/lit/ - Literature

Forms are illusions, Mr. Platon, vagueries of perception

Thread theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s88hmJ_osjY

Gurnemanz initiates Parsifal into the mysteries.

>>21712926
Prove it

>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."

>>21715129
What would naturalism mean in this context? Because it doesn't seem to me that the forms would be unnatural, but more supernatural perhaps.

>>21712260
You are your own thoughts/mind eye. What you experience, is you. And with this, call it a soul if you want, you can go anywhere in the universe, even if your body is somewhere else, you can completely and fully belive at will that you are on the moon for example, but you have to deeply realise even this moment, you are your thoughts. Or am I just schizo? Just saying, you are not your body and not even your brain, your soul is on another plane and you can go anywhere you want. For example if you visualise a football ball, you are that ball. If you see a waterfall and nothing else, you are it, look at the sun, you are it and so on, because you have no shape is why you can experience the gift of knowing, understanding and living through things, but because your body has a shape and is solid, it can't do much of anything, the human body is pathetic. The mind is like water, can take any form, but the body is solid and unable to do magic. Decalcify your lungs and brain for maximum results, you do this by intense cardio or hyperventilation or of course, fasting, for at least 48 hours. There you have it guys, i just told you the secret to unlimited happiness, transcendence and overcoming of the physical body. Decalcifying your lungs is the easiest way to make your brain use more oxygen and of course more energy and calories, your sexual energy will go to your head instead of your dick if you keep your body pure

>>21712260
You are your own thoughts/mind eye. What you experience, is you. And with this, call it a soul if you want, you can go anywhere in the universe, even if your body is somewhere else, you can completely and fully belive at will that you are on the moon for example, but you have to deeply realise even this moment, you are your thoughts. Or am I just schizo? Just saying, you are not your body and not even your brain, your soul is on another plane and you can go anywhere you want. For example if you visualise a football ball, you are that ball. If you see a waterfall and nothing else, you are it, look at the sun, you are it and so on, because you have no shape is why you can experience the gift of knowing, understanding and living through things, but because your body has a shape and is solid, it can't do much of anything, the human body is pathetic. The mind is like water, can take any form, but the body is solid and unable to do magic. Decalcify your lungs and brain for maximum results, you do this by intense cardio or hyperventilation or of course, fasting, for at least 48 hours. There you have it guys, i just told you the secret to unlimited happiness, transcendence and overcoming of the physical body. Decalcifying your lungs is the easiest way to make your brain use more oxygen and of course more energy and calories, your sexual energy will go to your head instead of your dick if you keep your body pure. Then you can just go on endless adventures in your head (you will feel like you're dreaming even when awake, and the cinema in your head will be crystal clear)

>>21715917
Based. What is this sagacity?

>The gnostics are wrong, matter is evil!

Wow. Plotinus was a blithering retard.

>>21716124
>matter = the sensible world
It's evil in that it is unordered and is as far from the One as you can get. The only reason he sees to shun the sensible world is because it's not the intelligible world or the Good. He correctly points out that the "world is evil because I got bit by a snake" arguments are dumb.

>>21716139
so just move the goal posts to make Plotinus consistent and not retarded

got it

>>21716159
That's not what moving the goalposts is, did you read the book or a wikipedia page?

>>21716178
There's a bunch of things Plotinus can't make his mind up on. His critique of gnosticism while saying matter is evil and having this deep nostalgia to leave sensible existence is just another one of his retardations. Overrated thinker who very nearly could have been fully based.

>>21716183
That's great man, but could you reread 2.9?

>>21715917
Everything is information and all information is "real" including thought. What we call material reality is just the densest level of information and therefore the lowest level in the neoplatonic hierarchy of being.

>>21716139
That's still gnostic thought

>>21716249
Gnosticism isn't a single coherent set of beliefs. The version Plotinus argues against condemns the entire cosmos as evil, not just matter.

>>21716256
You agreed with me but phrased it as if you disagreed...

>>21716249
Gnosticism before Plotinus and after Plotinus are two different things entirely. Most of those who authored the corpus of the Nag Hammadi library took Plotinus' considerations to heart and reformed their own doctrines.

>>21716284
How did they reform their thought?

>>21716277
Plotinus doesn't think the cosmos is evil. That's what he is arguing against in this chapter >>21716187

>Certainly no reproach can rightly be brought against this world save only that it is not That.
(V.8.8) The world is beautiful, but it is not Beauty.

I'm listening to On the Kinds of Being because they're not in the penguin edition I have. Am I going to miss anything essential if I skip this stuff? Seems like this is just Aristotle's thought.
Also, the cover of anyone else's penguin edition peeling?

THIS IS THE LITERATURE BOARD; THIS THREAD IS OFF TOPIC.

PLATONISTS ARE THE ONE'S PLUGGED INTO «THE MATRIX», MAKEBELIEVING THEMSELVES «REALITY WARRIORS» —ID EST: CAVEDWELLERS HAVING NIGHTLY BACCHIC ORGIES UNTIL THEY DIE LIKE ANIMALS.

