Plotinus

[Anonymous No.16531503]

Is his thought still tenable in the Modern age?

[Anonymous No.16531540]

No. University professors in Burgerland showed that he's a big dummy. Don't even think about reading his silly boomer words. Anything written more than 10 years ago is surely outdated and bad.

[Anonymous No.16531545]

>>16531503

Bergson appropriated him fruitfully. Was Bergson a modern?

[Anonymous No.16531567]

>>16531540
Nigger, I'm asking if Platonic thought is still sensical after the writings of eg. Wittgenstein, Kant, ...

[Anonymous No.16531575]

>>16531567
Read it and find out.

[Anonymous No.16531581]

>>16531575
But what has been YOUR experience, anon?

[Anonymous No.16531601]

>>16531503
If your a Christian who cares about the theology behind divine simplicity and energies-essences he is very important. Especially when examining Augustine, Palamas, and Dionysius.

[Anonymous No.16531686]

>>16531581
I didn't read any of that shit so how would I know?

[Anonymous No.16531708]

>>16531503
only as developed through Scholasticism

[Anonymous No.16531718]

>>16531503
Of course; how can the content of first philosophy, expounded by a true seer, ever be not tenable?

[Anonymous No.16531736]

Schopenhauer, Bergson, Ponty, Heidegger, Deleuze, are all pseudo-neoplatonic or capture half their picture.

[Anonymous No.16531739]

>>16531736
Also Derrida.

[Anonymous No.16531847]

>>16531567
Yes it is.

[Anonymous No.16531852]

>>16531736
>Heidegger
>Platonist

[Anonymous No.16531864]

>>16531503
No. He is interesting from a historical perspective, but all of Platonism is basically religion, you either believe in it or you don't. If you do, you will say it is True, and if you don't it doesn't make any sense at all. It is Ancient Greek New Age hullaballooh to make sense of why you will die, and why you aren't the center of the world. But it has no reference outside of the belief system itself.

[Anonymous No.16531865]

>>16531503
It's involuted, dense, but fascinating and even beautiful as well once you get the hang of it. It's the kind of writing that inspires writing.

[Anonymous No.16531930]

>>16531852
>heidegger
>not a neoplatonist

[Anonymous No.16532130]

>>16531601
I always wondered how did people manage to ID all the philosophers without anything but their appearance to go on. Some are obvious in terms of who they are, but how can we be sure in that pic that that is Plotinus?

[Anonymous No.16532138]

Absolutely, Neoplatonism is the most functional theological system made by western thinkers.

[Anonymous No.16532241]

>>16532130
Porphyry said a guy drew several depictions of him with which he made sculptures of varying accuracy, then we find these three similar busts among busts of other philosophers and made the connection. Sort of.

[Anonymous No.16532968]

I want to fuck a black chick

[Anonymous No.16532974]

>>16531930
Correct, Heidegger is a Platonist and not a neoplatonist.

>"The third passage of the Parmenides is the most profound point to which Occidental metaphysics has ever advanced. It is the most radical advance into the problem of Being and time—an advance which afterwards was not caught up with [aufgefangen] but instead intercepted [abgefangen] (by Aristotle)
Though Heidegger is by far exaggerating here, the point remains. And here by Karl Jaspers in a letter to Heidegger:
> If the second half of his [Plato’s] Parmenides would be performed anew with today’s methods (and not Neoplatonically), then all bad metaphysics would be overcome, and the space would be open for a pure hearing of the language of Being.

[Anonymous No.16532994]

>>16531503
parts of it but certainly not all of it. some of his physical claims have been scientifically disproven and some of his ideas are not completely consistent with each other

[Anonymous No.16533005]

>>16532130
because the painting is from the 1500s and we have quite a good idea about what people thought those philosophers looked like at that time

[Anonymous No.16533269]

>>16532974
>Neoplatonism
>Different from Platonism.
The 'neo' stands for revival.

[Anonymous No.16533309]

>>16531708
Scholasticism is backtracking to middle platonic peripateticism, away from the perfection of Late [neo]Platonism. They were reconstructionism from few of the Exegetai (Commentators) but almost nothing of Plato nor even all of Aristotle to see the Harmony with.
Real Scholasticism IS Neoplatonism, what we call Scholasticism is its Echo, or rather faint Echo while the Islamic Neoplatonists (Scholasticists) were the first Echo.

