Platonism General

[Anonymous No.18277107]

Which Middleplatonists and Neoplatonists are worth a read?
And where can I find an extensive list of all Middleplatonists and Neoplatonists who have available writing?

[Anonymous No.18277116]

Plotinus is said to be the gold standard when it comes to Neo-Platonism. I would honestly start there.

[Anonymous No.18277173]

>>18277116
Plato and Plotinus are quite essential for this field: so essential that they're implicit.

[Anonymous No.18277563]

All of them? They survived the ravages of time for a reason anon. Proclus, Iamblichus, Damascius, Porphyry, and medievals like Eriugena too

[Anonymous No.18277712]

>>18277563
Yep, it would be nice to have a full list, are there any more than
Plato
Plotinus
Proclus
Iamblichus
Damascius
Porphyry
?

[Anonymous No.18277719]

>>18277712
Idk :/

[Anonymous No.18277726]

[Anonymous No.18277729]

>>18277712
Supplement your reading of Platonist metaphysics with Buddhist metaphysics, i.e. Nagarjuna

[Anonymous No.18277732]

Max Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis is basically neoplatonism

[Anonymous No.18277739]

>>18277712
Hermes Trismegistus

[Anonymous No.18277752]

>>18277732
Do you know what the individual mathematical structures in the top left are? I can only make out the mandelbrot set

[Anonymous No.18277754]

>>18277107
Skip the middle platonists
Start with Plotinus - Ennead V then go:
>Proclus - Elements of Theology
>Pythagoreaon Sourcebook [extremely important]
>Platonic Dialogues alongside Marsilio Ficino and/or Proclus' commentaries
>Read Aristotle alongside Simplicius and Syrianus' commentaries
>Read the rest of Plotinus (Ficino has some good commentaries on Ennead III & IV)
>Porphyry - Isagoge
>Iamblichus - De Mysteriis and Arithmetic Theology
>Proclus - Theology of Plato
>Read Damascius [Sara Rappe]
Do the Christian Neoplatonists:
>Origen - De Principiis
>St. Augustine - De Trinitate [parts of City of God are relevant too]
>Boethius - Consolation of Philosophy
>Dionysius the Areopagite - The Complete Works
>St. Maximus the Confessor - Ambigua
>John Scotus Eriugena - Perisphyseon
>The Cloud of Unknowing
>St. Thomas Aquinas' Commentary on "the Book of Causes" [that's the Medieval title of Proclus' Elements of Theology]
>Meister Eckhart - Commentary on John
>St. Bonaventure - Itinerarium
>Marsilio Ficino - Platonic Theology
>Nicholas of Cusa - On Learned Ignorance, On the Hidden God
I left Thierry of Chartres off the list because I have no clue if his work has been translated.
If you want some decent modern works to help you make sense of all of this, check out Eric Perl's works, Stephen Gersh, Llyod P. Gerson and Wayne J. Hankey
Oh and Jean Trouillard when and if he ever gets translated
>>18277732
Correct
>>18277712
For the Pagan Neoplatonists, you're missing Syrianus and Simplicicus
>>18277739
This is a good reccomendation

[Anonymous No.18277756]

>>18277712
Oh memeing aside, there are the renaissance Neoplatonists: Gemistus Pletho and Pico Della Mirandola

[Anonymous No.18277775]

...and Ficino obviously

[Anonymous No.18277778]

>>18277107
>>18277754
Read the Old Testament Wisdom Literature

[Anonymous No.18277782]

>>18277754
>>18277756
>>18277775

Thank you, that's really some nice recs

[Anonymous No.18277785]

>>18277107
You did read Plato's Parmenides before embarking on this... right anon-kun?

[Anonymous No.18277789]

>>18277107
The most important Middle-Platonists would be Philo, Numenius and the Chaldean Oracles.

Numenius of Apamea was sort of the 'grandfather' of Neoplatonism and there were books highlighting the dfiferences between his ideas and those of Plotinus. Sadly we only have fragments, mostly from Christian writers and some Neoplatonic commentaries. PDFs are around and Prometheus Trust publishes a decent edition.

The Chaldean Oracles have been called the "Bible of Neoplatonism" and were a part of the 'underworld of Platonism' that produced the Hermetica and certain Gnostic texts. We only have fragments from Neoplatonic commentaries, sadly. The best edition is by Ruth Majercik, there is a PDF on archive dot org or if you want a hard copy, Prometheus Trust.

Philo of Alexandria was the first, prominent, philosopher to interpret the Bible through Platonic eyes. Big on allegorical exegesis and influenced Christian exegesis of the Bible. His works are available online, except his Questions and Answers on the Exodus, I think only Loeb had published those.

John Dillon has translated Alcinous' _Handbook of Platonism_ which gives an overview of Platonism during the Middle-Platonic era, although he suggests it might be a handbook for teachers not students. Galen is another one that comes to mind but I'm unfamiliar with anything he wrote.

[Anonymous No.18277797]

>>18277778
I just missed the complete 7 number :'(

>>18277789
Thanks :)

[Anonymous No.18277798]

>>18277782
anytime anon
>>18277756
Pletho seems interesting but Pico turned into an absolute kook when he tries mixing kabbalah into all of this
>>18277789
John Dillon is actually amazing
good point about Philo

[Anonymous No.18277804]

>>18277797
And then it wasn't even my comment i realize now haha

[Anonymous No.18277805]

>>18277797
same lmao

[Anonymous No.18277831]

>>18277798
>Pletho seems interesting but Pico turned into an absolute kook when he tries mixing kabbalah into all of this
Yeah, Pico got a bit carried away, for sure. If anything he’s an interesting study for how lenient the Catholic Church had gotten with respect to scholars prior to the reformation. The renaissance neoplatonists were revivalists, not necessarily original thinkers. Though I do stand behind my rec of the Corpus Hermeticum if you’re getting into this kind of thing.

[Anonymous No.18277840]

>>18277831
>if you’re getting into this kind of thing.
this is directed at OP

[Anonymous No.18278953]

>>18277831
>>18277840
definitely agree with the Corpus Hermeticum rec

[Anonymous No.18279354]

Died so young..

[Anonymous No.18279393]

>>18279354
Does she have any surviving works? Tell me anon

[Anonymous No.18279656]

>>18277729
Nagarjuna is logically incoherent and would have been laughed at by any platonist, he BTFO’s himself by saying the reflexive relations are impossible but then he says that the subject is empty or shunya but if reflexive relations are impossible the subject is incapable of perceiving its own emptiness because that’s reflexive

[Anonymous No.18279672]

>>18277107
If you're interested in Middle Platonism then I recommend Platonist Philosophy 80AD to 250AD by George Boys-Stones. It has an overview of several key philosophical points of Middle Platonism and quotes from Middle Platonists. Given that we only have fragments of works from that period it's about 90% of what you can get by actually reading the works themselves.

[Anonymous No.18279677]

>>18279656
I see the guenon picture and I already know your post is worthless dribble

[Anonymous No.18279686]

>>18279677
This is a Platonist thread, not another one of your tranny buddhist threads that you spend the whole thing seething in.

Again, Nagarjuna is logically incoherent and by the rules of his own system he is unable to prove the emptiness of the subject and so Nagarjuna is unable to refute the intrinsic reality of one’s own soul or self, and every Platonist would have thought he was a complete moron for attempting to do so.

[Anonymous No.18280258]

What's the opposite philosophy of Plato's theory of Forms called? As in reality IS the ideal world and your mind is only capable of holding corrupted versions of it.

[Anonymous No.18280322]

>>18280258
Nominalism, in which any sort of generalization or universal is simply an illusion created by the mind extrapolating from sense perception. Hume is probably the farthest you can get from Plato.

[Anonymous No.18280343]

>>18280322
Thanks!

[Anonymous No.18280588]

>>18280322
Then there's a deleuze synthesis

[Anonymous No.18281090]

>>18277754
>>18277789
quality posts

[Anonymous No.18281318]

>>18277732
I read his book as a youngin and absolutely not. Neoplatonism is more concerned with the unwritten doctrines of Plato than with mathematical platonism. Plus Tegmark is a nitwit

[Anonymous No.18281351]

>>18279656
That's why Plotinus tried to go to India to meet the gymnosophists right?

[Anonymous No.18281396]

>>18281351
Buddhism wasn't the only thing going on in India, obviously. Though it would have been interesting if Plotinus had encountered Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.18281417]

>>18281396
Nagarjuna's philosophy had already partially been transmitted to Greece through Pyrrho. That's why fourfold negation is present in ancient Greece and in ancient India.

[Anonymous No.18281734]

>>18281417
Which books by Nagarjuna presents fourfold negation?

[Anonymous No.18281763]

This is a good thread to ask. What you Platonists do with the case of numbers? Plato believed natural numbers to be intermediary between the Ideas and the phenomena. Are natural numbers equivalent with matter, that is pure quantity? Following from this I ask about the relation of this indetermination of the numbers with matter and the Dyad itself.

