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22765748 No.22765748 [Reply] [Original]

Did Porphyry and Iamblichus actually get filtered by the Enneads? I really respect them and I didn't believe one of the anons here who told me that they got filtered, but apparently Porphyry did some weird syncretic shit with Aristotle's Categories that doesn't mesh well with the Forms, while Iamblichus' statement that the rational soul does not dwell among the Forms straight up breaks Platonism and shifts its focus from an ontology of Being to an ontology of Becoming. Both of these thinkers are still super valuable but I am surprised at seeing such major doctrinal errors.

>> No.22765893

>>22765748
What I don't understand (I'm in the first 1/4 of the enneads) is how any of this shit was taken seriously.
You may think the other religions are silly getting messages from burning bushes or demons or sacred falmes, but this shit is far less plausible.
He makes no claim of special revelation but claims to know all this stuff about the higher spheres, souls coming up and going down.
Bruh-ther how the fuck would you know? And people actually paid him to learn this stuff from him. Wild. Basically aincent greece was just a huge market place for elaborate fan fiction.
Its even more wild that the great and powerful for thousands of years since have created little cults and clubs of their own just rehashing his shit, which has zero provenance to begin with.

>> No.22765907

>>22765893
filtered brainlet

>> No.22765929
File: 31 KB, 598x800, 621.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22765929

>>22765907
>Doesn't even claim his source as being revealed to him in a dream
>has no source
>is taken seriously when speaking about things that should by definition be outside mortal comprehension
and yet im the brainlet baka baka fr fr

>> No.22765942

>>22765893
I'll take the obvious bait and point out that dialectic is considered a valid method of acquiring knowledge for the entire Platonic tradition. In other words, anyone with sufficient intellectual qualifications would be able to observe what is logically necessary and eventually arrive at true conclusions. This is the basis of Plotinus' project. As far as I am concerned, the project was a complete success.

>> No.22765947

Yep explain properly

Thanks

>> No.22765969

>>22765942
Sketch me out the dialectic that leads you to understanding the upper soul descending from the higher sphere (but only kind of) (well maybe idk tee hee)

>> No.22766007

>>22765969
It doesn't descend. It remains in the realm of Forms and is connected to the lower soul and to your body only in an occult manner, because if it actually descended you would have no connection to the Forms and would become either incapable of reasoning or literally as dumb as a rock - this last point could be interpreted differently depending on how you read the passage I am currently thinking of.
This point is actually something I mention in my OP because Iamblichus did believe that the rational soul did not reside in the higher plane, and that is a major mistake on his part IMO, as I stated earlier.

>> No.22766017

>>22765748
Plotinus had a different system that probably has spiritual and aesthetic superiority but in terms of pure metaphysics he was blown out of the fucking water by the later neoplatonists.

>> No.22766033

>>22765748
are you sure this isn't a translation issue? "rational soul" in plotinus may be referring to the part of soul with noesis and in iablichus and porphyry to the part of the soul that performs dianoia.

>> No.22766034

>>22766017
In what way is this the case? I suspect by "metaphysics" you actually mean esoteric or magical practices rather than noetic truth, the latter being what metaphysics is supposed to refer to.

>> No.22766035

>>22766017
>he was blown out of the fucking water by the later neoplatonists.
Such as?

>> No.22766040

>>22766033
I couldn't possibly know that since I do not read ancient Greek. But the way I understand it, Plotinus also considers Diaonoia to be a faculty of the rational soul and not of the irrational soul. So what you suggest seems unlikely.

>> No.22766056

>>22766035
The platonic theology and elements of theology annihilate anything Plotinus wrote. But we don't know how much of that is proclus and how much iamblichus and syrianus so that is why I refer to the late neoplatonists in general.
>>22766034
what is vague in Plotinus is completed in Proclus, in the procession from like to unlike, in the system of triads, in the account of various shit like infinite vs limit, etc. maybe I am underestimating Plotinus because I didn't read him as closely.

>> No.22766130
File: 161 KB, 1119x964, proclus.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22766130

>>22766056
>maybe I am underestimating Plotinus
I can't rule that out. I haven't read Proclus myself though, so I am no authority on him either. I only have this little chart. It does seem a bit funky though because it seems to posit that Life precedes Intellect when Plotinus seems to suggest that Intellect itself is Life, and that things attain Life to the extent that they attain Intellect... Reversing the relationship seems undesirable to me.

