>>24799538
i'd be interested. big admirer of plotinus here. how do these groups work? is the discussion held in threads?

>>24799661
That's how we did the last one. Maybe it would be better if we had like three days per chapter or something. Idk. People would just post how they understood it, questions they had, insights, criticisms etc.

>>24799731
Perfect. Let's hope more people show interest

>>24799538
Bump. Sounds interesting.

Bump

>>24799538
I'd join but might get filtered. Is this a premium certified Plato Chad group or are plebians welcome?

I always thought of Proclus as a schizo afterbirth of Plotinus. Will lurk the thread but I’m highly skeptical that multiple anons will be able to understand an author like this. I foresee a bunch of senseless questions/discussion b/w mystical woowoo. Prove me wrong. And btw if you haven’t read Aristotle, forget about the neoplatonists, you’ll be completely out to sea. Unfortunately most people participating will not have studied Aristotle seriously so pretty confident this will be a failure. Good day.

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>But Plato demonstrates that the psychical essence [i.e. the essence pertaining to soul] is more ancient than bodies, but is suspended from an intellectual hypostasis.For every thing which is moved according to time, though it may be self-moved, is,indeed of a more ruling nature than things moved by others, but is posterior to an eternal motion. He shows, therefore, as we have said, that intellects the father and cause of bodies and souls, and that all things both subsist and energize about it, which are allotted a life conversant with transitions and evolutions.

It's interesting how much this can clarify debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. All one needs to do is invert the modern materialist picture, such that the more basic (the "physical" as against the higher "chemical" as against the higher "biological" etc.) is no longer considered "more real" or "more fundamental." It is, in fact, infinite being that is the ground of being, for only it can be fully self-determining, essential (superessential), and fully intelligible in itself (super intelligible) (arguably, because only it has an essence that explains its existence, for it is not contingent). Whereas, a philosophy of natura pura, of self-subsistent yet contingent "building blocks" is a sort of historical accident of reason, a metaphysical wound wrought by contingent struggles in Christendom (and we see something similar in the triumph of voluntarism in Islam and the death of Islamic "neoplatonism").

Anyhow, I thought pic related was pretty good on that whole issue as it relates to modern thought. Robert Wallace's stuff on Hegel (both books) is pretty great on this too, with the one focused solely on Hegel being a fairly accessible book for something that grapples with the Logic (the Plato boom is much more accessible though, and fantastic).

>>24799992
>And btw if you haven’t read Aristotle, forget about the neoplatonists, you’ll be completely out to sea.
what if I've read him but struggle mightily with concepts ?

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Also, does anything exist for this like Joe Sachs translation/commentary for the Physics? A difficulty here is that I am not totally sure how Proclus might be using all his terms, especially without knowing what is being translated as which English equivalent. The references to "symbol" versus "image," etc. seem important.

>>24799992
>I always thought of Proclus as a schizo afterbirth of Plotinus.

I'm not sure where you got that? I have normally seen Proclus praised for being particularly clear and in particular for developing syllogistic logic such that it can handle some of these ideas. I am only familiar with him in passing, although I have read the Liber de Causis and part of Saint Thomas' commentary on it, and that's a paraphrase.

>woo woo
Meh, this term is normally just employed by empiricist-natutalists to decry anything that violates their aesthetic sensibilities or dogmas. No doubt, ideas can be more or less thought out, subtle, plausible, etc. Yet I have no reason to suspect that Proclus would fall into the sort of shallowness one finds in some "New Age" adoptations of older ideas for mass consumption.

>>24800150
On this quote, a key difference in later thought would be that the Logos (Christ) is considered as part of the Godhead (One). Yet, there is an interesting parallel here with the ideas of Sophiology, and of Sophia as perfusing the created order, which exists in a sort of "suspended middle" between the absolute plentitude of divine infinity and nothingness (John Milbank's term). Sophia is here associated with the divine energies (with the Palamite distinction in the East), whereas created and diefied Sophia appears in history in the Theotokos (Blessed Virgin) who is the fullest symbol of the role of the Church (giving birth to the mystical body of the Logos in thought and deed through conformity/participation in God by the creature). Pic related.

>>24800157
>Meh, this term is normally just employed by empiricist-natutalists to decry anything that violates their aesthetic sensibilities or dogmas.
Nope, it's referring to the fact that anons get obsessed with the 'spooky' aspects of these thinkers and ignore the philosophy. "Pneumatic body? Cool man. The relationship quality to position? Borrrrring. Pseudo-Egyptian numerology? Cool, man. Number as the principle of differentiation in Intellect? Borrrrring."
>>24800152
Trolling aside you need to know Aristotle thoroughly to read the neoplatonists, they reference him more than they do the Dialogues, though often without naming him.

>>24800157
>I'm not sure where you got that?
Because he goes crazy with Plotinus' principle of continuity and uses it to generate a vast, schizo-Pagan theology. Because he was a theurgist. Because he's into spooky woo woo stuff.

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Also, just to note another similarity that leapt out to me from texts I have studied in detail:

Proclus writes:
>Likewise that the intellectual theory apprehends intelligibles, and the forms which are capable of being known by the soul through the projecting energy of intellect ; but that the theological science transcending this, is conversant with arcane and ineffable hyparxes, and pursues their separation from each other, and their unfolding into light from one cause of all : whence, I am of opinion, that the intellectual peculiarity af the soul is capable of apprehending intellectual forms, and the difference which subsists in them, but that the summit, and, as they say, flower of intellect and hyparxis, is conjoined with the unities of beings, and through these, with the occult union of all the divine unities. For as we contain many gnostic powers, through this alone we are naturally capable of being conjoined with and participating this occult union. For the genus of the Gods cannot be apprehended by sense, because it is exempt from all bodies; nor by opinion and dianoia,* for these are divisible and come into contact with - multiform concerns ; nor by intelligence in conjunction with reason, for knowledge of this kind belongs to true beings; but the hyparxis of the Gods rides on beings, and is defined according to the union itself of wholes.

Likewise, Saint Maximos writes:
>83. In the multiplicity of beings there is diversity, dissimilarity and difference. But in God, who is in an absolute sense one and alone, there is only identity, simplicity and similarity. It is therefore not safe to devote oneself to the contemplation of God before one has advanced beyond the multiplicity of beings. Moses showed this when he pitched the tent of his mind outside the camp (cf. Exod. 33:7) and then conversed with God. For it is dangerous to attempt to utter the inexpressible by means of the spoken word, for the spoken word involves duality or more than duality. The surest way is to contemplate pure being silently in the soul alone, because pure being is established in undivided unity and not among the multiplicity of things. The high priest, who was commanded to go into the holy of holies within the veil only once every year (cf. Lev. 16; Heb. 9:7), shows us that only he who has passed through what is immaterial and holy and has entered the holy of holies - that is, who has transcended the whole natural world of sensible and intelligible realities, is free from all that is specific to creatures and whose mind is unclad and naked - is able to attain the vision of God.

>84. When Moses pitches his tent outside the camp (cf. Exod. 33:7) - that is, when he estabhshes his will and mind outside the world of visible things - he begins to worship God. Then, entering into the darkness (cf. Exod. 20:21) - that is, into the formless and immaterial realm of spiritual knowledge - he there celebrates the most sacred rites.