[Anonymous No.18281769]

>>18281351
>Plotinus wanted to travel to India just so he could learn a form of radical skepticism that happens to perfectly accord with materialism
kek

[Anonymous No.18281773]

>>18281351
Source. Never heard about Plotinus leaving the mediterranean to go to India before.

[Anonymous No.18281780]

>>18281769
isn't this a copypasta?

[Anonymous No.18281803]

>>18281773
>Source. Never heard about Plotinus leaving the mediterranean to go to India before.

It's in chapter 3 of Porphyry's bio of his master:

>he became eager to make acquaintance with the Persian philosophical discipline and that prevailing among the Indians

[Anonymous No.18281809]

>>18281773

>Plotinus was moved to study Persian and Indian philosophy. In order to do so, he attached himself to the military expedition of Emperor Gordian III to Persia in 243. The expedition was aborted when Gordian was assassinated by his troops. Plotinus thereupon seems to have abandoned his plans, making his way to Rome in 245. There he remained until his death in 270 or 271.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plotinus/

[Anonymous No.18281829]

>>18281809
>>18281803
Ah pretty interesting, thank you. It seems he remained in the mediterranean then. I wonder what he thought he would find there, specially in India. Can we discard anything people say about Plotinus applying any indian (nondual vedanta) to his own system, despite clear similarities?

[Anonymous No.18281830]

>>18281780
That sentence in greentext? No, I wrote it right now. The whole point of Nagarjuna's writings most Buddhists interpret as purporting to show that it's logically unfeasible that there can be any eternal One or Ineffable who is the divine source of everything as Neoplatonists maintain. It's laughable to think that Plotinus, rooted in Plato and Aristotle that he was, would have thought highly of this.

If Plotinus indeed desired to travel to Indian to learn of the famed Indian wisdom whose reputation was known in the west, it was almost certainly not because of any knowledge that he had about Madhyamaka and a desire to learn more about it, it would be more likely to be based on what he heard about Hinduism, or at least a portrayal of Buddhism that hinted at some transcendental knowledge instead of skepticism.

[Anonymous No.18282071]

>>18281830
I saw the greentext word for word in another thread the about a week ago...

[Anonymous No.18282171]

>>18281734
mulamadhyamakakarika is the most obvious example

[Anonymous No.18282199]

>>18282071
Maybe that was me calling out another person for falsely trying to associate with Plotinus with Nagarjuna, I can't remember. If that was also me, then in both cases it was impromptu

[Anonymous No.18282440]

>>18282171
>mulamadhyamakakarika
I have the precious garland is that more illuminology(practical advise to become a buddha) than logic?

[Anonymous No.18283170]

bump

[Anonymous No.18283404]

>>18277754
>>18277789
Is it you, Arrus Kacchi?

[Anonymous No.18283438]

>>18281417
You got it the wrong way around. It went Buddha > Pyrrho > Nagarjuna

[Anonymous No.18283457]

>>18283438
I thought the thesis that Buddha got his views from Indian Buddhists was disputed? The standard account typically goes like this:
Leucippus -> Democritus -> Nessos > Metrodorus -> Diogenes of Smyrna -> Anaxarchus -> Pyrrho -> Timon

[Anonymous No.18283462]

>>18283457
Whoopsie-daisy, I meant to say Pyrrho instead of Buddha. My bad.

[Anonymous No.18283498]

>>18283404
not the second one

[Anonymous No.18283529]

>>18283457
Dunno about the influence on Pyrrho but there is apparently good reason to believe Nagarjuna and India at large was influenced greatly by Greek thought.

[Anonymous No.18283579]

>>18283498
Yeah, I wasn't sure which one it was. You should join the lit discord, we need more phil bros

[Anonymous No.18284432]

bump

[Anonymous No.18284632]

>>18283404
Can someone give a summary what the blog is about? https://sympoiesis.net/author/arruskacchi/

[Anonymous No.18284696]

>>18283579
dm me or something anon
you know where to find me

[Anonymous No.18284709]

>>18281829
yea we can discard it because there absolutely no possibility that he actually encountered any of them or their writings

[Anonymous No.18284721]

>>18277712
Meister Eckhart and other Christian contemplatives.

[Anonymous No.18285010]

>>18284721
are they neoplatonist or just jiving well with 'em

[Anonymous No.18285038]

>>18284721
>>18285010
some are some arent
see>>18277754
Boethius, Dionysius, Eriugena and Ficino are quite explicitly Neoplatonic
while Aquinas is kinda yea just jiving well with 'em he does have a direct commentary on Proclus and there is some indication that St. Bonaventure did read Plotinus
Plotinus was famously a massive influence on St. Augustine

[Anonymous No.18285051]

>>18285038
there's also the alchemical text attributed to aquinas

[Anonymous No.18285062]

>>18285051
i thought that was attributed to his teacher St. Albert the Great?

[Anonymous No.18285069]

>>18285062
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_consurgens

[Anonymous No.18285137]

>>18285069
the wikipedea source is Jungs student and partner Von Franz so a gram of salt is needed

[Anonymous No.18285180]

>>18285069
very cool thank you
>>18285137
noted

[Anonymous No.18285307]

>>18277107
I like most things about Platonism but I deeply dislike the idea of reincarnation. What should I do?

[Anonymous No.18285544]

>>18277107
Check out Shaw's book on iamblichus

[Anonymous No.18287467]

bump

[Anonymous No.18287506]

0_0

[Anonymous No.18287526]

>>18285307
>but I deeply dislike the idea of reincarnation. What should I do?

Look to Platonists like Ficino

>Ficino is so worried that his readers will think Plato believed in the doctrine of transmigration in a literal sense that he devotes the greater part of Book 17 of the Platonic Theology to showing that this was not the case, and to explaining what Plato’s real views probably were regarding the soul’s metaphysical-temporal relationship with the body. In the process he constructs a highly sophisticated piece of historical, literary and philosophical analysis worthy to stand with the finest examples of Quattrocento humanist criticism.

[Anonymous No.18288218]

bump

[Anonymous No.18288224]

>>18287506
Whats this from?

[Anonymous No.18288296]

>>18288224

One of the end-notes in "Neoplatonism and Indian Thought" I think.

[Anonymous No.18288483]

>>18285307
If you got filtered by the Timaeus you can't do Platonism.
>>18282440
MMK is written in a very terse and abbreviated style though employs what you could call "Indian logic," but that opens another debate. In it Nagarjuna attempts to show that there are four possible views on any metaphysical question and that none of them are tenable. This is similar to Pyrrho as others have noted, but the Greek skeptics largely lack the soteriological component of Buddhism, though both believe in a therapeutic practice of suspending judgment on (most if not all) metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.18289043]

>>18287506
lol

[Anonymous No.18289060]

>>18280588
quick rundown on the synthesis?

[Anonymous No.18289095]

>>18284632
Can't give you a summary; but I can thank you for the recommendation.

[Anonymous No.18290476]

>>18289060
Deleuze has a quite funky reading of Plato and a quite creative use of Hume in difference and repetition so i can't

[Anonymous No.18290486]

Socrates was a gamer, dude

[Anonymous No.18290499]

>>18277726
None of the men on the right are dumb, besides Bill Nye, just uncultured.

[Anonymous No.18290583]

>>18288483
>If you got filtered by the Timaeus
Plato always spoke about metempsychosis as myth, not as logos. I'm not saying he did or didn't believe in it, we'd have to ask him directly and that's kinda hard to do, but that there is plenty of room to interpret his works without literal reincarnation.

[Anonymous No.18291149]

>>18290486
man, is there a more reddit comic than existentialcomics?

[ReleaseMeFromThisMask-LikeForm !!HraTM3Vvtb/ No.18291185]

>>18277107
I would say that Charles H. Humphreys III is very far down the list, but it’s really the same problem as Middleton here, in that it is almost impossible to identify any systematic link between Middleton and his Middletonian works and anything else outside of Middleton’s lifetime. Charles H. Humphreys III’s writings are probably by far the most concise treatment of Middletonian material out there, though of course that doesn’t mean they’re all also the best.

[Anonymous No.18291408]

>>18287506
The reported paragraph does occur in Eusebius' *Praeparatio Evangelica*, but even he seemingly doubts the authenticity of this report. He may have got this anectode from an intermediary writer, and not directly from the writings (if there were any?) Aristoxenus.
The text immediately after this says:
Now Aristoxenus the Musician says that this argument comes from the Indians: for a certain man of that nation fell in with Socrates at Athens, and presently asked him, what he was doing in philosophy: and when he said, that he was studying human life, the Indian laughed at him, and said that no one could comprehend things human, if he were ignorant of things divine.

'Whether this, however, is true no one could assert positively: but Plato at all events distinguished the philosophy of the universe, and that of civil polity, and also that of dialectic.'

