Neoplatonism Reading Group #7

[Anonymous No.21739436]

Uh whoops last thread archived
>>21465826
>>21483166
>>21499617
>>21552286
>>21614908
>>21638469

Schedule:
.1 - "What is the Living Being and What is Man?" 9/1
I.2 - "On Virtue" 10/1
I.3 - "On Dialectic [The Upward Way]." 11/1
I.4 - "On True Happiness (Well Being)" 12/1
I.5 - "On Whether Happiness (Well Being) Increases with Time." 13/1
I.6 - "On Beauty" 14/1
I.7 - "On the Primal Good and Secondary Forms of Good [Otherwise, 'On Happiness']" 15/1
I.8 - "On the Nature and Source of Evil" 16/1
I.9 - "On Dismissal" 17/1

18/1 - Break / Discussion

II.1 - "On Heaven" 19/1
II.2 - "On the Movement of Heaven" 20/1
II.3 - "Whether the Stars are Causes" 21/1
II.4 - "On Matter" 22/1
II.5 - "On Potentiality and Actuality" 23/1
II.6 - "On Quality or on Substance" 24/1
II.7 - "On Complete Transfusion" 25/1
II.8 - "On Sight or on how Distant Objects Appear Small" 26/1
II.9 - "Against Those That Affirm The Creator of the Kosmos and The Kosmos Itself to be Evil" [generally quoted as "Against the Gnostics"] 27/1

28/1 - Break / Discussion

III.1 - "On Fate"
III.2 - "On Providence (1)."
III.3 - "On Providence (2)."
III.4 - "On our Allotted Guardian Spirit"
III.5 - "On Love"
III.6 - "On the Impassivity of the Unembodied"
III.7 - "On Eternity and Time"
III.8 - "On Nature, Contemplation and the One"
III.9 - "Detached Considerations"

7/2 - Break / Discussion

IV.1 - "On the Essence of the Soul (1)"
IV.2 - "On the Essence of the Soul (2)"
IV.3 - "On Problems of the Soul (1)"
IV.4 - "On Problems of the Soul (2)"
IV.5 - "On Problems of the Soul (3)” [Also known as, "On Sight"].
IV.6 - "On Sense-Perception and Memory"
IV.7 - "On the Immortality of the Soul"
IV.8 - "On the Soul's Descent into Body"
IV.9 - "Are All Souls One"

17/2 - Break / Discussion

V.1 - "On the Three Primary Hypostases"
V.2 - "On the Origin and Order of the Beings following after the First"
V.3 - "On the Knowing Hypostases and That Which is Beyond"
V.4 - "How That Which is After the First comes from the First, and on the One."
V.5 - "That the Intellectual Beings are not Outside the Intellect, and on the Good"
V.6 - "On the Fact that That Which is Beyond Being Does not Think, and on What is the Primary and the Secondary Thinking Principle"
V.7 - "On whether There are Ideas of Particular Beings"
V.8 - "On the Intellectual Beauty"
V.9 - "On Intellect, the Forms, and Being"

26/2 - Break / Discussion

VI.1 - "On the Kinds of Being (1)"
VI.2 - "On the Kinds of Being (2)"
VI.3 - "On the Kinds of Being (3)"
VI.4 - "On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole (1)"
VI.5 - "On the Presence of Being, One and the Same, Everywhere as a Whole (2)"
VI.6 - "On Numbers"
VI.7 - "How the Multiplicity of Forms Came Into Being: and on the Good"
VI.8 - "On Free Will and the Will of the One"
VI.9 - "On the Good, or the One"

7/3 - Final Discussion

[Anonymous No.21739441]

>>21736986
For the sensible genera, I think it's supposed to be:
1. substance
2. quantity
3. quality
4. motion
5. relation

[Anonymous No.21739715]

>>21739441
Thanks my fellow principle.

[Anonymous No.21740437]

An argument for how Neoplatonism could explain why anything exists:
https://alwaysasking.com/why-does-anything-exist/

[Anonymous No.21740534]

>>21739436
>thread archived
A horror of the things to come
Is anyone reading ahead? Tomorrow is 30 pages and the day after is 40, gonna be kind of a slog. I feel like plotinus repeats himself a lot about things

[Anonymous No.21740595]

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

[Anonymous No.21740620]

Do you guys follow Ken Wheeler (Theoria Apophasis on youtube)?

[Anonymous No.21741272]

>>21740620
No, but I'll check him out. What's a good video to watch?

[Anonymous No.21742098]

>>21739436
Did these guys ever make drawings of what they thought, philosophically speaking?

[Anonymous No.21743347]

>And when seeking, do not seek outside him (autou)12[the One], but seek inside all things which are after him. For
he is himself that which is outside, the encompassment and measure of all things (tôn pantôn)—or that which
is inside in depth, but what is outside him, as it were both touching (ephaptomenon) and hanging off of (exêrtê-
menon) him by a circle, is [the] All (pan) which is rational account (logos) and intellect (nous). But rather it would
be Intellect according to which it touches and hangs off of him, inasmuch as it has its being Intellect from him. Just
as the circle, then, which touches the center with a circle, would be agreed to have its power from the center, and
to have the center’s form (kentroeidês) as it were, by which the radii (grammai),13 coming together in the circle to-
wards the center as one, make their limiting-point (to peras) to be such at the center, like that towards which they
are brought and from which they, as it were, grow out, since the center is greater than what is according to these
radii and their limiting points, the points belonging to the radii themselves14—and on the one hand, the limiting
points are like [the center], on the other a dim [image] and trace of that which is capable (dunatai), having the
power [for] these [limiting-points] and the radii, they everywhere have that [center]. And what the center is like
is revealed through the radii, as it were unfolded without having been unfolded (exelichthen ouk exelêligmenon)—
in such way is it necessary to take both Intellect and Being (ton noun kai to on), coming to be out of it and as it
were poured forth (ekchuthen), unfolded, and hanging upon its intellective nature, to bear witness to (marturein)
Intellect in the One, as it were, which15 is not Intellect: for it is ‘One’ (hen). (1–22)

[Anonymous No.21744502]

Rogatianus was a 3rd-century neoplatonist and disciple of Plotinus.[3] Porphyry stated of Rogatianus in the Life of Plotinus. "Another Senator, Rogatianus, advanced to such detachment from political ambitions that he gave up all his property, dismissed all his slaves, renounced every dignity, and, on the point of taking up his praetorship, the lictors already at the door, refused to come out or to have anything to do with the office. He even abandoned his own house, spending his time here and there at this friends' and acquaintances', sleeping and eating with them and taking, at that, only one meal every other day. He had been a victim of gout, carried in a chair, but this new regime of abstinence and abnegation restored his health: he had been unable to stretch out his hands; he came to use them as freely as men living by manual labour. Plotinus took a great liking to Rogatianus and frequently praised him very highly, holding him up as a model to those aiming at the philosophical life."

[Anonymous No.21744517]

>>21740620
Isn't this the schizo that got banned on /p/? The one that Guenonfag worships, the magnets guy.

[Anonymous No.21744518]

>>21744517
How do you get banned from the photography board?

[Anonymous No.21745075]

I have abandoned chapter 6.4 onward and am binging hogwarts legacy. go on without me......

[Anonymous No.21745722]

>>21745075
How can you have such a drastic swing of focus?

[Anonymous No.21746678]

>>21745075
Harry Potter is gay

[Anonymous No.21746973]

Just want to say something about last thread, reply to >>21703845

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

Incredibly interesting to me is that the myth of the titans cutting off Ouranos's phallus (which was impregnating Mother Earth) corresponds with the Gnostic take of the state of things on Earth.

If you take the impregnating of Gaia from the One to mean, in Hindu terms (which I am more familiar with but this exists in all religions in some symbolic form) the Purusha acting on the Prakrti (in loose terms, it is the pervading of pure energy, breath, the life-giving spirit of the All, on the substrate, the dead matter, of our reality, giving it form), then the cutting off of the phallus implies that we have been cut off from the Source, from God.

Even more interesting is that Kronos, the ruler of the Golden Age (or Dawn cycle, in Hindu mythology), was one of the titans who did this, and who ruled once it was done.

So taking the symbolism suggested by the post I reply to, the intellectual principle, reason, which orders all of this reality (time, matter, and so on) would correspond to the Gnostic Demiurge that has cut us off from the Source (Ouranos) to dance to his clockwork creation.

