?

>>21665661
will do

>>21667182
You miss the part where he praised man love

>>21666791
>plotinus wa sso ahopy with me that he took my behind in his private chambers

>>21667334
Where?
In Symposium, it is ultimately, solely, the reproductive love that is praised in the only speech that matters which belongs to Diotima and Socrates. The speech of Alcibiades illustrates Plato's disapproval of homosex.
In Phaedrus, the sterile love is condemned.
In Gorgias the life of the catamite is said to be terrible, Soc here agreeing with Callicles? homophobic statement.
In the Republic, the Master and Son (student) should never go beyond kisses and the touch as a Father would a son (affirming Phaedrus).
Philebus entirely condemns the kind of hedonism of LGBT.

>>21667334
This thread is about Plotinus'work The Enneads, and so far not a single tractate has praised sodomy.

>>21667368
You missed the weird platonic love stuff huh

>>21665129
>>21664560
I never meant to say Aristotle was "bad" only that the Platonists designate him as daemonic rather than divine like Plato in the philosophic canonizations.
I wonder should I be reading the commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias before reading Aristotle himself. Aristotle seems to be very obscure in his writings and I don't want to be totally lost.

>>21667873
Aristotle can be very hard to follow as he'll make a page worth of arguments in a single sentence. Commentaries like that are very helpful for reading him.

what do you think of plutarch?

>>21668250
He was pretty mediocre.

>>21668250
I like Apuleius better

>>21661011
4.8 The Soul's Descent Into Body

I forgot to post 4.8 yesterday, today is a short reading 4.9. I'll make another post for that later.
..
Heraclitus speaks of metaphysics in terms of metaphors, not concerning himself with a doctrine since the answer is to be uniquely found within ourselves

Plato alternates between whether the Soul's descent is good or bad. In the cave allegory and in phaedrus the Soul is in a prison which it must escape, but in Timaeus the Cosmos is a 'blessed God', such that all things may be possessed by the intellectual

2 none of the bodily misfortunes can befall a soul which has never been deeply immersed in body, but is a sovereign over body/fear/desire

Everywhere people speak about bodily reality as a bitter and miserable durance, a prison and tomb in the cave that is the cosmos

4 when the Soul has lost its innocency of the higher sphere and falls to the lower, it has retained something of the transcendent. It can be free through making memory its starting point for a new essential being, and belong to both spheres of reality

5 Contradiction of divine sowing to birth vs voluntary descent, judgment vs. The cave, necessity vs will
Its OK to say the Soul is sent down by God, but what is the Soul's motive?
-Appetite for creativity
-atonement for any sins

All degeneration is involuntary, but when an "inherent tendency" brings about the inferiority

6 there must be something other than unity for unity to exist
Matter is necessary

The greatness of the Supreme is only fully known through the experience of evil insofar as it brings clearer perception of the good

The cosmic All Soul governs the universe with the part of it that is in body
-uses intellection in a different way than we do, since it has no need to make calculations. Similar to artistic creation

..
The amount of times this man repeats the same writing about the soul descending into body and being Supreme in the intellectual sphere is way too much. I feel like I read this repeated every page.

>>21668469
4.9 Are all Souls One?

This chapter is mostly concerned with arguing how the soul is one and multiple. Some analogies and hypothetical scenarios are used but nothing new seems to have been said which he hadn't argued in earlier chapters we read desu.
..
We can deduce that each individual Soul is present at all points of the body or fully encompassing

There must be difference in Soul since there are vegetal, animal reasoning, and unreasoning souls
- it is a matter of degree of soul-power
Sensation/intellect/growth is not equally present in every body
Just because there is a unity of souls does not mean people necessarily share the same emotions/experiences/desires or share omnipresence with the universe
- this would be the case if all were one Soul only

The higher soul effects the lower soul since the points of sympathetic contact are more numerous

While the one essence penetrates all things, it can't be sundered

Science is a whole, while a theory is a part of science which invites the wholes immediate interest. The other constituents are present to the other part as a potential presence, such that the whole is in every part.
- the one detail potentially includes the all
- a single proposition of a geometricians analysis includes all the items that went into constituting it, and all the propositions which can be developed from it.

>>21667368
Good post

While I haven't read anything praising profanity at all in the Enneads so far, its not hard to imagine how much time Christians had to scrub any potential debauchery out of their 'handmaidens'.

>>21668841
Why would you be expecting praise of profanity and debauchery from Plotinus?

>>21668469
>The amount of times this man repeats the same writing about the soul descending into body and being Supreme in the intellectual sphere is way too much. I feel like I read this repeated every page.
This could be because, supposedly, it's one of his unique contributions to the tradition. I somewhat sceptical of this assessment. I think it's more likely that this is something that was esoterically understood through the Tradition but that Plotinus is just the first one to exoterically elucidate.

isnt plato rebuked? why are you guys trying to be platonists in 2023. isnt this just a waste of time

>>21669905
This is neoplatonism we wear trenchcoats and bullet time our way past materialists

>>21669905
I for one am a fan of dictatorship. What we need today are seven Dions of Syracuse.

>>21669949
kant nietzsche wittgeinstein hegel completely destroy your outlook

>>21666432
so what are the best translations of plato's work?

>>21670006
Those guy's are gay

>uhhmm sorry sweetie plato is debunked
>x y and z DESTROYED your boy fr fr

>>21669429
I meant from platonists more so. Anything that's antichristian and surviving back in the day was inevitably going to be neighbors with if not a shelter for degenerates/antiestablishment/mysticism etc.

>>21670152
From the gnosticism tractate it seems like Plotinus was friends with some of those who were more degenerate/mystic than your average platonist. But from St. Augustine's Confessions it seems that the more degenerate Roman just practiced some lay form of paganism or committed themselves to a form of epicureanism/stoicism. To my knowledge these were always more popular than platonism/peripatetic schools anyways.

>>21670152
>>21670183
Of course I would have to look into this more, all of my 3rd century knowledge comes from Peter Adamson.

>>21670056
Jowett is generally the go to if you are English. I own Hackett but this translation is not as good. It is a bit more streamlined and the words do not flow as swell.

