/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16319873]

Which modern philosopher(s) most returned to a pre-Christian way of thinking and being? Spinoza? Nietzsche? Heidegger?

I'm still on the Greeks and intend to completely skip the Christians so I'd like to hear what /lit/ thinks about the modern philosophers in this regard.

[Anonymous No.16319952]

Aquinas, by incorporating Aristotle, effectively incorporated a pre-Christian (but not inconsistent with Christianity) "way of thinking" into his philosophical system.

I don't know of any serious modern philosophers of whom the same could be said.

See generally Copleston, and Gilson, for a quick rundown.

[Anonymous No.16319974]

>>16319952
I think I made it pretty clear, no Christians. Thanks though.

[Anonymous No.16319987]

>>16319974
Jung, maybe, though he's not strictly speaking a philosopher.

[Anonymous No.16320058]

>>16319873
impossible. there is no such thing as “return” it is all iterative. why would you want to skip the christians anyways unless you want to intentionally skew your perception of intellectual development?

and its not like it was a hard break either, it was more of a spectral shift that carried over some elements and incorporated others.

[Anonymous No.16320065]

>>16319873
>I'm still on the Greeks and intend to completely skip the Christians so I'd like to hear what /lit/ thinks about the modern philosophers in this regard.
You're ridiculously foolish if you're going to skip all of the most important developments since the Greeks.

[Anonymous No.16320075]

Shelling, Schopenhauer, William James, Heidegger + Deleuze, Blumenberg, Derrida.

[Anonymous No.16320081]

>>16320065
>developments
Citation needed.

[Anonymous No.16320124]

>>16320075
all those are explicitly post christian tho

>>16320081
augustine, scholastics, occum, Aquinus, Jesuits, Machiavelli, Bacon, Calvin, Montaigne, Spinoza Leibniz, Hobbes, Locke, etc. All are inextricably influenced by christian dynamic.

>>16319873
maybe read platinus for an even more hellinised equilivent then.

[Anonymous No.16320138]

>>16319873
>>16319974
>>16320081
just give up philosophy, it is clearly not for you

[Anonymous No.16320148]

>>16320124
All I see are names, show some great idea from them that is original. I can discard half of the names automatically, then question the Christian element in the others, like Spinoza who merely regurgitates Stoic metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.16320156]

>>16320075
Thanks, I'll check them out. Care to explain a bit further on why you recommended these in particular?
>>16320138
>y-you have to study the Christians too!
No.

[Anonymous No.16320163]

>>16320124
>all those are explicitly post christian tho
So? Obviously modern philosopher will have to address Christianity or show influence, the questi in OP was EPISTROPHE, return to truth.

[Anonymous No.16320181]

>>16320156
if you think i solely referred to reading the christians then not even if you had the will to intellectual pursuit you would achieve something, go watch youtube

[Anonymous No.16320198]

>>16320156
Platonism, or specifically "Neoplatonism", Derrida for example realized later on that all ideas of philosophy of the past 600 years were already discovered/discussed or prefigured by the Neoplatonists.
Schopenhauer is nothing but reformulated Platonist metaphysics, minus the excessive pessimism.
Blumenberg rediscovered the might of mythopoetics, the Hellenes were masters of sumbolism, he finally broke with rationalism. As Plato so long ago understood, reason (dianoetics) can't get you farther than the edge of Being. But God in his highest form is beyond logic and gnosis. To reach beyond you must embrace paradox and night.

[Anonymous No.16320219]

>>16320148
>show some great idea from them that is original
like most ideas are not iterative anyways.
For example you gave me stoic metaphysics, which really isnt much different to Aristotelian. if we want to boil it real down most things are an interpretation of either Plato or Aristotle. but even then, i can name a few
>Bacon’s forwarding of a more emperical methodology of analysis as aposses to the classical aristotilian model,
>Montaignes questioning of social order that is not simply the arbitrarity of all things in a cynic lense, leading to revolutionary thoughts and actual social reorganisation latter on instead of simply resignation from society.
>Descartes reconceptualization of basic thought from the platonic model of forms to one of perception and the contemplation of the eye, probably the biggest philosophical reorientation since plato and aristotle


I can name more if you would like.