And finally, completing the trinity of that symbolism, Zeus represents the SOul. In Gnostic terms, it is only through our soul that we can break free from this reality and reach back into the higher divine (Or achieve Moksha, as the Hindus would have it, or Nirvana, or Heaven). This is also shown in Greek myth by Kronos devouring his own creations in an endless cycle, but Zeus deceives him and breaks free from the cycle, achieving new reign over this age. Kronos (or Saturn/Satan) is transcended, outplayed.

I just found it incredibly interesting that the old, Homeric/Herodian Greek Mythology has such obvious ties to Gnosticism, probably even through Neo-Platonism.
The ties to Hinduism and eastern religion are just an added bonus.

[Anonymous No.21747811]

>>21746973
I wonder if there is an equivalent to Heracles? Considering he's the son of Zeus and rescues Prometheus from that eagle, I'd say he's pretty important to the development of this kind of stuff.

[Anonymous No.21747964]

>>21746973
Indo European stuff has many equivalents such as this. This is a good one though. Well articulated.
>>21747811
Maybe you could compare Heracles to Krishna

[Anonymous No.21748222]

Is there any evidence that Greeks and Indians corresponded philosophy to each other? Maybe there was a zorastrian authority involved since this was pre-Muslim.

[Anonymous No.21748887]

>>21748222
There was a lot of interaction between Buddhists and Greeks from Alexander's campaign. Sialkot in Pakistan was the capital of an Indo-Greek kingdom. And Chandragupta Maurya married Seleucus' daughter. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greece%E2%80%93Ancient_India_relations#Philosophy_and_religion here are further claims to interaction.

[Anonymous No.21749573]

>>21748222
Plotinus takes quotations from the Gymnosophists at times, who i think are supposed to be Jains or other Shramanas

[Anonymous No.21749601]

>>21748887
I think Greeks and Indians exchanged ideas before and after as well. I believe there is evidence from trade etc.

[Anonymous No.21750193]

I made this years ago before I knew much about neo-platonism
>The red lines are intellectual influence (which may be indirect), and the blue lines are direct personal association of some kind.
Ignore the top part about Pomponazzi, I think the pic started out as something else

There may be mistakes in it but it may also be useful just for a visual representation of names and groupings?

[Anonymous No.21750201]

>>21748222
Check out McEvilley's Shape of Ancient Thought and Beckwith's Greek Buddha

[Anonymous No.21750331]

>>21748887
That doesn't necessarily say there was a lot of interaction, just a hypothesis due to some similarity between a few points.

>>21748222
Hard to say. You have Herodotus speak of the "gymnosophists", but more with curiosity toward people with different customs. Ctesias, a Greek doctor for one of the Persian kings, wrote with some mention of gymnosophists, but his writings only exist in summary now, I think. One of the historians of Alexander's campaigns make some limited mention too, but I don't recall which one.

By the time of Plotinus, it seems there was more chance for direct contact, but it's hard to say what it amounts to.

[Anonymous No.21750729]

>>21739436
So... in the final analysis, is there such a thing as a form for each individual person?

[Anonymous No.21750906]

>>21750729
Not for anime posters. Seriously though, it doesn't seem so to me. There is certainly 'Individual Living Human Being', but it seems to me that what we think of as individual personality is just a consequence of circumstances. What makes up the singularity of the person in the most mundane sense is just the contingency of the circumstances of the matter that go into "their soul's" work. I dunno though, I could be misreading him entirely. Right now anyway I find it comforting to think that this limited, petty notion of selfhood is just an illusion and feel it's freeing to be able to identify with an All-Soul.

[Anonymous No.21750969]

This section (VI.5.5) reminds me of an ontologically positive Indra's net in geometric form:
>Often for the purpose of exposition- as a help towards stating the nature of the produced multiplicity- we use the example of many lines radiating from one centre; but, while we provide for individualization, we must carefully preserve mutual presence. Even in the case of our circle we need not think of separated radii; all may be taken as forming one surface: where there is no distinction even upon the one surface but all is power and reality undifferentiated, all the beings may be thought of as centres uniting at one central centre: we ignore the radial lines and think of their terminals at that centre, where they are at one. Restore the radii; once more we have lines, each touching a generating centre of its own, but that centre remains coincident with the one first centre; the centres all unite in that first centre and yet remain what they were, so that they are as many as are the lines to which they serve as terminals; the centres themselves appear as numerous as the lines starting from gem and yet all those centres constitute a unity.
>Thus we may liken the Intellectual Beings in their diversity to many centres coinciding with the one centre and themselves at one in it but appearing multiple on account of the radial lines- lines which do not generate the centres but merely lead to them. The radii, thus, afford a serviceable illustration for the mode of contact by which the Intellectual Unity manifests itself as multiple and multipresent.

[Anonymous No.21751004]

>>21750906
Plotinus seems to argue heavily in favor of individual souls(using Socrates as an example) in i think 6.1 or 6.2.

Who made it? How far did you get if not? We're just in time for (spring)summerfags to shit up the place. OPs intellect is divine in this regard truly.

[Anonymous No.21751021]

>>21750729
This section (VI.5.8) seems to me to give a good explanation for your question:
https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plotenn/enn614.htm

[Anonymous No.21751026]

>>21750906
Sure, but souls already exist on a lower plane. I am wondering if there is such a thing as a *form* for each individual self. Like the Form of Socrates or Plato. The idea is brought up once or twice in the sections I read, but I couldn't determine if Plotinus asserts it or rejects it.
I was a bit surprised that at some point Plotinus asserts that even matter can participate in form (as a kind of celestial substrate contained in the form itself). From that perspective, it would be possible to posit a "true (little, individuated) self" for every human being, which exists not on the plane of souls - a plane still subject to change - but on the celestial plane of eternal forms. And the material human being can conform to a lesser or greater extent with the celestial one.

[Anonymous No.21751036]

>>21751004
nta but I feel that individual souls would have to be in the intellect if Plotinus is going to include all animals and plants in the Living Being, but a footnote in my edition says that he doesn't bother to distinguish between the Human Being and human being in 6.7. In the section on memory from 4.something it seems like souls do remember who they were in past lives, they just don't care as they desire the Good so much.

[Anonymous No.21751037]

>>21751004
Quote something specific?
Also, not there yet. In VI.5, hence why I'm quoting it alot. It's funny. I am back into uni shit but it's so fucking boring and feels so pointless compared to Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.21751054]

>>21751026
I dunno man. See section I quoted here. If there is individuated Ideas of fire, why would there be of people? >>21751021

[Anonymous No.21751059]

>>21751054
*No individuated Ideas of particular fires
Is what I should have written

[Anonymous No.21751060]

>>21751021
It seems like the answer is no, then? That's a bit unfortunate. It would have been nice to know that I have a "true self" existing on the plane of forms, eternal and invulnerable. Oh well. I suppose I should content myself with always existing potentially within the Universal Soul - and if there's need of me to be actualised again, I am sure I would be. Although it is difficult to foresee circumstances in which that would be the case.

[Anonymous No.21751075]

>>21751037
>>21721550
Here it is in some previous notes
5.7 Is there an Ideal Archetype of particular beings?

[Anonymous No.21751097]

>>21751054
>>21751059
Yeah, unfortunately it seems like you're right.
>>21751037
>I am back into uni shit but it's so fucking boring and feels so pointless compared to Plotinus.
I am a similar case. I should be studying for my classics MA but I just want to read about ancient astrology these days. Reading Plotty, astrology and all kinds of random stuff seems to be higher on my list of priorities, judging from my day-to-day actions.
>>21751075
This looks fascinating but I can't really unpick it. If there is a "distinct Reason-Principle for an original Socrates", does that mean there is a Form of Socrates or not? If not, then what does a "distinct Reason-Principle" mean? I haven't read Plotinus in a while so this is a bit hazy for me - I think the alternative might be that Socrates exists as a distinct potentiality contained within the Universal Soul? Is that what it means? Please help me figure this out.

[Anonymous No.21751185]

>>21751060
>I suppose I should content myself with always existing potentially within the Universal Soul
No dude. This is not the implication. The implication is that you are that Universal Soul as everyone is.
>>21751075
>Every soul contains all of the Reason-Principles that exist in the Cosmos
There is a distinct Reason-Principle for an original Socrates
So everyone is Socrates, everyone is everyone else. At least that's how I'm understanding it.
>>21751097
I feel you about the school shit. Same boat. As for the distinct Reason-Principle of an original Socrates, as I'm getting it, this is a Logoi, the noetic archetype which Soul uses as a blueprint to manifest Socrates below (in this sense each individual person has noetic reality -so don't despair). As this same Soul works to make us all and it's Life is each of our lives, we are that Soul as equally as we are that Reason-Principle. At both levels (Nous- Intellect and Psyche- Soul) there is an equal and mirroring lack of distinction. All logoi are made of the same Intellectuality, as all souls are Soul. I have a response to the post above >>21722307 #
I'm no expert by any means. I'm just calling it as I see it.