>> No.22766188

Yes, you can't just not disagree with something or not like it. It means you were filtered

>> No.22766221
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22766221

>>22765969
>>22765893
>>22765929
Platonists believe that the soul is endowed with reason and as such it can just innately gather information about the world. This isn't like inference under a materialist system wherein the brain can process information and find ever more interlinkings between an otherwise set amount of sensory data. Rather, because the soul can move up the ontological hierarchy it can actually gain information about the world that it is embedded in (and it does so via religion, so it has to go up a chain of Gods to eventually reach the Forms and Nous and Sophia and so on). This is because things lower on the ontological hierarchy are "in" things higher up (so matter is inside bodies which is inside a variety of Gods who are inside Zeus who is inside...and so on... which is inside Being). To put it in modern parlance he's basically arguing that you can engage in astral projection by thinking to gain new knowledge.

Also Plotinus, like his teacher Ammonius Saccas, was actually a very devoutly religious man in the "sacrifice cows to Zeus and wrestle for Poseidon" sense and was deeply involved in the local Platonic religious institutions of his day and locale. Plotinus himself was basically a lesser prophet in the religious tradition founded by Ammonius Saccas who was himself seen as a prophet figure by the laymen of the area (he was a "theodidaktos", that is "god-taught", which is a term that the Greeks used to refer to prophets and holymen who founded religious organizations and cults). All of this is to say that Plotinus did actually claim that he was given knowledge by the Gods, he was just claiming that you can also gain that same knowledge by just astrally projecting yourself into the aether and chatting it up with Aphrodite yourself (technically, Platonism rejects "revelation" as a distinct epistemological class that only Jews can access, it's just that "prophets" are people who have access to certain knowledge more easily than others do).

>> No.22766437

>>22765748
>Porphyry did some weird syncretic shit with Aristotle's Categories that doesn't mesh well with the Forms
Could you go further? I love Aristotle’s Categories.
>Iamblichus' statement that the rational soul does not dwell among the Forms straight up breaks Platonism and shifts its focus from an ontology of Being to an ontology of Becoming
What do you mean by a shift of ontology? As in that the rational soul is now something that shifts and changes, like Hegel almost?

>> No.22766453
File: 29 KB, 235x310, IntellekuellerAnschauer.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22766453

>>22765893
>Bruh-ther how the fuck would you know?
INTELLEKTUELLE ANSCHAUUNG

>> No.22766482

>>22766221
>To put it in modern parlance he's basically arguing that you can engage in astral projection by thinking to gain new knowledge.
holy based

>>22766221
>Platonism rejects "revelation" as a distinct epistemological class that only Jews can access, it's just that "prophets" are people who have access to certain knowledge more easily than others do
[Christianity has entered the chat]

>There existed, long before this time, certain men more ancient than all those who are esteemed philosophers, both righteous and beloved by God, who spoke by the Divine Spirit, and foretold events which would take place, and which are now taking place. They are called prophets. These alone both saw and announced the truth to men, neither reverencing nor fearing any man, not influenced by a desire for glory, but speaking those things alone which they saw and which they heard, being filled with the Holy Spirit. Their writings are still extant, and he who has read them is very much helped in his knowledge of the beginning and end of things, and of those matters which the philosopher ought to know, provided he has believed them. For they did not use demonstration in their treatises, seeing that they were witnesses to the truth above all demonstration, and worthy of belief; and those events which have happened, and those which are happening, compel you to assent to the utterances made by them, although, indeed, they were entitled to credit on account of the miracles which they performed, since they both glorified the Creator, the God and Father of all things, and proclaimed His Son, the Christ [sent] by Him: which, indeed, the false prophets, who are filled with the lying unclean spirit, neither have done nor do, but venture to work certain wonderful deeds for the purpose of astonishing men, and glorify the spirits and demons of error. But pray that, above all things, the gates of light may be opened to you; for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have imparted wisdom.
-Justin Martyr

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Martyr?wprov=sfti1

>> No.22766509

>>22765893
>he hasn't read the presocratics
ngmi

>>22765748
i'd love to hear your proper works cited, OP

>> No.22766545
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22766545

>>22765969
Its presence is mediated by the 'signal-receiver' in the materium via emanation; it's apophatic, burn the haystack to acquire the needle-- then you get the apodictic, neti neti "this not that", the Higher Self that is self-coherent with the lower one here and now. Armstrong's rendering muddles emanationism sections; Get Thomas Taylors, while incomplete, will shine a light on this.