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>>24800174
>85. The darkness is that formless, immaterial and bodiless state which embraces the knowledge of the prototypes of all created things.

This is also why Virgil (human reason) can only lead Dante as far as the Earthly Paradise (and his presence there is unstable, he vanishes, a mirror of Virgil's own pessimistic outlook on man's ability to transcend the passions in the Aenied, e.g. the ascent through the lying Ivory Gate, the murder or Turnus, the beast similes for Aeneas that mount with his furor and overcome pietas, etc.). Dante needs an erotic other to guide him, one beyond reason. But even then, at the climax, the jump to insight just come all at once. It cannot be discursive because it cannot be divided. It cannot be ratio.

Theosis and infused contemplation must be an immediate jump, no matter how much preparation and ascetic labors may be needed to guide the way, since the gap between the infinite and finite is infinite. This is for the same reason that a an object traveling at a finite speed can never cross an infinite distance in a finite amount of time (or how Aristotle shows that an infinite number of principles make knowledge impossible, pace Anaxagoras).

>>24800167
Prayer was a central part of neoplatonism. Boethius Consolation is structured as a prayer, but it is hardly "woo."

>>24800163
>Borrrrring

It's their loss, that's the best part. Peter Redpath reads Aquinas very much in this way, by focusing on the Problem of the One and the Many. I am not sure if this is the "correct" reading of Aquinas, although it seems so to me with how rough contemporaries like Dante read him. But it makes everything "hang together" (e.g. the idea of virtual quantity, and the way numerical quantity emerges from Unity and measure).

>>24799538
Sounds awesome, I’m in.

OP here, pardon the multiple response post.
>>24799916
A self acknowledged pleb is just a chrysalis form of a Chad anon.

>>24799992
Stop being a Debby downer. Aristotle is overrated.

>>24800150
You stick around. Every reading group needs a good effort poster.

>>24800152
He's not that hard. Prime mover, four causes. As I said he's overrated. Remember unless you're pushing the limits of your ability to understand you're intellect won't expand. Don't be daunted by a book. Besides we have a a fucking oracle at our fingertips now if you need help understanding something.

>>24800157
>I am not totally sure how Proclus might be using all his terms
In the copy of the text I linked at p. 83 (according to archive.org) there is a list of terms and explanation of their uses.

>>24800167
>schizo-Pagan theology.
Did it occur to you that maybe you're the schizo for not understanding the multiplicity of divinity? That maybe the entire Abrahamic mutilation of the concept of the divine is in fact schizo?

>>24800465
>Stop being a Debby downer. Aristotle is overrated.
Aristotle is the main guy in the room, often the only guy, from AD 300-1500. If you don't read Aristotle because you think he's boring then you simply will not understand anything you read from this period.
>Besides we have a a fucking oracle at our fingertips now if you need help understanding something.
You use ChatGPT to understand philosophy? Shocker.

>>24800174
I never read St Maximos but I always thought he sounded like he'd be on point. Confirmed. Thanks.

>>24800203
Dude, you stick around. Good post.
>Theosis and infused contemplation must be an immediate jump
I'd almost go as far as to say there is nothing the human will can do. It's all at the discretion of the divinity. Using terms like infused contemplation, I wonder, have you read Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange?

>>24800482
I've read enough Aristotle to know that I don't need to read more. I read Plotinus and understood it well enough to be challenged but found it profitable and interesting. And I think Plato is the main man in the room dude.
>You use ChatGPT to understand philosophy?
I don't but people can. I was just thinking about it like a spotter when lifting weights. It can help you not get crushed under the weight.

>>24800476
Abrahamics don't deny the multiplicity of the "celestial"/divine. For Christians, there is the three hypostases in one essence, Being itself being essentially relational community. And in all three there are the hierarchies of angels: the thrones, dominions, principalities, arch-angels, angels, djinn, etc. Pagans aren't any different in acknowledging that the one that is itself beyond all multiplicity of above these. Where Abrahamics say they err is in misunderstanding the role of the celestial hierarchy, and also being misled by the rebellious archons and principalities—the demons and their leader Lucifer, who is "the prince of this world."

Funny enough though, while it acknowledges the corruption of the principalities that govern the natural world, Christianity and Islam have a much (IMHO) healthier attitude towards the body, particularly Christianity which sees the body as essential to diefication. Creation will be transfigured, as Christ was, etc., and indeed all of the sensible world is sacramental, and at the culmination of the ages, at the end of the process of exitus and reditus, it will return as diefied, as Incarnational, the Incarnation being the type of all creation, and the Theotokos acting as the model for all creatures, created being transcending its finitude and giving birth to the divine (which we can already see in Plato).

Funny enough on the last part, I came across a sermon where Meister Eckhart refers to him as "Saint Plato." IIRC, Abelard did this too and it got him in trouble. It gave me pause to see, although I've seen a few "Saint Origen"s too (which to be fair, is more plausible; Clement of Alexandria is a Coptic Saint).

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Anyway, cool. Seems like traction enough.
Let's just call it /ProclusGeneral/ on some shit. We can probably just loosely aim for one chapter a day and go from there.

Ignore the toxic Aristotle guy.

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>>24800512
>Abrahamics don't deny the multiplicity of the "celestial"/divine
I think you're probably being kind of obtuse. Maybe the scholars who study the history of monotheistic philosophy understand this. But for the most part Abrahamic religions are just MONOtheistic. Most Abrahamics draw a hard line between creator and creation, all of them acknowledge angels etc as creations. I think the pagan world view throws a much broader net with their idea of divinity.
>sees the body as essential to diefication.
Yeah, through crucifying it. I don't think that's as healthy as the pagan idea of apotheosis through beauty.
>Transfigured
>Will be
The time is now. Now is all there is (an exaggeration for effect.) But anyway all views welcome for the group. The more the merrier.

A relevant question: should we bother with Taylor's introduction? I'm having a look and, at the beginning, he's just talking about stars being animate. Let's say, if you wanna read his intro, go ahead. We'll start the book proper on Saturday. Sound good?

I honestly do not understand the appeal of theology.

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>>24800620
Don't you feel (or think etc) there's more than just what we see?

>>24799538
Neoplatonism is my thing but I can't imagine following a reading schedule alongside a bunch of randos. I read at my own pace.
>>24800620
It's helpful if you want to do theurgy. Or if you want to know things.
Otherwise it's pretty useless.

>>24800646
No. Just seems like wild, baseless speculation.

>>24800778
Well do you think things like love, justice, courage etc are real? What about numbers? You can see any of them but they're pretty real as far as I'm concerned. Platonic theology studies what we car rationally know about such things.

>>24800842
Sorry *you can't see any of them.

>>24800842
What do you mean by 'real'?

>>24800960
I meant it in the conventional sense. Something that's actual, factual, true.

>>24799538
Are there any reading charts for this line of philosophy? I've read the basics of Plato and very minimal Aristotle, but want to one day read more of him and Aristotle before moving towards Plotinus and others like Proclus.

>>24800983
Read all of Aristotle, read all of Plato, then Plotinus, and follow your heart from there. Very minimal Aristotle will not cut it, these guys had virtually memorized Aristotle.