[Anonymous No.21751188]

>all these realms, and you're stuck in the lowest one

[Anonymous No.21751257]

>>21751185
To expand on this a bit. I suppose that Logoi could be looked at as the potentialities or powers within a given Idea. The Idea-Form if Living Human Being has the logoi of every possible individual person within it. (?) So in that sense, like I said, you >>21751097 shouldn't despair.
Another thing I wanted to add was I think it has something to do with what the Soul/soul is engaged in. In contemplation it's seeing unity, in act it's differentiating. If an individual person, identifying with Soul looks upwards thence they perhaps are not prone to see any sense of individuation of particularity, but as Soul looking to Matter there is a tendency to find or sort out differences. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Anonymous No.21751281]

>>21751060
What do you mean?

[Anonymous No.21751311]

>>21751185
>>21751257
>No dude. This is not the implication. The implication is that you are that Universal Soul as everyone is.
Well yes. But I am also simultaneously a subsection of the Universal Soul. That's the beauty of it, and also the trickiness of it. If I was the Universal Soul as such, I would be able to control a lot more than just my body. At the very least, I would need to pass a process of recalibration in order to get in touch with the complete limit of my (Universal Soul) self.
As to the Reason-Principle stuff, I am taking this to mean that my initial observations about surviving as potentiality on the plane of forms is still valid. This is the conclusion I drew a few months ago when I was reading Plotinus as well, iirc. My "specifications" are included in the Form of Man, on the celestial plane of forms, as potentiality - this potentiality can be actualised materially by the souls, but it survives independently, autonomously and eternally in its own state of perfection on the highest level (beneath the origin/One, of course).

[Anonymous No.21751321]

>>21751281
You will have to be a bit more precise with your question.

[Anonymous No.21751362]

>>21751311
I agree with your comments qua the Reason-Principle. But I think it's a mundane approach to say that the soul has subsections. Remember it has no extension, thus it can't be divided. Yes the eye tells us that there are distinct things to be seen, but the Soul is not divided, it is a unified principle. When you say
>If I was the Universal Soul
It feels like a misconception to me. As Soul we are that unity. As people (i.e. part of the work Soul is doing) we can be nothing but individual people. Soul does control more than just your body. It's not contradict in this higher way of seeing to say that I control your body as you control mine as well control our own because the true identity is not yours or mine but Soul. That recalibration you talk about IS the work of philsophers. Compare this section from the Republic:
>this organ of knowledge must be turned around from the world of becoming together with the entire soul, like the scene-shifting periact in the theater, until the soul is able to endure the contemplation of essence and the brightest region of being.
[518d] & 519
Once thusly recalibrated we are not just in touch with universal self (Soul) we know ourselves to be and thus are that.

[Anonymous No.21751413]

>>21751037
having written notes everyday as I read each section I can say this experience was about on par with a level 400 special topics class at a university. No essays or tests but the volume of reading more than compensates for that.

[Anonymous No.21751418]

>>21751362
>But I think it's a mundane approach to say that the soul has subsections. Remember it has no extension, thus it can't be divided.
You may well be right. I am gradually realising that my mind may be too bogged down by image-based and object-based thinking. I can't really imagine "pure thought" - and here again crops up that word, "imagine". Maybe one day I will liberate my mind from symbols and think pure being. But that day has not arrived yet.
Still, I will give you my view on this anyway - and it may be a bit more geometric than you ma be willing to accept. Imagine a circle with a centre and a radius - the centre is absolute awareness, centrality and knowledge, which grants control over everything within the radius. The Universal Soul dwells here and spans everything within the radius - although I would not necessarily consider her to be all-powerful since IMO it is still bound to the laws of necessity. As to the little souls, they are smaller circles with narrow radii and, to the extent that they are individuated, their own centres. It is in this sense that I say the individual soul is a subsection of the Universal Soul, and by making the centre of the individual soul coincide with the Universal Soul, you end up with the "enlightened individual" who is simultaneously both awakened spirit and incarnate materiality - both the centre of everything and his own centre. This, in my view, is what henosis is.
Another way to describe my view would be through the metaphor of the tree. There is one tree with its many features, but at the same time there are also many individual leaves on that tree - these leaves exist independently so long as we consider them to be such, but all of them are obviously connected to the greater whole through the branches of the tree. Or if this metaphor is too strained, we could consider the image of a large ball of string (the Universal Soul) from which many individual strings stem, this not compromising the individuality and wholeness of either the ball or the individual strings.

[Anonymous No.21751615]

>>21739436
Neo-Platonism is pseudo-scientific bullshit. Materialism is the only truth.

[Anonymous No.21751626]

>>21751615

[Anonymous No.21751695]

>>21745722
Well its also because I got fucking HEEMed in a sparing match last week and in the days a posteriori it hurts to move. Losing is also depressing.

[Anonymous No.21751699]

>>21751695
pic related

[Anonymous No.21751783]

>>21751626
I hate all Idealist schizos whom can't admit they're wrong and Materialism is the only truth. Religions are cancer.

[Anonymous No.21751796]

>>21751783
>whom can't

[Anonymous No.21751826]

>>21751615
Plotinus thought the One was not the source of matter.

[Anonymous No.21751831]

>>21751413
The other shit I study is so mundane (history) that it becoming quite hard to give a fuck. History just feels like a catalogue of errors and missing the point. Like Socrates talking about war in the Phaedo.
>>21751362
I'll respond to this soon.
>>21751695
>sparing match
>Harry potter
Wtf are you doing reading Plotinus at all dude?
>>21751783
I would pity you, if you were worth thinking about. Hylics should be enslaved. They, by their own convictions, are no better than matter in motion. It's really our duty as actual souls to compel them as we will when you think about it.

[Anonymous No.21751841]

>>21751831

You don't have a soul, you are a body. You have a delusion.

[Anonymous No.21751843]

>>21751831
>The other shit I study is so mundane (history) that it becoming quite hard to give a fuck. History just feels like a catalogue of errors and missing the point. Like Socrates talking about war in the Phaedo.
Historian here. History was really fun and enlightening to me when I still used to delegate all important opinions and decisions to custom and tradition in the inferior sense of the word. After I realised that there are better ways to navigate the world, I've channelled the energies I used to pour into history into philosophy instead. Unfortunately, I am still enrolled on a masters degree so we'll have to see how that goes, lol.

[Anonymous No.21751865]

>>21751831
>Wtf are you doing reading Plotinus at all dude?
I want to be a warrior poet but in the classical sense

[Anonymous No.21751990]

>>21751843
How much writing is involved in that? Also if you don't mind me asking how do you afford it?

[Anonymous No.21752031]

>>21751865
I'm guessing you've read all the stoics and wanted to go further? Also shouldn't you be focusing on, idk, poetry?
>>21751418
>I can't really imagine "pure thought" - and here again crops up that word, "imagine".
Imagination is a fine way of understanding Nous imo. The trick is, imo, to make the mental leap from the image to its origin. The principle or power by which you are capable of imagining anything is Nous. It clicked for me when I thought of looking at the darkness of my closed eyes as a background on which the images of Imagination arise. But it's not just a canvass because the images are composed of the same substance, so to speak and the principle is the same with eyes open (obviously I guess). The principle or power of the image is the same as what gives it form in the mind: Mind.
From there to the One is a harder leap, but this Mind has to have an origin as it's capable of diversification, so there must be an underlying unity that gives rise to it. This section of Republic always helped me to understand it. Yet I understand it as something ultra refined that takes much training, contemplation, meditation and self-action (cultivation) to achieve unity with.
>the region of the known the last thing to be seen and hardly seen is the idea of good, [517c] and that when seen it must needs point us to the conclusion that this is indeed the cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful, giving birthin the visible world to light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source of truth and reason, and that anyone who is to act wiselyin private or public must have caught sight of this.”
An alternate take is that all it takes is patience in concentration on this Ultimate-Idea for the flower of Absolute-Unity to blossom in the individual.
Apropos the circle analogy. See >>21750969
Apropos tree analogy. Yes. Universal tree, we are seeds that make our own tree (seed must go down into ground to bring new life, as we must go back down into cave to free troglodytes). Gospels do this one well also:
>Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. (John 12:24 etc)
Also the mustard seed parable. There are more than this I think but the idea is apparent. You could also check out the ashvattah tree in the bhagavad gita. The string analogy is new to me though. Very interesting thanks.