THIS IS THE LITERATURE BOARD; THIS THREAD IS OFF TOPIC.

PLATONISTS ARE THE ONES PLUGGED INTO «THE MATRIX», MAKEBELIEVING THEMSELVES «REALITY WARRIORS» —ID EST: CAVEDWELLERS HAVING NIGHTLY BACCHIC ORGIES UNTIL THEY DIE LIKE ANIMALS.

>>21717203
Go say rosaries for us then. Or have you abandoned the church?

>>21717333


JOIN THE CHURCH —OR DO YOU WANT TO SUFFER IN HELL?

>>21717203
Are you assuming the people reading are Platonists? I'm mostly reading for the purpose of continuity. I wouldn't say I believe in "Forms" as antiquity philosophy describes it but something similar to that I remember was a "cognitive landscape" put forward by a Dr. Del Ratzsch.
Here's a paper about that:
https://academic.oup.com/book/12844/chapter-abstract/163114714?redirectedFrom=fulltext

>>21717203
Also philosophy has been posted every day on /lit/ for the past decade or so?

>>21709193
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

>>21717398
I can't believe in a God that would condemn me to torture for all time for not joining a certain group. A God shouldn't need anything, yet God needed to send Jesus. Or send himself, because he needed to kill himself, or needed to allow himself to be killed, because he needed to atone for our mistakes, which are caused by him... certainty only a religion tripfags could believe.

>>21717571


GOD DOES NOT CONDEMN YOU; THAT IS WHERE YOU AUTOMATICALLY GO IF YOU ARE AN ATHEIST; GOD HAS US PROVIDED SALVATION FROM THAT.

>>21717621

>[...] GOD HAS PROVIDED [US] SALVATION FROM THAT.

>>21717621
A) I'm not an atheist, and B) if your God can't even save us from a hell no one but him could have created, if he can't even get us to believe in him, why should we?

By sensible world does he mean just of the physical senses?

Is there a chart for platonic literature?

>>21717682
Things you can sense. See, touch, taste etc.
>>21717709
Not any decent ones that I've seen.

>>21717621
There's no convincing reason why the divinity of Jesus Christ can't be pluralistically granted to other people throughout history.
The Word of God did not exist until far after humans began existing, there is no reason why the people before deserve to suffer in hell, nor the people who have never heard of it, nor people like Ghandi, Guru Nanak, or others who by all accounts appear to be extremely moral people despite not being Christian.
The content of the Bible cannot be trusted due to the long and now well documented history of it's editing, despite it's claim that those who do alter it will go to hell.
God can't make an object so heavy that he himself can't lift it.
Choosing when to apply logic to the qualities of God and when applying logic would be illogical makes for a relativistic God.
That the universe is "finely-tuned" is biased by the instruments which determine this quality within it. It's like saying 1 is still equal to 1.
Men are due to suffer since they are in sin but animals suffer horribly at random as well.
Carbon dating and the geologic record prove the Earth is older than 6000 years, or 1000 years, or 3000 years.
"Visions" or "hallucinations" of Jesus speaking to you in your head are active imaginations, and the work in depth psychology done in the 20th century has a bed of evidence through thousands of documented case studies of dream work which identify patterns pointing to a person's perception of their life-narrative. This process can also be applied to seemingly unintelligible schizophrenics.
There is no bottom-up method whatever for evaluating Christian visions within it's own set of beliefs which do not determine one set of beliefs over another due to the phenomenon of the underdetermination of theory by data. There is no empirically adequate standard or data for these beliefs which can't be otherwise interpreted.
Christianity is not argued by an arguable majority of scholars as a "coherentist" belief system but a foundationalist system. Foundationalist systems fail because at their bottom is an axiom they take to be true, which they have no reason to believe but which they are obliged to provide because the onus of proof falls on the statement maker in sentential-logic.
Children are not instinctively drawn to believe in the Christian God until they are told.
Children believing in "spiritualistic" phenomena from a young age have a variety of options to choose from.
Why would God be all-loving if the vast majority of all living things suffer, and the vast majority of humans suffering the worst fate imaginable for all of eternity?
Why is God all-present if he is separate from the universe?
Why is God all-powerful if he has to send prophets in illogical, unconvincing ways to spread his message and combat the devil, yet can't even reveal himself to us in any true way?
Why is God all-knowing if we have free-will to make independent choices?
If we don't have free will why are we held responsible for our actions?

>>21717726
Is the sensible world the physical world? If so then he thinks the physical world is the only thing that can be sensed, which is materialism. What is senseless existence? That is hardly existing at all.

>>21717789
Why would you enter a thread asking a basic question and then try to argue?

>>21716216
Yess you get it I am so happy

>>21715857
Naturalism is being one of those guys that believes in science for everything. They would reject anything not in the sensible world as a mental illusion. Science is extremely gay in my humble opinion as a scientist.

>>21717800
I like asking questions that I already know the answer to, so that I see if others know the answer and call them out as posers when they don't. Get the fuck out.

>>21717935
That seems like a really gay use of your own time

>>21717942
If they put up a fight they might show me I didn't know the answer. Arguing about philosophy is a waste of time? You really need to leave.