>>24800983
Iamblichus had set up a curriculum of dialogues that he thought got at the core of what he took Platonism to be:

Alcibiades Major, Gorgias, Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Phaedrus, Symposium, Philebus, Parmenides, Timaeus (in this order)

Consider also looking to the extant commentaries on these dialogues. Proclus and Olympiodorus have commentaries on the Alcibiades Major, Olympiodorus on the Gorgias, Olympiodorus and Damascius on the Phaedo, Proclus on the Cratylus, Hermias on the Phaedrus, Damascius on the Philebus, and Proclus on both the Parmenides and Timaeus.

Reading Taylor's introduction
>I confess I am wholly at a loss to conceive what could induce the moderns to controvert the dogma, that the stars and the whole world are animated, as it is an opinion of infinite antiquity, and is friendly to the most unperverted, spontaneous, and accurate conceptions of the human mind.
So this whole project of Proclus is really an intellectual explication of Mediterranean animism in the context of the Platonic traditions understanding of it. Would you agree? What a gem this survived really.

Btw there is a raw text file of the work at Wikisource.

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>>24800983

>>24800983
In reference to >>24800995 see >>24800534

Come along for the journey dude. I'm sure you'll be fine.

>>24801054
I like how this ends with Evola. I take out some the Christian stuff and put something with Ramana Maharshi

>>24801040
Also, the moderns subvert this "ancient, venerable dogma", to centralise control obviously. How could Taylor be so naieve?

My main issue with the neoplatonists is that they gloss over Aristotle’s most radical insights and turn them to mush. Aristotle was a natural scientist, he emphatically rejected the subordination of everything to theology, setting the stage for modern science. But the Platonist wizards would rather cast spells at each other. Aristotle was ahead of his time in directing us to the life and world that’s right in front of us - conceived as teleologically caused by God, to be sure, but still taken on its own account. So our life is the life of God. But neoplatonists cling to these abstract, purely logical divisions in every subject, as in the three hypostases. Aristotle tried to free us from logicism, the neoplatonists returned to it and held us backward, retarded, for hundreds of years.

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>>24801147
Spirit > phenomenon. I really don't think the quantitative improvements that the scientific revolution has granted us,(which terminated in nihilism essentially,) are really worthwhile if we neglect the Life of the Mind/Spirit/Divinity. The qualitative impacts on life are tragic. Look at we're the Aristotelian direction towards "the life and world that’s right in front of us" has brought us. Tragic.

>>24801199
Yes before 1500 everyone was based and virtuous. The degeneracy starts with Descartes! You are a trad pretending to be a philosopher. You’re approaching philosophy aesthetically rather than with your brain. Sorry but this is extremely retarded and annoying and it’s faggots like you who will be conducting this circlejerk.

>>24801234
You are free to leave the thread. Somehow I think you wont though.

>>24801234
That Anon made a perfectly reasonable reply to a trash post about how Neoplatonist philosophers are "wizards holding us back from science!"

Rejecting such a facile view has nothing to do with the culture war categories you want to throw around. If you don't like late-antique philosophy and how the Greeks read Aristotle, don't open the thread. No one is forcing you to pop into any thread that might tangentially related to Aristotle to tell everyone how their all idiots and cannot possibly fathom him, before calling anyone who disagrees with you a "trad" and then devolving into a stream of racial slurs (your highly recognizable MO). Not everyone is so obsessed with le culture war as to divide everything into "muh trads."

It is not, on any reading of Aristotle, virtuous to keep doing this at any rate.

>>24800971
I don't think true and real are the same thing. But in that sense then, no. I don't consider those concepts 'real'.

>>24800995
>>24801032
>>24801054
Thanks anons, I did a close read study this summer on the Republic and Timaeus and loved it, with some dipping into iirc Phaedo and Gorgias here and there two for a writing project. I also reread important sections of Aristotle's politics along with sections from physics on the four causes, and dipped around in his collected works here and there, and its intrigued me ever since to learn more. All this will be a big help in the future.

>>24801199
>spirit>phenomenon
This isnt a dichotomy. You can study and should focus on both. You cant deny science, tech didnt vastly improve the standards of living.
t. Not a materialist.

>>24800507
You need to read Aristotle; the Organon as a minimum, the six works of the Organon are his best.

>>24802421
No. You need me to read Aristotle for some reason. This is a Platonist thread. Why don't you make like the peripatetics and walk way

>>24802421
I've read categories, on interpretation and currently reading Prior analytics. I haven't read Plotinus or Proclus. Is it important that I finish reading Aristotle to read them?

>>24802507
>>24800534

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>>24800174
I find that Maximus has a much more developed praxis in his surviving works though. Like Aristotle, he understands the virtues sort of as the universals of right action, but he extends this to them being a participation in divine love. They are to divine love as the logoi of created things are to the Logos (Christ).

Like the Desert Fathers, he has a three part progression. First is practical philosophy, the cultivation of virtue, ascetic labors, and spiritual exercises. The Neoplatonists are not that different now. Proclus, for instance, is said to have led his students in communal prayer towards the sun thrice daily. They also engaged in small group living, some ascetical labors, etc. But the Christian praxis was more developed (or at least certainly more indepth records and explanations of it survive). The Liturgy of the Hours / Horologion is a communal spiritual exercise for instance, and extends from prior Jewish tradition (when Saint Peter has his vision about all food being clean to eat in Acts he appears to be going up to the roof for the set hour of prayer). The asceticism also tended to be more intense, even though they had a more positive orientation to the body.

Hence, the role of ascetical labors and spiritual exercises is worked into all the discourses:

>94. So long as we are manfully engaged in the holy warfare of ascetic or practical philosophy we retain with us the Logos, who in the form of the commandments came from the Father into this world. But when we are released from our ascetic struggle with the passions and are declared victor over both them and the demons, we pass, by means of contemplation, to gnostic philosophy; and in this way we allow the Logos mystically to leave the world again and make His way to the Father. Hence it is that the Lord says to His disciples: 'You have loved Me and have believed that I come from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world; again I leave the world and make My way to the Father' (John 16:27-28). By the world He meant perhaps the hard task of practicing the virtues; by the Father, that intellectual state which transcends the world and is free from all material propensity. When we are in this state the Logos of God enters into us, putting an end to our battle with the passions and the demons.

>83. According to the text, 'But we have the intellect of Christ' (1 Cor. 2:16), the saints are said to receive Christ's intellect. But this does not come to us through the loss of our own intellectual power: nor does it come to us as a supplementary part added to our intellect: nor does it pass essentially and hypostatically into our intellect. Rather, it illumines the power of our intellect with its own quality and conforms the activity of our intellect to its own. In my opinion the person who has Christ's intellect is he whose intellection accords with that of Christ and who apprehends Christ through all things.

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>>24802421
It would be helpful. But as a counterpoint, Saint Augustine, the most influential of all "neoplatonists" probably only read the Categories and a handful of perhaps second hand sources on Platonism.

Eriugena is often considered as the culmination of late-antique Platonism—as having written the "summa" for it—and he only had access to Dionysius the Areopagite, Saints Maximus, and the Cappadocians, and yet was able to reconstruct what they do not make explicit and expand upon them in novel ways.