>> No.22767118

bump

>> No.22767168

>>22766545
Is there a heaven in Neo-Platonism and where is it? Neo Platonsits talk more of individual ascension of exceptional souls not like a general heaven of regular good people like the Christians see it. Where would the Christian heaven be? Above the demiurge? Below the forms?
Is there a heaven for the masses at all in Platonism?

>> No.22767179

Are there more Forms than there are Henads? Like which group are more numerous, are there like loads of Forms and a few selected Henads? Or vice versa.

>> No.22767184

>>22766221
The problem with Neo Platonism

Is what was the cause of the cosmic disturbance?

It’s never explained how exactly we forget and move away from the One
How is it possible for a state of perfection to forget itself
Because if you have complete perfection how is it possible for imperfection to arise

Why not just enterally rest in that perfection and be content in it

>> No.22767193

>>22765893
>aincent greece
Plotinus was from Egypt under the romans. He was probably ethnically greek, but he was not from ancient greece.

>Bruh-ther how the fuck would you know?
He thinks the soul has innate knowledge of this stuff. If it makes you uncomfortable you can instead see his work as investigations into the truth of the universe similar to how Plato writes Socrates in his dialougues. Also the stuff about higher spheres and this stuff is not an issue for most readers since his writing, especially his description of The One, agree almost completely with the islamic (shia) view of God.

>> No.22767205

>>22765929
>things that should by definition be outside mortal comprehension
please name and number all of these things and offer the precise definition of what is outside mortal comprehension anon, so that I may never overstep the boundaries of what I am supposed to say or think about.

>> No.22767217

why should i become a neoplatonist?

>> No.22767219

>>22766221
> chatting it up with Aphrodite yourself (technically, Platonism rejects "revelation" as a distinct epistemological class that only Jews can access, it's just that "prophets" are people who have access to certain knowledge more easily than others do).

If the One is beyond our ability to comprehend and conceptually encapsulate on what basis do we base our knowledge that there is a One at all?

Christians can say divine revelation, what does a Platonist say?

>> No.22767221

>>22767217
Because it’s the only coherent system that can makes sense of reality

>> No.22767236
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22767236

>>22765893
without the innate capacity for a predefined way of seeing and knowing the world, actual perception would be impossible since the categorization of objects of perception are infinite, you'd have no principle of seeing from which you'd see anything
Nothing is 'given', there's no default categorization of materiality, OUR world is entirely anthropocentric

>> No.22767253

>>22767217
all modern philosophy, every great thinker between Descartes to Roger Penrose has been a neoplatonist of some kind, or wrong (like Hume)

>> No.22767296

>>22767217
Become muslim and use neo-platonism as secondary reading to "understand" God.

>> No.22767302

>>22767253
i met penrose. nice guy. never met descartes or hume tho

>> No.22767336

>>22767217
Because it is the golden thread underlying and linking together the mysticism off all the Abrahamic religions, and certain concepts map 1:1 to Hinduism and other Eastern Religions.

>> No.22767600

>>22767184
This is also the problem with Buddhist and Hindu viewpoints, imo. The closest anyone will get to explaining it is saying something like "it is simply in the nature of [the One|Brahman|etc] to do so" which seems a little ridiculous since it implies a perfect eternal unchanging omnipotent being's nature is to generate imperfection and suffering.

>> No.22767633

>>22767184
>disturbance
Is it, though? Emanation from being is either infinite, in which case you have a point, or it's finite and thus there's a point where you hit nonbeing. Matter is the last stop before nonbeing. So, it's not that we've necessarily "fallen away" from nonbeing but rather that we have moved lower on the hierarchy and wish to ascend even higher.

>>22767219
It's not beyond us, we just don't have big enough brains yet. How do you get a bigger brain? Ascend.

>> No.22767760

>>22767633
>It's not beyond us, we just don't have big enough brains yet. How do you get a bigger brain? Ascend

What I meant by beyond us is its ineffable

Just saying ascend is a kinda a lazy answer don’t you think?

>> No.22767777

>>22767633
>So, it's not that we've necessarily "fallen away" from nonbeing but rather that we have moved lower on the hierarchy and wish to ascend even higher.