>>21717947
Are you reading the Enneads or are you just here to argue?

>>21717958
Yes

>>21715998
It's meant to make you realise you don't have to neccesarily live through certain experiences to live them, you live them all in your head in the end, how realistic does a dream feel when you dream? more than reality sometimes. So you can live everything, all within your own head, you don't have to be there. Remember, god's first mistake wasn't the woman, it was making this world solid. In the 4D dimension that is to come, we will get rid of density and move to the spiritual plane free of suffering

Bump

Plotinus on the age old question -- is there a form of a chair?
>In the intelligible world, then, are there products of the crafts and the crafts themselves? Actually, among the crafts, such as the mimetic ones - painting and sculpture, dance and mime - the construction of which, I suppose, is done here by the use of a sensible paradigm, that is, by imitating forms and motions, and transferring the symmetries that they see, one would not reasonably refer to the intelligible world, unless it were to the expressed principle of human being. But if human beings had some disposition for examining the symmetries of beings generally apart from those of individuals, it would also be a part of that ability to examine and to theorize the symmetry of everything in the intelligible world.

>Further, we could say the identical thing for the study of harmony and rhythm in the case of music generally, too, insofar as matters concerning rhythm and harmony have a conceptual basis, just as intelligible Number has as well. And so, too, those of the crafts that produce sensible objects, such as architecture and carpentry, to the extent that they make use of symmetries, would have their principles in the intelligible world and their thought processes there, too.

>But insofar as they are mixed with something sensible, they are not as a whole in the intelligible world, except within the human being. Indeed, there would not be farming, which contributes to the growth of the sensible plant, nor medicine, which considers health in the sensible world, nor the craft which is concerned with strength and good conditioning. For there is another power in the intelligible world and another health, according to which all living beings are undisturbed and have sufficient means.

>But as for rhetoric and strategy, economics, and the craft of kingship, if some of these share in that which is beautiful in their actions, and if they contemplate that, they have, by having this scientific understanding, a share of the scientific understanding that is in the intelligible world. Geometry, being concerned with intelligibles, should be classified as being in the intelligible world, as should theoretical wisdom, which at the highest is concerned with Being. And this is what needs to be said about the crafts and about things produced by them.

>>21719356
Quote the location this is written? Ennead#.tractate#.section#

>>21719895
5.9.11, from the Gerson edition.

>>21719904
Nice one lad.
>>21719356
So as I understand it there is two ways of looking at the Forms that Plotinus seems ambivalent about. A) everything sensible is the result of a combination of refined Forms (like principles, reason-principles) participating together forming matter into sense objects. Or B) every individual sensible thing has it's own Form which is a derivative of the more refined Forms mentioned in A. These Forms of individuals are less refined, more basic, less abstract, closer to Matter.
Agree, disagree, thoughts? Could these two propositions be reconcilable. I think possibly so.

So tractate 6 is 182 pages, which is fairly more than previous ones. Divided by 9, that is about 20 pages per day. I think I am going to read 20 pages a day and post my notes whenever I happen to pass a chapter. I'm behind 2 sections but I may be able to catch back up. What a ride its been.

>>21717924
Isn't that the same as materialism?

>>21720195
>Or B) every individual sensible thing has it's own Form which is a derivative of the more refined Forms mentioned in A.
In 5.9.14.8-19 he writes
>Regarding the question of things that arise from putrefaction and wild animals, and whether there is a Form of them in the intelligible world, and one of dirt and mud, it should be said that everything provided by Intellect from the outset is best. These things are not among these types. Nor can one infer from these things to Intellect; rather, to Soul, which comes from Intellect, and receives additional things from matter, these things among them. Regarding these, matters will be spoken of more clearly when we come back to the puzzle of how a plurality comes from one.

>We must say that composites occurring by chance and not by Intellect are sensible by coming together by themselves, and are not among Forms. The things that come to be by putrefaction are perhaps from a soul impotent to produce anything else; if it were, it would have produced one of the things that exists by nature. Nevertheless, it produces what it can.

So it seems that there are some things he considers to be products of soul and matter, with no Form in the Intellect? I guess it's due to things like decay only existing in the sensible world due to time, as the intelligible world, being eternal, wouldn't ever have a rotting thing in it. Like an inverse of how there's no farming in the intelligible world as it "contributes to the growth of the sensible plant".

>>21703872 5.7 Is there an Ideal Archetype of particular beings?

Is there a soul for Socrates and is that soul an eternal form? Or is there just a form of soul given to all, or are souls modified by the body and frame it is put into

Every soul contains all of the Reason-Principles that exist in the Cosmos
- Since the Cosmos has the Reason Principles of man and all individual living things, then the Soul does as well
- The Soul's content of Reason-Principles is limitless

There is a distinct Reason-Principle for an original Socrates
- (How do Souls change lives in reincarnation if they are purely original? Do they trade Reason-Principles?)