[Anonymous No.18291420]

>>18287506
>>18291408
Also, strangely enough, I tried to search for this in my Loeb edition of the Early Greek Philosophers, specifically the first part of the book on the Sophists. The preface to the entire series says they attempted to be exhaustive to the point of including Syriac, Arabic and Armenian sources. But, again, weirdly enough, they left out this single passage in their chapter on Socrates. It's not mentioned in either the biographical, doctrinal, or receptional parts.

[Anonymous No.18291434]

>>18290583
>Plato always spoke about metempsychosis as myth, not as logos
What's left of Plato that isn't myth if you use that dichotomy?

[Anonymous No.18291453]

>>18291434
Not the same person but... a lot? He sometimes is clear that he is using analogy and metaphor to mean another thing, like when he compares the Good to Sun/Light, when he relates the egyptian myth of Thoth to point to his own unwritten doctrines. In Meno the doctrine of the anamnesis in the reincarnated soul is allegorical too, Timaeus in many parts too.

[Anonymous No.18292106]

>>18287506
>...

[Anonymous No.18293244]

>>18279393
>she

[Anonymous No.18293393]

>>18293244
That's Hypatia retard.

[Anonymous No.18293531]

I don't obviously agree with all of these writers since some are Christians.

Homer
The new book "Greek Poems to the Gods"
Presocratics
Bacchae by Euripides
Plato
Xenophon
Aristotle (he's a Platonist)
Euclid's Elements
'The Hymn of the Pearl' and 'Thunder-Perfect Intellect', I don't believe these are gnostic texts.
'Corpus Hermeticum' and 'The Perfect Discourse of Asclepius'
Cicero
Philo (better to read about him secondarily)
Epictetus
Plutarch, go back to him and read him inbetween everyone else not all at once, he's the antiquity's Montaigne. But do read Isis and Osiris.
Valentinus "The Gospel of Truth".
Sextus Empiricus, skepticism is also a form of Platonism, or offspring.
Fragments of Numenius of Apamea
Didaskalikos (Dillon Translation)
Apuleius The Golden Ass, The God of Socrates.
Albinus Prologos
Galen, I'm sorry.
Alexander of Aphrodisias (important to understand a section of Plotinus, and later Neoplatonists, again Aristotelianism is a form of Platonism.)
Dissertations of Maximus of Tyre
Philostratus
Clement of Alexandria
Plotinus
Origen
Calcidius commentary on the Timaeus.
Chaldean Oracles (older than Plotinus but he never comments on it).
Porphyry
Iamblichus
Dexippus (nice overview of Plotinus and Porphyry)
Anonymous Commentary on the Parmenides
Victorinus
Julian Hymn to King Helios and the Mother of the Gods
Macrobius The Saturnalia, and Dream of Scipio (why Cicero is important), Macrobius' hard monotheism is a bit heretical, but if you read him a little allegorically...
Themistius
Sallustius On the Gods and the World, could even read this before Plotinus.
Gregory of Nyssa Life of Moses
Synesius, the accidental Christian.
Eunapius Lives of the Sophists
Syrianus
Hermias (commentary of Phaedrus)
Proclus
Ammonius Hermiae, like Simplicius a good go to if all of this is above like these later towering intellects might be, this isn't to say he's dumb, far from it, his books are just more introductory.
Asclepius of Tralles, basically Ammonius.
Damascius, good luck.
Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Simplicius
Philoponus, a midwit.
Priscian
Olympiodorus
Boethius
Eriugena

The categories, the categories, the categories, introduction to the categories, AH CATEGORY.

Dillon's The Middle Platonists
Gerson's Ancient Epistemology, Aristotle and Other Platonists, From Plato to Platonism, Platonism and Naturalism.
>Orphic Hymns.
>Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth.

[Anonymous No.18293535]

>>18293393
What a strange last name.

[Anonymous No.18293557]

>>18293393
Shame the Pagans killed her because they got asshurt she taught Christians

[Anonymous No.18293559]

What do you guys think about Schopenhauer and Jung as modern platonists?

[Anonymous No.18293619]

>>18293557
What bizarro world did you come out from?

[Anonymous No.18293642]

>>18293619
How does it feel to know everything you think you know about history are myths fabricated by enlightenment fedora tippers who had an axe to grind against Christianity. The Hypatia myth comes from Gibbon and he made the whole thing up because he's a fucking sperg who wanted to make Christianity look bad. Hypatia was killed by pagans in riots, Christians had little to nothing to do with it,

>It suited Damascius’ purposes to make the Christian bishop into the murderous villain of the story and polemicists from Gibbon onward have been happy to accept his word on this. But modern historians are less convinced. Socrates was a hostile source regarding Cyril and had good reason to note Cyril’s guilt on this in his much earlier account, but he does not. Edward Watts argues that mobs were used to intimidate and noisily demonstrate in ancient street politics, but deliberate murders were rare even in tumultuous Alexandria – they only tended to happen when things got out of hand and were rarely the deliberate object of the exercise

>Many popular modern accounts conflate elements in the story and so have Hypatia being killed by the Nitrian monks, which serves to highlight the lurid “wise rationalist killed by ignorant clergy” theme in the polemics. But Maria Dzielska points out that this is not found in what Socrates tell us and that the monks “terrified by the popular reaction to their aggression against the prefect Orestes, took flight”

[Anonymous No.18293662]

>>18293642
>The Hypatia myth comes from Gibbon

Hypatia being of such a nature —skilled and dialectical in
speech, wise and politic in behaviour— the entire city naturally
loved her and held her in exceptional esteem, while the powers that-be paid their respects first to her, as indeed was the custom in
Athens. Even if philosophy itself was dead, its name at least still
seemed most honourable and worthy of admiration to those who
ran the affairs of the city.
It happened one day that Cyril, the man in charge of the
opposing sect,”? was passing Hypatia’s house and seeing a great
crowd at the door “a mix of men and horses”, some going, some
coming and some standing around, he asked what the crowd was
and why there was this commotion in front of the house. His
attendants told him that honours were being paid to the philosopher
Hypatia and that this was her house. When he heard this, envy so
gnawed at his soul that he soon begun to plot her murder -the most
ungodly murder of all. When she left her house as usual, a crowd of
bestial men —truly abominable— those who take account neither of
divine vengeance nor of human retribution— fell upon and killed the
philosopher; and while she still gasped for air they cut out her eyes;
thus inflicting the greatest pollution and disgrace on the city. And
the emperor was vexed at that (...)°? had not Aedesius been bribed.
He removed the punishment from the murderers and brought it
upon himself and his offspring; it was his grandson who paid the
penalty.

[Anonymous No.18293676]

>>18293642
>posts a quote with no source
>no mention of Synesius' letters which demonstrate the hostility between Cyril and the Porphyric school on account of the latter's support of Orestes
You are a faggot.

[Anonymous No.18293677]

>>18293642
>>18293662
>Both in detail and general spirit Damascius’ account of Hypatia is corroborated by Socrates, HE VIL15, who also gives jealousy as the motive for her murder; an epigram ascribed to Palladas (Anthol. Gr. [X. 400) and addressed to Hypatia, a virgin, an astronomer, a wise teacher and a talented orator, clearly tefers to our Hypatia, as indeed is argued by P. Waliz and G. Soury, Anthologie erecque VIII, ad foc. (the ascription is doubted by Alan Cameron, The Greek Anthology from Meleager to Pianudes, Oxford 1993, 323-324, who argues that the epigram was addressed to a nun). Hypatia’s martyrdom, which occurred in March 415, is mentioned by several Byzantine chroniclers (Philostorgius VII9; Malalas 359; Jolin of Nikiu (Zotenberg / Charles) 87- 102; Theophanes A.M. 5906 {de Boor I, $2) among others); for a discussion of the sources and a plausible reconstruction of the events leading up te her death, Dzielska, 83-100.

[Anonymous No.18293679]

>>18293662
Modern historians know this is a falsified account written by someone who wanted to make Christianity look bad.

[Anonymous No.18293684]

>>18293677
>It suited Damascius’ purposes to make the Christian bishop into the murderous villain of the story and polemicists from Gibbon onward have been happy to accept his word on this. But modern historians are less convinced.
Sorry bro. Your narrative is literally fake news. You've believed a lie.

[Anonymous No.18293685]

>>18293679
So explain why Synesius' letters from when Hypatia was alive corroborate them.

[Anonymous No.18293690]

>>18293679
>>18293677

[Anonymous No.18293700]

>>18293684
Of Hypatia the Female Philosopher.

THERE was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions.

On account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not unfrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in coming to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more. Yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace, that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them. This affair brought not the least opprobrium, not only upon Cyril, but also upon the whole Alexandrian church. And surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions of that sort. This happened in the month of March during Lent, in the fourth year of Cyril's episcopate, under the tenth consulate of Honorius, and the sixth of Theodosius.