[Anonymous No.16533390]

>>16533269
Yes, a revival of its own conception of Platonism anon. As I have said before, I have a lot of respect for the Neoplatonists, and it is an immensely beautiful and great belief, but it is not Plato and does not reach his heights. Firstly, they interpret him differently to how it is quite obviously seen he understood his own works:

>Heidegger, however, the second part is not only intimately connected to and consistent with the first one, but in fact he takes it as proposing a solution to the initial problem. The first hypothesis, “the One is” (137c4–142a8), leads to an impasse. Parmenides shows that the One, considered as an absolute unity, that is, as a unity that excludes all plurality and otherness, is in fact an impossible notion. Absolute unity is something of which nothing can be said or thought, as all discourse and predication necessarily involves plurality and difference. Absolute unity has no attributes at all. Taken as absolute, unity cannot even be said to be or to participate in beingness (metecheinousias)—it can be characterized only in negative terms. The Neoplatonic interpreters ofPlato, Plotinus, and Proclus among them, took the first hypothesis to be the properculmination of the dialogue; here, Plato would point to the absolute, unspeakable, andincomprehensible One, the fundamental source that is itself “beyond Being” (epekeinatou ontos) and from which all secondary reality emanates. This ineffable unity is thecornerstone of the elaborate Neoplatonic metaphysics of late antiquity.

They didn't understand arguably Plato's most important dialogue, they aren't Plato.

[Anonymous No.16533447]

>>16532968
Based and same

[Anonymous No.16533843]

>>16531567

No, Platonism got BTFO once and for all by itself via the differential sorcery of Deleuze.

[Anonymous No.16533864]

>>16531540
That's why I read ancients only

[Anonymous No.16533874]

Guenon said it was trash because Plotinus only had fleeting unity with the One while Sufis and Hindus experienced it constantly. Although I think this would be considered a feature and not a bug to neoplatonists because of the whole returning from the light to the cave thing.

[Anonymous No.16534020]

>>16533390
>Absolute unity is something of which nothing can be said or thought, as all discourse and predication necessarily involves plurality and difference. Absolute unity has no attributes at all. Taken as absolute, unity cannot even be said to be or to participate in beingness (metecheinousias)—it can be characterized only in negative terms.
woah such a revelation, I'm sure none of the Platonists nor Plato himself ever said this.

Well, understand the soul in the same way: When it focuses on something
illuminated by truth and what is, it understands, knows, and apparently
possesses understanding, but when it focuses on what is mixed with
obscurity, on what comes to be and passes away, it opines and is dimmed,
changes its opinions this way and that, and seems bereft of understanding.
>It does seem that way.
So that what gives truth to the things known and the power to know
to the knower is the form of the good. And though it is the cause of
knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge.11 Both knowledge
and truth are beautiful things, but the good is other and more beautiful
than they. In the visible realm, light and sight are rightly considered
sunlike, but it is wrong to think that they are the sun, so here it is right
to think of knowledge and truth as goodlike but wrong to think that either
of them is the good—for the good is yet more prized.
>This is an inconceivably beautiful thing you’re talking about, if it provides both knowledge and truth and is superior to them in beauty. You
surely don’t think that a thing like that could be pleasure.
Hush! Let’s examine its image in more detail as follows.
>How?
You’ll be willing to say, I think, that the sun not only provides visible
things with the power to be seen but also with coming to be, growth, and
nourishment, although it is not itself coming to be.
>How could it be?
Therefore, you should also say that not only do the objects of knowledge
owe their being known to the good, but their being is also due to it,
although the good is not being, but superior to it in rank and power.
>And Glaucon comically said: By Apollo, what a daemonic superiority!

[Anonymous No.16534222]

>>16533874
>Sufis and Hindus experienced it constantly.
They experience unity with Soul, or the Demiurge, or with Being, or perhaps Beauty, thinking it is the absolute One.