A distinct Reason Principle is the determinant for the offspring of two parents
- The Reason-principles of the parents mould the bodily substance of the child, depending on which principles are most dominant

Deformity is a power in Matter which thwarts nature by overmastering the perfect Reason Principles
- Differences in general, however, often result in beauty, so there must be a wide diversity of Reason-Principles or archetypes
- This infinitude of variety exists in every person (Sounds very transhumanist. However, Plotinus also seems to reprimand effeminate boys in 4.4, so sex ambiguity seems to be a matter of ethics for him rather than if it is possible or not)

If twins are precisely alike, there is one Reason-Principle which created both of them, or there are two which we can't differentiate
- Even if someone builds two clay pots that are identical, it is not in our power to perceive the difference

"As in Soul (principle of Life) so in Divine Mind (principle of Idea) there is this infinitude of recurring generative powers; the Beings there are unfailing"

>>21721550
5.8 On Intellectual Beauty

Much in this chapter has been covered in previous sections, such as "on Beauty" in particular.

..
The beauty that makes a sculpture is found not in the material but the artificer by his participation in art
- The original beauty in the maker is not ever fully transferred, everything that reaches outward is the less for it

However, the primal, immaterial, firmly unified Idea is not Beauty
- nor can Beauty depend on material extension

Beauty as an Idea is taken in as an elaboration upon "the presented form"; an "inner comeliness"; also identical with Being, which is the Intellectual-Principle; to become [the divine]/the seen and not the seer is to be most truly in beauty
- Since the IP (Zeus) is "too lofty (5.8.13)" to be called beauty so it is divine, but the divine is more purely beautiful than the primal Beauty (situated in "the second God" or All-Soul/Aphrodite). However, the beauty of the All-Soul is a double beauty, since it takes beauty from the IP and also has it's own inherent beauty
- Someone may become possessed by a god such as Apollo or one of the Muses and as such be divine
- The unbelieving element is sense, the Intellectual Principle sees (if the IP sees then why is what is seen Beauty?)
- sensations of ugliness and evil affect us more strongly, but provide less knowledge or explanation since it is not the natural thing which belongs to our being

The gods in Heaven are omnipresent to it
- "For all There is heaven; earth is heaven; and sea heaven; and animal and plant and man; all is the heavenly content of that heaven:"
- In our realm all is part moving to part, but There all beings are wholes/eternal products
- myth of Lynceus seeing into the earth explains divine sight

the Supreme is 'that knowledge which is not a stranger in something strange to it' (Plato)

In Heaven the ancients had [authentic existence] in mind when they equated Ideas/Forms as Beings/Essentials
- Ideas/Forms are perfectly actualized so they don't need methods of alteration or discovery through science to develop any further

"as it seems to me, the wise of Egypt...indicated the truth where they left aside writing forms/words/sentences--and drew pictures instead: thus they exhibited the absence of discursiveness in the Intellectual Realm"

7
Designing the universe "was not possible" since the One has never looked outward toward what was created
- all things already eternally existed in what is prior to them
- the aggregate of existence "springs" from the divine world
- only Being and Idea had a part in the simple process of creating everything


13
Whenever Plotinus talks about God creating things and using male pronouns to describe him I think he is referring to The One in it's colloquial/symbolic sense (Ouranos)
- "Kronos (IP) claims for himself his own father (Ouranos, the Absolute)"

>>21721556
5.9 The Intellectual-Principle, the Ideas, and the Authentic Existence

Lots of idealism in this section. I'm also beginning to take the word "Form" to mean "definition" as that one anon pointed out last thread
..
All human beings from birth live to the sense realm more than the intellectual
- the best order of people live in their native land of intellections, the "place of reality", who "hold firmly to that other world"
- only reachable by those who are born with the "nature of the lover" but are also "authentically philosophic by inherent temper" (this seems to contradict another position where he stated it was accessible to every temperament)
- guided first by the thought that perceived beauty is borrowed from Idea

souls in themselves aren't beautiful since some are ugly
- they become prettier through wisdom

Everything in our existence is compound of matter, soul, and idea

The IP is in one phase the Form/shape of Soul
- If the IP is the maker of All, it doesn't do so by looking outside itself, since it contains Being and the objects of itself
- in the immaterial, knowledge of the thing is that thing
- this is why Being = Idea

In Nature the power of generative Idea is the "seed-life"
- sense perception only opinionates upon the seed life, but these kernels contain the reason-principle variety/infinity

10
In the Int. Cosmos, every entity is an intellective essence/pure essence
- quality is never separated from essence because every being is actual

EVIL is caused by need, privation, and deficiency, and is related and like Matter

12
The Ideas which constitutes people (such as simian(monkey-like), aquiline(bird-like), reasoning-like or artsy/craftsy types) are determined by Reason-Principles, Matter, and diversity of place

All souls have some form of rightness and justice, which exist as those very original ideas of the Supreme
- however they exist in a mode peculiar to our sphere of existence

Compounds are not Ideas

>>21712260
Like many thinkers of his time, he was influenced by Indian philosophy. The Hindus and Buddhists understood that what gave man continuity over countless lifetimes was not his body, or even his mind, but his labour, his karma. The labour determines his future, not his class or the whims of God. If you want to understand Plotinus et al, you have to understand the Upanishads

>>21721490
Nice one. Thanks brother.
>So it seems that there are some things he considers to be products of soul and matter, with no Form in the Intellect?
From what I'm getting such things are the soul(s) attempting to manifest the Forms, but failing or not creating the best possible manifestation matter will allow. There the principle of matter has too much hold of either the soul or the particular magnitude in question.
What about things like motion? This can't be a form because motion doesn't apply to the Ideas right? So motion would be a category of action of the soul? I think I remember hearing something along these lines in 6.1 On the Kinds of Being.