[Anonymous No.18293716]

>>18293700
>Many modern accounts also dwell on the gruesome details of her death: with Hypatia being seized, stripped, dismembered, dragged through the streets and then burned. Socrates’ use of the word ὄστρακα for the tools by which she was killed led Gibbon to declare that “her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster shells”, since the word means “shells”. But it can also mean “potsherds” and was a term used for roof tiles, which is most likely what it means in the description of her murder. Roof tiles were available in abundance in an Alexandrian street and made ready missiles in a riot or for a mob stoning someone to death.

>In fact, Hypatia is likely to have been in her mid-sixties when she was killed and the story of her great beauty serves to set up a moral fable about her philosophical chastity and so is of dubious historicity.

>It should also be noted that a ritualised dragging of the body through the streets, dismemberment and then burning of someone who had been lynched or executed is found in several other accounts of such events in Alexandria. The murder of George of Cappadocia and his two compatriots was followed by a similar process. So were the bodies of some Jews in the pogroms of 39 AD and the that of Proterius in 457. Christopher Haas argues that these parallels are not coincidences, calling it an “Alexandrian civic ritual of expiation” (Haas, p. 87; see his detailed analysis pp. 87-89). So these elements in the story are not, as some seem to think, evidence of a particular animus against learned women, but – yet again – just how they did things in the street politics of Alexandria.

This is funny. /lit/ finding out they've mindlessly accepted a version of events written by polemicists that has little relevance to actual historical events. I thought you niggas actually read books?

[Anonymous No.18293748]

>>18293716
Literally nobody has invoked Gibbon or any source that is post-Gibbon. You have not explained why Socrates is a bad source, and you haven't responded the the multiple posts about Syrenius' letters that prove the relationships described by Socrates were real. You are the one living in a fantasy world here.

[Anonymous No.18293752]

>>18293716
>beauty is only skin deep
>Helen Mirren
and your quotes have nothing to do with the historicity of the event only secondary hyperboles, the third one even verifies it as a traditional barbaric way to murder, which only strengthens the reality of her gruesome murder.

[Anonymous No.18293758]

i would not recommend porphyry or iamblichus unless youre really interested in the history surrounding these movements. if youre interested in the philosophy read plato -> aristotle -> plotinus and dont worry about the various third tier thinkers rephrasing their ideas

[Anonymous No.18293777]

>>18293748
>You have not explained why Socrates is a bad source
Because he's a hostile anti-Christian source who is motivated to paint Christians in a bad light. He's a polemicist, not a historian.

[Anonymous No.18293788]

>>18293752
>which only strengthens the reality of her gruesome murder.
Yes by pagan rioters in a standard and generally unremarkable riot. It was pagans killing pagans. The Christians simply left while things settled back down.

[Anonymous No.18293789]

>>18293758
>third tier thinkers
t. hasn't read Iamblichus or Proclus. The Enneads are a loose collection of lecture notes, they are not in any sense a complete teaching of later Platonism. You would be better off skipping Plotinus and reading Proclus' Elements of Theology than you would just reading the Enneads.

[Anonymous No.18293796]

>>18293777
>Socrates of Constantinople (Greek: Σωκράτης ὁ Σχολαστικός;[1] c. 380 – after 439), also known as Socrates Scholasticus, was a 5th-century Christian church historian, a contemporary of Sozomen and Theodoret.
Holy shit you are a fucking retard. He WAS a Christian. The source here >>18293700 is from his Ecclesiastical History.

[Anonymous No.18293799]

>>18293788
>It was pagans killing pagans. The Christians simply left while things settled back down.

[Anonymous No.18293803]

>>18293796
He was a (((Catholic))) not a Christian.

[Anonymous No.18293806]

>>18293788
>he thinks socrates was a pagan, not a christian
>he STILL hasn't responded to synesius' letters proving socrates right
top kek

[Anonymous No.18293809]

>>18293799
>>18293700
>>18293677
these digits speak for themselves

[Anonymous No.18293819]

>Pagans trying to cope with the fact they killed Hypatia and not the mean nasty Christians
Come back to reality paganbros. Gibbon lied to you.

[Anonymous No.18293826]

>>18293819
>only sources mentioned are Synesius, Socrates Scholasticus and Damascius
>GIBBON GIBBON GIBBON GIBBON GIBBON

>>18293803
So were Cyril and all his followers. So I guess Hypatia was killed by pagans if that's your standard.

[Anonymous No.18293881]

>>18293789
i have read all three. what do you expect OP to gain by reading some ancient argument about whether or not a dead syrian practice called theurgy is a legitimate means of accessing the one? what will they gain by reading a rephrasing of plotinus' doctrines in a letter to his student's wife?

should he read every fragment of the chaldean oracles as well? should he read every fragment of zeno?

the enneads lay out the whole system. they are not a 'loose collection of lecture notes' (some of the individual treatises are over 100 pages in modern editions - do you think he was lecturing for 9 hours straight and somehow managing to maintain structured thought the entire time? it is a combination of notes and his own essays)

OP, if you are interested in the history of plotinus' ideas and what 'versions' of his thinking dominated after his lifetime then you should read pseudo-dionysius. he is important in that he was very influential for subsequent Christian thought, though his ideas aren't at all original.

[Anonymous No.18293957]

>>18293881
>what do you expect OP to gain by reading some ancient argument about whether or not a dead syrian practice called theurgy is a legitimate means of accessing the one?
I would expect him to gain knowledge of the background metaphysics underpinning theurgy, and what that means for mankind's association with the Monad and the gods.

>should he read every fragment of the chaldean oracles as well?
I would be good.

>the enneads lay out the whole system. they are not a 'loose collection of lecture notes'
Alright, that was poor phrasing on my part, of course there are various materials inside, but my point is that these various materials were collected and assembled by Porphyry and do not constitute a complete system that accounts for everything in the way that Elements does. Plotinus never intended such a thing and it's very obvious from reading them. The issues covered by Iamblichus regarding the microcosmic principle, sacrifice, categories, the gods and daemons, and Proclus' treatment of the Henads and the relationships of number and particulars in participation are not found in the Enneads, and they are essential for understanding the broader late Platonic metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.18294001]

>>18293881
those chaldean fragments only make up like ten pages by word count

[Anonymous No.18294003]

>>18293957
why would someone in the 21st century who is not necessarily interested in ancient cult practices want to know about the background metaphysics underpinning theurgy? porphyry gives the chronological order of plotinus' works at the beginning of the enneads and i would recommend ignoring his ordering and following it. if you really want to get into reading about henads then fine go and read all the minor neoplatonists (after plotinus), but henads are obviously not an essential element in neoplatonism (are there even any subsequent thinkers who draw on those aspects of neoplatonism? i can't think of any)

[Anonymous No.18294033]

>>18293758
>>18293881
Not the other guy, but there is loads of stuff about Neoplatonism as such that's not found in the Enneads. Iamblichus had many ideas that are highly divergent from Plotinus (hence why there were two Platonis schools in Alexandria) and these two distinct systems were only reconciled by Proclus. Things like the nature of descent and ascent which are very important to the core of Neoplatonism are treated in completely different ways by the Plotinian-Porphyric school and the Iamblichean school. OP might find he agrees with the latter rather than the former.

[Anonymous No.18294076]

>>18294003
>henads are obviously not an essential element in neoplatonism
The henads are the forms you ignorant cunt. If you're referring to Damscius three henads then those are the same as Plotinus' One, Indefinite, and One-Being/Nous; in the sense of Mone, Proodos, Epistrophe.
Plotinus also implicitly makes the same distinctions of 'two Ones' that Iamblichus reveals, even using the wording "Second One" to describe the One-Being.
>why would someone in the 21st century who is not necessarily interested in ancient cult practices want to know about the background metaphysics underpinning theurgy
How could they know they aren't interested in what they know nothing about and as you would have them remain?

[Anonymous No.18294098]

>>18294003
>why would someone in the 21st century who is not necessarily interested in ancient cult practices want to know about the background metaphysics underpinning theurgy?
Why would a person interested in Platonism want to know what Platonists believed you are supposed to actually do? Wow, I have no idea.

>but henads are obviously not an essential element in neoplatonism
The relationship between universals and particulars is the basis of what distinguishes Platonism from other philosophical schools and the Henads are at the core of that relationship.

>are there even any subsequent thinkers who draw on those aspects of neoplatonism? i can't think of any
Marsilio Ficino on the Symposium, treated as 'Theioi'. Proclus was Ficino's biggest influence, the Elements is what drove Ficino to compose a Christian equivalent.

[Anonymous No.18294127]

Platobros do we have any epistemological ground to defend metaphysics from the attacks of, say, logical positivists, analytics and linguists? What do you think about Aristotelian epistemology?