[Anonymous No.16320316]

>>16320181
nerd
>>16320198
Thanks friend. I'll check out the book you posted later. Been thinking of getting into pic related now since I've seen it been recommended on /lit/ quite a lot lately. Or should I start with something else? It seem to be a rather large series on Neoplatonism by different authors, are they all good or should I avoid any of them?

[Anonymous No.16320335]

It is not possible for a western writer to return to pre-Christian thinking. You have to read Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, etc. philosophers from the east.

[Anonymous No.16320350]

>>16320335
this too
>>16320316
... you know i recommend plotinus right? like one of the preeminent figures of neo-platonism?

still i think its a bit petty to skip over 1500 years of development. even if you cut out the dark ages, thats still like 700 years of stuff. because tbf, you really only need plato and aristotle if we want to get to brass tax for most things and jump to the 1800’s. everything after in the classical world really didn’t develop much.

[Anonymous No.16320399]

>>16320219
>Montaigne
>Christian
>descartes
>original
You mention plotinus and then say Descartes offers something new?

[Anonymous No.16320410]

Suggested reading: Santayana's five volume "The Life of Reason". He draws heavily on the Pre-Socratics. Easily the most beautifully written philosophy work of all time.

[Anonymous No.16320471]

>>16320399
>>16320219
The Eye is a central aspect of greco-egyptian philosophy and myth. The Flower of Intellect, Apollo as the sun as Zeus all seeing Eye. Platonism is almost nothing but sight focused in their language, which is related to mythopoetics and symbol. Additionally they long ago advanced beyond Subject Object distinction that Descartes', if anything, backwards thinking brought with him.
The book here advances that both Augustine and the "Muslim" Neoplatonist got this proto-cogito from Porphyry and Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.16320486]

>>16320081
Ughh I dunno maybe Leibniz, Wolff, Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer?-- to say only a few.

[Anonymous No.16320505]

>>16320399
>Montaigne
>Christian
i said
> All are inextricably influenced by christian dynamic.
yes montaigne worked within a christian paradigm
>descartes
>original
yes. probably the most influential figure after aristotle and plato. still created the rationalist empericist divide that would be a major trend up to the 1800’s and how to synthesis the two afterwards. its not that others did not talk about the self, in fact, both plato and aristotle did, Plotinus only restated it. Descartes brought it to an epistemological fundement that sparked more intensive study into the subject.
> You mention plotinus and then say Descartes offers something new?
yes. what does Plotinus say that is not mentioned by plato?

[Anonymous No.16320522]

>>16319873
>It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a nation of men's. By religion I do not mean here the church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith which he will sign and, in words or otherwise, assert; not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. We see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any of them. This is not what I call religion, this profession and assertion; which is often only a profession and assertion from the outworks of the man, from the mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as that. But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion: the manner it is in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, What religion they had? Was it Heathenism,—plurality of gods, mere sensuous representation of this Mystery of Life, and for chief recognized element therein Physical Force? Was it Christianism; faith in an Invisible, not as real only, but as the only reality; Time, through every meanest moment of it, resting on Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of Holiness? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty and inquiry whether there was an Unseen World, any Mystery of Life except a mad one;—doubt as to all this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denial? Answering of this question is giving us the soul of the history of the man or nation. The thoughts they had were the parents of the actions they did; their feelings were parents of their thoughts: it was the unseen and spiritual in them that determined the outward and actual;—their religion, as I say, was the great fact about them. In these Discourses, limited as we are, it will be good to direct our survey chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. That once known well, all is known.

[Anonymous No.16320529]

>>16320522
>The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan Mythologies, we found to be recognition of the divineness of Nature; sincere communion of man with the mysterious invisible Powers visibly seen at work in the world round him. This, I should say, is more sincerely done in the Scandinavian than in any Mythology I know. Sincerity is the great characteristic of it. Superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for the total want of old Grecian grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that these old Northmen wore looking into Nature with open eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, unfearing way. A right valiant, true old race of men. Such recognition of Nature one finds to be the chief element of Paganism; recognition of Man, and his Moral Duty, though this too is not wanting, comes to be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. Here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious development of Mankind. Man first puts himself in relation with Nature and her Powers, wonders and worships over those; not till a later epoch does he discern that all Power is Moral, that the grand point is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of Thou shalt and Thou shalt not.