[Anonymous No.21752038]

Does anyone have a resource for academic papers on this subject? Someone posted one in a previous thread and it was great.

[Anonymous No.21752120]

>>21752031
I studied philosophy as an undergrad but nothing further academically, I just kept reading it for personal interest

[Anonymous No.21752157]

>>21739436

What are you reading?

[Anonymous No.21752168]

>>21752157
The Enneads, I forgot to put that in. Today we're on
>VI.7 - "How the Multiplicity of Forms Came Into Being: and on the Good"

[Anonymous No.21752173]

>>21752120
also I don't really know how to cope with my peers being mostly hylics obsessed with money or sex/have zero intellectual interests so I'm glad this thread happened.

[Anonymous No.21752178]

Plotinus on how to get laid
>Just as in the sensible world all those who love fashion themselves into a likeness of the person they love, making their bodies more comely, and their souls close to this likeness, in that as far as possible they do not want to fall behind the self-control of the loved one or any other virtue -- otherwise, they would be rejected by loved ones with these qualities -- and these are those who are able to have intercourse; in this way, soul loves the Good, because it was moved to love from the beginning.
6.7.31.12-19

[Anonymous No.21752205]

>>21752173
I know that feel. The Cave analogy seems to suggest: help them out but that doesn't seem easy. I guess it's not meant to be. I guess, personally at least, if I just keep cultivating the Soul over the flesh and the Intellect over mundanities I'll get to a point where help is easier to give.

[Anonymous No.21752217]

>>21752173
Also you should be working on memorisation if you want to be a based old school warrior poet. Being able to rattle of seemingly endless lines of the likes of Homer is one hell of a way to shock and impress normies I imagine. You could just improvise it as well I suppose, which is another skill one can work on.

[Anonymous No.21752283]

Is the guy that originally proposed to read this book and made the first threads and schedule still here? It's a pretty interesting book, and I'm glad to have devoted my 2.5 month NEETdom to it.

[Anonymous No.21752294]

>>21752217
>warrior poet
Oh that was just a line from Apocalypse Now, I'm nowhere near based enough to embody an ancient Irish bard or something.

[Anonymous No.21752382]

>>21751990
>How much writing is involved in that?
You'll need to write about ~40k words, at least where I am at. So about a novel's worth.
>Also if you don't mind me asking how do you afford it?
UK loan.
>>21752031
Very interesting, this has been a fruitful exchange. Thank you for your time.
>>21752120
>>21752173
I would have liked to study philosophy but my interests are fairly narrow (Platonism) so I chose History instead since there's more room for choice.

[Anonymous No.21752583]

>>21752283
I have a feeling he might be playing the Harry potter game. Or is that Anonocalypse who was playing Harry potter?

[Anonymous No.21752629]

>>21752583
I'd be impressed if the original anon who made this had abandoned the study after like 2 days

[Anonymous No.21752691]

I strongly recommend everyone in this thread to give Versluis' book Wisdom's Children a try.

[Anonymous No.21752717]

>>21752691
>Provides an in-depth introduction to the Christian theosophic tradition that began with Jacob Bohme
>Protestantism
No thanks boss

[Anonymous No.21752722]

>>21752717
You don't know Böhme?

[Anonymous No.21752743]

>>21752717
>the Christian equivalent of Sufism and Kabbalism
I mean that sounds kinda neat
>"Wisdom's Children" is a book by Timothy Versluis that explores the history and teachings of the Theosophical Society, a spiritual movement founded in the late 19th century. Versluis examines the Theosophical Society's impact on Western spiritual thought and the broader cultural and social context in which it emerged. The book traces the society's origins in the spiritualism and esotericism of the 19th century, its development under the leadership of Helena Blavatsky and subsequent leaders, and its influence on a range of thinkers and movements, including the New Age movement.
Yuck

[Anonymous No.21752754]

>>21752743
Funny post, but why? Just for anyone reading, he's joking. It's not about HPB. I think Goodrick-Clarke has a good book on her. The chapter on Theosophy in Webb's Occult Underground has all the tabloid gossip about the TS. But Versluis' book is not about the 19th century TS, it's about Christian theosophy which was a major influence on all modern esotericism, including revived study of neoplatonism, and on Schelling and Hegel and others.

It would be good to read in tandem with classics like Copenhaver's Corpus Hermetica and Frances Yates' Giordano Bruno & The Hermetic Tradition, and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. A lot of neoplatonism overlaps with hermeticism obviously, especially following Iamblichus and Proclus.

[Anonymous No.21752773]

>>21752754
Just realized I said Corpus Hermetica
>Corpus Hermeticum*

[Anonymous No.21752776]

>>21752754
Why would anyone reading actual ancient texts want to read a deformed, decayed version of the same thought mutilated by generations of chrisitian dogmatism? Part of the reason I wanted to read Plotinus is to get further back that all this kind of modernist shit that has all sorts of stupid syncretism in it. And that's really all Christianity is when you see through it all. Syncretism, blind faith in dogma and martyr worship. I'm mean seriously, do you not understand that Christianity destroyed the ancient traditions of paganism which were the roots of our forefathers being for millennia and sowed the roots of the collapse into nihilistic materialist dogshit that we have today...

[Anonymous No.21752783]

>>21752776
Plotinus is syncretizing all Hellenistic philosophical traditions into a Platonic framework though. And the theurgic schools of Neoplatonism after Iamblichus take the Chaldaean Oracles, Corpus Hermeticum, and Orphic and Pythagorean traditions as basically revealed scripture. That's why Julian tried to use them to found a neo-pagan mystery religion.

I don't really care who does what as long as it's good philosophy. Ibn Arabi and Suhrawardi are worth reading no matter what, and so are Eckhart, Ficino, Pico, Reuchlin, Paracelsus, Agrippa, and Böhme. Most of these have been accused of being un-Christian neoplatonists anyway.

You should read the chapter on ancient paganism in Burckhardt's Age of Constantine. Or the first chapter of Dean Inge's Gifford lectures on Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.21752842]

>>21752783
You don't seem to get it. I don't want a modern perspective. I dont want an Abrahamic perspective. This is why I'm reading Plotinus. I'll call chrisitian theology as I see it. They stole it from the Hellenic tradition. Yes Plotinus is synthesising, but it's all within a tradition. You could equally call it rearticulation.
>good philosophy
What like stealing Hellenic insights, changing the names, passing them of as your own, then banning the way of life associated with them and closing the schools that taught them.
Anyway, how about you share some of what's so valuable about this book? Why is it so good we should read it? Why would I read that over Proclus say?

[Anonymous No.21753555]

Bump

[Anonymous No.21754397]

Does Plotinus think the world looks like this? What are these things?

[Anonymous No.21754894]

>>21754397
Plato first created this idea in the Timaeus. Arithmetic is the core base of Platonism but it’s not really something you have to focus on for the main philosophy.

[Anonymous No.21755081]

>>21754397
>What are these things?
There called Platonic Solids anon. Read your own pic.

Anyone have favourite tractates. I remember liking On Nature, Contemplation, and The One. The Three Initial Hypostases was good too.

[Anonymous No.21755091]

>>21755081
*They're

[Anonymous No.21755108]

>>21755081
4.4, 1.6, and 2.4 I thought were great
hated 6.1-6.3

[Anonymous No.21755112]

fuck man, i want to read plotinus and write poetry and shit, but im so tired after work and studying

[Anonymous No.21755270]

>>21755108
Yeah. The problems of the soul tractates were good. So was On Beauty. I was just listening to On Number which is pretty interesting.
>>21755112
>work and study
Damn. You shouldn't be doing both if you can help it my dude. There's an audio book of the Enneads on YouTube also btw.

[Anonymous No.21755435]

>>21755081
For me it's 6.7, 2.9, 3.7, and 4.3-5

[Anonymous No.21755441]

>>21755081
I read enough in Timaeus and wasn’t impressed with the idea there.

[Anonymous No.21755898]

>>21755441
I thought it would have been impressive for its time now doubt.

[Anonymous No.21755958]

Sad that it's all over now. Had a good time with this. Definitely fascinating getting a first hand tour through late Platonism with its master. It's crazy to me how far we've fallen. Any support out there for Proclus next?