[Anonymous No.18294135]

>>18294076
Just to correct you, Henads are not necessarily tied up with Forms. For Proclus the Henads primarily are the origin of individuation, and thus the determining factor in particulars which share the same Form.
Proclus: An Introduction by Radek Chlup covers this very nicely.

[Lamy No.18294139]

>>18294076
>The henads are the forms you ignorant cunt.
No they're not. The forms are found in the Nous exclusively. Henads are mediating gods that bridge the gap between Nous and Soul.

The Henads are basically Proclus' attempt at keeping traditional Polytheism alive when it was getting mogged by Christianity

[Anonymous No.18294154]

>>18294135
Yeah I was thinking about this after reading Plato’s agrapha dogmata on his protology. The henads are just the relation of Unity in the same way the One has a relation with the Dyad, perhaps. What do you think?

[Anonymous No.18294177]

>>18294127
The necessary existence of the One Itself, and the identity of the One with the Good, are establsihed based on less presumptions about reality than the existence of the material universe. The first twelve propositions of Elements of Theology hold up in any hypothetical universe, even if we live in the Matrix or physical reality is an illusion. Positivism makes the assumption for no reason that our senses can be trusted and that human reason can produce accurate assessments of sense-data, while also affirmign that these things evolved to keep us alive with no mind to making us right about anything.
These things are secondary and rely on first principles to be established, which Positivists assume with no rational backing while Platonists and some others take the time to deal with.

[Anonymous No.18294207]

>>18294177
Yes, when they present arguments saying metaphysics has no basis on reality, that is empirical reality, I think they are naive to dismiss Unity, Difference, Sameness, Whole/Parts and these ideas or meta-ideas in the platonic sense. But still they could retort saying all these are abstractions from the empirical world and that actually in themselves these things reference no thing and trying to explore what they mean will render them meaningless.

[Anonymous No.18294213]

>>18294154
Yes, the Henads are defined relationally to one another by their total individuation, they are the Ones (plural) in the same way that the Monad is the One. Absent this plurality (which is a derived form of unity itself) every hypostasis all the way down to matter would consist of only a single thing each. The Henads turn this line into a cone of distinct lines.

[Anonymous No.18294228]

>>18294213
Didn't Agrippa try to redo this whole concept with special angels, and even called those angels gods?

[Lamy No.18294247]

>>18294213
This is why Proclus is worse than Plotinus. This destroys the elegance of the Plotinian scheme of reality just to add in a bunch of unnecessary shit

[Anonymous No.18294288]

>>18294247
Different anon, here. I think that in Plato’s protology, the Unity would be equivalent to the Nous/Demiurge, because it is from the Unity (which in its turn follow from the mixture between One and Dyad) that manifests the Meta-Ideas, Meta-Mathematical Numbers, Meta-Geometrical forms. The Unity being the Measure of ontology, epistemology and axiology for the Unity expresses at once: the point and its developments (line, plane, euclidian forms), being and its developments (being, non-being/difference, sameness, identity) and the monad and its developments (thinking of the pythagorean tetraktys).
That is why I guess this Unity is the One that Is from the Parmenides dialogue, from which all things “emanates”.

>>18294213
>>18294177
>>18294076
Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.18294380]

>>18294098
theurgy was not 'what Platonists believed', it was a Syrian cult practice that Iamblichus tried to interpret through the framework of Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.18294386]

>>18294380
>theurgy was not 'what Platonists believed'
So everyone in the Iamblichean school in Alexandria and in the Athenian school were not Platonists?

[Anonymous No.18294404]

>>18294386
they were platonists who also had an interest in the pre-existing tradition of theurgy. i think there is some evidence that some of them also believed in fairies lol. does the existence of the Aetherius Society mean that UFOlogy is an essential part of Christianity?

[Anonymous No.18294441]

>>18294404
>they were platonists who also had an interest in the pre-existing tradition of theurgy
It wasn't an "interest", it was essential to how they lived their lives and it was completely integrated into their metaphysics. Ritual transforms the subject, be it the practitioner or the icon, into a receptable that is then filled with the communication of the gods. It has Platonic precedents unrelated to Iamblichus. Plato in Laws said that sacrificing to the gods is the best and noblest thing a man can do.

>i think there is some evidence that some of them also believed in fairies lol
Yes, so did Plotinus and Porphyry. Daemonia are an aspect of Platonic metaphysics that bridge the gulf between the physical and the ideal.

>does the existence of the Aetherius Society mean that UFOlogy is an essential part of Christianity?
if you want to make an analogy with Christianity, it's more like the Eucharist. Imagine trying to learn about Christianity while ignoring everything tangentally related to the basic praxis of the largest Church on earth.

[Anonymous No.18294524]

>>18294441
>It wasn't an "interest", it was essential to how they lived their lives and it was completely integrated into their metaphysics.
'they' being one sect of (neo)platonists who lived in syria. porphyry of course argued that the whole thing had little to do with plotinus' thought.

>Plato in Laws said that sacrificing to the gods is the best and noblest thing a man can do.
and if you are interested in small minded men treating received authorities such as plato as gospel truths then you should definitely read iamblichus! if youre interested in quibbles over minutiae then go ahead and read iamblichus! i doubt plato had anything like theurgy in mind when he wrote this btw.

>Yes, so did Plotinus and Porphyry
to the best of my recollection there is nothing about fairies in the enneads. certainly he writes about daemons but its not the same thing as fairies at all.

>Imagine trying to learn about Christianity while ignoring everything tangentally related to the basic praxis of the largest Church on earth
imagine telling someone "You would be better off skipping the gospels and going straight to reading the patristic justifications for transubstantiation"

[Anonymous No.18294655]

>>18294524
>who lived in syria
The academy in Athens was Iamblichean and so was the school at the Serapaeum. Proclus was an Iamblichean, so ere Julian, Sallust and Priscian. Iamblicheans consituted the large majority of non-Christian Platonists from the time after Plotinus until Justinian closed the academy, and they were a major influence of Renaissance Platonists like Ficino.

>treating received authorities such as plato
Way to completely miss the point. This has nothing to do with authority and everything to do with how theory translates into practise.

>i doubt plato had anything like theurgy in mind when he wrote this btw.
So you think Plato believed the gods to require sacrifices to live, despite his depiction of the gods being entirely self-perfect?

>its not the same thing as fairies at all
Yes they are. They are tutelary spirits with bounded domains that mediate between the immaterial and the physical, i.e. daimones.

>imagine telling someone "You would be better off skipping the gospels and going straight to reading the patristic justifications for transubstantiation"
What a horrible twisting of the analogy. It's closer to; I would reccommend reading a book that summarises Catholicism in theory and practice concisely and clearly rather than reading just the epistles of Paul. The "Gospels" of a Christianity analogy would be Plato's dialogues. In case you've somehow gotten the impression that I don't like Plotinus or don't think people should read the Enneads, you're completely wrong. I think the Enneads ought to be read before Elements or De Misteriis.

[Anonymous No.18294684]

>>18277563
>They survived the ravages of time for a reason
And the reason was.. they were the ones burning the books of their opponents. It's their gay sect gave birth to christianity.

[Anonymous No.18295573]

Anime girls are the ideal form of women anon, that is all you need.

[Anonymous No.18296304]

>>18294684
>they were the ones burning the books of their opponents

[Anonymous No.18296366]

>>18296304
The part about the supposed burning of Democritus’ works comes from Diogenes Laërtius, a 2nd/3rd-century AD biographer and doxographer of the ancient Greek philosophers. Diogenes reports that Aristoxenus of Tarentum, a 4th-century BC philosopher and student of Aristotle, “affirms that Plato wished to burn all the writings of Democritus that he could collect.” It’s an indirectly preserved piece of information.

[Anonymous No.18296439]

>"without gods, without oracles, a philosopher has no place." - Damascius
Don't forget about the gods. Without polytheism there is no Platonism. Simple as.

[Anonymous No.18296615]

>>18296439
Cringe. Plato himself rejected polytheism and these gods.

[Anonymous No.18296652]

>>18296615
Quite the opposite. Plato was and was always considered by others to have been a highly devout pagan.

Nice try though sissyboy.

[Anonymous No.18296665]

>>18296615
Plato was a Christian

[Anonymous No.18296694]

>>18296652
No gods in his private (and most important, according to himself) teachings, sorry.

>>18296439
Oh, also, is Damascius implying Plotinus was not a philosopher?

[Anonymous No.18296729]

>>18296694
>No gods in his private (and most important, according to himself) teachings, sorry.
Another cringeposter appears.
>Oh, also, is Damascius implying Plotinus was not a philosopher?
Of course not. Plotinus is another in the long list of devout Platonists, also known as polytheists.

[Anonymous No.18296745]

>>18296665
Arguing that he be believed in Xenophon's god is one thing: another is to argue that he believed in a jewish desert god...

[Anonymous No.18296773]

>>18296729
>he takes Plato seriously, cringe!