>>21721550
Thanks for your summaries MacKennanon, they've been helpful.
>How do Souls change lives in reincarnation if they are purely original? Do they trade Reason-Principles?
Every soul contains all the reason-principles. (Are these are plural form of Logos, Logoi?) And soul is united in its upper sphere. It seems to me that particular portions of soul cycle around eternally through all the logoi. My guess is this is accomplished through the soul trying to emulate the Divine idea of Absolute Justice.
>so sex ambiguity seems to be a matter of ethics for him
Sexuality is surely at the service of reason for a Platonist. It provokes an interesting question. I'm reminded of this saying from the Pythagorean Carmen Aureum:
>Learn how to produce eternal children, not such as may supply the wants of the body in old age, but such as may nourish the soul with perpetual food. -Demophilus

>if the IP sees then why is what is seen Beauty?
Because it is seeing itself. It sees an aspect of itself. By the same power as that which sees, so is the seen made capable of sight. The Intellect sees Intellectuality. Mind sees mind. Its weird. The sort of thing that I guess could sound confusing but it's as basic as closing your eyes and imagining anything. You see with your mind as you imagine the image you are seeing through your mind with your mind.
>>21721564
>I'm also beginning to take the word "Form" to mean "definition" as that one anon pointed out last thread
Fair. How about "concept"? The Idea of a car/ the concept of a car.
>guided first by the thought that perceived beauty is borrowed from Idea
This is a crucial lesson I think. A great way of not getting mentally trapped in the mundane. I think it's worth treating like a mantra. Certainly a vital mental tool.

>The IP is in one phase the Form/shape of Soul
>- If the IP is the maker of All, it doesn't do so by looking outside itself, since it contains Being and the objects of itself
>- in the immaterial, knowledge of the thing is that thing
>- this is why Being = Idea
Good summary here.

>>21721569
> his labour, his karma
There are more forms of yoga than just Karma bro. Platonism would be jhana-yoga imo, union through knowledge (or lack of ignorance perhaps more accurately).

Is the best course for the soul a balance of contemplation and action or exclusive contemplation? The Soul's natural roll seems to be some level of both, but how would one go about determining the right level for one's self?

>>21722798
Its same as for Soul, action and idea grow together, but if you ever master both plotinus thinks you'll become a sage that will ultimately stick to contemplating

bump

Was listening to Timaeus earlier. There Plato uses the term necessity in place of where Plotinus would use matter. I thought that was an interesting nuance to the notion of the lowest form of being. Can the axis of actuality and potentiality also be applied to the dynamic of Form/Matter? Such that we would have on the ideal side: Form, Idea, Actuality, Being, Reason (Potency?)- and on the other, Matter, Necessity, Potentiality, non-being. But isn't the grouping of Necessity and Potentiality incongruous?

>>21723377
This is why I haven't read Jung any further than I did several years ago. I feel like I don't have enough of a connection to my interpersonal relationships/workplace/physical hobbies to make sense of the material without losing it.

>>21725840
What's the appeal of Jung? From what I can see hes just a trashy modern synthesist passing of his own misunderstandings of ancient insights as his "work".

>>21722307
No problem, thanks for answering some of my questions also.
>it is seeing itself
That makes sense. Kind of similar to the equating of Being to Idea, and why Plotinus likens a purer sense of Beauty in some way to it also.

4.4 notes are written. I put this off for a while but I will just add it now for the sake of completeness.

>>21643476 4.4 Problems of the Soul (II)

No memory remains in souls when they return to the intellectual realm

3 Soul leaves the union with the IP out of love for it's powers and possessions, and so wants a memory of itself
- Possession without consciousness or memory of the possessed is often stronger (unconscious possession of belief "runs very close to identity")

8 The force of the star souls' tendency to unity and the light cast from themselves are like strumming the notes of a lyre (This analogy was heavily used by I think Pythagoreans)

10 Usage of "demiurge" as an appellation from Zeus
- nothing to do with notions of stage or progress, but rather unchanging/timeless life

12 Wisdom is a state of repose, not apparent by acts of reasoning and memory
- the person possessing wisdom doesn't need to reason since they are wise (Very different take than Aristotle, who likens habit to having goodness)

The "leading principle of the universe" is omniscient

13 The difference between Wisdom thus conducting the universe and Nature
- first versus last
- Nature is an image and the last in the Soul
- Nature operates towards Matter and receives from it; Soul also operates toward matter but without receiving in turn