[Anonymous No.16534236]

>>16533390
>That also which is most admirable and laudable in this theology is, that it produces in the
mind properly prepared for its reception the most pure, holy, venerable, and exalted
conceptions of the great cause of all.
>For it celebrates this immense principle as something superior even to being itself;
as exempt from the whole of things, of which it is nevertheless ineffably the source, and
does not therefore think fit to connumerate it with any triad, or order of beings.
Indeed, it even apologises for attempting to give an appropriate name to this principle,
which is in reality ineffable, and ascribes the attempt to the imbecility of human nature,
which striving intently to behold it, gives the appellation of the most simple of its
conceptions to that which is beyond all knowledge and all conception. Hence it
denominates it the one, and the good; by the former of these names indicating its
transcendent simplicity, and by the latter its subsistence as the object of desire to all
beings.
>For all things desire good. At the same time however, it asserts that these appellations are
in reality nothing more than, the parturitions of the soul which standing as it were in the
vestibules of the adytum of deity, announce nothing pertaining to the ineffable, but only
indicate her spontaneous tendencies towards it, and belong rather to the immediate
offspring of the first God, than to the first itself.

[Anonymous No.16534251]

>>16533874
>Although I think this would be considered a feature and not a bug to neoplatonists because of the whole returning from the light to the cave thing.
returning to the cave can be interpreted in two different ways

1) returning to ignorance, becoming estranged again from unity or non-duality
2) returning to the physical dwelling and locations where the worldly work and reside in order to bring the truth to them there and help enlighten them

The Easterners would disagree that you have to be estranged from unity/non-duality in order to go back into the city or marketplace and converse with people and teach them, and would say that you can do this while still experiencing constant unity.

[Anonymous No.16534271]

>>16534222
>They experience unity with Soul, or the Demiurge, or with Being, or perhaps Beauty, thinking it is the absolute One.
wrong, anyone who has read their texts could tell you otherwise, I don't know how you still have such basic misconceptions about this stuff

>Differences between the two doctrines usually result from the fact that Plotinus is using the Platonic three-leveled ontology and the Vedanta is using the older Parmenidean-Upanisadic two-leveled model. The act of primal intellection is Plotinus’s description of a mind which has realized its identity with the intermediate realm of Universal Mind, not with the ultimate One, whereas Yajnavalkya and Sankara are speaking of oneness with brahman, the ultimate One.

[Anonymous No.16534420]

>>16534271
>Plotinus is using the Platonic three-leveled ontology and the Vedanta is using the older Parmenidean-Upanisadic two-leveled model.
are you trying o imply that this is a good thing?
You literally prove me right, the one's you revere couldn't even distinguish soul from Being or even see beyond Being.

[Anonymous No.16534474]

>>16534271
As in. I can call the World Soul the Absolute and the One, then truly claim I am in unity with her, but that doesn't make her the One just because that's what I call her, even if my experience is really with her and she is also One.
Using the right names for the wrong natures.

[Anonymous No.16534480]

>>16534271
What are you quoting there in your last paragraph? Is that Guenon?

[Anonymous No.16534493]

>>16534271
>The act of primal intellection is Plotinus’s description of a mind which has realized its identity with the intermediate realm of Universal Mind, not with the ultimate One
Because he's three steps ahead, the One is beyond Sameness and Difference, it is not the Same as Being yet not Different from it.

[Anonymous No.16535322]

>>16534420
>the one's you revere couldn't even distinguish soul from Being or even see beyond Being.
Incorrect, that distinction is a part of their theology but they just don't give the distinction as much importance as Neoplatonism gives it. The level of the Universal Soul in Neoplatonism, sometimes equated with the Demiurge or Being; corresponds in Vedantic terms to Prajapati or Hiranyagarbha, which is a 'cosmic entity' filling and forming the entirety of the physical cosmos and which is still subject to fear, ignorance etc. The higher, supreme form of Brahman, or Nirguna Brahman is different from this Demiurgic-being and is transcendent to it and the physical universe, this is coincidentally why Advaita is not "monism", which is another persistent mistake I have seen you make before. It's not given much attention in their writings because in Advaita Vedanta it's taken as a given that one has already set one's sights on a higher goal than a temporary merger with this still ignorant entity. Shankara affirms in his commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, Mandukya-Karika and on the Taittiriya Upanishad that Brahman is beyond being and non-being.
>>16534493
see above
>>16534480
It's from "The Shape of Ancient Thought" by Thomas McEvilley