>Plotinus was a devout polytheist
Porphyry tells us how he refused to go to to feasts dedicated to the gods and said that it was not he who should go to them, but them to him. VERY DEVOUT.

[Anonymous No.18296839]

>>18296773
Ascetics valuing the contemplative life over ritual does not make them not polytheist. I would advice that you would read Plotinus again since you seem to have been filtered.

May I suggest his writings against the Gnostics which is essentially an attack on monotheism. Although honestly I think you should stay with the church fathers, they seem more up your alley.

[Anonymous No.18296940]

>>18296839
>tfw a christian understands better your religion and your philosophy than you
Christ will always be waiting to receive you. May God bless you.

[Anonymous No.18297335]

>>18277107
am I late

[Anonymous No.18297554]

>>18296940
Thanks for agreeing that polytheism and the philosophy we're discussing is the same. Good that we cleared that up. For a moment I thought Christianity had corrupted your faculties to such an extent that you couldn't be reasoned with. Going back to the sources will usually solve most disputes and I am glad you actually did go back to Plotinus as I recommended, most people just shut down and refuse to actually follow recommendations.

This was a good discussion!

[Anonymous No.18298085]

bump

[Anonymous No.18298555]

>>18298085

[Anonymous No.18298632]

>>18294127
Platonic epistemology isn't irreconcilable with Aristotelianism at all.
Logical positivists, analytics and linguists all got blow the fuck out by the Theatetus dialogue.
I'd massively recommend reading Heidegger's commentary on the Theatetus from On the Essence of Truth and Eric D. Perl's "Thinking Being" if you want to dive into Platonic Epistemology.
Ficino has a good commentary on the Theatetus in Arthur Farndell's "Gardens of Philosophy" collection of essays.
Also see Plotinus, Ennead V.5.1-4.

[Anonymous No.18298647]

>>18296839
>Plotinus his writings against the Gnostics which is essentially an attack on monotheism.

I mean they were largely just attacks, and very good ones at that, on soteriological shortcuts and dualism.
On a broader note, I'd massively recommend that you check out Ficino's commentaries on Plotinus' Ennead III & IV or Stephen Gersh' work that weaves Pagan and Christian Neoplatonism between Iamblichus and Eriugena into a coherent system.

[Anonymous No.18298665]

>>18296745
>Jewish Desert God
Funny thing about the name "YHWH" is that it means the exact attribute that makes The One the most unique, namely: aseity.

[Anonymous No.18298790]

>>18298665
Interesting. Where is this from?

[Anonymous No.18298812]

>>18298790
Ludwig Ott - Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma

[Anonymous No.18298844]

>>18298812
Oh, I have added this book to my wishlist because of a recommendation from a thread two days ago.

[Anonymous No.18298880]

>>18298665
isn't this more christianity adopting Platonist lingo

[Anonymous No.18298895]

remember, during plato's time God were only the god of the jews - that's why jesus is so special.

[Anonymous No.18298904]

After all, Xenophon's god is the one a lot of modern Christians believe in.

[Anonymous No.18298956]

>>18298880
>adopting Platonist lingo
Somewhat
put it this way: there are irreducible tenants of the Christian faith that prior to engagements with Platonic philosophy, could not be excavated and understood most fully
As St. John Damanscene likes to put it, reason is the handmaiden of faith.
but we might follow up with Boethius' implicit point from the Consolation that the most perfect handmaiden for the faith is of a Platonic nature. Why? Because it unconceals these historical and metaphysics truths, as well as mysteries as best as possible that reason can.

Elements of the Christian faith exist independently of Platonic excursions, but the Platonic excursions are useful.

[Anonymous No.18299023]

>>18298956
excellent way to explain to them. i tried to situate the historical causes which led to the integration of platonic logic in christian theology as a hermeneutical tool for the deeper rational exploration of the sacred scripture and dogmas of the faith in the other thread, but was attacked and had to hear the same cope about how christians ''stole everything from the greeks!!''.

[Anonymous No.18299623]

>>18285307
Read Eric Perl's Thinking Being: that explains how the pre-existence of the soul in the Platonic dialogues is a mythic expression of the togetherness of thought and being such that a literal pre-existence which is the premise traditionally held for transmigration to be true, would assimilate soul to a body which is a contradiction. It's an epistemological point expressed mythically, and a very powerful one at that. Transmigration is thus never seductively argued for by Plato in the dialogues, nor actually held as this transcendental argument for the possibility of knowledge (a la "being with the forms prior to ensoulment").

The important greek word here is συνουσία or "synousia".

[Anonymous No.18300190]

>>18277107
Read Pythagoras
Plato
Nicomachus
Iamblichus
Nicholas of Cusa
Max Tegmark

[Anonymous No.18300858]

bumping for one of the best threads on /lit/ rn

[Anonymous No.18301790]

>>18300858
last one

[Anonymous No.18302200]

>>18298632
What specifically from the Theaetetus?
Also, thank you for recommending Heidegger's commentary, seems really interesting. As for platonic epistemology, it is basically the conjunction of epistemology and ontology, no? Knowledge and Intellect as the very essence of Being, nothing out of intelligibility, for anything to be must be intelligible.

[Anonymous No.18303098]

Are there any neo-platonists who don't believe in personal annihilation after death? Is it all about fusing into the void/absolute?

[Anonymous No.18303408]

>>18303098
Reason is the most personal and most important

[Anonymous No.18303459]

>>18303408
Reason is means.

[ReleaseMeFromThisMask-LikeForm !!HraTM3Vvtb/ No.18303487]

>>18303098
Do you find other sources of morality and sense, like love, time, creation?

I am not a neo-platonist, though like Aristotle and Kant, I think that, at least in principle, theism is more appropriate than atheism. I do not, however, see theism as sufficiently superior to atheism to warrant embracing it. Rather, I favor neither in principle, and am persuaded by the rationality and aesthetic qualities of the atheistic worldview. So, I suppose, I am an existentialist.

[Anonymous No.18303508]

>>18281809
Real shame. I would love to have seen greater correspondence between east and west.
Are there any more explicit syncretisms or meetings between indians and hellenics?

[Anonymous No.18303543]

>>18277789
I own a copy of Philo's works. Which should I read first?

[Anonymous No.18303865]

>>18303459
no

[Anonymous No.18304003]

>>18303865
I had exactly him in mind. He can equal reason to spirit, but the justification of reason, or of its investigations, lies beyond it.

[Anonymous No.18304714]

>>18304003
no*

[Anonymous No.18304750]

>>18277107
here's a good guide to Neoplatonism

I would like this:
1. read Plato (Republic->Timaeus/Phaedo/Parmeides)
2.Read the fragments of Parmenides
3. Read Aristotle (Metaphysics -> De anima)
4. Read Proclus (The elements of theology)
5. Read Plotinus's enneads

[Anonymous No.18304801]

>>18303408
>>18303487
What the fuck is this bullshit supposed to signify?

Are there any neo-platonists who don't believe in personal annihilation after death? Plotinus did. I really don't get the appeal of monist/pantheist annihilation. It's the "I'm atheist but spiritual" of philosophy.

[Anonymous No.18304913]

>>18304714
>spinoza
now i know you're full of shit

[Anonymous No.18305272]

>>18304801
>. I really don't get the appeal of monist/pantheist annihilation.
Are you able to understand the appeal of never being unhappy or afraid ever again while enjoying eternal happiness and freedom?
>It's the "I'm atheist but spiritual" of philosophy.
That would be Buddhism

[Anonymous No.18305528]

>>18279656
>he BTFO’s himself by saying the reflexive relations
this sort of shit is why no one takes guenon seriously lmfao

[Anonymous No.18305615]

>>18305528
Guenon never wrote a word about Nagarjuna or Madhyamaka. The observation has been made by multiple other people though, that if reflexive relations are universally impossible as Nagarjuna purports to show then Nagarjuna by his own logic is unable to show the emptiness or conditionality of the Self, or of awareness, and then his claim that all things are empty is unfounded.

[Anonymous No.18305679]

>>18304913
Spinoza wants democracy because it allows for free speech because these are means for reason: reason being the way for god/nature to know itself - I would argue that this knowledge is not separate from reason.

[Anonymous No.18305734]

>>18305272
>Are you able to understand the appeal of never being unhappy or afraid ever again while enjoying eternal happiness and freedom?

That implies a personal existence. What the monists teach is no different than atheist annihilation, only the monists think they trance out on some stations as they ascend to the final station which is the void and complete annihilation.