If you are French or Italian I recommend La Rouchefoucauld. His translation of the Apology is the one used here btw for reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bxbmVx8ews

>>21670183
some things never change

>>21670209
i am something worse than english french or italian but i will settle for english. THAnK yOu

>>21670056
Straussians, but only as long as they have footnotes/endnotes. Jowett's the most common, since his translations are public domain, but they're iffy. See some comparisons on this thread:

>>/lit/thread/S21535298#p21536537

>>21670251
i wish all of plato was in one book but with the other translations instead of the ones that one book used

>>21670259
Hackett?

21669905
I'm not trying to be anything but the eternal soul I already am habibi

>>21670006
On the contrary, these gentlemen (bar Nietzsche, whom I regard as a kind of intellectual wild animal), are but footnotes not Plato. I suggest you reread them all

>>21670183
Epicureanism was massively popular, people seem to either blame Christians, "paganism" in general, or barbarians for the fall of Rome and never seem to consider the influence Epicurus had. That's not to say Epicurus is solely at fault, the Roman mentality had become ripe to receive him in the first place so something was clearly going wrong in the background with or without him and his philosophy.

>>21669905
Plato was never "rebuked." People just stopped reading him because they tended to not be able to understand him. Either they couldn't read Greek or they could read it but were philologists rather than philosophers.

>>21670315
we have had translations forever what are you saying

>>21670251
Is this actually good or is this just a RACIST post

>>21638469
>We're still reading the Enneads
Holy crap! I was just wiki'ing this thos last hoir!

Where can I get a decent copy?

I genuinely dont think Plato was a real person. I think Socrates wrote that stuff

>>21670318
You mean translation into Latin of three Platonic dialogues?

>>21670152
> As if there isn't ample evidence of moral and spiritual corruption that St Paul takes to task in his Epistles.
Everywhere there is body there is corruption. Nowhere in the sense realm is the soul untained by matter. But everywhere manifests the goodness of the Gods. This passage gives you a hint at late Platonic moral attitudes:
>It is not to be thought that such beings (Divinities in the celestial realm) engage themselves in human affairs in the sense of making men thieves, slave-dealers, burglars, temple-strippers, or debased effeminates practising and lending themselves to disgusting actions: that is not merely unlike gods; it is unlike mediocre men; it is, perhaps, beneath the level of any existing being where there is not the least personal advantage to be gained. (IV.4.31)
I think Guenon is right when he distinguishes between mysticism and esoteric truth. The former depends on an unreasoning faith in grace, the later has a certain refinement of reason as its principle of access. Christian is either exoteric dogma or mysticism as I've come to see it, it's supposedly esoteric dimension is really just an eclectic, mystic, syncretism of pre-Christian beliefs with an exoteric dogma holding it all together. Of course to top off the inauthenticity of its theology the Church wins the crown of being the most stridently, hypocritically decadent institution on earth.

>>21670330
>Socrates wrote dialogues about himself under the pseudonym of a fictional third party acolyte of his

Deepest lore.

>>21670349
No. its not dogma. and you shouldn't equate the church with it either. you're wrong here. and your body and soul are the same thing, but not in the nihilistic way

Why do people say Plato was refuted? Who refuted him?

>>21670330
>>21670358
Plato was a character created by Aristophanes to troll Xenophon.

>>21670251
what is straussian

>>21670367
Socrates. he refuted everybody including himself

>>21670375
Leo Strauss, he was a 20th century right winger who reappraised Plato as a Neocon type basically. Disregard anyone shilling him.

>>21670376
Socrates does frequently refute himself depending on the dialogue. Hipparchus (Greed) and Charmides (temperance/ moderation) are a great example.

Nietzsche completely destroys this stuff

>>21670210
Yes like the smug, hypocritical, moralising of chrisitians, with their fear tactics.

>>21670290
Good point here. It's the general rise in the level of prosperity leading to decadence and moral decline, the influence of Greek rationalism breaking down the old mos, the corruption of the mos maiorum for political and economic expediency. Epicureanism certainly doesn't help.

>>21670360
It's is a dogma and protestantism is a literal protest movement against the body of your own God. If it's not a dogma it's just eclectic, mystical syncretism like a said and it's basically on bar with something like the Golden Dawn or Blavatsky but simpler and a more obvious rip off of late Platonism.

>>21670450
that doesnt make any sense. its weird you keep bringing up shit like churches and denominations

>>21670371
By eyes have been opened!

>>21670401
I was more referencing pop stoicism/epicureanism but ok you do you girl dam

21670398
Nietzsche completely destroyed himself. How do zoomers keep falling for this trap?

>>21670398
nobody in this thread is dumb enough to actually desire to be a platonist in 2023 CE we're just fucking studying what they wrote you autists

21670452
>that doesnt make any sense.
Did you mean: "I am incapable of understanding you"?
Smh

>>21670472
This is still not a refutation. you brought up complete nonquitters. I was never discussing any denomination nor institution. A protest movement against the body of god isnt what protestantism is either. Not that it matters.

>>21670471
Define "Platonist" and define "being one." I think the man had many great ideas and was on to stuff excluding the Forms crap.

>>21670471
Did you mean:
>nobody in this thread is dumb enough to actually desire to be a modernist in 2023 CE we're just fucking inquiring into the truth
?

21670476
Keep reading anon. I sense you have yet to get far past the bible.

>>21670493
I've been in these threads for a while and have read much more than just the bible anon. Im not even christian.

>>21670521
Whatever, look if you actually believe this:
>your body and soul are the same thing >>21670360 I don't see much need for us to continue to discuss anything else.

>>21670559
Prove they aren't

Who wins, Stoics vs Platonists?

>>21670595
Win? My friend, I think you'll find the real "winners" in life are too busy contemplating to have time for such petty games...

>>21670595
I wasn't aware those two groups were in competition for something.

>>21670567
Prove they aren't distinct, you are the one identifies them as two distinct things. If they are the same why do we accept a distinction? Also there are amples proofs in the Enneads.