[Anonymous No.16535399]

>>16535322
Yet the Egyptians—whom none of these three groups had, supposedly, any access to—match the 3000 year later neoplatonic system. The main, minor, difference is their emphasis of pairs while Platonism highlights the Triads (neither deny pairs or triads). While your naive ADS denies both, at least the orthodox Christians affirm one triad.

[Anonymous No.16535405]

>>16535322
>"The Shape of Ancient Thought" by Thomas McEvilley
>taking mcevilly as an authority and schizo with nice comparisons.

[Anonymous No.16535498]

>>16535405
And not*

[This is a simplification. No.16535767]

>>16535322
>The level of the Universal Soul in Neoplatonism, sometimes equated with the Demiurge or Being; corresponds in Vedantic terms to Prajapati or Hiranyagarbha, which is a 'cosmic entity' filling and forming the entirety of the physical cosmos and which is still subject to fear, ignorance etc. The higher, supreme form of Brahman, or Nirguna Brahman is different from this Demiurgic-being and is transcendent to it and the physical universe, this is coincidentally why Advaita is not "monism", which is another persistent mistake I have seen you make before. It's not given much attention in their writings because in Advaita Vedanta it's taken as a given that one has already set one's sights on a higher goal than a temporary merger with this still ignorant entity.
The Anima Mundi is not the third Hypostasis (reality not Christian person) of Soul, the 'Demiurge' is not Being rather Soul (third Hypostasis) however each Sphere has a 'Demiurge' so the "Demiurge of Wholes" is Demiurge as Intellect that completes Being as the One-Being (in the Intelligible Triad of Being-Zoe-Nous) which is the Manifest One-Triad out of the Unmanifest One-Triad.
We wouldn't even call the World Soul Ignorant, her contemplation is perfect, for she fulfills her nature and telos without flaw if I could be a star in death to be a part with her for Aeons, I'd be content, for that would be my telos—you just further distanced yourself from me.
Not even as a Child could we blame Dionysus and call it 'ignorance' in any bad way for leaning forward towards the waters to see his face, in pure innocent curious play—and in doing so becoming infinite ones. Even the Titans, in the extended myth who entices the divine child to leave the throne of God, are evil or ignorant, for it is their nature as gods of Difference to divide unto infinity.
Evil is to choose division over unity to such an extent that it crosses Necessity.

[This is a simplification. No.16535815]

>>16535322
>It's not given much attention in their writings because in Advaita Vedanta it's taken as a given that one has already set one's sights on a higher goal than a temporary merger with this still ignorant entity.
Except this is only truly possible by capturing the Whole of Being. As Plato's Ladder of Love signifies, you cannot skip steps,for the higher encompasses the lower, just as having hieratic virtue by their nature begets fruits of lower and even civic virtue. For this is also Providence which is the lesser sung third name of praise that we grant the One (aka unbegotten Love/Eros).

[This is a simplification. No.16535827]

>>16535815
Whoops, wrong image, meant to post the Gondola version.

[Anonymous No.16536164]

>>16535322
And as regards the Hiranyagarbha.
>When, they say, the wind fell in love with its own beginnings and a blending took place, that entanglement was called Desire. ... And from its self-entanglement—the wind’s—came Mot. Some say this was mud, some say the ooze from a watery mixture. And from this came the whole seed of creation and the genesis of all things ... and it was formed like the shape of an egg.