[Anonymous No.21756437]

>>21755958
Is there enough momentum to keep the threads going with another work? Seems like only a handful of people stuck with the reading the whole way through.

[Anonymous No.21756477]

>>21755958
Let's do Proclus' Elements of Theology or Iamblichus' De Mysteriis.

>>21756437
Who cares as long as there are a handful?

[Anonymous No.21756865]

When will The Enneads be translated into hieroglyphics?

[Anonymous No.21756929]

>>21756477
I'm pretty keen on either Proclus' Elements or Iamblichus. Is De Mysteriis his major work? Also, yeah. As long as there's a few, who cares. I'll probably not be able to contribute as much as there's reading for school shit to do but it would be good. I think we should give more time for each section though. What can you say about De Mysteriis also?

[Anonymous No.21757029]

>>21740437
Cool.

[Anonymous No.21757705]

>>21755958
I'm moving to a swamp so I don't know how much time I'll have for threads.

[Anonymous No.21758312]

>>21756437
More people could join in once we start a new work.
>>21756477
I think we should go with Proclus to really cement The Enneads, it also would get new people up to speed without them having to read 900 pages of Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.21758779]

>>21756477
Iamblichus sounds good to me. Proclus seems more challenging and longer.

[Anonymous No.21758825]

>>21756929
I'm reading De Mysteriis right now and I would say it's comparable in difficulty to Plotinus because it relies on Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics, but it's also heavily infused with hermetic thought, so there is a lot of interpretation of Egyptian myths and gods according to esoteric symbolism. I think Proclus probably edges it out for difficulty because it's more purely didactic and metaphysical.

>>21758312
>>21758779
These about capture the pros and cons rom what I can tell: Proclus is possibly harder, but it's more schematic so it will cement Plotinus really well. However there is something to be read for reading something a little easier and different from what you've been steeped in for a while, and on top of that, Iamblichus is chronologically earlier..

If we do Iamblichus I say we read Plutarch's Isis and Osiris first
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Isis_and_Osiris*/home.html

[Anonymous No.21759055]

>oh btw you should probably get initiated into the eleusinian mysteries btw

[Anonymous No.21759153]

>>21759055
god that'd be nice

[Anonymous No.21759332]

What's longer? De Mysteriis or Proclus' Elements?

[Anonymous No.21759333]

>>21751097
>does that mean there is a Form of Socrates or not?
In 6.7:
"The Reason-Principle is not identical with soul...the conjoint of rational soul and body is the reason-principle of man"

[Anonymous No.21759339]

>>21759333
6.7.3*

[Anonymous No.21759529]

Thoughts on this reading list:

>Timaeus - Encosmic Physics
>Parmenides - Hypercosmic Physics
>Phaedrus - Psychology
>The Republic - Epistemology
>Symposium - Teleology

??

[Anonymous No.21759558]

>>21755898
Yeah but not nowadays.

[Anonymous No.21760001]

>>21759529
There's more in those texts than what is associated with them in this post imo. All of Plato is worth reading imo. If for nothing else than the prose and style being delightful.
>>21759558
I found it interesting. I don't read it as being contradicted by modern science but as dealing with levels of reality altogether different.

[Anonymous No.21760043]

This is the kind of plodding witless Neoplatonist reading list that reminds one of Kurt Gödel's experience of reading carefully from Plato all the way on to Plotinus and then realize, okay, and suddenly there's no actual human brain doing any actual thinking here anymore. Skip to Leibniz.

For a start, this list lacks the single most influential Neo-Platonic text of all time.

Which ain't the Enneads of Plotinus, kiddies.

It's the Gospel according to John.

[Anonymous No.21760061]

>>21760001
That guys reading list looks like random big words thrown next to dialogue names. Phaedra’s- psychology? Isn’t that dialogue primarily concerned with reincarnation and justice? I don’t see any connection.

[Anonymous No.21760088]

>>21759333
>the conjoint of rational soul and body is the reason-principle of man
It's over.

[Anonymous No.21760099]

>>21760061
Agreed. Republic is mostly a political text with some metaphysics

[Anonymous No.21760209]

>>21760088
that's a misreading
here's the full quote
"But if the conjoint of rational soul and body is the reason-principle of man, how can man be an eternal reality, seeing that it is only when soul and body have come together that the Reason-Principle so constituted appears?"
He argues back and forth about various considerations. He doesn't hold the view you quoted.
"What is this essential of Man? What is the indwelling, inseparable something which constitutes Man as here? Is the Reason-Principle itself a reasoning living being, or is the living being the conjoint of Form and Matter, while the Reason-Principle is merely a maker of that reasoning life-form? and what is it apart from that act of making?"

[Anonymous No.21760223]

>>21760209
... WELL? WHAT IS IT?? DON'T KEEP ME IN SUSPENSE.

[Anonymous No.21760225]

>>21760043
What reading list? The stuff in the op is the table of contents of The Enneads.

[Anonymous No.21760232]

>>21760223
The soul identified with intellect.

[Anonymous No.21760235]

>>21760232
So basically after I die, if my disembodied soul continues to contemplate my "blueprint" I remain alive? Is this the takeaway?

[Anonymous No.21760247]

>>21760223
Well the thing is, Plotinus likes to go back and forth between rhetorical questions and statements without achieving much of an answer outright as far as I have seen. It's also section 6.7.4 if you want to read it for yourself. It's not long.
https://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plotenn/enn642.htm

[Anonymous No.21760253]

>>21760235
The soul has the power of memory, so it would remember the body it had here, but it's also done this before. And why would the soul spend it's time contemplating the body it's now free from, now that it's free in the intelligible world?

[Anonymous No.21760263]

>>21760247
I'll take a look at it in a bit. From what I read of Plotinus (about ~200 pages), he seemed to always arrive at clear answers, even if he makes some digressions at times.
>>21760253
So basically the human personality that lives and breathes here is gone forever on death?

[Anonymous No.21760288]

>>21760235
>I die
>my disembodied soul
>my "blueprint"
My take away is that you haven't read anything from the Enneads. You are the Soul, the body dies. You reap what you sow. Don't expect to understand without reading the work.

[Anonymous No.21760293]

>>21760263
I think that depends on there being a form for individual human beings. Which I think is a discussion in 5.7.

[Anonymous No.21760312]

>>21760288
IDK if you realise this but I've had a long conversation with several anons here and I am using the terminology my co-conversants were using for the sake of consistency. I have no fucking idea what translation you're using and what your preferred terms are (or even mean) so excuse me for not being able to read your mind. Have a good life. Oh yeah
>You are the Soul, the body dies.
This is wrong btw, Plotinus is extremely obvious about the fact that the organism consists of both soul and body (matter), and believe it or not, you do actually have a material body! Who would've thought. Maybe you'll start reading the Enneads next week?
>>21760293
From my previous discussion with the other anons, the answer to that question seems to be no.

[Anonymous No.21760313]

>>21760263
>>21760293
I think it's a yes. Individual personality ceases after death. Would you really want to live forever as you are though? The point is to be enlightened of the ignorance that we are these lowely beings in this life so the Soul doesn't sink further into the mire of matter. So yes body dies, but do you as Soul want to be more or less Divine after you die?

[Anonymous No.21760319]

>>21760312
>This is wrong btw, Plotinus is extremely obvious about the fact that the organism consists of both soul and body (matter), and believe it or not, you do actually have a material body!
Wtf lol you're not your body. It's literally made of matter you fucking idiot, how could a RATIONAL being Be Real-non-being™.
>From what I read of Plotinus (about ~200 pages)
You didn't even read a quarter of the book.

[Anonymous No.21760322]

>>21760313
That's the thing. Ideally I want to attain henosis before I die, but I may not be able to do so. If I am not able to do so, having some other type of afterlife lined up would be the best option. I wouldn't want to stay as I am, but I would like to have some kind of character, an "archetypal existence" if you will. If forms of individual people existed, that would have been nice - this would mean there's a godlike version of me existing in the world of forms, a me without any flaws. But forms of individuals do not seem to exist, so that's a moot point.

[Anonymous No.21760327]

>>21760312
It's a pretty fucking mundane level of understanding imo but you are correct. It is written.
Yes. You have a body, the body dies. Life remains and transmigrates. What is it that lives? What are you? If you don't see that the principle of life is soul and identity is Nous, and want to stick to the most basic level of understanding the text I pity you.