>>24802428
Nta, but the Iamblicus curriculum I shared at >>24801032 was preceded by the study of Aristotle's works (at least the Organon, Physics, De Anima, and Metaphysics). Proclus himself studied Aristotle in this curriculum for two years before proceeding to Plato, but that was also considered unusually quick (according to Marius' Life of Proclus). So there is good sense in the advice. But, obviously, there's no harm in reading Proclus' Theology beforehand, if you have it in mind to return to it again at some later point, but Neoplatonism does rely on an Aristotelian conceptual apparatus, and uses Aristotle's arguments often enough that a familiarity with Aristotle is a significant help.

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>>24802765
I'm not denying that Proclus will be easier to understand if you've read Aristotle (and that generally the more Platonic tradition philosophers you've read the easier it will be), I'm just trying to say that, based on my experience of having read Plotinus, I believe people are capable of integrating knowledge and benefiting from it without having read an entire canon of other texts beforehand. I just don't want people to feel excluded from the group/thread because they haven't read enough. Pic unrel.

Bump

Bump

Just reading about Thomas Taylor,
>So enamoured was he of the ancients, that he and his wife talked to one another only in classical Greek.
What an interesting household it would have been.

>>24804834
I would be more skeptical. Greek passages that were too difficult for him in Plato he dealt with by translating Latin and French translations available.

bump

I fully support any /general/ threads. Anything to reduce the fucking noise of culture wars. There’s some really good posters here on platonism and such, I would join.

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>>24806223
Nice, we're kicking off Saturday with chapter one.

>>24806354
that statue is stunning

>>24806223
This

>>24799538
Bump. OP?

>>24806354
>>24806916
A real shame about the missing head

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Right so,

Chapter I. The Preface, in which the scope of the treaties is unfolded, together with the praise of Plato himself, and of those that received the philosophy from him.

My notes:

1. I noticed, as I glance askance at our seething, peripatetic friend, that Proclus neglects to mention Aristotle at all in his first, tributary, chapter, while giving mention to Plotinus, Amelius, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Theodorus. I did see in Taylor's introduction that Proclus, with Syrianus, made a study of Aristotle's works, "in less than two whole years."

2. Notice what great emphasis Proclus places on the role of the Divinities in leading us into wisdom. I mentioned this previously when I said,
>I'd almost go as far as to say there is nothing the human will can do.
Obviously I say almost because I think we have to have a fundamental openness that allows wisdom (in the divine sense) to enter. I think Socratic ignorance is the ultimate exemplar of this kind of attitude, (evinced by the influence of his daemon). Yet I don't think it's only limited to epistemological, intellectual concerns. At its deeper levels this attitude is something like a physiological receptiveness, a removal of all the impediments of preconceptions, a relinquishing of the tensions that concerns with the mundane world create. The body must become a temple fitting for the gods to enter, and the mind a pristine sanctuary for them to reside. -(I'd like to tie this to the vague notion that "the ancients" had a different way of being than us moderns- it's not just a different way of thinking but a different approach to being. I think Heidegger may have had some notion of this.)-
I think this approach is easily relatable to the idea that, for want of a better way of explaining it, imitation is the highest form of flattery. We naturally strive to become like what we love and find beautiful. But as the Divinities so far transcend us, the most fundamental thing we can do to come to know them is to purify ourselves, (as they are sublimely pure), mind and body.
Lastly, I think you could maybe call this a kind of humility. I think there's a conception on the part of Christians (I think Augustine talks about it) that the pagan world was nothing but pride and "muh personal glory," but it's not true. It's kinda ironic considering the institutionalisation of glory in the church of bishops and such. The Christian conception has you basically cancel your "prideful" intellect all together and just believe the mysterious dogmas. At least in Platonism there is still a commitment to reason and logic in some way.

Pic rel is Phaedo 66d-66e

>>24808345
Marnius says that Proclus structured his life (and so also those students with him during the days) with prayers to the sun at sun rise, noon, and sunset. This is perhaps somewhat like the Liturgy of the Hours or Muslim prayers (although less frequent). It's probably good for continually bringing the mind and group back into focus.

Porphyry's Letter to Marcella and De Abstinentia has some of the clearer stuff on the ascetic disciplines and spiritual exercises meant to make the body a temple.

>At least in Platonism there is still a commitment to reason and logic in some way

This is in plenty of Christian and Islamic thought too. Polemics aside, they seem to have generally had great respect for the Pagans, especially as time went on and they were no longer active rivals.

hmm this sounds cool. i've read some similar books recently (well they might be similar idk). i'll get the book

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>>24808363
You'll notice in the didache it says to pray the our father three times a day at morning, noon and night also. I think the Pythagoreans started the tradition of hymning the sun at certain times. (Love this painting, Bronnikov was a genius (or had a divine genus we might say)).

As regards ascetic training and spiritual exercises, I think we need start with the basics. Actually physical training like the lads would get at the gymnasium (teaches discipline and effort (Solon said a healthy diet and exercise are to the body like a sieve to wheat, a healthy mind needs a healthy body)) and having a good foundation in music, geometry, math, rhetoric, logic etc. then when these are established (along with virtuous habits as we'll see next chapter) we can move into more advanced ascetic and spiritual practice. I like particularly the story about Socrates when (I think he was on campaign somewhere) he stood in the same spot for 48 hours contemplating the sky.

>>24808477
Also I want to add, one of my favourite short books that complements this preparatory stage of our enquiry is The Golden Verses of Pythagoreans and other Pythagoreans fragments. I think it might tend towards an extreme asceticism of bodily denial (at least for young men) at points, but it's still inspired reading.

>>24808477
It might for the particular community that the Didache came out of but the Horologion itself comes out of a Jewish practice of praying towards Jerusalem at set hours each day, which began during the Babylonian Exile. You can even see it in the NT. For example, Saint Peter has his vision in Acts 10 when he goes up to the roof for prayer at the Ninth Hour, and this is often interpreted as the Sext prayer.

IIRC the Essenes, who lived much like monks, also kept this schedule. I think the midnight prayer is a later addition though. The Roman Church only seems to do it for certain seasons these days.

>>24808517
This is obviously also where Islam gets it from. I don't know why they have five times and the Christians have 7 (or 8) though. All I know is they do it EARLY. The monastery I stayed at started at 3:15 AM 365 days a year for Nocturns.

>>24808517
The orthodox Jews still pray three times a day at morning, noon and night. They actually teach that each prayer was instituted by one of the patriarchs: Abraham started morning prayer, Isaac midday and Jacob added night.
The Horologion developed much later- I think coming out of the practice of hermits reciting the entire Psalter daily- and in its mediaeval form actually has a cool correspondence with the passion. Matins represents Gethsemane, lauds he's imprisoned, prime, he's sentenced, terce he's made to take up the cross and walk, sext, he's crucified, none, he dies, vespers he's taken down and wrapped up, compline, he's entombed.

The Roman church still does it if you can find communities that stick to the traditions before the Vatican II reforms.
>>24808525
They start so early because of a line in the Psalter, Psalm 119:62, which says, "At midnight I rise to praise you, because of your righteous rules". There's also 119:164, "Seven times a day do I praise Thee because of Thy righteous judgments".