>>21670614
They competed in the olympics assuredly

So I posted before about Platonic contemplation and meditation techniques. So far I've identified two passages that talk about it:
>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.
>In the particular case of the affective phase of the Soul, purification is its awakening from the baseless visions which beset it, the refusal to see them; its separation consists in limiting its descent towards the lower and accepting no picture thence, and of course in the banning for its part too of all which the higher Soul ignores when it has arisen from the trouble storm and is no longer bound to the flesh by the chains of sensuality and of multiplicity but has subdued to itself the body and its entire surrounding so that it holds sovereignty, tranquilly, over all. (III.6.5) & one from the upcoming chapter (V.1.2) I won't quote the whole section as well get to it soon.
Can anyone think of anything that I might have missed?

Have you guys been reading anything in between this? For me its been snippets of Epictetus Discourses and an historical novel about Rome.

>>21670595
Stoicism is a species of Platonism along with Peripateticism and Academic Skepticism.

>>21671399
Yes, I am reading your post at the moment. I rate it 7/4.

Bump

>>21667873
>>21667925
I've started studying Porphyry's Isagoge. It's very based. Will check out the Alexander's commentaries on the Organum later.

>>21673261
Good for you, anon.

>>21670375
A Jew refugee scholar from Germany who taught at the New School in New York, University of Chicago, Claremont Men's College, and St. John's College. His work is mostly close-readings of ancient and early modern texts.

His students are a mess of factions (neocons, MAGA supporters, BAP supporters, Buckley-adjacent conservatives, establishment dems), but produce very good literal translations of texts. The best, like Benardete's translations, have copious footnotes or endnotes discussing puns relevant to the dialogue, the range of an important term's meanings, parallels to passages in other ancient literature, etc. Check tthe archive link above, the Straussians, whatever one thinks of their interpretations, are artistically attentive to the Greek, while Jowett takes a lot of liberties (though he's more pleasant to read).

>>21670383
Seethe

>>21673598
so whuch straussian translation is Best i dont undetstyandoiu i gotts to find translations for plato and plotoniusu

>>21673789
...against my better judgment, I'd recommend to you anything among the Agora Editions by Cornell University Press or the Focus Philosophical Library. Benardete has done translations of Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman (collected as The Beig of the Beautiful), Philebus, and Symposium. Thomas and Grace West have an edition of Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Aristophanes' Clouds collected as Four Texts on Socrates.

>>21673261
I'm going to follow your lead on this. Is there a specific edition or translation that you're using for it?

>>21674337
Following this translation:
>https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/porphyry_isagogue_02_translation.htm
There's also of some dude explaining the more difficult to understand language while he reads from this text translation that I've found the most helpful.
>https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7Fulq65zNbc5V-F9latmCxm66g5PJat7

maybe not relevant but
>Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel—three enslavers of the mind. The worst form of despotism is the system, in philosophy and in everything - E. M. Cioran
i feel the romantic mind is in closer harmony with the soul and to God than the rational mind, would Plotinus agree?

>>21673598
>His students are a mess of factions (neocons, MAGA supporters, BAP supporters, Buckley-adjacent conservatives, establishment dems),

This sentence alone should tell you everything about Leo Strauss and the type of people he attracts.

>>21674657
I would suspect not, Plotinus is deeply rationalist, though perhaps not in a modern sense.

>>21674693
This is a MAGA board faggot

>>21674657
He puts the philosopher, the lover, and the musician on pretty much equal footing when it comes to the potential to assimilate to God. (I.3)

>>21674693
That sounds like my family, and I like them, therefore I'm going to check this heeb out.

>>21674754
Kind of, the intellectually natured person has the easiest/most natural process of achieving so, while the others need more guidance. I'm also fairly confident that the non intellectual types are guided to become so.

>read 4.9
>footnote tells me Plotinus settled the issue in 4.3
>don't remember what his conclusion was
So are all souls one or what?

>>21675652
Can't you just reread it again?

>>21675751
Yes but today's discussion day, and maybe my question will prompt others to also go back and reread it.

>>21675778
>and maybe my question will prompt others to also go back and reread it
Not really, don't know why you would think that.

>>21671128
In furtherance of this:
>If there is to be perception of what is thus present, we must turn the perceptive faculty inward and hold it to attention there. Hoping to hear a desired voice, we let all others pass and are alert for the coming at last of that most welcome of sounds: so here, we must let the hearings of sense go by, save for sheer necessity, and keep the soul's perception bright and quick to the sounds from above.
(V.1.12). He could be describing listening to the harmony of the spheres.

>>21675652
Yes. Does no good to be told that it unless you understand it for yourself though.

>>21675840
>>21675860
Yeah that was pretty low effort on my part

Bump

Whats the first initial hypostsasis? WERE ABOUT TO FIND OUT! After a few words from our sponsors:

>>21677509
I googled it and it's either the One or a boss in a video game for Chinese people.

If we're identified with the upper soul, and not the complex of the body and soul, where our emotions and affections come from, then why should we care about anything besides facilitating contemplation for ourselves? Yeah, we could be moved by cosmic sympathy into helping others contemplate, but wouldn't that incur risk to ourselves? Why shouldn't we find a hidden estate for ourselves and hide from the mation of the sensible world?

>>21678877
>wouldn't that incur risk to ourselves?
I don't think so. Interesting question. I'll just answer as I see it. The one who seeks retreat still sees a division within the soul. There is no risk to self as self is really the universal soul. Having realised the universality of soul the individual will become a conduit for the motion of that universal, a point at which the goodness of the intellectual realm can flow through into the sense realm. Of course each individual nature is capable only of expressing the act of universal soul to the extent that such a nature allows.
There's a section in the biography of Plotinus by Porphyry where he talks about the former's ability to hold the contents of his contemplation whilst engaged in conversation with others. This is the kind of invulnerability of the sage that negates all risk. Because the lower phase of the soul is always gazing upwards, or is at least conditioned to turn back toward it's origin when it is called away, the motion of the world cannot perturb it because it's always capable of identifying that motion with universal soul striving to manifest the good in the Divine mind. An example I love of this sort of imperturbability, that I posted in a previous thread, is of Diogenes, who, whenever he meet with any supposed misfortune, would pray thus: thank you Fortune, for having given me the opportunity to train my virtue.