[Anonymous No.16320532]

>>16320505
>>16320471

[Anonymous No.16320534]

>>16319873
>skip the christians
Thanks OP I might do the same honestly now that I mull over it. I dont think its good to skip everything but read some of the christians that actually had something to say that was interesting and move on because at this point Im led to believe Im not missing much by reading things like City of God

[Anonymous No.16320544]

>>16319873
>arbitrarily skip important streams of thought in man's intellectual history
why?

[Anonymous No.16320550]

>>16319974
Filtered.

[Anonymous No.16320593]

>>16320316
why would you read that book? there is a section on aquinas, will you skip it?

[Anonymous No.16320603]

>>16320350
>dark ages
the absolute state of this board, holy shit no wonder the quality has been so low

[Anonymous No.16320618]

>>16320505
Christianity works within Platonism, all these great ideas are extracts from Hellenism, they are only working through Christianity as much as all its value is taken from the Hellenes.
This is most of al true of Aquinas, who says nothing new at all.
>Except where they are wrong.
They were only found revolutionary because the late ancients had been forgotten. Ironically Aquinas thought many works were from Aristotle that were actually from Proclus, they like you didn't even know that their major influences were the Neoplatonists.

>How, then, can you see the kind of beauty that a good soul has? Go back into yourself and look. If you do not yet see yourself as beautiful, then be like a sculptor who, making a statue that is supposed to be beautiful, removes a part here and polishes a part there so that he makes the latter smooth and the former just right until he has given the statue a beautiful face. In the same way, you should remove superfluities and straighten things that are crooked, work on the things that are dark, making them bright, and not stop ‘working on your statue’63 until the divine splendour of virtue shines in you, until you see ‘Self-Control enthroned on the holy seat’.
>If you have become this and have seen it and find yourself in a purified state, you have no impediment to becoming one in this way nor do you have something else mixed in with yourself, but you are entirely yourself, true light alone, neither measured by magnitude nor reduced by a circumscribing shape nor expanded indefinitely in magnitude but being unmeasured everywhere, as something greater than every measure and better than every quantity. If you see that you have become this, at that moment you have become sight, and you can be confident about yourself, and you have at this moment ascended here, no longer in need of someone to show you. Just open your eyes and see, for this alone is the eye that sees the great beauty.

[Anonymous No.16320619]

>>16319873
>skipping Christians but not jews

never going to make it

[Anonymous No.16320628]

>>16320316
that series pretty much covers everything, with the correct eye on the Ancients as focus, but they are at the top of difficulty.

[Anonymous No.16320663]

>>16320618
Platonism offers nothing new. Plato was not original, he made this clear and Plotinus confirmed this. Stop being a retard and at least get acquainted to what you study. This is the level of people who cannot conceive a single thought without attacking christianity, you people are sick beyond any repair.

[Anonymous No.16320685]

>>16320534>>16319873

Anything after presocratics is just intellectuals larping more and more as truth tellers in monasteries and university, to get a comfy pay, with the pinnacle being the academics in secular democracy.

If you want to skip the christians, jews and muslims, you have to go back to presocratics
-hindus, muh rituals mu sacrifices, then muh nonduality after seething at buddhists and jains from dwindling market share
-china, muh rituals muh sacrifices
-buddhists, muh dukkha, muh craving
-jains, muh non-violence
-africans, muh rituals muh sacrifices
-north europeans, muh rituals muh sacrifices
-south and north americans, muh rituals muh sacrifices
-desert people,muh rituals mu sacrifices

so yeah, besides jains, buddhists and presocratics, there is nothing outside spooky rituals.

[Anonymous No.16320691]

>>16319952
Pre-Christian would be Homer and early Hellenism, which did not praise Good over Evil, or an individual over a collective.