But trust me, I've been in the habit of saying Psalms. It can efficacious in a certain limited way in that it can help cultivate feelings of awe and devotion but for the most part it's really only the cultivation of sentimentality. Much more profound is this line,
>Silence is praise to thee o zion dwelling god
from Psalm 65:1

>>24808698
To go on, the cultivation of interior silence speaks to what I was saying here >>24808345
And what Proclus w attributes Socrates to have said in the next chapter
>It is not lawful for the pure to be touched by the impure.
It's the hardest interior ascetic exercise and the most important spiritual practice and I think the key to unlocking the whole paradigm of apophatic theology and truely efficacious theurgy.

>>24808714
>truely efficacious theurgy.
What do you take that to be? Marius' Vita reports that
>Proclus proceeded step by step; first he was cleansed by the Chaldean purification; then he held converse, as he himself mentions in one of his works, with the luminous apparitions of Hecate which he conjured up himself; then he caused rain-falls by correctly moving the wryneckbird wheel, by this means he saved Athens from a severe drought. He proposed means to prevent earthquakes; he tested the divinatory power of the tripod; and even wrote verses about his own destiny.
I have to admit to being puzzled by the talk of causing rain and such.

>>24808766
According to Proclus theurgy is "a power higher than all human wisdom embracing the blessings of divination, the purifying powers of initiation and in a word all the operations of divine possession."
- On the theology of Plato, 1.26.63
I think of it in terms of Theosis or Henosis. Diogenes Laërtius wrote than Socrates said, "he is nearest the God's who has the fewest wants." It's a process of purification of the soul. And I don't think it's necessarily confined to the individual. Remember you have to come back down into the cave and free others. I think the idea of it as a kind of magic to change externals was something uniquely added by Iamblichus.
As for the miracles, I think you can choose to believe them or not. Personally I don't believe them but I also don't think they're impossible. It's just the sort of pomp that students were fond of attributing to their teachers. I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on them.

>>24808979
>As for the miracles, I think you can choose to believe them or not. Personally I don't believe them but I also don't think they're impossible. It's just the sort of pomp that students were fond of attributing to their teachers. I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on them.
I'm not sure it can be that simply dealt with without calling any of the Platonists into question, because Marinus knew him, was his student, and was voted his successor. If we could dismiss an Academy head so easily, why are we sure Marinus' precursors weren't exaggerating things about Plotinus or Plato? It seems hard to fit a purely intellectual-spiritual view of theurgy together with this rain shamanism.

Love this big dick dialogue but I am getting filtered trying to read chapter 1.

>>24809033
What are you having trouble with lad?

>>24809023
You make a fair point. On consideration I incline to not dismissing what he says.
>purely intellectual-spiritual view of theurgy together with this rain shamanism
I think this is too reductive a dynamic. Theurgy, as I'm picturing it, has to do with a qualitative, ontological transformation. Let's think of the rain as wisdom and the salvation of Athens from drought as from ignorance (Analogy 1). Now it may have very well been physical rain, but it may not have been caused by the physical actions of Proclus but by the operations of Divinities in which his being participated (and may continue to do so for all I know). Analogy 1 may still apply in so far as he (and or the Divinities he participates in) may still cause wisdom to save us from ignorance. The Heavens he was in tune with may have been attempting to communicate analogically.
The luminous apparitions of Hecate I can accept. The rain causing could just be something he tried and it worked. The other stuff doesn't seem so impossible.
I don't want to give the impression I'm anything more than spitballing ideas here.

Just listening to Jowett's introduction to First Alcibiades. He makes an interesting comparison between Christian conversion (ie repentance) and, for want of a better term, Socratic humiliation (ie coming to know our ignorance). To me, the dynamic of knowledge/ignorance makes so much more sense than good/evil. Its tragic that people by and large don't seem to understand this.

>>24809454
I agree with you, however, my understanding on the nature of ignorance, differs much on the christian concept of (repentence) and Socratic humiliation, although more sympathies for the latter.
Without deviating the conversation too much I will say however it does 'feel' like humiliation (realizing the depth of 'your' ignorance) and the subtle 'guilt' one feels when they have inflicted pain and suffering on 'others' and themselves due to ignorance and fear
>knowledge/ignorance makes so much more sense than good/evil
But what do you think

>>24808345
>purify ourselves
But what does it mean to purify mind and the body? Is the body something that cannot be purified, for does it not decay, is mutable and will one day perish permanently. How does one purify the body that is 'illusory' and of appearances?
Or is my understanding of purity confused?
The idea of following moral commandments, diets, etc to become like the Gods seems..idk, I do not wish to focus and subtly expect the rituals, rites and 'behavior' to grant me favor from the Divine. Although hedonism I can see how its unproductive in general

what was the name of the artist who unlocked his final mode after reading proclus and hegel, and created a bunch of masterpieces?

Bump

>>24809539
Humiliation is a good thing. It makes you humble. Plato is at pains in that dialogue to say that the wise and those who know they are not wise aren't the problem, it's people who thing they know things when they don't. There's an interesting etymology of humility from Latin where it means dirt or earth. The idea is that humiliation is like cultivating the earth so things can grow.

>>24809996
I agree, but how does one admit ignorance when pride can be blinding? Its one thing to admit you do not know, but its another to even attempt to articulate the vastness of your ignorance, to the point where I just remain silent.

>>24809574
>But what does it mean to purify mind and the body?
It can mean different things at different times and places, ages, levels of spiritual development etc. For example, regarding the body, the Pythagoreans were vegetarians, the Athenians would have men go to the gym, there's things like Hatha yoga I guess. Bathing and baptism are forms of bodily purification. I'm currently thinking about it in terms of the purification of ugliness and the conformity to beauty.
Mind is obviously more subtle. It means directing ones thoughts towards more noble things (like philosophy, Plato's ideas, or more mundanely, virtuous paths of action you might take in the future etc)
and away from base, ignoble, vicious things. At the highest point I think it means, as I said here >>24808714
the cultivation of interior silence.
>the body that is 'illusory' and of appearances
I see what you mean, it is temporal, will decay etc but it is the vehicle for our mind, the temple of the soul. You might think about phenomenal reality like the canvas that Mind/Soul/Intellect can paint on, or the dance floor, or the orchestra or something. It is our playground in which to create beauty, express goodness, exact justice, demonstrate courage etc. I guess it's not as if we have to, rather that we get to.
>The idea of following moral commandments, diets, etc to become like the Gods seems..idk, I do not wish to focus and subtly expect the rituals, rites and 'behavior' to grant me favor from the Divine.
It's not that the Divine will grant you favour for such things, it's that you become Divine through such behaviour. The more Divine one becomes the more being will shape itself to your will which becomes divinised (ie good, virtuous, beautiful). But you can't cheat reality or fate or divinity, it's no good to outwardly do so and so and expect good things to happen. This is why Christ and Socrates are always decrying hypocrites. Again though, I don't pretend to be any authority on the subject. I'm certainly far from pure myself.

>>24810019
>The more Divine one becomes the more being will shape itself to your will which becomes divinised (ie good, virtuous, beautiful). But you can't cheat reality or fate or divinity, it's no good to outwardly do so and so and expect good things to happen
Thank you. Then perhaps the idea of interior silence seems like a good 'state' to cultivate for my mind immediately asked 'but what are then that which is divine? And how would I, a being of 'lower' status know what it means to proximate and imitate the Gods, who better to ask and know then the Gods themselves, things that are beautiful good and true.