[Anonymous No.21760329]

>>21760319
>Wtf lol you're not your body.
Learn to read anon. Paraphrasing the Guthrie translation, the organism consists of both soul and body. YOU are the organism. If you were just the soul, you would have no material body - but you do, so you are an organism. Not a soul as such. This is extremely obvious but I guess before you're ready to tackle the Enneads you can try learning how to read short sentences. And maybe learn to be less of a smug asshole next time, or at least learn how to be a correct smug asshole.
>You didn't even read a quarter of the book.
Somehow I still got more out of it than you did! Funny, that! Assuming you actually read anything yourself, of course. I feel like the odds on that are 50/50.

[Anonymous No.21760335]

>>21760327
>If you don't see that the principle of life is soul and identity is Nous, and want to stick to the most basic level of understanding the text I pity you.
You stick to the most basic level, asshole. Nothing I said contradicts what you said just now. The body is without a doubt the most inferior and lowest part of you - it is still integral to your current existence, it being what it is.

[Anonymous No.21760340]

>>21760322
Brah we are trying to fucking get you to realise you are an eternal soul, derived from the Eternal Soul of the Universe (which he calls Demiurge and/or Zeus). If you can't see this you're being deliberately ignorant or are so dense you'll need to reincarnate to something lower and come back up and try again. Maybe just try focusing on being virtuous and let cosmic justice take you into a clear instance of Mind.

[Anonymous No.21760349]

>>21760335
Okay. You are a soul trapped in a body. Stay in your cave bro. You said you wanted henosis and then you confine yourself to a level of thought that denies the possibility of henosis. Seriously, did you forget the myriad passages where he says the higher part of soul never descends... or do you think henosis is achieved by some other mechanism than understanding?

[Anonymous No.21760350]

>>21760322
>this would mean there's a godlike version of me existing in the world of forms
Holy fuck dude it would've helped if you actually read the book. There IS a godlike version of you existing in the intelligible world. Plotinus wants you to realize that and identify with the soul the is truly you.
>>21760329
The composite does consist of body and soul, yes. But you are truly the rational soul that's identified with Intellect.
>>21760335
>matter is integral to Being

[Anonymous No.21760353]

>>21760340
I have no objections to this in principle - I admire and rejoice in the philosophy of Plotinus. However, let us be precise. What I was curious about was the Plotinic conception of the afterlife and how this would look like from the perspective of the individual human being - which I think is understandable, because currently we are incarnate, human beings. You may say that the universal nature which generated these beings is primary and essential - very well, I agree. This doesn't make my question nonsensical or trivial. On death, a radical change of state occurs, and my existence as I know it will come to an end. I don't think there's anything wrong with being curious about what comes after this change of state in the Plotinic framework. If there's no future for the individual, you can just say that. I know Plotinus asserts that there is a kind of lower heaven for souls, but even these souls are - as was already stated - not quite the same thing as the incarnate individual.

[Anonymous No.21760375]

>>21760349
At this point I am genuinely sceptical of the idea that you can evaluate the boundaries that my thoughts are confined to.
>Seriously, did you forget the myriad passages where he says the higher part of soul never descends...
No, I have not. Do you know what implications that has for us, who, like it or not, live here on earth? Or do you mean to tell me that you are the higher soul and currently have no awareness of what your body is doing on earth since you are contemplating the world of forms instead? The higher soul contemplates the forms. The lower soul (that which is responsible for 99% of daily life and functioning for at least 99% of people) acts in the material world. This is the "human" level. If the human level is totally destroyed when we pass on, you can just say that, and you don't have to be a condescending asshole about it - I am willing to accept that, I was just curious to see what other perspectives the anons here can propose.
>>21760350
>There IS a godlike version of you existing in the intelligible world. Plotinus wants you to realize that and identify with the soul the is truly you.
A couple of other anons who seemed to have read the book posited the exact opposite argument yesterday and pulled up quotes to prove them. I took their word for it and I do not think I was wrong to do so, since they seemed convincing.
>The composite does consist of body and soul, yes. But you are truly the rational soul that's identified with Intellect.
Essentially, yes. Holistically, no, I don't think so. My current mode of existence is dependent on the existence of a functional body. Let's say that "I" will continue to exist even if my body is suddenly vaporised - that may well be the case, but the mode in which I exist will immediately change as well.
>>matter is integral to Being
Not what I said. This is the Neoplatonism general so I have no idea why some anons here seem to think that if they just try to muddy the water I will suddenly lose sight of the logical consistency of my words.

[Anonymous No.21760386]

>we're r̶e̶a̶s̶o̶n̶-̶p̶r̶i̶n̶c̶i̶p̶l̶e̶s̶ genetic code essentially
get a load of this fuckin materialist

[Anonymous No.21760397]

>le subtweeting outside twitter
get a load of this fuckin zoomer

[Anonymous No.21760403]

>>21760375
Why are you arguing about what Plotinus said if you haven't read the book?
>>21760397
>he's a twitter user

[Anonymous No.21760420]

>>21760403
>Why are you arguing about what Plotinus said if you haven't read the book?
Why are *you* arguing about what Plotinus said if you didn't understand whatever portion of the book you read, if you did, in fact, read any? I've read a third of the book and found it very much to my liking. Is it illegal to ask questions and fuel my curiosity? Plotinic philosophy is very stimulating to me and I found a handful of very helpful anons yesterday who gave me much food for thought. I don't come here to interact with smug assholes, generally - especially not ones that are wrong - and I didn't really expect to find any such people here.

[Anonymous No.21760427]

>>21760420
Obviously it wasn't that stimulating if you didn't finish it. And instead of reading it now, you're asking questions about it on 4chan.

[Anonymous No.21760440]

>>21760427
unless you are in academia and have connections to scholars, this thread is probably the best place to ask questions about The Enneads in the year of our Lord (current year) right now, as sad as that is. Even college professors won't be forthcoming since it's not likely fresh in their head and they probably have some bent about it. Also chatGPT hasn't read it yet. I tried asking it questions.

[Anonymous No.21760442]

>>21760427
I was on holiday. Sue me. And for what it's worth, some of the anons here actually knew what they were talking about, so this wasn't a waste of time. Plus discussing philosophy is fun, when people aren't being smug and condescending about it.

[Anonymous No.21760472]

>>21760353
>If there's no future for the individual, you can just say that
I did >>21760313

[Anonymous No.21760493]

>>21760472
Very well. Thank you for your contribution, I appreciate your good will and honesty in sharing your opinion.

[Anonymous No.21760500]

>"essentially, Soul is of the Intellectual and does not enter into the structure of what is called Sensible Being" 6.3.1
How is this the case if both Soul and matter are immaterial whereas the conjoint (I assume is part of "sensible being") has Soul as part of it?

[Anonymous No.21760545]

>>21760442
I'm sorry I was a sperg about it, there was no reason for me to be angry. I'll try to find passages that support my position tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.21760588]

>>21760545
You don't need to go through the trouble unless you want to. I accept your apology, and for my part, I am also sorry that I responded in an aggressive way. I wish you a pleasant day anon.

[Anonymous No.21760594]

Where do I start with Neoplato?

[Anonymous No.21760613]

>>21760588
>>21760545
>Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.
- Aristotle

[Anonymous No.21760621]

>>21760594
Dillon, Roots of Platonism
Dillon, Middle Platonism

[Anonymous No.21760632]

>>21760613
>The real noesis was the frens we made along the way
>t. Plato

[MacKenna No.21760720]

>>21736006
I know the reading is over but my notes are late and I'm going to post them more if I can in the chain of (You)'s I made
..
6.3 On the Kinds of Being: Third Treatise

Investigation of the principle of Becoming

Disassembling identity of the infinite into several unities until we have species' and genus' (species if imposed upon individuals, genus if imposed upon species)

The Universe is a living thing: essentially Soul is of the Intellectual and does not enter into the structure of what is called Sensible Being

Substance and Being have nothing to do with the things in flux (bodies)
- Becoming is not a uniform nature
- Becoming can be divided into Matter and the Form imposed upon Matter

Form in it's relation to Matter approximates to Stability

3 Beginning remarks on distinguishing Matter, Form, and their mixture

Since many things hold Matter in common, it may similar to a genus or is a genus in that sense

Form created Substance
- Substance is bound to the composite, matter and form are both not composites

Chapter ends with five classes, with three counted as one. They are: Relation, Quantity, Quality, Time-during-which, Place-in-which, Motion, Place, Time
- as five: (Matter, Form, Composite), Relation, Quantity, Quality, Motion

4 Nothing belonging to something else and predicated of it can be Substance

Matter is pure potentiality

5 remarks on predication (attaching subjective attributes)
- attribute interchangeable with accident
- when I say Socrates is a man, I predicate Man with a particular man

6 remarks on existence
- existence as applied to fire/earth/water/air
- existence in it's qualification

7 Matter is not a Reason-Principle
- it is like a shadow of a Principle, a vain attempt to achieve a principle

(if) being does not belong in equal degrees to Matter/Form and the Couplement, Substance can no longer remain common to all three as their genus
- Substance is dimmer and clearer there were there is a different proportion of Form/Matter
- (We conclude) within the Sensible world the term 'Being' has different connotations as applied to Matter/Form/conjoint

9 End of discussion on Substance, begin on its species'/genus'

11 Quantity and the quantum (quantum versus quale, quality, singuler/plural form)
- Time as the measure of Motion should be assigned to Relation, while Space, being that which circumscribes Body, is also a relative (chatGPT confirmed my thought that this quote was related to general relativity, which I thought was impressive.)