I've only dabbled a bit with some of Plato's dialogues, so apologies if it's a silly question. Could someone tell me how a Platonist/Neoplatonist addresses evolution in terms of the forms? An example being our own evolution, Homo heidelbergensis -> Homo sapiens. Does each species have its own form? When does one 'switch' occur from one step of evolution to the other?

>>21680273
That's actually one of the tougher questions in taxonomy tbqh. Our binomial naming system is good for the purposes of cataloging mammals, birds, and reptiles, but other forms of life present unique challenges. Amphibians have a high rate of hybridization, plants are can be a total clusterfuck (IIRC at one point there were 100 different names for the tomato plant, caused by different soils and things affecting their life histories), and bacteria, with it's horizontal gene transferring, exists solely to give taxonomists nightmares. The 'switch' in evolution, in my humble opinion, is a gradient that is not nearly as 1:0 as people make it out to be. Actually I think it's a lot like that old stoic problem about how many grains of sand it takes to make a heap.

BUT if you really want to get into this whole "what's in a name" problem, an anon has already linked the textbook >>21674570 that got medievals really excited about Universals in the first place. There are evolutionary scientists working today that are Platonists, and there are others that are not. I am not nearly close to being good enough to adequately explain evolution or neoplatonic philosophy.

>>21680348
Thanks for the response.

>>21680377
np that's the question that got me interested in philosophy to begin with

>>21680273
It would work the same way people differentiate chairs and tables, I imagine.

>>21680273
I do not see why the form of one thing can not reside in the form of another. ie Humans and gorillas within the Homo species.

>>21680273
As I see it, evolution (really the sensory temporal realm altogether) is the Soul striving to realise the Forms in the Divine-Intellect. I think it's perhaps safe enough to say there is a form of life and a form of man. Everything that has gone into the process of the formation of man participated/participates in the Form of man. There is probably also a form of animal, (the distinction is between reasonless and reasonable animal,) when we gained reason, we began to participate in the Form of animal and of man. Interesting question.

>>21680423
Existence implies being and not being are seperate, to be a man precludes being a gorilla.

Can one become the other? No, because if the gorilla had the capacity to become a man there would be no meaningful definition of a man. There would be only be one form.

This is exactly the same regarding caterpillars and butterflies for example, thought phisically distinct there is only one form.

This btfo'd transmutation in the middle ages and modern nuclear science, one thing cannot be made into another thing, you simply discover the two things were actually the same all along.

>>21679814
Diogenese was a chad, and i think you're right in your appraisal. The soul is always upwardly gazing regardless of what the body is doing l

>>21680975
Fuck. That's a brilliant way of putting it.

bumpo

>>21681046
Unsure if Sarcasm, I'm a tard.
We take it for granted today but the greeks invented many concepts we now take for granted, and their vocabulary was limited. Often the greeks having just invented a concept lacked the words to speak about it.

I consider this a practical matter and don't hesitate to translate to modern English, because its usually the case that the word we would use comes directly from their understanding.

There would be less confusion if instead of the "theory of forms" we called it the "theory of definition" because rhetorically, phisically and spiritually that's exactly what it is.

Our phisical form is defined, we are individuals and that's not a matter of perspective, this cannot become that.
Thus we would call those trying to make transmutation, who claim a frog and a tadpole to be different animals, who claim men and women as different animals, we would say they have made a false definition.

So this raises the question of what happens to the soul when a person dies? Is there "one soul" or is there a pool of individual souls that cycle through hades. Both ideas persisted but the synthesis of historical belief was that neither was in conflict because the souls in hades were not necessarily definite for the same reason the souls of men were not definite. This conciliatory view saved many greeks from being charged with impiety.

You can probably see how this fed into the ascendent cults of heraclese, later christ, and eventually a monothiestic view that the immortal soul of all men should be worshipped directly

>>21638469
Bump

>>21683108
No, I was being serious. One form can become another form just as some are merely a part of another. The original anon is too closeminded.

>>21683939
Maybe just somthing lost in translation, or maybe my view is normative. Who can say?

I like Plotinus because he decided to rationally explain the chain of being without resorting to poetics and obscuration. Also this pepe reminds me of the soul.

>>21668809
5.1 The Three Initial Hypostases

Evil that has overtaken souls has it’s source in self-will
- Pleasure in the freedom of self-motion from no longer discerning their divinity or their own nature, ignorance of their rank brings self-depreciation
- They only have awe and admiration for the alien and strange
- Admiring pursuit of the external is a confession of inferiority
The method of finding dishonor upon the object which this Soul finds honorable
- The second method (finding honor instead of finding dishonor) is better to discuss since it teaches the Soul’s race and worth, and so will reveal the former
Matter is the ‘execration of the Gods’

The Sun is a God because it is ensouled; so too the stars, as they must since to be ‘dead is viler than dung’

The Intellectual Principle which is also Being is in eternal actuality

The Primals (The first ‘Categories’):
- Intellectual Principle
- Existence
- Difference
- Identity
- Motion (for the intellectual act)
- Rest (preserves identity as Difference gives a Knower and a Known)
- Number, Quantity, and Dyad is not primal, these are secondaries
- The Soul is such a number or quantity (a real archetypal number)

6 Prayer towards God by aspiration, alone towards the alone, gives the answer of how anything at all comes into substantial existence from absolute unity
- The Supreme has no motion, so how can it cause it?