But thank you for your answer.

>>24799538
I'm through Chapter IV in Book I. Really enjoying it so far. Is this going to be a general thread in the future?

>>24809454
Ignorance is one sort of privation. I would say evil is a larger category containing ignorance. For instance, to get cancer is not a form of ignorance, but it is a privation of natural order that is the good of the body. So too, weakness of will, or a misdirected will (wrongly ordered loves) can seemingly exist alongside the knowledge the such loves are disordered or acts evil.

>>24809454
>>24811164
Oh, and I would just add the frameworks that deny man's existence as a moral being, which attempt to "rise above moral judgement," do not seem to be any better about treating people well. That's sort of a recurring theme of Crime and Punishment, where evil is routinely justified by a sort of utilitarian calculus and modern social theory.

This is not to say that a myopic focus on guilt and blame cannot be corrosive either of course. To my mind, Plato has a far more holistic approach. The wicked are pitiable, but they are also still wicked blameworthy. Yet they have dignity too. Criminals have a right to be punished, instead of being treated like dogs to be conditioned (what a focus solely on outcomes leads towards). It's like Socrates says in the Gorgias, punishment is, in the end, desirable for the punished.

>>24809583
>what was the name of the artist who unlocked his final mode after reading proclus and hegel, and created a bunch of masterpieces?

You mean F. Gardner? Or are you thinking of Stephanie Myers?

Chapter II. What the mode of the discussion is in the present treatise, and what preparation of the auditors of it is previously necessary.

Notes:

1. The obvious question is, what are we who are less than morally perfect to do? What can we learn? Is it a futile exercise to hear this treatise? I'll certainly cop to being very far from ideally virtuous. Honestly I think it just the case that the degree of virtue one has attained will somehow correspond with the level of insight you'll have, remembering of course wisdom is a virtue. Yet I can't help remind of the Ramana Maharshi who says you need to give up all thoughts of being a sinner in order to achieve liberation. Not the same tradition I know, at that doesn't give license to engage in degenerate behaviour. But I think it helps us to see that our souls are pure in their core perhaps, of a divine origin. We just need to establish the positive habits that let it fly free and unmolested by vices.

>>24811009
Yeah, when this thread limits or dies or whatever anyone can just post it as /ProclusGeneral/ and the chapter title we're up to on that day.

>>24811184
Funny man

>>24811164
Interesting points. I could equally say that ignorance contains evil, that the thought that somethings evil is a form of ignorance. Cancer is an interesting example. I think it's obviously not evil, it's just part of the body decaying and dying, therefore part of the natural order.
>weakness of will, or a misdirected will (wrongly ordered loves) can seemingly exist alongside the knowledge the such loves are disordered or acts evil.
I took the idea to be that if you actually know that you will is being misdirected then you correct it, it's only ignorance that allows someone to misdirect their will to something they perceive as good (or more usually "it's not that bad" etc) but that is in reality not good.

And yes, I don't think Platonism is trying to rise above moral judgements. It's still the responsibility of the individual to try and learn what is really good and it's reprehensible to just assume you know when you don't. You speak well towards this point at the end of this post >>24811179

>>24809583
I'd be interested to know this? You remember what country he was from? Or are you just baiting?

>>24811484
Well, from the perspective of the later Doctrine of Transcendentals, they are ultimately the same thing. Truth is being qua intelligible; Goodness is being qua desirable. They don't add anything over and above Being, so they are conceptual as opposed to real distinction. To see why, it is easiest to consider truth. There is not a thing, and then some separate things, "its truth." It sort of like how Aristotle points out in the Metaphysics that to say "a man" and "one man" is the same thing (One) and so too for "a man is standing" and "it is true that a man is standing" (True, assuming assertoric force, which is the default in every language I am aware of).

But the same is true for Goodness and the other derivative Transcendentals (e.g., Beauty, Thing, Something). To lack understanding (ignorance) is to lack being in some way (for the mind is "potentially all things;" the formal object of the intellect is as broad as being). Likewise, to be in some way sick, be it a physical ailment or a sort of spiritual illness (vice) is to lack full being (perfection).

Now there is an argument in Nicholas of Cusa (and arguably many Patristics) that the proper end of any rational being, insomuch as it is rational and so possesses the rational appetites for Goodness and Truth as such, is God. Of course, the end of all things is God in the general sense of exitus et reditus, but in this context it is a fuller sense of knowledge and participation, with knowing by becoming implying a sort of participation (theosis). But, interestingly, the rational creature can kept apart here, instead of facing a sort of absorption (as in say, Attar of Nishapur's Sufi classic, The Conference of the Birds) and this is probably most obvious in Dante's Paradiso where the individual and their historical role is kept in focus right up to the climax (because the unfolding of history is ultimately a moving image of eternity and diefication a sort of finite copy of infinite being, and so always transcending its own finitude). Plato gets at this sort of transcendence in the way the love of the Good allows us to move beyond current appetites and beliefs, transcending our own finitude, but this comes out more powerfully in later figures.

I wouldn't want to say weakness of will is impossible though. I think Aristotle's typology of vice, incontinence, continence, virtue is useful. I would say that it doesn't contradict Plato though insomuch as no one truly knows the Good until they have already unified themselves and "turned the whole person" towards the Good, which presupposes moving beyond weakness of will.

>>24811625
Interesting post. I bet you've read Fr. Garrigou
>a moving image of eternity
The only place I've heard the phrase "mobile image of eternity" is in his Three Ages of the Interior Life.

>no one truly knows the Good until they have already unified themselves and "turned the whole person" towards the Good, which presupposes moving beyond weakness of will.
Isn't there sort of a chicken and egg problem here? How to unify yourself, turn towards the good, and move beyond weakness of will without knowledge of the good? I suppose this is kind of the point that Deoteima makes in the Symposium of there are those who know and those who know they don't know, and those who don't know they don't know and it's the middle group that, propelled by love for the Good, Beautiful etc are capable of achieving unity, Theosis etc am I on the right track?

And yes it seems to make sense that evil and ignorance are in fact the same thing. That's how I would have guessed Plato would have expressed it.

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>>24811676
Yes, that is a bit of a difficulty. The idea is normally that the intellect always has some notion of God, in a confused way, as the First Cause and Principle, as the Good (albeit in a confused way), as the First Mover, etc. Growth in knowledge leads to a growth in love, which in turn spurs on a desire for more knowledge in a sort of positive feedback loop.

As Saint Bonaventure puts it in one of the finest examples of the Platonic Ascent and written mysticism, the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum:

>For no one is disposed in any way for those divine contemplations, which lead to ecstasies of the mind, without being, like Daniel, a person of desires. However, desires can be inflamed in us in two ways, namely through the cry of prayer, which makes us cry aloud with groaning of the heart, and through the brightness of contemplation, by which the mind turns itself most directly and
intently towards the rays of light

But God is known in all things, as the Good is known in all things, in even what merely appears to be good, or in what brings itself to our attention through its privations. Creation is a theophany, and so the signs are written on the "Book of Nature," as Saint Paul declares in Romans 1:20. As Bonaventure continues:

>Indeed, the created things of this sensible world signify the
invisible things of God: partly because God is the origin,
exemplar, and final destination of all creation, and every effect
is a sign of its cause or origin, every copy is a sign of its
exemplar, and the road is a sign of the final destination to
which it leads; partly in virtue of their own ability to represent;
partly by means of prophetic prediction; partly by means of
angelic forces; and partly by means of establishing an
institution. Indeed, by nature every creature is a kind of copy
and likeness of that eternal Wisdom.