No that doesn’t make sense there’s nothing higher to ascend to than The One
And if we were already once in that state there’s nothing higher. That’s why it’s called a returning to The One

The return includes nothing more or less than what already was.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding you and you’re making a more subtle and profound point so if you could explain it again maybe I’ll understand betters.

>> No.22767790

>>22767633
Also I think you’re confusing the procession which I guess in some sense is finite in that the One according to Proclus’s law penetrates into pure matter and the procession terminates there and returns upward.

But the energies of the procession are eternal, you know there is no end of the world in Neo Platonism like Revelations in Christianity its eternal so more or less infinite.

>> No.22767799

>>22767221
Reality is fake you live in subjectivity and can't comprehend...

Sure sounds like it doesn't

>> No.22768003

>>22767799
>Reality is fake you live in subjectivity and can't comprehend...

Who says this?

>> No.22768071

>>22767236
Would the trinity be at the demiurgic level? Or the first hypostasise below the One

>> No.22768074

>>22768071
Or the Father being the One and the Son demiurge but I dislike stretching the trinity like this I feel as if they should exist at the same level/hypostasis

>> No.22768453

>>22768074
>>22768071
WHAT
Do christians actually not believe that God is The One?

>> No.22768613

>>22765893
Probably not an answer you’ll like much, but, for many of the Ancient Greek thinkers, intuition was a valid way of arriving at certain transcendental truths. And one of their core intuitions (commonly) was that the “higher” cannot come from the “lower”. For higher, take life/sentience, intellect, consciousness, and abstract concepts (corresponding to Platonic forms) and, for lower, take insentient matter. When you take this core intuition, in tandem with the wondrous order we see all throughout nature and in the stars (which even the Ancient Greek scientists and especially their astronomers had a sense of, much as moderners chauvinistically like to believe they were all “pseudoscientists,” “cultists”, “elaborate fan-fictionists” somehow far stupider than us, etc.), and it’s not a far leap to positing a higher transcendental order that created, emanated, and/or rules all things. Hence why panpsychism, hylozoism, pantheism and panentheism were such common strains in Ancient Greek thoughts.

Disregard it if you will, but there is a case to be made that the Greeks were actually MORE authentic and originary thinkers than us (cf. Heidegger), as they had a closer, more primordial, intuitive relationship to Being than we had, without as much acculturation that had jetted the question as “already settled,” or, worse, gave a mere scientific/physicalist/materialist account of it as if this explained it all.

>> No.22769103

>>22767600
> which seems a little ridiculous since it implies a perfect eternal unchanging omnipotent being's nature is to generate imperfection and suffering.
It’s not ridiculous if you understand that the imperfection/suffering is only an appearance and not real, and that good/bad is just a subjective duality that people imagine; in this case there is nothing incompatible or contradictory in a supreme reality that is neither good/bad projecting a relative appearance that ultimately leads all souls back to that same Being or God.

>> No.22769123

>>22766007
> Iamblichus did believe that the rational soul did not reside in the higher plane,
Proclus was also filtered by Plotinus on the topic of the undescended soul

>> No.22769477

>>22767760
Only if you believe that there's nothing beyond this life and thus philosophy is about accurately describing reality using human language. "lmfao just ascend" is a perfectly valid action to take if you believe that there's life after death.

>>22767777
>>22767790
>No that doesn’t make sense there’s nothing higher to ascend to than The One
Ascend past humanity, not The One.

>And if we were already once in that state there’s nothing higher. That’s why it’s called a returning to The One
Well the argument would be that while we're already "inside" The One due to emanation what we want to get closer to "the center", which would be ascension. We're still inside The One at the next level up, we just want to get closer. I guess you could ask why we aren't just at the center anyways, and the counterarguments would be either 1) there's a churn away from the center and thus this is part of the cosmic cycle or 2) The One "wants" things the way they are so you were placed here so that you could ascend.

>Also I think you’re confusing the procession
I'm just speaking imprecisely for ease.

>> No.22769600

>>22765748
>Doctrinal errors

In what sense? That the doctrines they taught were incorrect? I agree; platonism is ultimately a philosophy that seeks to introduce some sort of "becoming" and is therefore incoherent.