All existences produce hypostases of some rank which represent in image the engendering archetypes

The vision of the One is it’s self-quest, it’s seeing is the Intellectual Principle

House of Rhea (realm of flux, that which falls away toward Matter from the IP)

The offspring of the IP is a Reason-Principle (a substantial existence, hypostasis)

8 Plato’s Triplicity
Parmenides on identifying Being with IP while separating Real Being from the realm of sense
9 Anaxagoras/Pythagoras/Pherecydes/Heraclitus/Empedocles/Aristotle short summaries about their overall thought on the One/First, each use similar terms but with different mechanics/relationships

Three hypostases:
The One, Being/Intellectual-Principle, Soul

There must be some permanent Rightness if the Soul can reason about what is good or bad

5.2 The Origin and Order of the Beings following on the First

Sense and Nature follow upon Soul, the vegetal the principle
Nothing is completely separate from its prior in the overall chain of being
Different phases of the Soul have different forms
- Vegetal form is more rebellious and less intellectual, the soul entering animals are dominant in sensation, soul in humans are more reasonable

Humans have an inborn desire of intellectual activity and of movement in general

Soul should not be understood as existing spatially but as being nowhere and everywhere at once
- The Divine Intellect is even more detached than that

>>21684498
I wish I understood half of this, having read it I still don't understand and I fear the issue is that I may simply not agree with the premesis.

For example the seperation between a phisical force (cold), the feeling of being cold, the suffering of being cold, and the evil of cold. Is cold evil? Is he evil who feels the cold? Is he who made cold evil?
Because unfortunately if you conclude that the cold isn't evil and the man who feels it is merely weak or lacking in individual virtue you have a serious problem in that this makes cold a universal force/ attribute divested from the spirit.
That may seem an obvious observation it believe me it becomes problematic when you get to "the sun is ensouled".

If you see the existence/ difference/ identity is fine, but how is it argued that motion/stillness don't give rise to each other in the daost sense?

Thinking takes time, knowing takes time at least as far as mortal knowledge goes so it's hard to deny that stillness is not the contrary force of motion.

This leads directly to (6) but I find that question answerable but unanswered. Though valid it doesn't seem to satisfy proof of the much later enlightenment era questions of self knowing and at the risk of being called a pseud the immortal aspect of the soul seems more connected to a contrary motion of... uh motion.
If motion is necessary to knowing, is the immortal aspect of knowledge simply unknowing,a direct function of stillness.

Thus in the vedric sense stillness is a requirement of unknowing, and that would be why for example in a cave or a womb existing, motion and unknowing can all be satisfied simultaneously?

You might surmise this by saying that in the beginning there was nothing, nothing was inherently still and stillness was inherently unknowing.

Unknowing created an unknower (you might say a nonentity) and the unknown (being the opposite of spiritual knowledge).
Thus all the contrary motions gave rise to each other without a bang.

But then the unknowable gave birth to the knowledge (which thus preceded a knower), this made the existence of a knower possible (but still a nonentity), an knower being possible when it was previously impossible gave birth to motion, and motion created the first immutable form (basically mass).

The immutable form embodies the entire cycle and thus when it moves moves in every direction at once.

This creates:
Form- being (like a cat)
Form- unbeing (the non-cat)
Form- moving (like a cat)
Form-unmoving (the form of cat)
Form- knowing (like a cats ego)
Form-unknowing (the individual cats unconcious))
Form-knowledge (a phisical part of the cats brain)
Form-unknowledge (parts of the cat not capable of self knowledge)

Thus a cat can come from mass, because the un-cat came from nothing.

The negative motions seem immutable and definite, but I'm not sure if they're strictly symmetrical because the unseen is to the unseer what the seen is to the see'er, while the seer and the unseer are contrary, their perspective is opposed rather than opposite.....uh. the nonexistent cat doesn't "see" a nonexistent world, and the cat which exists can't see the nonexistant world because it's unknowable.

>>21684717
And this would answer questions like:
>how come new forms exist before anyone knows about them
The falling tree creates a state of unfalling, When you find out the tree fell the unfalling becomes unknown to the unknower, you might simply say lost to time.
>why does mass increase over time
Because it creates antimatter, which is a phisical nonentity.
>where does god come from
The universal knower comes from universal knowledge, but has no soul, mass, cannot move/think. The positive embodiment of knowledge.
>what is the soul
Well that would be the imutable knowledge of form, which basically keeps the phisical development of form in tandem with knowledge. This would be why a man can't imagine himself into a cat, complete phisical knowledge of a cat won't give him a cats soul because the soul preceded form. If you uh... built a cat... it would have no soul, and I think it wouldn't be able to gain immutable knowledge. The souless cat (which we may live to see) would give birth to an equally souless cat which would simply exist without immutable knowledge.
There would probably be no practical significance of this at all, it would merely be another form without self knowing. A rock might self-gaze, but the souless cat could not self-gaze. Because mass can expand in every direction at once, a failure to expand in any given direction is also expected. Because again the positive and negative forces are not symmetrical, merely contrary and that means there's no real issue if they become mixed. That would be the basis for many things that could exist in a pseudo binary form, which we would call supernatural, but which would be virtually nonexistent.
You would have to create a atomically perfect cat body to create a disembodied cat soul in the netherworld, neither would really have any special purpous or significance. Equally bringing antimatter into the phisical world would simply create a floating atom in the void- you could impart antimatter with nonenergy but you wouldn't have any nonenergy, and even if you did all you would get is an unmoving object which I think functionally would be torn through the ever expanding universe and end up in space, which would explain why antimatter tends to end up in the middle of things eating matter then vanishing. It's brought into creation in an infantesally unlikely (but possible) way, and will simply take an improbably small amount of matter with it (an infantesimally small proportion of the matter which constantly expands unchecked)

Does any of this stuff have any practical purposes? What's with all the capital letter language? Can't he just speak in plain Greek without titalizing everything

>>21684668
Can barely understand you desu, but I think some of the questions you have may be answered in the 'On the Kinds of Being' treatises.

>>21684717
>in the beginning there was nothing, nothing was inherently still and stillness was inherently unknowing. Unknowing created an unknower
Can't follow you. Ex nihilo nihil fit. Nothing can come from nothing. Thus there is an eternal something.

>>21684857
Nothing precedes time, therefore it didn't "come" at all. It wasn't even "was" because it preceded stillness, nor can we really concive this before it preceded thought.
>>21684846
>All in the Intellectual and some in the Sensible is manifestly impossible.
See that's what I don't get, why can't some forms of being be nonsensical if they proceeded knowledge chronologically? Doesn't that mean they MUST be nonsensical in that they are unknowable unknowns?
>it is strange to find the one same "Existence" applying to the primary and to the derivative Existents when there is no common genus embracing both primal and secondary.
Not if the first positive force was a resolution of negative forces which preceded it, it seems to me like negative forces could all have stemmed from nothing long before the first positive force came from that contradiction, this logical sequence preceded time (see: thoughts are the basis of matter)
>but of a common origin: similarly, Intellectual Substance would be Substance in the first degree, the others being substances by derivation and in a lower degree.
Yes so the eternal form proceeded a phisical manifestation, that's why new phisical forms can exist.