"I'm atheist but spiritual." Very Sam Harris and Martin Heidegger tier,

[Anonymous No.18305738]

>>18305615
get help, you are seriously retarded

[Anonymous No.18305770]

>>18305734
>That implies a personal existence.
No it doesn’t. Eternal consciousness which is bliss by nature eternally basks in the plenitude of its own radiant happiness without any fear, and it’s not bound by anything.
>What the monists teach is no different than atheist annihilation,
That’s not true, because atheists deny that consciousness continues while religious monists/non-dualists don’t
>only the monists think they trance out on some stations as they ascend to the final station which is the void and complete annihilation.
That’s not true, they generally say that consciousness is eternal, there is no ascent to a final annihilation, because since consciousness is eternal it never goes out of existence.

[Anonymous No.18305779]

>>18305615
>universally impossible as Nagarjuna purports
this sort of shit is why no one takes guenon seriously lmfao

you need to read a book before having an opinion on it, retard. seriously, you expect people to take you seriously when you say shit like
>the emptiness or conditionality of the Self, or of awareness
you're a bad joke.

[Anonymous No.18305781]

>>18305738
> get help, you are seriously retarded
For calling out a shitty Buddhist ‘philosopher’ for being a sophist in a Platonism thread? Come back when you have a real argument kid

[Anonymous No.18305792]

>>18305779
>you're a bad joke.
How can you expect people to take Buddhism seriously if you just reply with ad hominem attacks when people point out the contradictions in Buddhism?

[Anonymous No.18305798]

>>18305734
don't even try to argue. i recognize that is the advaitard. the guy was literally brainwashed by guenon, you can't convince this nihilist of anything

[Anonymous No.18305813]

>>18305272
>affirms the existence of gods
So... By definition, it is not atheism.

[Anonymous No.18305841]

>>18305792
hey man, you are the one who is being incoherent and getting refuted about your lack of knowledge of buddhism in a fucking platonism thread, you bring this shit on yourself.

[Anonymous No.18305850]

>>18305734
>the monists
Could you clarify? Because Taoists and Buddhists don't believe that death (eventually) leads to
>the void and complete annihilation
and as I understand it the Platonists that could be called "monists" don't believe this either. So, who precisely are you talking about?

[Anonymous No.18305851]

>>18305841
>getting refuted
Where? So far nobody has provided a response to my point about Nagarjuna being logically inconsistent

[Anonymous No.18305876]

>>18305781
you are mentally ill, get help

[Anonymous No.18305879]

>>18305851
its been pointed out several times that you have deeply held opinions about a thinker whose works you have not read. im sorry anon, but i am afraid that you have been retroactively refuted several times today. best to duck out gracefully.

on the flip side, you can download the mmk off of libgen for free!

[Anonymous No.18305901]

>>18305876
>w-w-what, he pointed out this contradiction in Nagarjuna?!?
>Let me consult my Buddhism books to see how they deal with this objection...
>What?!!? They don't anticipate and answer this objection to Nagarjuna's reasoning.. .. whatever will I do now Buddhistbros?
>"y-you''re mentally ill!"

[Anonymous No.18305923]

>>18305879
>you have been retroactively refuted several times today
In order for that to be true, someone would have actually had to explain why what I said was wrong, but you can't do that and nobody has. Instead you can only seethe and posture because you know that I'm right.

[Anonymous No.18305964]

>>18305923
>>18305901
nagarjuna addresses the "point" you think you are trying to make, ironically.

but you have not read his works, so you obviously are unaware of this.

[Anonymous No.18305973]

>>18305964
>nagarjuna addresses the "point" you think you are trying to make, ironically.
No he doesn't, lol

[Anonymous No.18305999]

>>18305973
how would you know if you by your own admission havent read anything he wrote?

[Anonymous No.18306046]

>>18305999
Because I just watched a video by a guy who said he owns and has presumably read 4 or 5 different translations of the MMK and who has also taken a class on Nagarjuna or the MMK at Harvard (I forget which one it was) and even he agrees that this is an issue that Nagarjuna doesn't solve. And I've also participated in discussions with Buddhists and seen them not have any response before when they argue against self-reflexivity and then it's pointed out to them that this position in turns mean that they have no way to establish the emptiness of awareness.

[Anonymous No.18306054]

>>18281351
that was Pyrrho.

[Anonymous No.18306950]

>>18299023
>>18298956
Why cant you just do this with Islam then. By your rationale Islamic metaphysics is even closer to rational platonic metaphysics than whats proposed in Christiantity, i.e Trinitarian themes. Its a fallacy to attempt to reconcile Christianty with platonism.

[Anonymous No.18307616]

>>18299623
Thanks, this looks really useful.

[Anonymous No.18307775]

>>18302200
>What specifically from the Theaetetus?
Knowledge as reducible to constructed propositions from the subject, knowledge as not accessible due to various semiotic reasons (to say that language cannot capture truth is a self defeating argument), knowledge as its differentiated branches, knowledge as merely what is given to the senses, all of it was tackled quite elegantly.
The point of the Theatetus was less so to define "knowledge" and more so to dispel what it isn't. Phaedrus gets closer to what knowledge is, within the Dialogues, I'd argue.
>it is basically the conjunction of epistemology and ontology, no? Knowledge and Intellect as the very essence of Being, nothing out of intelligibility, for anything to be must be intelligible.
this is actually quite a nice summary
you're headed in the right direction I'd say
>>18306950
>why not with islam
It's been done with Islam but everytime Islam and Hellenic philosophy seem to butt heads you get weird antinomies (Averroistic "two-truths" or just straight up concessions to the more Pagan Platonism/Aristotelian elements, especially with Aristotle).
I don't know too much about Islamic theology in the utmost detail but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible.
With Christian theology, its almost encouraged by Logos theology [John. 1], that Hellenistic theology made knowledge of theological truths like the rational knowledge God made it that "there is no excuse" [Romans 1:19-20] to believe in God. And then there's also the entirety of the Wisdom literature.
Or if we want to take it further with the Logos theology, in the Gospel of John, Christ says that he is the Way, The Truth [aletheia], and the Life [Jn. 14:6].
If you're familiar with Heidegger by any chance, you'll understand the significance of "aletheia" as one of the 9 names of The Son.
Ch. 12 of Mark's gospel amongst many other points in scripture confirms that the word aletheia here is being used in the same manner as in Heraclitus and in Plato at times.
>trinity is a problem
Actually, the trinity is by no means a stumbling block to platonic theology.
From Origen, to Dionysius, to Maximus, to Augustine, to Boethius and Bonaventure and even Eckhart, some of the most famous, perfectly orthodox, blends of trinitarianism and the absolute simplicity of the One Godhead come from the most platonic strains in Christian theological thought.
If anything, because such attempts were most successful by the more platonic leaning Christian theologians, I'd infer that platonism was a great aid as opposed to some kind of stumbling block.
I'd even say that Perichroresis (circumcession) dogmatically defined might not have taken place as swiftly as it did if it weren't for the platonic handmaiden to patristic thought.
I'd check out Boethius' short tractates on the Trinity if you're interested (loeb print is great).
If you're up for the slog, go for Augustine's De Trinitate.
>>18307616
anytime anon ~

[Anonymous No.18307788]

>>18306950
>>18307775
Also for posterity's sake, I know Meister Eckhart gets accused of subordinating the hypostatic persons of the trinity to the ousia godhead such that his trinitarianism is allegedly "unorthodox neoplatonism" but this couldn't be further from the truth.
Here's a great article [albeit in German so you'll probably need to use google translate] that explains Eckhart's very creative Neoplatonic Trinitarianism.
https://sensuscatholicus.jimdofree.com/2020/03/24/der-gnostische-trinitarismus-des-meister-eckhart-hinter-dem-gott-hinter-gott/

[Anonymous No.18307862]

Very pleased to see so many Christian Platonists here.

[Anonymous No.18307915]

>>18307862
based and exemplarist-pilled
apparently, St. Bonaventure was the most eloquent and profound of those who explored exemplarism so I'm getting quite keen to look into his work
you read much St. Bonaventure?

[Anonymous No.18307924]

>>18299623
*deductively argued
fuck

[Anonymous No.18307954]

>>18307915
The Divine Ideas / The Forms are one of my favorite theological topics, so yep. Bonaventure is good. Maximos the Confessor with his doctrine of the Logoi is also a good read (the above quote is from the Christocentric Cosmology of Maximos the Confessor by Tollefsen).

If you're interested in the doctrine of the Divine Ideas/Forms I can also recommend "Aquinas and the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes" by Doolan

[Anonymous No.18307958]

>>18307775
What about Von Bingen?

[Anonymous No.18307959]

>>18307915
Quote on Maximos and the Logoi as Divine Ideas

[Anonymous No.18307970]

>>18307775
Can you explain somthing to me, if it isn't too much trouble.

From proclus elemetns:

4. Every thing which is united is different from "the one itself"

5. All multitude is posterior to "the one"

6. Every multitude consists of either of things united, or of unities.

How do you reconcile such statements with the trinity? Im not a learned person, of you could explain in layman's terms i would appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.18307978]

>>18307970
>explain in layman's terms i would appreciate it.
It can't be done. That's why the Trinity is such a controversial topic.