Beauty is an absolute, but there can be degrees of it
- men are ugly compared to gods, the most beautiful monkey is ugly to us

14 How to classify a straight line
- straight lines are a quantity plus a differentia

19
Qualities are independent of Time (insofar as, I guess, the quality is attributed to a form of something)

20 Is quality a dialectic? (are there contraries for every quality?)
- white and yellow are opposites

27
Should Stability or Rest be the opposite of Motion?

[Anonymous No.21760792]

>>21760500
I think the key to understanding this passage is to recognise he is dealing with speech categories. Not noetic, psychial or primal reality.

[Anonymous No.21760829]

>The Universe is a living thing: essentially Soul is of the Intellectual and does not enter into the structure of what is called Sensible Being
Another way I can understand this is: inert sensible being doesn't have soul enter into it, only when we consider sensible being with motion (i.e. life- which is a result of the act of Soul) added are we considering the most mundane level of daily reality. To consider the physical structure of sensible being without soul would be to consider a given set of phenomena without change, a single moment in the Life of the Universe. Dos that make sense?

>>21760720
Glad to see you MacKennanon. That picture is mad. What's the story there?

[Anonymous No.21761702]

>>21760594
The matrix reloaded

[Anonymous No.21761708]

bumping

[Anonymous No.21762399]

>>21760829
I looked it up and its just on pinterest, don't remember where I found it.

[Anonymous No.21762828]

>>21760588
I've tried to quote Plotinus in a way that presents a cohesive account of what happens to our personalities. I used the Gerson edition.

1.1.2.1-9
>First, need to understand if it is the case that soul is one thing and the essence of soul another. For if this is so, soul will be something composite, and there will be at once be nothing absurd in its being the subject, I mean, of these kinds of states and, in general, of better and worse habits and dispositions, that is, assuming the argument will turn out this way.

>In fact, however, if soul and the essence of soul are identical, soul would be a certain form incapable of being subject of all these activities that it imparts to something else, but would have the activity that is natural to itself in itself, whatever the argument reveals this to be.

1.1.5.21-27
>How, then, are states common to the body and soul?

>In fact, it is the case that appetite belongs to the soul’s faculty of appetite, and generally, the inclination towards something belongs to the soul’s faculty of desire. In this way, though, they will no longer be common, but belong to the soul alone. But, in fact, they belong to the body as well, because blood and bile must boil, and somehow the body must be disposed to move desire in the direction of, for example, sexual objects.

1.1.7.1-6
>In fact, assume that it is the complex that perceives, due to the presence of the soul, which is not the sort of thing that can make itself a part of the complex or of the other part, but which can make something else from a body of this type and a kind of light emitted from itself, namely, a different nature, that of the living being, to which sense-perception and other states proper to a living being are said to belong.

4.4.18.
>Now for the question whether the body possesses anything on its own account, and brings some unique quality of its own to the life bestowed on it by the presence of soul, or whether what it has is simply nature, and this nature is what it is that associates with the body.

>In fact, the body itself, in which there is soul and nature, in which there is soul and nature, must not be the same kind of thing as what is soulless, or that air is when it has been lit, but rather like air that has been warmed; the body of an animal or indeed of a plant, has something like a shadow of soul, and pain and taking pleasure in the pleasures of the body is the business of the body so qualified; but the pain of this body and this sort of pleasure come to the attention of ourselves for unaffected cognition.

>By ‘ourselves’ I mean the ‘other’ soul (i.e. the intellectual soul), inasmuch as even the body so qualified is not another’s, but belongs to us, for which reason it is of concern to us, as belonging to us. For we are not this qualified body, nor yet have we been purged of it, but it depends on us and is suspended from us, whereas we exist in respect of our dominant part;
Porphyrean split due to character limit.

[Anonymous No.21762871]

>>21762828
I've also inserted this section from 1.1.7, as my edition has it as a footnote at the point it splits, and I think it is a helpful one.
1.1.7.14-18
>So, sense-perception of externals is a reflection of this [grasp of impressions], whereas this [grasp of impressions] is truer in substantiality, since it contemplates only forms, without being affected. Actually, from these Forms, from which soul along has already received its leadership over the living being, come thoughts, beliefs, and acts of intellection. And here indeed is where we are. The things that are prior to these acts are ours, while we ourselves, controlling the living being are, actually, located here and higher up.

4.4.18 continued
>nevertheless, that other entity is ours, though in a different way. For this reason, it is of concern to us when it is experiencing pleasure and pain, and the more so the weaker we are, and to the extent that we do not separate ourselves from it, but hold this part of us to be the most valuable, and take it as the true human being, and, in a way, submerge ourselves in it.

>For we must say that affections of this kind are not those of the soul in general, but belong to the body so qualified, that is, of something common to both or complex. When something is a single thing, then it is in a way sufficient to itself. For example, what affection would a body on its own undergo if it had no soul? For if it were divided, it would not be itself. For example, what affection would a body on its own undergo if it had no soul? For if it were divided, it would not be itself that is being divided, but the unity in it. But soul on its own would not be affected even in this way, and being like this escapes every such experience.

>But when two things want to be one, since they have this unity as something extraneous, it would be reasonable to say that the origin of pain for them consists in not being allowed to be one. I mean here not two as if there were two bodies, for in that case there is only one nature involved; but when one nature wants to share something with another, that is, a thing of another kind – and the worse takes something from the better, and that cannot take the better itself, but only some trace of it, and in this way, too, it comes to be both two things and one, stuck between what it was originally and what it could not have – it generates a problem for itself, since it has acquired a transitory association which is not secure, but always borne in opposite directions. And as it fluctuates upwards and downwards, on its being borne down it proclaims its pain, and as it moves up its desire for the association.

My hope is that this explains, in a very summarized way, explains what I meant to say when you said:
>Or do you mean to tell me that you are the higher soul and currently have no awareness of what your body is doing on Earth since you are contemplating the world of forms instead?
For this next part -- I've reached that character lim.

[Anonymous No.21762898]

>>21762871
I'm trying to address your concern
>Do you know what implications that has for us, who, like it or not, live here on Earth? ... The higher soul contemplates the forms. The lower soul (that which is responsible for 99% of daily life and functioning for at least 99% of people) acts in the material world. This is the 'human' level. If the human level is totally destroyed when we pass on, you can just say that...
I was unclear last night as to what I meant, and I honestly didn't clearly remember what is quoted here. I'm skipping a lot of the discussion on the nature of memory.


4.3.31.19-20
>It is as when we have at some time taken up associations with a lower class of person, and then change these companions for others, we remember a few things to do with the former, but more that pertain to the people who are better.


4.3.32.
>But, the, what about memories of one’s friends, children or wife? Or of one’s country, and such things as it would not be out of place for a cultivated man to remember?

>In fact, the faculty of imaginative representation remembers each thing with feeling, while the cultivated man would have memories of these in an unaffected way; for one might take it that the feeling is in the former right from the start, and those of the feelings that are respectable are in the virtuous soul, insofar as it has association with the other. It is appropriate, after all, for the inferior soul to aspire to the results of the acts of memory of the other, particularly when it is respectable itself; for a given soul could be better from the beginning, or become better by education received from the superior soul.

>But in any case this one should be glad to forget the things that come from the inferior; one may after all envisage the possibility that, even when the one soul is virtuous, the other may be worse by its extent that it strives upwards, it forgets more things – unless perhaps all its life even in the sensible world was somehow such that it has memories only of better things. In this connection, the remark about ‘standing apart from human concerns’ is most apt; this necessarily comprises memories, too.

cont.