[Anonymous No.16320698]

>>16320663
The arguments are original (or rather re-discovered, but we can't know that since we only have the myths , like they Stoics they established all the arguments that scholastics (poorly) used. A difference here is that the Hellenic philosophers are the oldest extant texts with these transcendental ideas.
And thanks for affirming the ancient platonic tradition (a thing is not its name) that extends beyond Abraham, even older than Noah going by your retarded chronology.

[Anonymous No.16320716]

Is this even a fucking question?

[Anonymous No.16320724]

>>16320075
>Shelling, Schopenhauer, William James, Heidegger
Correct.
>+ Deleuze, Blumenberg, Derrida.
Train wreck. Why anon?

[Anonymous No.16320739]

>>16320724

>Schelling

No, his work is informed to much by christian and especially the mystical side , especially Boehme

>Schopenhauer

Short of , the first atheist , but still christian in his ethics.

>William James

?

>Heidegger

Close but he is informed to much by christian theology , he started philosophy by doing his dissertation on Scotus. Also only a god can save us? Some of his late writings are free of christian presuppositions as he tries to get to the root of ontotheology, but that is only because Christianity evolved philosophy into what it is today.

[Anonymous No.16320742]

>>16320685
>>16320685
>larping more and more as truth tellers in monasteries and university
Well fucking put. I’ll give some a shot because I know my curiosity will give in but this is why Ill just read from people that arent just intellectual from university #502 because most writers from those institutions write the most vapid boring shit and those who werent in academia or led interesting lives out of it actually contribute. Ill take your word on the presocratics being just spooky rituals but I have a feeling even those will be more thought provoking than a majority of what we have

[Anonymous No.16320765]

>>16320724
>train wreck. Why anon?
Damascius.
Also I didn't apply they all agreed, Deleuze is a continuation of Heidegger, these three are maniacs of the Indefinite Dyad. The Triptych Abyss. You can add Nietszche to these madmen (said in a good way). We Platonists can wield them as tools in one hand, as we wield Providence and Form in the other.

Are there three fathers or one? There are three, but they are above every triad. And therefore they are beyond the one that, relative to these natures, we divide as one related to two or to three. (III 143) Power, therefore, is neither one nor three, and the same is true for the intellects, in accordance with the Unified, since neither the one nor the two nor the three is distinct in the Unified, but the things there are, as it were, beyond any differentiation, and thus they are beyond what is the most reverend of all, and this is the differentiation between the one, the two, and the three. If that nature is truly this way, nevertheless for the sake of clarity and symmetry for human beings we trace back to it the most sacred properties that either proceed from or after that nature, as the one, the many, the Unifi ed, the good, the cause of all things, the limit, the unlimited, the mixed, and everything else with this kind of existence, and especially the perfection and completion of that which subsists as distinct, all of which the triad and the procession of the triad contain. But all these subsist only in the hypostasis after the intelligible, although they are [present] as a trace or causality, or analogy in the Unified itself. And again, [in the many] they are in a pre-trace or pre-causality or pre-analogy, which is from the Unified into the many insofar as the many are many, as if someone could see in the multiplicity that is before all number some unarticulated or rather some undifferentiated pre-hypostasis of numbers, as if it were the pre-hypostasis of forms in formless matter. And as a third step upward from chaos as one ascends from the many, one will intuit that they have been anticipated in the aether of the simplicity that belongs to all things, to the extent that the chaotic infinity is present in the simplicity and belongs to it, as well as the undifferentiated coagulation of all things that belongs to the Unified.

[Anonymous No.16320794]

>>16320716
Bro if your entire philosophy is based on “arghhhhhhh i hate christians!!!!” Then your obviously not returning to pre christian thought, your react directly to it.
If you want a prechristian thinker just read book written before 0. Everyone else was influneced because platonism and christianity became very close so all philosophy uas some of that influence.
But your probably just some edgelord who doesn’t realize how pathetic and foolish the premise of his question was

[Anonymous No.16320808]

>>16320716
He's Post-Christian, not Pre-Christian.

[Anonymous No.16320832]

A true return is impossible considering that would still be a 'return from'. The relation with Christianity, either positive or negative, will always be there.