Or do you mean, their teaching breaks with "Plato"? All of these people were writing almost a thousand years after Plato's death, and after numerous developments and obvious breaks with Plato. When it comes down to the details, it will be hard to fault or defend it as genuinely "platonic". They should be given leeway to develop their particular platonic denomination, albeit by that time anything "platonic" is really a grand amalgamation of 1,000 years of philosophy.

>> No.22769895

>>22769103
But why does it project that relative appearance?
I don't think "it's simply in its nature" is logically valid but I can't articulate why. It's like, why wouldn't it just exist eternally in absolute bliss *without* projecting any of that shit, and if it is in its nature to do that, doesn't that imply a reality to the world of appearances/samsara/suffering/whatever beyond the merely illusory, completely empty nature usually ascribed to it?

>> No.22770001 [DELETED] 

>>22765893
Go back to /his/, retard.

>> No.22770589

>>22769895
>I don't think "it's simply in its nature" is logically valid but I can't articulate why.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t be logically valid. If the ultimate Entity is wholly self-sufficient and unconditioned by anything else then it follows as a matter of logical necessity that anything which It does has to proceed either directly from that Entities nature or Its freedom to choose from among various possibilities of action contained within Itself without being influenced by anything else; otherwise It wouldn’t be unconditioned and self-sufficient.

When Plotinus says that the One seeks nothing and needs nothing but that nonetheless because of Its superabundance and fullness that It overflows as it were down into the lower levels, he is not really saying anything different in principle from Shankara, at least with regard to the ‘motive’ behind the universe. In both causes the Highest is utterly unconcerned and unaffected and the whole hierarchy of the cosmos etc arises because of an inherent ‘fullness’ or ‘potency’ in the One/Brahman.

> It's like, why wouldn't it just exist eternally in absolute bliss *without* projecting any of that shit,
From Brahman’s perspective, It has always done so and is still doing so right now, from It’s perspective the universe has never arisen or appeared at all but there is just the perfection of the partless non-dual infinite Brahman and that is the sum total of reality or all that exists, only the minds of the jivas has the experience of the illusion but not Brahman. Theoretically yes God/The One/Brahman could not have the nature of giving rise to everything instead of having that nature and then we wouldn't be sitting here talking online and there would be no experience of plurality but that’s not how things turned out so it’s kinda of fruitless to speculate about that.

>> No.22770605

>>22769895
>and if it is in its nature to do that, doesn't that imply a reality to the world of appearances/samsara/suffering/whatever beyond the merely illusory, completely empty nature usually ascribed to it?
Not necessarily, I think the opposite is actually true in that making the illusion completely dependent on Brahman as the manifestation of It’s inherent capacity/energy is something that actually undermines the reality of plurality, and this is because of the very simple logical premise that anything whose presence or existence depends upon something else is in some way less real than what it depends upon. Both Platonic and Christian thought accept this reasoning such as the Platonic forms being considered more real than what depends on them, or when Augustine writes about creation being not truly real like God is, it’s also seen when Augustine argues against the problem of evil by saying that evil lacks substantial existence and thus isn’t real because it’s just a privation or shadow that’s dependent on what’s real.

It’s also worth mentioning that Advaita Vedanta doesn’t mean illusionary in the sense of being entirely subjective illusions imagined by individuals but rather illusory in the sense of deceptively appearing to be what they aren’t, i.e. plurality appears as an imitation of the real existent when it’s not a real existent. The illusion still is maintained by Brahman though independently of individual minds and in this way it’s kind of a shared space or medium for minds to interact. The illusion has ‘relative existence’ which designates it as something which appears in experience as dependent on the Real, but while lacking any substance and while not being truly real (as in not being self-sufficient and unconditioned like the Real is).

>> No.22771860

>>22768453
Can someone respond. Has the trinity eroded christian minds that much?

>> No.22771891

>>22767600
The Absolute is all that is.
All that is contains every single possibility.
Non-absolute existence is possible.
Therefore, the Absolute "contains" non-absolute existence.

>> No.22772714

>>22771860
No Christian who takes the religion seriously or who knows anything about theology would ever posit that there is a higher One that is above God. I can only assume that whosever said otherwise wasn’t Christian or they were just spitballing or brainstorming about how the two systems can be conceived as matching in various ways, e.g. Yahweh someone resembles the Demiurge in his behavior even though metaphysically he is said to fulfill the role of the One.