14 If time is a thing of division and comports a past, how is the activity producing it (eternity) not also of division?
- The realm created by the All-Soul is always in time
- Souls are not in time, but some of their experiences and productions are, since Souls are eternal
- What is in Time is lower than Time itself; "Time is folded around what is in time exactly as place and number fold around what is in place and number (location, situation/quantity)"

17 Variations in judgment do not affect our highest moral
- analogy of the ineffectual advisor of good counsel speaking who often fails to dominate over the "brawlers and roarers"

(on political organizations) Life is aristocratic in the supreme type of living since ruler is one only (Hyper Statist); A municipality is in two sections, the "superior city" and "the city of the lower elements"
- in the mid-type a better class of citizens keep the rest in a demotic check
- in the anarchic-type humans are a compost

18
Does the body have force of it's own?
- The body holds some shadow of soul
- everything in existence is a composite

19 pleasure/pain
- pain is our perception of a body despoiled and deprived of the image of the Soul
- pleasure "our perception of the living frame in which the image of the Soul is brought back to harmonious bodily operation

>>21726799
20 bodily desires are also attributed to the compound corporeal nature (everything in our existence?)
- body desires its own motion in a fore-desiring with impulses

22 Vegetal forms of the Soul
- The earth contains desire by virtue of having a soul (Plato thought only the earth possessed a soul primarily)
- earth's soul is vegetal since there is vegetation on it
- It has also an IP since earth is a God
- If something is ensouled, it has perception and sensation (earth/stars can perceive and sense?)
- (Plotinus shies away from this position near the end as unaccepted/would require examining certain difficulties, which he comes back to in 25/28, then again rebukes in 42)

23 The Soul does not know sensible objects on it's own or in isolation
- "there is something more than the outlying thing and the Soul" (bodily organs)
- Soul without body can't sense things

25 The sun and other heavenly bodies can see and hear things, and have memory (otherwise, why would anyone pray to them?)

26
In the art of magic, enlinking is the sympathy of enchained forces which inform heavenly bodies of our prayers

There is nothing against the idea that sensation exists in the earth for the sake of furthering human interests (Demeter as Earth-Soul, Hestia as Earth-Mind)
- smell and taste
- (heavenly bodies made aware by human's mental projections?)

28 Location of pleasure and pain in the human body
- the liver is the starting point of desire
- blood/bile is the starting point of anger; anger also has two phases, it's imaging of reason and one in emotion; trees have a vegetal principle but don't get angry because they don't have blood or bile
- (maybe traces or similar to Asiatic philosophy like Qigong where they talk about making your organs vibrate)

29 When Soul leaves body, there is still life force indwelling for a brief moment

30 The stars may have perceptions, and can be helpers for evil as well as good
- the Heavenly circuit is a cause
- the stars don't engage themselves in human affairs to such an extent that they are responsible for people's fates (astrology)
- such as "debased effeminates practicing and lending themselves to disgusting actions...it is beneath the level of any existing being where there is not the least personal advantage to be gained"

34 The entire human will is not bound completely to the body of the All
- Idea retains something independently in us

>>21726805
38 The range of production from the All/specific agencies like prayer/magic incantation are not to refer to some one heavenly body

39 We cannot refer all that exists to Reason-Principles inherent in the seed of things (the All)
The seeds can't contain Matter which is independent of them
- Intentions are not to be considered as operative causes but the inevitable relation of parts
- individuals make a large contribution
- every communication good in itself takes additional qualities in resulting combinations
- Life in the Cosmos looks to the whole rather than the individual
- Matter underlies all, and is unable to make the best of what it is given
- (is this a Realism chapter? Is Matter/individual free will not included in the One?)

40 Magic spells
- Magic is internal to the All
- One use of magic (patterns of power) is to make love spells (makes two people fall in love)
- Mages can "stand outside the All"

The tune and mien of a magician's spell affects reasonless souls more strongly
- beguilement by music
- "the powers that answer to incantations do not act by will....the sun or star perceives nothing of it all"
- "ascribing acts of memory and experiences of sense"

42 It follows that "the stars have no need of memory or of any sense of petitions to them"
- (It seems he changed his mind about his statements in 25-28)

43 The Proficient is immune to all magic and philtre-spells (reminds me of a vidya RPG)
- his unreasoning element can be affected, but philtre-love (love spells) require consent from the higher Idea so he is immune to them completely
- he also has counter-incantations he can use to combat them
- Everything that looks to another is under a spell to it; only self-intent is free of spellcraft

Celestials/Daimones can also use magic/be affected by it

44 There is no magic involved when actions recognized as good are done upon necessity only, and with the veritable good being elsewhere in mind
- if the agent falls in love with the actions done, he is a victim of magic (the Sorcery of Nature)

45 The punishment of evil is like medicine for disease for the sake of the health of the All
- if someone is sick, the nature of the all is to take them to where they will no longer be weak

>categories commentary
These are always peak autism

>>21726846
I see why Porphyry but them towards the end though. They get the foundation layed for them and then act as an exercise for the application of the understanding of the foundation established beforehand.
In the Penguin edition On the Kinds of Being isn't included and the editor claims its because the excluded tractates have been covered elsewhere, but he doesn't say where. My first guess would be Aristotle?