[Anonymous No.16320839]

>>16320739
Heidegger had a Catholic burial and spoke extensively with his priest in the years before his death.

[Anonymous No.16320846]

>>16319873
>getting triggered this hard by Christianity.
Americans should just nuke themselves to oblivion

[Anonymous No.16320858]

>>16320698
The arguments are not original but the form in which they are put is - rationalism starts with them.

>Stoics they established all the arguments that scholastics (poorly) used.
All? Do you need to be dishonest to this point? Can we say the post-Plato platonists did nothing but employ stoic and aristotelian ideas and schema in the development of platonic ideas?

>the Hellenic philosophers are the oldest extant texts with these transcendental ideas.
I hope there is an ambiguity in this statement I cannot perceive. I will give you the benefit of doubt and ask you to explain what you mean by this.

>And thanks for affirming the ancient platonic tradition (a thing is not its name) that extends beyond Abraham
Ur-platonism (egyptian theopoesis) can go back to 10.000 BC. We can call that ur-platonism if it makes you happy since most platonic (orphic, pythagorean) ideas are found in them. Sad that their (platonism) symbolique is nothing compared to real religions.

[Anonymous No.16320903]

>>16320858
like the Stoics they*, they aka the Platonists (which includes the aristotelians) I'd even call the stoics bad platonists, like the Scholastics.

[Anonymous No.16320945]

>>16320903
none of these, stoics and scholastics, had the pretension to continue platonic thought, they were much more inclined to aristotelianism than platonism. christianity is not limited to scholasticism though and I as a christian don't care much about them, there is another much richer side.

[Anonymous No.16321043]

>>16320945
>they were much more inclined to aristotelianism than platonism
this is a myth, as I said with Aquinas, the texts that actually gave them their biggest ideas came from neoplatonic works THOUGHT to be by Aristotle because the arabic neoplatonists edited them and pseudographically pinned them under Aristotle. Such as 'Liber de Causis' which Aquinas late in life realized was from Proclus, long after he had finished his Summa or other main works. Or 'The Theology of Aristotle' which is a collection of Neoplatonic texts, this also proves the reality of the Dark Ages in the Latin west, they had lost all these works, they didn't even have much of Plato. To give something to Aquinas he began the rediscovery of them.
Nor were Aristotle and Plato in any significant disagreement, as Gerson has proved. Aristotelianism is a form of Platonism.

[Anonymous No.16321301]

>>16321043
Yes we know Aquinas cited Dionysius a lot, but we can't deny Aristotle is the central pillar in his theology. Aristotelianism didn't come out of nowhere, it is not a total deviation from its source: platonism. But it is still not platonism.

>this also proves the reality of the Dark Ages in the Latin west, they had lost all these works, they didn't even have much of Plato.
Then explain me this: how did the early and high middle ages produced and developed platonic ideas more than the renaissace, when supposedly the writings of plato came to the hands of the italian intellectual elite? You can cite Ficino, Mirandolla, Pletho of relevance from this period. But what about Bonaventure, Eriugena, Tauler, Suso, Eckhart, Albert Magnus, Lull? To cite a few only and restricted to the latin west.

[Anonymous No.16321540]

>>16321301
Eriugena saw it himself. Also the entirety of platonic metaphysics exist in-between-the-lines of Dionysius.
>how did the early and high middle ages produced and developed platonic ideas more than the renaissance
because the entirety of platonic metaphysics exist in-between-the-lines of pseudo-Dionysius.

[Anonymous No.16321639]

>>16319873
>skipping an entire major historical period because of being le enlightened atheist
This kind of behaviour is anti-philosophical. Drop philosophy now, it isn't for someone like you.

[Anonymous No.16321665]

>>16321540
But not in Origen? Nyssa? Augustine? Boethius? (If you consider the modern academic conjectures and regard proclean influence on Dionysius, all these predate and influenced him). To mention only some of the most influential ones in the latin west, again.

