/lit/ - Literature

>>19259448
Eric D. Perl - Thinking Being. Introduction to Classical Metaphysics

>>19259466
I actually really like using secondary sources since they can save so much time in getting to the point, but does this Perl guy understand Platonism on a really deep level, like some of the theurgytards on this board for example?

Please somebody bump this.

Bump

Curious of the same

>>19259448
>I want to master the Platonic worldview
Then why are you already looking for cliff notes and restricting your timeframe? Do you want to understand Plato or just seem to? Read the Dialogues if the former applies. I don't have any advice for pseuds and charlatans.

>>19259931
You know what I mean bro, I want to understand the core of Platonism which is necessary to see things from the Platonic perspective, but I don't need to become a Plato autist.

>>19259448
>I don't want to spend three years reading shit, I just want to understand and absorb the framework faithfully, then move on
ngmi, stick to wikipedia, get out of /lit/

>>19259518
Nigga they literally know anything at all because they've read Perl.
>theurgy
He wrote an entire book on Dionysius the Areopagite

>>19260089
honestly this

what you'll understand about platonism after 1 month of study is an atom, a quark, compared to what you'll understand after 1, 5, 10 years, a lifetime.

>>19260089
>>19260140
This is kind of what I mean though. I don't want to make Platonism the focus of my life. I want to understand the core nucleus that lies behind the entire system, absorb it and go on with my life, where I can apply it or integrate it into other systems as I wish. I want a deep understanding, but I do not need a broad understanding per se.
>>19260094
My bad then, should I assume this Perl is himself a theurgyfag in this case? If he's a Platonist as a matter of spirituality/religion as well as scholarship, then that's perfect. My concern was to avoid anything that couple be conceived as simple materialistic and academic scholarship on Platonism as would be the norm in contemporary academia.

Man do not read Plotinus before reading aristotle and plato

>>19260245
Is Aristotle mandatory? The little I have read from him has been extremely dry and boring.

>>19259448
oh i get it, his brain is strangling him aha

>>19260271
Ethics + politics are perhaps the bare minimum if you wish to avoid him as much as possible.
Neoplatonism, as for example Plotinus, is greatly troubled with the act of reconciling Aristotle's metaphysics with Plato's system. For they will even argue that Plato and Aristotle in the end argue for the same thing.

All the technical terms introduced in Aristotle's metaphysics + in works of categories from Aristotle and Stoics greatly influenced the Enneads.

You could always try to read the Enneads. Look up which chapters are commonly dictated as the "easiest" and give those a shot. Neoplatonic works are generally of long sentence length prose and riddled with technical terms, so it might ward someone off.

If you want to focus on the "core", then perhaps read chapters on the first cause/principle: the main idea that all emanates forth from the One, that the One is all in one, but is also above Being.
This to me leads to the greatest prose and mysticism in Neoplatonic texts

>>19259448
The Enneads are somewhat difficult if you don’t know where Plotinus is coming from.
Read the first 3 chapters of Perl’s Thinking Being, Phaedo, Symposium, Republic, Timaeus, Phaedrus, Theatetus, Sophist, Statesman, Parmenides. Then for Aristotle, read Nicomachean Ethics, De Anima, and Metaphysics.

>>19260410
>>19260635
Thanks lads, I appreciate the recommendations.

>>19259448
Be steadfast in your long haul but digest tangential fun bite sized videos as pit stops. I suggest a casual sampling of Vedic Hymns or a quick read through the Kybalion. The philosophy has been lived and can be transpersonally induced by closer counterparts to our modern experience and some historical view. If you have some general knowledge about Pythagoras and Vedas you have much you can practice and attach meaning and instantiate experience and artifact with. You are creating mental shelves for big brain shit man. Sri Aurobindo is a master of the Vedas. You could be the Sri of the Enneads and develop a mental model like the Kaballah or a practice like Hatha Yoga.
"Let no man ignorant of Geometry enter" Pythagoras and Plato.