[Anonymous No.18307993]

>>18307978
How is that possible? Something like Proclus elements can be understood. Are you saying that the Trinitarian argument is so complex that it cant be explained to a layman?
Im actually baffled at your response.

[Anonymous No.18308034]

>>18307993
Aquinas spent decades trying to show how it was possible through pure reason and metaphysics and he never succeeded without committing fallacies.

[Anonymous No.18308069]

>>18308034
I don't know to be honest. I just cant see how they are reconcilable given Proclus propositions above. If he commited fallacies, then its not reason, it just becomes an obstacle to truth.

[Anonymous No.18308104]

>>18307959
>>18307954
very cool thank you
>>18307958
She unexpectedly was really pythagorean in her musical works and the accounts of her personal revelations make more sense after grasping Christian Neoplatinism imo
>>18307993
>Are you saying that the Trinitarian argument is so complex that it cant be explained to a layman
generally speaking yes but I'd definitely hold that if you can understand Proclus you can grasp trinitarianism.
>>18307970
First of all, we know the trinity through faith first and foremost so everything Proclus says about the One generally applies to the homoousias [single and absolutely simple divine essence] of the Godhead shared between the three persons.
One ousia, 3 hypostases.
Propositions 4 and 5 concern the One Godhead in this manner.
We know of the ousia rationally and the three hypostases which are self-same with the ousia but distinct from each other through faith.
But by being of the same substance of the Godhead we know that they are not "unified" multiplicies in themselves.
The Godhead is unconditioned and so not a being-as-such but is beyond-being. Unification is due unto beings-as-such as they are given to intellect directly [the same is for thought as is for being - being is to be known, and thus to be "this" or "that" i.e. determinate and thus finite], but the ousia shared between the three persons is infinite/unconditioned.
Thus the persons of the trinity are not "things united" or "of unities".
Every determinate multitude however, is exactly how Proclus describes it in prop 6.
Dionysius seems to identify the henads with the highest chorus of angels from memory.
Regardless of all that I've said, it is important to note that the trinity is known first and foremost from 'de fide'. From faith. It's existence, origin/procession, relations, number and manner of signification are taken on faith prior to any rational excursion.
The goal then is never to deductively prove the existence of the trinity but to show at a baseline level that there is no necessity for it to conflict with reason.
>>18308034
>Aquinas worked from pure reason
but he didn't - his article on the nature of the knowledge of the trinity starts with "It is impossible to attain to the knowledge of the Trinity by natural reason."
pic related.

[Anonymous No.18308105]

>>18277107
Marsilio Ficino is the greatest neoplatonist along with Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.18308125]

>>18308104
This is also in part why we speak of two natures in Christ-Incarnate. True man and true Godhead.
It's a soteriologically necessary unification because if Christ were not true man and true Godhead, the finitude of creatures and the infinite Godhead would not be bridged, and so our imitation of him would not actually deify us.
Christ as the bridge between the conditioned and the unconditioned in being both is a fairly unique thing to Christianity, and seems to be the only really satisfying soteriological solution to my mind at least.

[Anonymous No.18308132]

>>18308125
>>18308104
Shut the fuck up know-it-all

[Anonymous No.18308135]

>>18308104
>but he didn't
He did try, it's in the Summa Theologica. That's not to say he didn't end up giving up and acknowledging it was a mystery. There are modern Christian philosophers who have still tried to salvage Aquinas' original explanations.
>>18308069
see above

[Anonymous No.18308156]

>>18307788
crazy how much cope you have to do to make Eckhart orthodox...why was Eckhart such a shitty communicator?

[Anonymous No.18308167]

>>18308104
>First of all, we know the trinity through faith first
So your belief in the trinity is faith based and not through reason?

I know what you are trying to do. Unfortunately, it seems you are trying really hard to mould the trinity to platonic metaphysics, to make it coherent, but objectively it is incoherent. Thank you for your time anyway.

[Anonymous No.18308181]

>>18308135
>>18308104
I should also state, with respect to the image you posted, that he only tried to prove its possibility, not its very existence. This is what I meant (which is actually corroborated by what he states there about only attempting to prove mere possibility).

[Anonymous No.18308182]

>>18308156
Eckhart wasn't a shitty communicator
he is really explicit in his works that he speaks in "spicy nutmegs", which is to say in parables. Really obviously inflammatory sounding ones (like the one where he was accused of affirming the eternity of the world which was actually an argument against applying temporal predicates to God). He does this all the time and on purpose.
>>18308135
I mean I'm no diehard Thomist so this is not a hill I want to die on, but considering that he takes the fact of the trinity as de fide as his first premise before engaging in rational excursions into what we can and do know of the trinity makes it pretty damn clear that its not pure reason.
>>18308167
>So your belief in the trinity is faith based and not through reason?
Yes and this is dogmatically so.
Sound historiography proves the incarnation, and the gospels are written by eyewitnesses so there is sufficient reason to have faith.

I guess its your loss for just handwaving my argument though.

[Anonymous No.18308190]

>>18308167
How is the Trinity that much harder to reconcile with Neoplatonism given that Neoplatonism already reconginizes a single divinity in three hypostases? Father, Son and Holy Spirit is stranger than One, Nous and Soul? Given the core difference is the Neoplatonic hypostases form a hierarchy and each one proceeds from the one above while the Trinity are all equal with none of them being above or below each other in ontological priority but this hardly seems like an insurmountable issue.

One God. Three Hypostases. Both Neoplatonism and Christianity affirm this even if the details of how the Hypostases relate to each other differ.

[Anonymous No.18308193]

>>18277726
half of the people on the right panel believe there's more than2 genders

[Anonymous No.18308204]

>>18308182
Its not a handwave, Proclus is perfectly clear. Why is it 3 gods? not 5? or ad infinitum?

Its either One, i.e the Godhead, and The One, i.e A God. This is what he meant.

A multiplicity is in fact, a multiplicity, despite having ONE essence. A ONE essence being part of a 3 is not "The One Itself". Its actually extremely simple but you want it to fit the narrative.

[Anonymous No.18308219]

>>18308204
I mean if you want answers on the Trinity you're obviously going to have to address Christian theology, not Platonism. The Trinity is a dogma revealed through scripture, it's not something you just discover through human reason since it relates to the inner nature of God, a mystery that the human intellect can't penetrate. Christians believe in the Trinity, Platonists don't and that's because Christians believe scripture is divine revelation and Platonists don't.

Platonism forms a very useful philosophical framework and worldview for understanding theological concepts but don't get it confused with the idea that everything Platonic must necessarily be syncretized with Christian teaching.

[Anonymous No.18308242]

>>18308219
Fair enough friend, I wasn't sure what was behind your reasoning process. It makes more sense now.

[Anonymous No.18308250]

>>18308182
>Eckhart wasn't a shitty communicator

99% of his readers think he's a Buddhist

[Anonymous No.18308280]

>>18308204
>>18308219
This is a good summary of how the two, Christian revelation and the Platonic dialectic, are supposed to interact
also see>>18298665
>>18298880
>>18298956
>>18299023

Here's a proposition and idk if it will stick the landing but I'll attempt this nonetheless:
Let us consider Plato's divided line from the Republic for a second.
For the Christian Neoplatonist, we might ascribe the substance of revelation [scriptural and personal] to gnosis atop the line, and that discursive affirmation of scriptural revelation can only come through pistis/belief [and also love/devotion more crucially but that's not purely considering knowledge].
>>18308250
Please ignore the perrenialist pseuds, Eckhart is quite the scholastic Catholic which is really evident from his language and conclusions [albeit the approach in his Sermon is not scholastic], especially his commentary on John.
If you want someone to help decode Eckhart properly, check out:
>Burkhard Mojsisch - Meister Eckhart, Analogy, Univocity and Unity
>John M. Connolly - Living Without Why, Meister Eckhart's Mediaeval Critique of the Will

[Anonymous No.18308304]

>>18308280
>Please ignore the perrenialist pseuds, Eckhart is quite the scholastic Catholic which is really evident from his language and conclusions

Is that why even the Catholic church thought he was a Buddhist? Had he lived, he would have been condemned.

[Anonymous No.18308398]

>>18308280
Worth noting the Eastern Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky was a big fan of Eckhart.

[Anonymous No.18308992]

>>18306950
>>18307775
>>18307788
>>18307970
>>18307993
>>18308104
>>18308167
>>18308190
>>18308204
>>18308219
I’m late but wish to remind you friends that Plato’s protology consisted of One and Dyad as a single Principle. There is much room for a triadic reading of platonic protology than most people think, not by chance Damascius will see how the Mixture is necessary to be “hypostasized” as part of the Principle for the reconciliation of One and Dyad and the very expression of Unity.

[Anonymous No.18309539]

>>18307788
Lmao I know the guy that made that wojak. arrus is a great poster i wish he'd come back