[Anonymous No.16321674]

>>16319873
Evola and you all know it

[Anonymous No.16321706]

>>16321639
Not an atheist. Just think Christians do not have anything to say and what they said others said better. Stop pretending we all got infinite time to read.

Why read Aquinas when I can read Aristotle? Why read Christian neoplatonists when I can read the Neoplatonists?

[Anonymous No.16321797]

>>16321706
I just want to remind you that the entirety of Platonism is a serious effort to provide an accessible ladder to the numinous. Its essence is fundamentally the same as that of all religions: God (if you read literally any dialogue from Plato you are already aware of this). The problem is that Platonism is philosophy, it is not religion and lacks in spirituality and proper theurgia, even though they saw both as basically the same (philosophy and religion). Still this is the main point of contention in Platonism and because of that it is lacking and is not completely coherent like a proper religion. So I really wonder what you are seeking.

[Anonymous No.16321816]

>>16321665
You can just repeat what I said about Dionysius with them. But none of them as much as in Dionysius, Nyssa is just a repeat of Origen minus the heresies. Doesn't matter that these individuals stretch the boundaries, the church has established the boundaries and they are fixed, there is no salvation of the Bible and its horrors through the church, and there's no legitimate Bible without the church.

[Anonymous No.16321910]

>>16321816
>Nyssa is just a repeat of Origen minus the heresies.
No, you don't know what you're talking about. Nyssa had a profound influence on Dionysius specially on his Mystical Theology. You either face it or admit the established chronology of modern academics is wrong and Dionysius influenced Proclus heavily.

>proceeds to flee the discussion with raving mad behaviour attacking the church out of nowhere.
This is proof you people have no intellectual and spiritual commitment. This is what made me give a chance to Christianity and now it only confirms how demonically possessed you people are.

[Anonymous No.16321970]

>>16321706
>Just think Christians do not have anything to say and what they said others said better.
... how would you know that without having read them? seeing as they are usually on the criterion for western canon anyways, wouldnt it be a better idea to read them then form an opinion afterwards? weither its positive negative or neutral doesnt matter. by explicitly not reading them you are cultivating a bias. their identity as christian or not is besides the point, reading through the progression of thought chronologically gives you the basis for an even analysis.

[Anonymous No.16322023]

>>16321797
It should be added that I find the Christian religion to be immoral as a practical religion. And since the destruction and perversion of what I find to be empirically good and beautiful which it caused wherever it went it is obvious that their immorality is not accidental, rather it is an essential part of the Christian religion. I have therefore deemed it necessary for the sake of my soul to steer away from it. Especially the parts of Christianity that you're currently trying to convince people are part and parcel of the religion while we both know that most of these "Christian" mystics and neoplatonists either outright was judged to be heretics or came close enough to be cinched. Their only room in Christianity is to create the illusion of spiritual depth. I harbor no anger against Christians since I've never actually met one but I maintain that to it is the only virtuous thing to do to reject it wholesale.

[Anonymous No.16322256]

>>16321910
>Nyssa had a profound influence on Dionysius specially on his Mystical Theology
What does this have to do with what I said?
Plotinus (through Porphyry and now lost Neoplatonists works) and Origen had a profound influence on Nyssa.

[Anonymous No.16322282]

>>16321910
The Bible is full of horrors, the church (which became the Catholic and Orthodox churches), compiled the Bible, there's no Bible without the church, there is no Christianity without the Bible as is. It was an attack on the unredeemable elements of the Bible.

[Anonymous No.16322285]

>>16322023
We were talking about purely intellectual and spiritual productions. If you are willing to discuss the other aspects of the Christian tradition just make it clear because it is obviously a common maneuver to deviate to the ''faults'' committed by some of the clergy.
I will restringe myself on these matters and not digress on to show to you how many pagan temples were preserved by christians after being abandoned by the pagans themselves or that some pagans did persecute, kill, commit attrocities equal or worse to those of some christians. You cannot have a moral sense without a sense of the Real. It is a natural development explicited even by Plato, for example in the Symposium, that when you ''have contact'' with That (Beauty, representing the Eidetic Vision) you are conformed to That.
>you're currently trying to convince people
I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything but to actually be honest with themselves and take a look, if not directly into the christian theology, at least into the history of the development of platonism and spirituality from the late antiquity to the middle ages.