[Anonymous No.21762909]

>>21762898
>So, anyone saying that the good soul is forgetful would be right in this sort of way. For it flees from the many, and brings the many together into one, thus getting rid of unlimitedness. In this way, it is not involved with many concerns, but travels light and is focused upon itself; since even in the sensible world, whenever it wants to be in the intelligible world, it gets rid of everything that is other than it while it is still here; and there are few things in the sensible world that are also not in the intelligible world; and when it is in heaven, it will get rid of more. For example, the Heracles we spoke of above would talk about his past brave deeds (4.3.27.7), but the other Heracles would think these things unimportant, and when he has been transferred to a holier place, and has come to be in the intelligible world, and to a degree surpassing the other Heracles, he prevails in the contests in which the wise contend, (4.4.1) what, then, will he say? and in general, of what things will the soul retain memory when it has come to be in the intelligible world and be with Substance?

4.4.4.14-20
>For it could be that when one knows something, one might possess this as something different from oneself, while if one does not know that one has it, one may very well end up being what one has; and this latter experience actually makes the soul fall further.

>If, though, on departing from the intelligible world, a soul somehow recovers its memories, it had them there, too. That is, it had them potentially, but the actuality of the things there made the memory disappear. For the memories are not after all like impressions deposited in the soul, in which case what happens would perhaps be absurd; rather, it is a case of a potentiality which was later subsumed into an actuality. When the actuality in the intelligible world, then, ceases to be operative, the soul sees what it had been seeing before it came to be there.

4.4.5.11-22
>So, memory from what we have been saying, starts in heaven, when the soul has already left the intelligible regions. If, then, the soul has come to be in heaven, from the sensible world, and stops there, there is nothing surprising if it were to have memory of many of the things here, of the kind mentioned, and were able to recognize many of the souls it had known before, if indeed it is necessary for them to have bodies around themselves of similar shape. And even if they change their shapes, making them spherical, they would then recognize them through their characters and the peculiarities of their behavior; for that would not be absurd. Granted that they have abandoned their affections, their characters are not precluded from remaining. And if they were able to converse as well, they would recognize them that way, too.
So I think that you have no need to worry about the personality being destroyed, or even forgotten.

[Anonymous No.21763175]

>>21762909
>you have no need to worry about the personality being destroyed
>If, then, the soul has come to be in heaven
Good posting anon. A lot hinges on that if though. It's very easy to imagine that the tendency as time goes on is that Soul's activity becomes more and more diffuse and it's tendency to forget Nous and The One get more and more extreme that less and less of Soul will return to the higher realms. This is why I think ethics is still so important. Sure it's fine to engage in more sublime contemplations, and it's necessary for an upwards orientation, but ethics disciplines over our behaviour are harder and just as necessary.

[Anonymous No.21763267]

>>21763175
That reminds me of the last lines of the book:
>If, then, one sees oneself having become this, then one has himself as a likeness of that; and if one moves from oneself, as from the image to the archetype, then he reaches 'journey's end'. And when one drops out of the vision, then one wakens virtue in oneself again; and seeing oneself ordered by virtues on is again uplifted by virtue, in the direction of intellect, and wisdom; and though wisdom, towards oneself. This is the way of life of gods, and divine, happy human beings, the release from everything here, a way of life that takes no pleasure in things here, the refuge of a solitary in the solitary.

[Anonymous No.21764103]

>>21760594
start with the Greeks

[Anonymous No.21764627]

To the anon that started this: did you have thoughts about reading something next?

[Anonymous No.21764857]

>>21764627
I didn't make the original, just the last half of threads, but I was planning on making a thread for Iamblichus' De Mysteriis after this thread dies. Ideally it'd be announcing just the schedule and start a week after that, so anon's have time to finish their current reads/order a physical copy if they want one. I don't have a reading schedule though and I am unfamiliar with the book, so I don't know the best way to structure it.

[Anonymous No.21765297]

>>21764857
Ten books of varying lengths. Would it be too much to say a week per book?

[Anonymous No.21766179]

bump

[Anonymous No.21766699]

>>21758825
Which translation of De Mysteriis are you reading?

[Anonymous No.21766911]

>>21760594
Neoplato is actually what they call the author of spurious dialogues like Rival Lovers. With that in mind I would say Hipparchus is best of the spurious dialogues.

[Anonymous No.21767455]

>>21766699
You can find the Thomas Taylor translation online easy enough. I'll probably just read that.

[Anonymous No.21768290]

>>21767455
Cool the only other translation is an autistic double text one

[Anonymous No.21769217]

>>21768290
which is that?

[Anonymous No.21769220]

>>21766699
Emma Clarke's is really nice, the intro is helpful.

>>21769217
Probably Clarke's, it has parallel Greek/English which is extremely useful for some of Iamblichus' odd late Greek.

[Anonymous No.21770121]

>>21764857
Looking forward to it. I fell out halfway through the Enneads due to work but I should be able to keep up with this one.

[Anonymous No.21770391]

>>21766911
Neither of those are spurious.

[Anonymous No.21770393]

>>21770391
According to Thrasyllus they are. I don’t really like Thrasyllus anyways so it doesn’t matter to me much.

[Anonymous No.21770472]

>>21770393
Thrasyllus has them in his tetralogies with the Alcibiades dialogues. He's one our early sources suggesting they're not spurious.

[Anonymous No.21771797]

>>21770393
>>21770472
Source?

[Anonymous No.21771848]

>>21771797
Thrasyllus

[Anonymous No.21772281]

>>21771797
Diogenes Laertius in his Life of Plato attests to Thrasyllus' canon.

[Anonymous No.21772896]

>>21760720
I kind of have been reading out of order, 6.4-6.8 may not be written b/ I'm kind of ready to move on to Iamblicus but maybe a couple for 6.6/6.7 will get posted since they were interesting. The last chapter was beautiful like as a reflection/summation of everything I read preceding it.

..
6.9 On The Good, or The One

beings are beings due to unity

Soul bestows (and accepts) unity, shape, Ideal-Form upon material things yet remains distinct from it
- Soul is a manifold though not composed of parts. It can reason (about sensibles), desire, perceive

The Intellectual Principle is Thinker and Object of its Thought
- Intellect is the act of thinking, not something that has intellections; Cause is not to be identified with caused


The Unity (the All/ineffable One) is not... (etc.)
- Those who think of The One as Mind or God think too meanly
- more authentic than God

Myth of Minos (the familiar of Zeus)
- Minos' vision and memory of achieving the vision of the inner All-Soul led him to establish laws based on it

To hold aloof of Thither is loneliness and lessening
- Link of the Love-God with the Psyches relates to the quest of beings to bear heavenly goodness

11 The Supreme is not to be made a common story for a stranger to see
- The person ascended is in perfect stillness and isolation, not even looking inward anymore
- risen beyond beauty, virtue, temple images (though these are the first things to regard when leaving "the holies")
- this belongs to the lives of gods and godlike beings, to pass from solitary to solitary (from some individual's own life to the ineffable one which is in them)

[MacKenna No.21772903]

>>21760720
I kind of have been reading out of order, 6.4-6.8 may not be written b/ I'm kind of ready to move on to Iamblicus but maybe a couple for 6.6/6.7 will get posted since they were interesting. The last chapter was beautiful like as a reflection/summation of everything I read preceding it.

..
6.9 On The Good, or The One

beings are beings due to unity

Soul bestows (and accepts) unity, shape, Ideal-Form upon material things yet remains distinct from it
- Soul is a manifold though not composed of parts. It can reason (about sensibles), desire, perceive

The Intellectual Principle is Thinker and Object of its Thought
- Intellect is the act of thinking, not something that has intellections; Cause is not to be identified with caused


The Unity (the All/ineffable One) is not... (etc.)
- Those who think of The One as Mind or God think too meanly
- more authentic than God

Myth of Minos (the familiar of Zeus)
- Minos' vision and memory of achieving the vision of the inner All-Soul led him to establish laws based on it

To hold aloof of Thither is loneliness and lessening
- Link of the Love-God with the Psyches relates to the quest of beings to bear heavenly goodness

11 The Supreme is not to be made a common story for a stranger to see
- The person ascended is in perfect stillness and isolation, not even looking inward anymore
- risen beyond beauty, virtue, temple images (though these are the first things to regard when leaving "the holies")
- this belongs to the lives of gods and godlike beings, to pass from solitary to solitary (from some individual's own life to the ineffable one which is in them)

[Anonymous No.21772940]

>>21740437
This question could be answered so simply

[Anonymous No.21773969]

>>21772940
What's your answer anon ?