Number is entirely secondary, because all the forces preceding creation were discreet, though logically connected they couldn't be concived and thus couldn't even be counted... not that any metric could apply to more than one anyhow.
>sound
We now know sound to be a phisical force, thus secondary to matter.

Relation is indeed a void prior to creation because none of the preceding forces bear against one another until the contrition of mass, at which point there is existence and a hybridization rather than a return to nothingness.

>>21684955
>It wasn't even "was" because it preceded stillness
Nothing preceded stillness? I don't get it. In order for their to be stillness there must be something that is still. But there is nothing hence there cannot be anything. I just can't follow any logical chain that begins with nothing. There isn't even a starting point to the chain. Further in the tractate On the Kinds of Being Plotinus writes:
>Many as are the objections to this theory, we pass on for fear of the ridicule we might incur by arguing against a position itself so manifestly ridiculous. We may be content with pointing out that it assigns the primacy to the Non-existent and treats it as the very summit of Existence: in short, it places the last thing first. The reason for this procedure lies in the acceptance of sense-perception as a trustworthy guide to first-principles and to all other entities.
(IV.1.28) And after this and also in the 27 section he seems to be dealing with something like what you're suggesting.

>>21685099
I could continue but couldn't attribute what followed to the platonic school so I won't derail the thread further

Isagoge anon here.
I don't understand the difference between the predictables "inseparable accident" and a "property". Porphyry says that accidents are predicable of both the individual and its species. He gives an example of inseparable accident: black is predicated of a crow. But isn't blackness a property of crow as a property of the species crow?

idealist nonsense. why should i care

>>21685742
Well, an "accident" in Aristotle could also be translated as what's incidental, so the claim would seem to be that such and such "accident" is incidentally predicable of a thing, but it's not essential to its being what it is. The distinction between separable and inseparable accidents seems to be later than Aristotle to maybe deal with "accidents" that, while not essential, are nonetheless present almost always or for the most part. Does that help?

>>21686178
Yes that helps. Porphyry's examples however are still confusing.
"Crows are black" is given as a proposition where blackness is an accidental predication to an entire species.
"Man is biped" is given as an example predicating a property to a whole species.
Would "ability to caw" be the property we predicate of crows?
I am beginning to understand that properties may relate to their subject in the same way as accidents, but properties themselves arise from the specific essential constitution of a thing, what its powers and activities. Accidents emerge less universal than property.
Am I understanding correctly?

>>21686178
>>21686251
In other words, accident is a quality which presents itself exteriorly like color or appearance, but property is a quality that manifests itself in the specific nature of the thing. Is that right?

>>21686251
>>21686292
That's by and large how I understand it; maybe this is akin to Hume's example of swans, re: one says that all swans are white until one sees a black one? So something about form seems more essential, i.e., having two legs, two wings, this kind of facial arrangement, etc. Does that seem right?

>>21686451
Yes. But the finding one individual black swan does not disprove the proposition "swans are white", an accidental predicate. Neither does finding one individual swan with a severed leg disprove the proposition "swans are bipedal", a predicate of property.

>>21686537
Yes, I think that's certainly true.

>>21686550
Would it be correct to say that the individual swan with its severed leg has the accident of a monoped or the property of a monoped? It is evident that swans are biped, but we certainly cannot predicate this property of this individual. We can only say "this swan is a monoped".

>>21686635
I would imagine it would be accidentally predicated of the swan. The difficulty, of course, and Aristotle recognizes it in plenty asides in his work, is that these observations can be tricky to pin down. The Categories and the Analytics, with their laying out demonstrative knowledge, are almost the ideal cases: if we know perfectly, these distinctions would be clear, but real world examples might knock us down to only speaking about what's more or less probable ("diaectical knowledge" in the Topics and Sophistic Refutations) if our premises and observations are flawed.

>>21686822
Porphyry says something very brief in Cap. VII that I think is the key to understanding all of this.
>"[Accidents and properties are] pre-eminently (predicated) of individuals, but secondarily of those things which comprehend individuals (like species)"

bump

>>21688154
Why don't you say something to get talking?

>>21688231
i havent even read homer much less plato and even less than that plotinus

>>21687021
>>21686822
There's a lot more other to this than I thought. The second half of *Isagoge* is Porphyry comparing each predicable (genus, difference, species, property, and accident) with another. Accidents accept "intension and remission" but properties do not. We can predicate black of an Ethiopian, but one Ethiope may be a shade darker than another. We can predicate large of Plato, but there is another man who is larger. With properties there is no "intension and remission" either you have the property or you don't. Either you're bipedal or you're not. Either you're risible or not.

In an earlier thread an anon mentioned that The Minotaur of Milwaukee wrote something about how neoplatonist theory really isn't that effected by modern physics. Does anyone have that? I was listening to the History of Philosophy episodes about Plotinus and the host called the modern universe chaotic and random.
>>21688231
I was in the middle of getting filtered by llpsi lol. I try to keep the thread alive regardless if I have anything to post, mostly because I made it and I can't ask anons to take care of it for me.

If the One is so simple why don't I get it? Check mate.

Why'd the skeptics get replaced by the middle and neoplatonists? I think Plotinus did a pretty good job of answering Sextus' challenge in 5.3, but why'd all the platonists like him and Cicero die off?

Bump

>>21688231
/lit/ is a fairly inhospitable place for a book general overall. we're tracked to finish in around 2 weeks but constantly monitoring thread life sucks. However it did produce far more content than most of the site does.

>>21692058
I swear the board gets faster everyday. I'd like to be able to read a tractate and think about it without having to worry about the thread dying.

>>21690740
Not entirely sure. But I think it may have something to so with Sulla sacking Athens.

