/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20411686]

To what degree did Egyptian cosmology/mythology/religious ideas influence Plotinus and related philosophers?

[Anonymous No.20411694]

I believe that's what Uzdavinys writes about

The controversial point is how much of the hermetism of the first two centuries AD was "Egyptian" in any meaningful sense. Faivre also writes on this

[Anonymous No.20411722]

>>20411694
Augustine in the City of God theorizes pretty openly that all Platonics stole from the Egyptian Hermetic tradition randomly

[Anonymous No.20411829]

>>20411686
Egyptian ideas had penetrated Platonism well before Plontinus. Aside from the Timaeus's claim to be an Egyptian myth, see the Middle Platonism of Apuleius (not sure on Plutarch), whose Golden Ass finds redemption through the mystery cult of Isis around 160AD.

The most direct synthesis is Iamblichus's 'On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians'.

[Anonymous No.20411859]

>>20411722
And of course the Egyptians were just stealing from the Jews, oy vey!

>>20411686
The simple fact is that we don't know. Egypt was a civilization that lasted for roughly 2,500 years. There was not one Egyptian cosmology, but many. The same goes for mythological and religious traditions. I find it hard to believe that NOTHING influenced the African and Middle Eastern Platonists, but at the same time the Egyptian intellectual world had been utterly wrecked by the time that Plotinus was alive. The complete lack of knowledge of how to read hieroglyphics among the people of the Roman Empire doesn't bode well for it. I think a better question would be how much of the Egyptian religious milieu could truly be separated from the general Afro-Asiatic milieu religious currents as a whole to a layman, or the last few scions of a dying intellectual tradition (as Plotinus would have interacted with). That is to say, how different was some given rite or ritual from a similar Semitic one?

[Anonymous No.20412222]

>>20411686
>>20411694
>that's what Uzdavinys writes about
>ideas influence Plotinus and related philosophers

Reminder that Plotinus literally admits he is diverging from the opinion on Platonists in developing his concept of the "undescended soul."

[Anonymous No.20413918]

>>20411694
>I believe that's what Uzdavinys writes about
You got a source?

[Anonymous No.20414305]

>>20411686
Well, the Egyptians considered the soul/self to consist of many, sometimes physically dependent parts, an idea I don't think seeped into Platonic thought.

[Anonymous No.20414758]

>>20411686
>To what degree did Egyptian cosmology/mythology/religious ideas influence Plotinus and related philosophers?

[Anonymous No.20414771]

>>20413918
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Algis-Uzdavinys/dp/1898910359

[Anonymous No.20414815]

>>20411686
>To what degree did Egyptian cosmology/mythology/religious ideas influence Plotinus and related philosophers?

>>It is inconceivable that scholars, philologists, theologians, and, in general, all those interested in the history of this world, should not as yet have understood the importance of the Pyramid Texts. No other scriptural texts, preserved and transmitted across the millennia because of their sacred nature, have reached us intact in form. Various transcriptions, translations, and commentaries, if they have not altered the fundamental meaning, at best leave room for doubt as to the original form, which is precisely the vehicle for esoterism.

>>Carved into stone, the writings in the chambers of the Fifth Dynasty pyramids have been preserved, unaltered, for four thousand years. The Samaritans treasure as a sacred relic a Bible they claim as "authentic," while here at the holy places of Egypt, ignorant but curious tourists brush carelessly against these carved stones where every feature—each line, each arrangement of text, each color—has a particular significance, there being no doubt that every detail is intentional.

Esotericism & Symbol ; R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz

[Anonymous No.20414883]

>>20414771
Uzdavinys skim-reading eisegetical hermeneutic is almost as bad as Guenon's.

[Anonymous No.20415274]

>dude alchemy lmao

[Anonymous No.20415322]

19th century egyptomania made inquiry into the afro-asiatic roots of Greek thought seem like a flaky, quasi-theosophical domain. The question was revisited starting in 1987 through orientalist and post-colonial discourses (very fashionable) with Bernal's Black Athena, which is widely thought to have overstated the case, once more making the question smack of amateurishness. A year before Bernal's first volume came out, Garth Fowden published a most interesting, erudite, and measured analysis in his Egyptian Hermes. Fowden's thesis is that mainline scholarship was wrong in seeing Greek civilization as entirely self-made, where things like Plato's valorization of Ancient Egyptian wisdom is taken as some sort of orientalist projection. But he also says the afrocentric revisionists are wrong, and you can't just draw a straight line from ancient Egyptian wisdom to, for example, Plato or the Hermetica. It seems pretty obvious when I place it in this context, but Fowden argues for a both-and position, where there was direct Egyptian influence on early Greek thought, but that Greek thought could in no way be reduced to that influence. Anyway, his book was mostly forgotten in the light of Bernals more polemical afrocentric reductionist take. But from what I can tell the question is once again being revisited and people are beginning from fowden. The similarity between platonic dialogue and Sebayt literature dating back to Old Kingdom Egypt, for example, is a line of inquiry I know multiple scholars are exploring right now. I expect some interesting books on this topic to come out over the next few years.

[Anonymous No.20415548]

>>20415322
>The similarity between platonic dialogue and Sebayt literature dating back to Old Kingdom Egypt, for example, is a line of inquiry I know multiple scholars are exploring right now.
what Old Kingdom sebayt literature, and what similarity, besides the occasional utilization of the dialogue form and the focus on wisdom (which is present in Akkadian literature as well)?

[Anonymous No.20415794]

>>20415322
>Bernal is Afro-centric

Seems like a cope to make the Egyptian influence seem more absurd when really we all know the Greeks took from the Egyptians, as they did from the Pheonicians.

[Anonymous No.20415824]

>>20414771
kino book

[Anonymous No.20416621]

>>20415794
>Greeks took from the Egyptians
what did they take, specifically?

[Anonymous No.20417554]

>>20414758
Jan Assmann

[Anonymous No.20419226]

bump