>these "Christian" mystics and neoplatonists either outright was judged to be heretics or came close enough to be cinched.
Give me a name then. All the ones I mentioned before in this thread had important contributions to the Church, to christology, pneumatology, theology in general, ethics, liturgy, christian art and its symbolique.

>Their only room in Christianity is to create the illusion of spiritual depth.
We know you have no idea what you're talking about but how can anyone take you seriously when you yourself admit to have never read a single one of them and say it is all illusion? You don't even know what it is an illusion of. Again, why someone like you is concerned with philosophy?

[Anonymous No.16322305]

>>16322023
>It should be added that I find the Christian religion to be immoral as a practical religion. And since the destruction and perversion of what I find to be empirically good and beautiful which it caused wherever it went it is obvious that their immorality is not accidental, rather it is an essential part of the Christian religion.
why. what is the fundemental aspect of it that makes everything wholesale anathema instead ofjust particular parts of it. you really didnt give a reason. which is doubly so unreasonable given how broad and multifacted the overarching term “christian” is.
> while we both know that most of these "Christian" mystics and neoplatonists either outright was judged to be heretics or came close enough to be cinched
that seems to be a critique of orthodoxy and theological centralization rather than essentiality in the religion. eastern orthodox is heretical to catholisism which is heretical to protestantism which all find gnostic and other less centralized branches heretical.

[Anonymous No.16322322]

>>16322285
You can't divorce practice from theory. This too is a principal platonic ideal. Yes you can extract the truth from the Bible but if you do you've removed the Bible from the truth.

[Anonymous No.16322341]

>>16322256
>What does this have to do with what I said?
You said Nyssa is just repetition of Origen when this is outright false and could only come from someone who has no idea what he is talking about. One of the main influences of Nyssa on Dionysius is not found in Origen.

>Plotinus (through Porphyry and now lost Neoplatonists works) and Origen had a profound influence on Nyssa.
Didn't I say that Nyssa was influenced by platonists and plato himself? Why are you repeating what we already know?

[Anonymous No.16322355]

>>16322341
>is not found in Origen
Such as?

[Anonymous No.16322367]

>>16322322
>You can't divorce practice from theory. This too is a principal platonic ideal.
Plotinus disagrees. But in anyhow: we were discussing the intellectual productivity of christian theologians. You were the one deviating from it and is now going even further from the issue at hand. If you want to talk about the other aspect of christianity, that is not theology it will be a pleasure.

[Anonymous No.16322384]

>>16322355
the unfolding of and inquiry of the metaphysical and apophatic aspect in biblical symbolique of exodus.

[Anonymous No.16322387]

>>16322355
Yes, I obviously am no expert on the Christian Neoplatonists since as some guy here in the thread said: why read the X-Neoplatonists when you can read the Neoplatonists. But I do respect Nyssa a lot just as I respect Dionysius and Eriugena. But you don't find revolutionary anything in them except perhaps better prose sometimes, but in their superior one liners you lose detail, the light of heavens become watered-down. They would be like poets/theologians to us, needed to be exegetically interpreted like Synsesius the "Christian" did.

[Anonymous No.16322421]

>>16322384
That's not something new in technical terms, but a reapplication of something common in exegesis of mythopoetics.
And I thought the mystic aspect of Moses ascent of the mountain to the darkness of God was talked about even before Origen.

[Anonymous No.16322440]

>>16322282
Sure. Egyptian mythopoesis is full of horrors too. Atum's masturbating might mean the egyptians had no notion of transcendence and only recognized their animalistic inclinations, right? The depicting of the Battle of Kadesh in their temples might mean they were solely a bloodthirsty warrior people with no theological, ethical productions, right? Symbolism does not exist anywhere, right?

[Anonymous No.16322443]

>>16319873
imagine being such a fedora lmao, go back to r/atheism

[Anonymous No.16322455]

>>16319873
“Help me with my anachronistic larp, lit”

[Anonymous No.16322460]

>>16322455
Studying philosophy is anachronistic.