Has anyone read Gerson's From Plato to Platonism?

>>21684498
5.3 The Knowing Hypostases and the Transcendent

A being that has no parts or phases may have the consciousness of introversion and self-awareness
(in the later sections he seems to assign the IP as being self-aware and the Soul not, yet both are multiplicities)
- There would "be no real self-knowing in an entity presented as knowing itself in virtue of being a compound--some single element in it perceiving other elements

Whether the IP holds knowledge of externals or not should be examined

If the unalloyed IP is within the Soul, should we consider it a phase of the Soul?
- We are not the IP, we represent it in virtue of that higher reasoning faculty
- The IP enters from above us as the sensitive(Soul) faculty from below

"the We is the Soul at its highest, the mid-point between two powers, between the sensitive principle, inferior to us, and the intellectual principle superior"

The IP belongs to us and we to it, and awareness at once of ourselves hence

6 The self-knowing nature of the IP is different in the Soul
- Soul knows itself when it is in something else
- IP knows itself as self-depending

The Soul in which we live uses "persuasive probabilities" in it's search for intellection (kind of reminds me of the treatment of magic in 4.4)
- Soul attains self-knowledge through its highest phase, which is image, next to the intellective world of Primals and Reality

7
Intention of the IP is toward self-knowing and (maybe) the contemplating of God
- in this case knowing God and "His" power is the same as the IP knowing itself

In the IP, Being "is an (self-directed) Act"
- but Soul has a double phase of activity, one faces the IP, the other the externals

8 The intellectual realm antedates colour and shape and things like it
- rather is produced by intellective "seeds"

Soul has no permanence but by attachment

Soul can act as a medium for the IP for it's effective possession of it/seeing a perfect image of it
- the way to do accomplish this "phase" is to separate yourself from body/sense/desire/impulse/mortality etc., until only the "outrushing and indwelling" image of the "Divine Intellect" is left
- Anyone who does not have the strength to do this can start from "less fine degree" and work their way up
10
IP is a multiplicity
- It couldn't have self-vision if it did not have relative things to compare/synthesize/create dualisms
- the utterly undifferentiated makes no inquiries and has no immanence, transcends knowing and is undefinable

Knowledge implies desire, it is "discovery crowning a search"

13
Consciousness is a "conperception" acted upon a manifold
- 'I am a being', not 'I am that being'
- however, each item in the multiplicity will not be an object of intellection to us, taken bare and single (but Being itself is manifold within itself)

..
What is distinguishable about the "unalloyed" Intellectual-Principle?
Is there no omnipotence in the IP since it weakens in it's extension into Matter?

>>21694307
15 The emanation of the Transcendent can't be one

17
Soul used with pronouns for the first time I've seen (as female). Reminds me of how some Catholics ascribe divinity to Mary and mix her up with the holy spirit, as well as spirit and Neoplatonic Soul both repeatedly being described as indwelling in things.

5.4 How the Secondaries rise from The First: and on The One

How does IP/Soul/Nature etc. come from the One if the latter is unmoving/unity?
- everything is observed to generate in some way, nothing is able to remain self-closed, even lifeless objects like fire/snow/drugs

2 Why can't the IP just be the generating source of all things?
- It is not a self-sufficing simplex
- The IP is consummated by it's intellective objects
- it is determined by it's intellectual objects and is indeterminate in itself
- it is deficient since it needs an object (the One)
- it is the "seat of life as of all things"

The Act of the Essence
- explanation for how the IP came from the One
- the first Act is its realized identity, the second Act (IP) is an emanation distinct from the thing itself
- The perfect unchanging One has an "Act included in it's nature", which emanates the "issuing Act (IP)"

Potentiality of the All, then the secondary All made actual

"Real Being is no corpse"

The IP is the things it knows
..
Also that "famous" passage of 'alone towards the alone' in 5.1 reminds me of Jung's individuation process though with heavy metaphysical accents.

Bump

>>21684498
The best Ennead

>>21694307
>conperception
>look up this word
>only references are this book and like 2 random papers
>con (with/together) perception (Latin: sensus)
Neat

>>21661577
>>21663611
>>21638544
>the stars being a sign of what's to come
I suppose if we are moving in the direction of astrology being a factor in causation, what is the practical level we can implement it into our lives? I doubt the morning horoscope has much value but certainly there is some pattern or two to look out for.

>>21693293
QRD?

>>21697704
>Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients were correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato’s teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of "anti-naturalism."Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato—Plato’s own Platonism, so to speak—was produced out of a matrix he calls "Ur-Platonism." According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five "antis" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato’s Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five "antis." It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics. In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as "the great exegete of the Platonic revelation."
Gerson is the editor for the edition of the Enneads I'm using, so I figure he knows what he's talking about.

>>21697805
Ty

Evola's essay on neo-Platonism in Intro to Magic Vol. 3 is excellent. Many Hermeticists were neo-Platonist.

>>21699216
Evola is a giant meme better suited to occultist LARPers than philosophers.

>>21699456
Does he teach you the chants and spells required to counter curses? Plotinus mentions these exists but then says, "it's not that big of a deal, you'll just die."

>>21700522
>Plotinus mentions these exists but then says, "it's not that big of a deal, you'll just die."
He's right in that it's not a big deal since curses and the like are essentially useless to and ineffective against someone who has genuinely achieved union with the One/Monad/God/whatever you call it.

>>21696324
as someone who has delved into the astrology hole I can tell you there is a lot, the movements of the world politics and economics follow a trajectory very in line with the stars, the same way an electron has its own free will but is confined to certain paths of quantum probability by the macro world around it
I can also tell you that pursuing astrology for real borders on idolatry and should be avoided.