Still, today this begs the question: "why then can do many fail to see it?" The empiricist-naturalist paradigm of a meaningless mechanistic world is far more dominant today than anything remotely similar in prior eras.

And herein lies another chicken and egg problem, if the aesthetic and contemplative appreciation of the way creatures form a whole and point upwards requires a sort of practice to develop, or at least an internal move of the mind and will, and yet this is only sought when one already knows there is something desirable to seek here, which comes first?

But my thoughts are that it is always there, no matter how stifled. The instrumentalization of reason (the "linear movement of the nous" in the Philokalia) is ultimately a sort of pathology. It's one that can be reversed, but when it becomes particularly acute it becomes very difficult for one to shake oneself out of it. Someone else has to do it, or a rare beauty, or divine intervention perhaps—to redirect the gaze upwards. That the nature of the incurvatus in se, the soul becomes a sort of black hole that cannot escape its own desires.

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>>24811849
>But my thoughts are that it is always there, no matter how stifled
I agree. And I think that's because our souls are of their nature divine fundamentally, as opposed to created- I think this might be one of the differing points between Platonic and Christian theology/soteriology/psychology. Being Divine, (Divine sparks as the Isaac Luria might say), they have a natural tendency to gravitate back to their Source in the Divine Fire. And obviously we all want the good.
>The instrumentalization of reason (the "linear movement of the nous" in the Philokalia) is ultimately a sort of pathology.
It's funny, I hope Guenonfag hops into this thread because this sounds precisely like what Guenon means when he rights about pragmatism. Although that concept might have broader connotations in his work. I don't know though. Is it a disease? Or is it in the nature of things, or is it because the good, the wise etc have failed to do the job of going back into the cave and helping the poor troglodytes out?
>the incurvatus in se, the soul becomes a sort of black hole that cannot escape its own desires.
Sounds like what true, pious Christian scholars would call hell. Doesn't it also sound like Narcissus?

I wanna correct a mistake I think I made here >>24810019 and prior. The inter silence is not key factor, but I think it may just be a means. The silenced mind allows us to witness our own thoughts and know ourselves accurately. This self knowledge is the necessary starting point for divinisation/Henosis. Although I think their may be a kind of circle that the soul traces here, where at the perfect state of wisdom and and Divine intimacy there is the ability to rest the mind in the apophatic silence and darkness of ultimate being or God, to become one with what we have come to love: the beautiful, the good, the one.

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bump with a really superb intro level text

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>>24808363
Stuff of Neoplatonic praxis is unfortunately very little and far between. You have to get into some pretty deep cuts like the Life of Isidore to find tidbits here and there.

You can look to guys like Origen and Evagrius for practical advice, but it's anyone's guess how much Christianity and Jewish tradition transformed praxis and its understanding. I get the idea that the Desert Fathers like Evagrius were vastly more "extreme" in their pursuits.

That said, they do offer very "hands on" detailed instructional material. Evagrius can be found in the Philokalia online for instance, and audio recordings are on Archive and YouTube, but I know some people are allergic to Christianity and he does cite Scripture like every other sentence. But, if it makes you feel any better, despite still being huge in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, Origen and Evagrius were both condemned as heretics for holding too much to Platonism, although they continued to be copied and read.

The stuff in the Philokalia is pretty much just straight praxis too, that's why it can be included. The theological platonist stuff (pic related) is pretty cool too though.

>>24813477
Ancient philosophers were mostly elites in a time when elites had servants for everything, whereas most of the big Desert Fathers were peasants who educated themselves in the desert. Saint Anthony was a laborer and Saint Pachomius was conscripted into the legions to fight in the civil wars. Saint Moses the Ethiopian was originally a slave turned runaway turned gang leader of a group of raiders 75 strong. It's a very different sort of average background.

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Chapter III. What a theologist is according to Plato, whence he begins, as far as to what hypostases he ascends, and according to what power of the soul he particularly energizes.

Notes:
Things are starting to kick off. Also, we're gonna have to hash the issue of pic rel out at some point.

>He (Plato) shows... that intellect is the father and cause of bodies and souls, and that all things both subsist and energize about it, (3.7)
1. First question (or discussion) is when we hear talk of intellect, can we think of it as akin or synonymous with consciousness? With mind? Or is intellect used in a specific way to indicate the faculty of reason and it's exercise. Or, again, should we think of it like in Plotinus as the second Hypostases, The Divine Mind?

2. Where he says "about it" it here I couldn't help but be reminded of the idea of the exitus & retitus, or ekpyrosis, or yugas, and the notion of the moving image of eternity. Bodies and souls subsist in and through intellect and energize about it. I can't help but think of this in terms of metempsychosis for some reason. Especially because he goes on in this paragraph to say: "which are allotted a life conversant with transitions and evolutions." I'm picturing the scene from the Lit sticky of Doré's Dante and Beatrice witnessing the highest Heaven (especially because later he uses the word "revolve") but it's "grounded" in Being as opposed to the mundane notion of heaven as transcendent or ethereal (I'm aware the more sophisticated, "scholars" version of Heaven is something more corporeal than the normal idea of clouds and such). I'm fond of the idea that any given soul will pass through every possible mode of all the given manifestations that soul is capable of making, not that I think this is necessarily what he's talking about but it's kind of the image I can't help but picture.

3. We'll probably get into this more as we go but what is "energizes" signifying here exactly?

4.
>the hyparxis of the Gods rides on beings,
An excellent turn of phrase. It conjures up imagery I was fond of contemplating when in a more Christian frame of mind of a multitude of angels attending to and upholding all beings. Except it's now been intellectualised and polytheised.

>>24814077
5. Section 9 of this chapter is fascinating.
>If it be admitted that a divine nature can be in any respect known, that it must be apprehended by the hyparxis of the soul... For we say that every where things similar can be known by the similar;... So that most unical nature must be known by the one, and the ineffable by that which is ineffable.
I love this line also,
>when she (the soul) converts herself to herself, beholds she evolves her own essence, and the reasons which she contains...
>For all things are in us psychically, and through this we are naturally capable of knowing all things, by exciting the powers and the images of wholes which we contain.
This is so beautiful and reminds me of two things, first this from the Dao De Jing:

Without going out of your door, you are aware of the world.
Without looking out of your window, you see the Way of Heaven.
The farther one goes, the less one knows.
Thus, the sage knows without going out, sees without looking, and achieves without doing."
- Translated by Tien Cong Tran, Chapter 47.

Doesn't it also seem like,
>For from him and through him and to him are all things.
Romans 11:36. The Church is said to have the mind of Christ right? Well what if this isn't the exclusive domain of the Church (which I think clearly it is not). It teaches that Christians are to become like little christs, well what if that isn't the exclusive capacity of Christians? And indeed, even Stoics like Epictetus taught that every human was a son of God.