Damascius:
Without question, according to this theology, too, Time (Chronos) as the
serpent begat a triple offspring: Aither, which he calls “watery,” and indefi-
nite Chaos, and third after these is misty Erebus. And the second triad is
analogous to the first, although it is dynamic, as the first was paternal.91 And
so the third member of it is also misty Erebos, and the paternal element and
the one extreme is Aither, not unqualified, but moist, and the middle term is
indefinite Chaos. (III 162) But in the midst of these principles [the traditions]
says, Time (Chronos) begot an egg, and this tradition makes [the egg]
the offspring of Time (Chronos), and as birthed among these gods, because
the third intelligible triad also proceeds from them. What then is this third
intelligible triad? It is the egg. The dyad consists of the two natures in the
egg, male and female, and the multiplicity [corresponds to] the various seeds
in the middle of the egg. And third after these is the god with two bodies,
with golden wings on its shoulders, which has the head of bulls growing
from his sides, and on the head a huge dragon likened to all manners of
beasts. This must be understood as the intellect of the triad; the many kinds
of being constitute the middle term, and the power is the dyad, but the egg
itself is the paternal origin of the triad. And the third god belongs to this
third triad, whom the theology celebrates as Protogonos and also calls him
Zeus the disposer of all things and the entire world, and therefore he is also
called Pan.

All myths are double entendres.

[Anonymous No.16536226]

>>16536164
God is a master craftsman;
yet none can draw the lines of His Person.
Fair features first came into being
in the hushed dark where He mused alone;
He forged His own figure there,
hammered His likeness out of Himself—
All-powerful one (yet kindly,
whose heart would lie open to men).
He mingled His heavenly god-seed
with the inmost parts of His being,
Planting His image there
in the unknown depths of His mystery.
He cared, and the sacred form
took shape and contour, resplendent at birth!
God, skilled in the intricate ways of the craftsman,
first fashioned Himself to perfection.

[Anonymous No.16536309]

>>16536226
The Nine Great Gods were drawn from your person,
and in each you shadowed your features;
But it was you shone first
when you fashioned the world long ago,
O unseen God
who hides Himself from all others.
Ancient of ancients,
elder even than they,
earth god who fashioned Himself into Ptah,
The very parts of whose body are primeval gods;
who rose as the Sun amid chaos
To betoken rebirth
and the rhythms of resurrection;
Sowed the seed of the cosmos as Atum, the Old One,
from whose godhead were moisture and air,
Shu and Tefnut, the primordial couple.
He ascended in splendor His throne
as His heart had determined,
by His power, alone, overruled all existence,
United Himself and kingship forever
to remain, to the end of days, sole Lord.
But in the Beginning, Light!
Light was His first incarnation;
and the incipient world lay hushed
waiting in awe of Him;
And He cried the glad cry of the Great Cackler
over the nomes of His new creation
while He was still alone.
He loosened speech:
words flowed in the chambers of silence;
He opened each eye
that it might behold and be gladdened.
Sounds of the voiceless world began with Him:
the victory shout of unparalleled God
shattered silence and circled the world.
He nurtured to birth all things
that He might offer them life,
and he taught men to know the Way,
the path they each must go.
Hearts come alive when they see Him,
for He is our Procreator, the Power
who peopled the dark with His children.

[Anonymous No.16537264]

>>16531503
yes Neoplatonism is based disregard Wittgenstein, Kant and all those nerds look into Marsilio Ficino, Jean Borella, Wolfgang Smith, Robert Bolton, Jean Hani, Gregory Shaw, Wayne J Hankey

But ofc first read Plato, Plotinus, Proclus

[Anonymous No.16537269]

>>16533843
Deleuze literally just was like "hurr durr Parmenides dialogue already undid universals" and then didn't take it any further an left Neoplatonism totally unexamined

Deleuze is a pseud

[Anonymous No.16537436]

>>16531503
I had an ancient philosophy class taught by a Plotinus expert. Some of his lectures (Aristotle etc) were solid, but he made Plotinus sound like New Age wankery. Also, at the end of the class lots of the books he recommended we read were New Age shit (Richard Bach, The Morning of the Magicians, etc). I still don’t know if the class was a waste of money or if there was at least entertainment value. But it left me skeptical of the value of Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.16537447]

>>16537269
What a dumb fucking reading. At best the Parmenides dialogue undoes the connection between universals and particulars. At no point does Parmenides attack universals or particulars, only Ideas.

[Anonymous No.16537509]

>>16537436
He's easy to cherry pick for your own liking, easy to misquote, easy to misinterpret.