>>21697805
very well put

List words that can describe the One, I'll start:

>>21694334
>>21694307
5.5 That the Intellectual Beings are not outside the Intellectual-Principle: and on The Nature of the Good

The IP is never wrong and never forgets
- It would be like SP's if it dealt with external impressions

Either the objects of the IP are senseless/devoid of life or they possess the intellect
- If the objects possess Intellect, they are in a unionized realm of Truth
- if the objects of the IP are without intelligence and life, they cannot be premisses, axioms, or predicates, since each concept would just stand on it's own without any assurance of their coherence or character, the IP would not be able to possess the truth of them

Sense-perceptions deal with beliefs which are phantasmic images

The Supreme rules the Intellect, Intellect rules everything else

3 Zeus is a symbol of the Soul, Kronos the IP, Ouranos >>21703200 the One

The First is intact even when other entities spring from it
- (Something from nothing? Law of conservation?)
- As Number is a host for Quantity, the One is host for reality

5 etymology starting with Being (I don't know anything about ancient greek I am just poorly copy pasting it if anyone cares about it but I thought it was neat. Maybe other translations are different)
- Reality/Essence -> ousia
- Hestia/hearth -> ἑστἱα(estia)
- Being/Existent -> ὄν
- One -> ἕν
- Existence -> εἶναι

6 The One has no Being
- Being must have definition and limit
- Pythagoreans deifed Apollo since his name means "not + of many" (α + πολλῷν)

"The light inherent to the sun would not be perceived but for the solidity of the mass"
- The sun is light entire, without any other properties

The thing of extension is least real of all, while what is most unseen (the One) has the most realness
- "You must turn appearances about or you will be left void of God...like those at festivals who cram themselves"

12 On Beauty

Sense perception of Beauty stirs awe and passion toward it, but the Good has been long possessed and stirs no wonder since it's always there
- Beauty causes pain for those in love with pursuing it, and is more sophisticated than love of Good
- Those that know Beauty judge it to exist for itself and not for them, as beauty belongs only to the possessor
- No one wants the Good in semblance only, as "they struggle venomously for Beauty as something secondary like themselves"
- "Beauty is all violence and stupefaction; it's pleasure is spoiled with pain and leads the thoughtless astray"

God is not the "All", that would make Him dependent upon the universe, thus he is separate from all things
- (God and Good seem to be used interchangeably)

Beauty/Being does not come from evil

>>21703845
5.6 That the Principle transcending Being has no Intellectual Act. What being has intellection primally and what being has it secondarily

intellection primally = IP (vague sense of dualism)
secondarily = Soul (tons of dualism)
no intellection = One (no dualism)

The intellection is more profound when it possess an object internally

Intellection is not primal if perceiving principle and perceived object are different
- The primally intellective is both simplex and containing duality
- there is unity in duality in the order of primal intellect

Primal intellections are dual by the fact that it is an intellection but single since its intellectual object belongs to itself
- (This seems like something Wittgenstein would want to tear apart, or something he would sympathize with as being seemingly inexplicable)
- Duality implies something is external to the externalizing force

4 How could anything be present in anything else unless in virtue of existing independently of association? Anything that is manifold or dual must be dependent.

The orb of the moon takes its light from the sun

Intellection itself does not exercise intellective acts, this belongs to some mediating principle which holds the intellection

..
From previous reading 5.3 I want to say Plotinus doesn't give us the capacity to "have" intellection, since they "antedate" things like "color and shape", but we have some inkling notion that these now "sense" thoughts which take place in the Soul, or perhaps the couplement, come from the intellective "seeds".
If abstractions are just the result of our imaging capacity, does this mean intellect is like a preconscious substratum to the ego? If it's valuable at all to make that comparison would Id be like the part of Matter in us which isn't completely mixed with Soul, while IP is like a collective unconscious?
Or maybe the IP is closer to a mechanism or a dynamic cognitive landscape for reasoning activity/"energy", which hence would be unknowable. I think this position would make Plotinus more of a realist because it would be moving our phenomenal experience of "mind" down in the sense realm.

Also, just want to say that being an idealist is dangerous. I don't recommend committing yourself to anything near idealism without developed notions of opposing points of view.

>>21703879
What's dangerous about it?

>>21699456
You really have no clue what you're talking about.
>muh philosophy
Metaphysics is above philosophy. Philosophy is just noise compared to the supranormal. Evola actually explains how to get there, instead of positing vague speculations that one will never experience.

>>21701588
Wrong. Maybe if you read Evola and Guénon you would know what you're talking about. Even Mohammed was cursed by sorcery.

>>21704588
Damn that's crazy haha

>>21697805
>
>Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries.

It’s really telling that the spurious dialogues attributed to Plato but now believed to be by his students often outright contradict Platonist thought (Hippias Minor or Hipparchus for instance) and are generally viewed as poorly written.

This is a pretty interesting tractate on biology, but is he also claiming that the sensible world unfurls, curls back up, and unfurls again in the same way eternally? That sounds like the Stoic eternal recurrence.

>>21705216
I was unaware that Porphyry attributes the idea to Pythagoras
>19. Through this he achieved great reputation, he drew great audiences from the city, not only of men, but also of women, among whom was a specially illustrious person named Theano. He also drew audiences from among the neighboring barbarians, among whom were magnates and kings. What he told his audiences cannot be said with certainty, for he enjoined silence upon his hearers. But the following is a matter of general information. He taught that the soul was immortal and that after death it transmigrated into other animated bodies. After certain specified periods, the same events occur again; that nothing was entirely new; that all animated beings were kin, and should be considered as belonging to one great family. Pythagoras was the first one to introduce these teachings into Greece.
https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/porphyry_life_of_pythagoras_02_text.htm

>>21704630
How do Hippias Minor and Hipparchus contradict his thought? Doesn't the Republic have strong resonances with both (e.g., the Noble and medicinal lies; and the Idea of the Good)?

>>21705381
Hippias Minor contradicts Crito with "it is better to lie intentionally than to not."

>>21705399
Then the Republic contradicts Crito too with the Noble/medicinal lies, and the discussion of the lie in the soul being more hateful than telling lies.

>>21705417
Yes, it does.

>>21705417
And also the distinction with Hipparchus is "the good" is more of a material good which is why it is a discussion of Greed.

>>21705439
Where does Socrates claim that profit is merely material in Hipparchus?

>>21705424
Well, would you care to say more?

>>21705519
Nta, but, as has been said before, the Dialogues exist to make us think, not to tell us what to think.

bump limit