>>21727405
It all has but it's Plotinus consciously arguing with Peripatetics and Stoics, like if 2.9 was against his Stoic and Peripatetic friends. He's so confident in his argument that he even makes a joke about owning stoic arguments at the end.

>>21727428
>He's so confident in his argument that he even makes a joke about owning stoic arguments at the end.
Haha. In the third tractate of VI? What's the joke? He's appropriately dismissive imo. Especially when he deals with Epicureans. I can see why: because some of the implications of stoic and Aristotelian arguments are pretty absurd. Souls being mortal or Forms being material just doesn't make sense as I see it. That said, he does incorporate some Peripateticism and Stoicism.
Anyway, do you know if this stuff is covered in the Tot's Categories?

>>21727471
6.1.28.
>Given that much has already been said against their hypothesis, let us pause here, lest we ourselves appear absurd in gloating over a victory against such an evident absurdity, having show that they rank non-being as what is being most of all, that is, putting the last first.
Yeah, he's directly going through the 10 categories Aristotle proposes and reducing them. In 6.2 he's going through The Sophist and then going through his genera in 6.3.
>http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/categories.1.1.html

>>21727504
Thanks king. Have a blessed day.

>>21726846
I've been reading Tom Taylors' notes on his translation of Categories--mostly stolen from Simplicius, Archytas, etc. But holy smokes does he go overboard.
It should be obvious that Categories is a logical work about simple terms and predicaments--not natural things or metaphysics. But no one seems to want to treat it that way.

Bump

>>21727735
I misunderstood, he's doing the genera of Being and then the genera of becoming, I think.

>>21728407
>It should be obvious that Categories is a logical work about simple terms and predicaments--not natural things or metaphysics. But no one seems to want to treat it that way.
Kinda sounds like nominalism though. Which is, as per Gerson at least >>21715129, is not a Platonist position.

An interesting summarising discussion of various scholarly takes on Plotinus inquiry into the categories: https://www.ontology.co/categories-plotinus.htm#:~:text=Following%20in%20the%20footsteps%20of,%22%20of%20the%20'Sophist'.

>>21726811
6.1 On the Kinds of Beings: First Treatise

Divergence of views about what genera are
- are they first principles?
- generic classification of the Existents?
- 10 divisions of the Existents? (Avicenna has a version of 10 categories of existents, but this one is from the Stoics. They are: God(Allah),Intellect,Soul,Nature,Matter,Time,Space,Power,Action,Object. The Stoics have Substance,Quality,Quantity, Relation,Place,Time,Position,State,Action,Affection)

4 On Quantity
- Quantity as related to number, magnitude, space, time, motion(measure of time)
- some magnitudes are not quantities (line and surface)
- 3 oxen = not a quantity; 3 (in relation to the oxen) = quantity

Are numbers alone constitutive of quantity?
- number is a substance since they exist independently
- number is in the category of quantity primarily

Are magnitudes quantities?
- only in a secondary degree

5 Speech/time/motion as quantities

Speech is an action upon a substrate (air)

Time is a quantity, but only if it is applied by Measure. Otherwise Time is applied by a different nature like Soul
- things are not quantities just by participating with quantity

6 Relation
- nothing emerges from the relation or equality of like to like; relation's/equality's entire content is the quality shared between two objects
- shared quality presupposes an existent, quantitative identity

If Relation does not mean anything outside quantity/quality then we are victims of words

9 Sensation/Habit/Measurement

10 Quality is the source of what we call a "quale" (plural form of qualia)
- qualia refers specifically to subjective aspects of conscious experience, qualities can also be objective
- Being 'qua' (insofar as it is) Being has no power of activity until Quality is added to it
- Boxing is not a power of man qua man, but reasoning is

Quality is a power which adds the property of being qualia to substances already existing

Not all qualities can be Reason-Principles

Why is knowledge gained by natural ability distinguished from learning if both are the same?
- as qualities, they are the same (the quality of someone's education?)
- what is different(the source) is outside quality

>>21731850
13 Date
under the genus of time

14 Location
category differentiating itself by minuter delimitation
- above, below, here, middle

Delphi is the middle of the earth

15 the category of Action
- is action, the agent performing the action, or the activity of the action the category of Action?

16
Separation of Act from Motion because Act is timeless
- Motion is thoroughly in time and quantitative

17
Act and Motion is more than mere reference to external standard

Duality of Action and Passivity (so-called; Plotinus argues against this idea that act and passion are dualistic from section 18-22)

23 Possession (category)
- differently conceived when something is possessed by an inanimate

24 Situation
- reclining, sitting, being in a place, lying down, lying midway, lying up
- position is added from outside this genus

25 Argument against the four categories division into Substrates/Qualities/States/Relative States (and that Matter is the basic source of all the other things)
- It's a paradox that bodies and the universe have less existence than Matter
- How can Intellect be trusted to talk about Matter if it is an inferior version of Matter?