[Anonymous No.16322469]

>>16322421
>That's not something new in technical terms
Of course it is not something new. It is all in Exodus, a book written hundreds of years before Nyssa. But if you are worried about what is new or not, why read Plato and Plotinus, who said that their own doctrines were not novel?

[Anonymous No.16322528]

>>16322469
Because they aren't corrupted or watered down by a false mythos.

[Anonymous No.16322571]

>>16322440
Allegorizing the Bible as a whole was ecumenically made a heresy by the church in one of the Holy spirit guided councils. It's heresy to not read the Bible historically or "literally". This is why I mentioned the Bible and church, most the great parts from these Christians you mentioned are against doctrine. And there is no Bible or Christianity without the church and its doctrine.
We don't have this literalist perspective that you are doomed with unless you're a Protestant—but fuck prots.

[Anonymous No.16322591]

>>16322528
>mythos
>false
yes, i lost my time talking to someone who has absolutely no idea about the sacred, numen, theology and religion in general. start with someone like eliade for the basics.

[Anonymous No.16322695]

>>16322571
This is only to maintain the unity of the purely metaphysical conceptions with the commoners. This was a thing in late platonism too, Olympiodorus talks about the need of a common and ''superficial'' theological scheme, in this way it serves chiefly as a moral paradigm of conduct, but it is obvious that there is no morality divorced from metaphysics. Theologians have always penetrated deeper in the Scriptures, and a myriad of passages in the Scriptures demand this sort of inquiry. ''I am that I am'', ''Darkness of God'', ''God is Light'', sequences of the same word being repeated, etc. A theologian can penetrate in the Scripture in this way, but he cannot advise commoners to do it. Much like the rule among Pythagoreans, egyptians and the platonists.

[Anonymous No.16322746]

>>16319873
try killing yourself incel

[Anonymous No.16322853]

>>16322746
>Definition 4 of philosophy: Learning how to die die and being dead.
>kill myself
That's the plan!

[Anonymous No.16323033]

>>16322695
Olympiodorus, trying to not disrespect him, was a follower of Ammonius, or Alexandrian Platonism, which was the true precursor to Scholasticism. He in his concessions to save philosophy, which he did up until Islam forced them out of Egypt, can easily be seen as a sacrifice of the lower for higher in a time of necessity. He and Ammonius were allowed to practically preach by not breaching through depersonalization of the gods, while this eludes the christian (and actually means nothing to a Platonist since there's no such thing as impersonal to us) it then opened up the critique of personalism vs "abstract forces" (again—a false dichotomy in truth) which is so prevalent today. Olympiodorus saying that Athena is the mere mythologizing "mere" expression of God's Intellect (aka Metis). Is saying nothing to us, since there's no such thing as a real distinction that isn't also a contemplator, "everything is contemplation" the irony is Christians wailing about muh personal God is a only a problem to them. He and It is the same word in Greek, all real itnesses are intellects, even if they're one trick ponys. This is the real distinction between orthodoxy and Platonism, each of the Logoi of the Logos is to us a "person", a subject with a will (they are rather one and the same, willing and perceiving). And this is why we are polytheists.
At least that guy who's getting popular now, Beay Bransun, does admit with a sleigh of hand that person and itness is a false dichotomy, they're in Greek nothing but 'real particulars'. You might wonder why I mention this, but it's a hidden massive turd-sandwhich problem in catholic/orthodox onto-theology. If the son and spirit are distinct persons, even though they share will love and mind with the father, why aren't the Logoi and energia each real persons? And if God is the Energia....

[Anonymous No.16323048]

>>16323033
Beau Branson* had to sacrifice my intelligibility to Thoth for Dubs.

[Anonymous No.16323442]

>>16323048
Well worth it

[Anonymous No.16324858]

rip

[Anonymous No.16324871]

>>16324858
Gustave Moreau is so based.

[Anonymous No.16324876]

>>16319974
Well philosophy is concerned with the truth so you're gonna eventually get there, buddy

[Anonymous No.16325355]

>>16324876

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.16325367]

>>16324876
Ha! Funny