30 State is the category of Possession and Situation
- Action can't be a State
- State can neither hold Qualities or Quantities or Matter

>>21726846
Yeah pretty much. One time I saw a page or two dedicated to their own made up logic system like "A = B + C if (predicate) (noun) (adverbs) BC*A = A + B(T) <= BA + A (fig. 3) ct = √-1. 3.1^41". I don't remember what I was reading but it may have been Gurdjieff.

>>21728407
He translated chapters from 6? My copy only has i think 6.9.

>>21726135
>>21731997
Most popular esoteric writers like blavatsky/mathers/jung were geniuses fluent in 8+ languages. Their hubris in thinking they alone could distill centuries of thought created by old societies is a modernist tragedy which ended up as a ton of disorganized insights. Im beginning to think it was largely a lack in the institutions and other support needed for a social mass dedicated to scholarship.

>>21732484
Well said, but,
>Im beginning to think it was largely a lack in the institutions and other support needed for a social mass dedicated to scholarship.
I don't follow you hear. What do you mean?

Is Plotinus just accepting Aristotle's biology and physics in 6.3.10?

>>21730928
If you try to use Categories as a metaphysical system you end up with moderate realism which is just a step away from nominalism. For the Categories "everything" depends on the sensible individual essence as a subject.

>>21732747
He would have preferred that there were several people, an institution, working together, instead of lone wizards (From what I understood)

>>21730928
>>21733791
universals like "species" or "genus" cannot exist without the primary substances (the sensible individual subject) according to Chapter 5 of Categories. This is the opposite of Platonic (and might I say Peripatetic) metaphysic which places the universal principle as ontologically superior to the individual--the eidos and morphe which the sensibles participate. Which is why the Platonists after Plotinus are led to believe that the work is about simple signifying terms in so far as they are significant of something so as to bring greater harmony between Aristotle and Plato.

>>21733841
the solution to the problem of universals is that we affirm both the transcendental quality of eidos and the immanent quality of morphe.
Porphyry gives hint to this in the beginning of Isagoge on his definition of genus. The members of genus stem from a singular principle, a monad. This monad is the unparticipated and transcendent originator of the transverse series of participated substances.

>>21732468
sorry i wasn't talking about Plotinus' commentary. Just the footnotes T. Taylor put on his own edition of Aristotle's Commentary.

>>21717625
You can't even construct sentences properly you retard

Bump (sensible motion)

>>21733792
Righto. The problem is see is that these modernists didn't place themselves with any tradition. They just synthesised willy nilly. Not that I'm against synthesising per se, Plotinus does it a bit, but you need to acknowledge the ground on which you stand and continue to push an envelope forward. There's nothing new under the sun and for these modernists to think they were producing insights ex nihilo is absurdly dumb and hubrisitc.

>>21733860
This is the post. Well said.

>>21731872
6.2 On the Kinds of Being: Second Treatise

Plotinus' own views about genera and how they agree with Plato

Whether genus is a first principle, if it is a unity, the number of genera there are, what is meant by the Existent

Genera can be principles/species of Being

4 in body, there are three distinguishable characteristics: pseudo-substance, quantity, and quality
- motion also if it is "equally inherent in its constitution"
- body as a coming-to-be

Soul is an essence, holding from no source external to its own essence
- similar to Being. If it's individuality makes Soul depend upon something outside it (that which determines it's individuality), then something external to Soul is determining it's essence(or part of it)

7 observable entities in this plurality(sensible existence)
- Substance(Essence) simultaneously present in Soul
- Motion(with energy, the Act of Being(this changes in 15. Motion is the Act of Substance))
- Stability

Five genera in the Becoming realm
- Being, Motion, Stability, Identity, Difference (Being is omitted in 15 and is then rather the primary of the other four)

Being is a unity in relation to All-Soul but plural when outward toward sensibles

11
Unity is not a genus, though in some way it is contained in Being
- something can have unity in terms of more or less (but not being) such as a choir
- Unity is identical with Goodness

13 Why Quantity/Quality are not among primary genera

Primaries are permanently associated with Being
- Quantity/Quality are posterior

17-19 Why beauty/goodness/virtues/knowledge/intelligence aren't primary genera

20 the particular intellects exist potentially in the self-existent universal Intellect
- the universal Intellect, as a genus of the particulars, is the potentiality of the subordinate intellects(which also are not actualized but latent in it)
- the particulars are actualized by Acts in the universal

>>21712260
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

>>21733792
Yeah I think the political apparatus was too materialist at that point and what was dug up from ancient Syria etc. was too exotic for us. We can see this with how the CIA treated hippies. Jung tried harder than most to make science out of it and something that would last after he died. Also he is definitely outclassing something like the kybalion or any new age religious shit like Thelema

So, I think I'm gonna have to go back and study the Kinds of Being tractates again in detail, but for now, because of the schedule, is this correct?
>Kinds of Being: 1) Intellectual: A) Being, B) Motion, C) Rest, D) Identity. E) Differentiation. 2) Sensual: A) Matter, B) Form, C) Composite, D) Relation, E) Quantity, F) Quality, G) Motion.

I think that's what I remember but I don't get how there can be motion in the Intellectual Realm?