>>24813477
>I get the idea that the Desert Fathers like Evagrius were vastly more "extreme" in their pursuits.
I think this is correct for a few reasons 1) Christianity slipped into believing the body to be evil and something that had to be crucified in order to achieve spiritual growth. 2) They wanted to distinguish themselves from the new Christians of the city that they saw as hypocrites- which they probably largely were because it was a only recently sanctioned as the imperial religion. 3) I think the belief in the Devil and demons has a lot to do with it, they're something you have to fight against through prayer, fasting, vigils etc 4) by contrast Platonism/Paganism seems to have operated more in terms of a dynamic between orthopraxy and "gnosticism" (in the sense of a soteriology based on knowledge), whereas Christianity has always been orthodoxy and salvation by faith and works. So there's always seems to be this tendency for the individual Christian to believe more and do more works which promotes these kind of extreme behaviours. Whereas in orthopraxial systems you simply do the rituals which are sufficient to keep the pax deorum in order, then gaining wisdom is the path to higher states of being. Whereas the monotheistic traditions tend to have a streak that seems human wisdom as folly and pride.

>>24814077
1) Intellect is the Greek word nous, which can in Plato just mean "mind." Sometimes, like in the Republic, it can be described as non-discursive understanding, but that's not consistently the case. But, almost as a rule, you would want to consider what Plotinus says about intellect. Also, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics book 6 on the intellectual virtues is important here.

3) It's the Greek verb energein. More or less "being-at-work" (en-ergein) or "activity" or "actuality." As a verb it just means to be active. Aristotle uses it and derivatives all over the place.

>>24814200
Nice, thanks anon.

>>24814077
>1. First question (or discussion) is when we hear talk of intellect, can we think of it as akin or synonymous with consciousness? With mind? Or is intellect used in a specific way to indicate the faculty of reason and it's exercise. Or, again, should we think of it like in Plotinus as the second Hypostases, The Divine Mind?

Great question. From what I recall, I would think it is more like the Divine Mind, with finite nous being a participation in the higher Nous. It is ontologically "above" and prior to the minds of "creatures."

I am not Proclus specialist though so I am not sure exactly how he might use the term in different contexts. Our "consciousness" seems too diffuse as a synonym. We are middle beings that can rise up, but we are normally defused below. I know this is how Boethius conceptualizes it, and he draws a lot from Dionysius who is supposed to be influenced by Proclus. There, discursive reason (ratio in Latin) is as a circle is to its center, or as time is to eternity (or as acquisition is to possession in Aquinas' commentary). Noesis/intellectus is then generally a term reserved for what is highest in man, the shadow of angelic intelligence we but glimpse (but again, I am not sure how much stock this translator is putting in the historical Latin use of the origin of our "intellect").

On 2, yes, it reminds me of Boethius contrast between fate and Providence, and how has one rises closer (upwards) to the "center" around which all revolves one is less moved by "fate" but all still unfolds with Providence. The Consolation is itself structured like a Neoplatonic prayer apparently.

On 4, yes, like Dionysius hierarchy where every celestial being communicates goodness downwards and is fixated upwards, Eros leading up, Agape pouring down.

>>24814140
>Christianity slipped into believing the body to be evil and something that had to be crucified in order to achieve spiritual growth

You crucify the flesh, but the "flesh" ≠ the body just as the world ≠ the corporeal world. There is certainly some of that in Christianity, if you look at gnosticism, but there is also the idea of "glorifying God in your body" in the spirituality of the desert and the resurrection of the body meant that the orthodox always had a strong focus on the diefication of the body.

Likewise, "passions" are not "all emotions and drives" but, to put it a bit too neatly, all that are evil. Saint Isaac of Nineveh is a great example because he is full of passion in our sense of the term, and sees it as essential, but says:

>The world" is the general name for all the passions. When we wish to call the passions by a common name, we call them the world. But when we wish to distinguish them by their special names, we call them passions. The passions are the following: love of riches, desire for possessions, bodily pleasure from which comes sexual passion, love of honor which gives rise to envy, lust for power, arrogance and pride of position, the craving to adorn oneself with luxurious clothes and vain ornaments, the itch for human glory which is a source of rancor and resentment, and physical fear. Where these passions cease to be active, there the world is dead…. Someone has said of the Saints that while alive they were dead; for though living in the flesh, they did not live for the flesh. See for which of these passions you are alive. Then you will know how far you are alive to the world, and how far you are dead to it.

Even the more extreme ascetics have a sort of ambivalence more than hatred, e.g. John of the Ladder 15.89

>What is this mystery in me? What is the meaning of this blending of body and soul? How am I constituted a friend and foe to myself? Tell me, tell me, my yoke-fellow, my nature, for I shall not ask anyone else in order to learn about you. How am I to remain unwounded by you? How can I avoid the danger of my nature? For I have already made a vow to Christ to wage war against you. How am I to overcome your tyranny? For I am resolved to be your master.

But what you get in the overall context of the Ladder is that the main issue with the "body" or "flesh" is the proper ordering, its demand to usurp the role of the nous.

>>24814497
I'm painting a bit of an extreme picture when I say that stuff about crucifying the body, but you have to admit the Christian view about the body is very far from the pagan one. In the former it seems much more to be treated as a vehicle, in the later it seems more something like a canvass that is used to express beauty and vitality. Christians seem to spiritualize the glorification of the body, pagans seem to corporealize the glorification of the spirit. Maybe I'm caricaturing a bit but I think most will know what I'm getting at.

Bump

>>24814558
I normally see period scholars put it the other way. The Pagans are more anti-matter, and anti-body, the Christians diverge in the fundamental belief that creation is good and destined for eternity. In this various conflicts, a common polemical attack on Christians is that the body and material world is too disgusting and lowly for God to ever condescend to. This ends up being a weak point for the Pagans and Origenists though, because if union with the One is so great, why did souls ever decide to leave it in the first place and why wouldn't they get bored and leave again?

At any rate, if you contrast someone like Plotinus with Maximus or the Gregorys, it seems obvious that the latter has a much more positive outlook on matter in general, so the fact that pretty much every period scholar I have read says the exact opposite of what you're saying also seems in line with the primary source texts I've read.

But, it's obvious that such notions to crop up in Christianity from time to time. They just don't seem to dominate the Patristic and medieval period the way earlier propagandists would have it (actually, I've come across books just on this, the old "medieval hatred of the body" being a common Protestant polemical trope, although this normally works by generalizing the excesses of the Black Death, an apocalyptic moment where 66+% or the population was dying in areas, and claiming these sorts of reactions were just what medievals did for 1,000+ years). Nietzsche sort of just picks up this critique tradition, although the only primary source I can recall him ever mentioning is The Imitation of Christ (which is a particularly bad example, but also not represent, particularly of the whole of Christian history East and West).

tl;dr, this strikes me more as a sectarian smear that lived on the Anglophone literature as a sort of consensus master narrative before being torn about by the Patristic revival in the second half of the 20th century. I think it's just taken awhile to spread outside specialists.

>>24815307
The smearing works in several historical registers and dimensions too. Origen was probably the chief figure in devaluing the body (and had a Platonist theory of the pre-existence or souls) and even he is (probably) getting smeared with stuff like: "he hated the body so much he cut his penis off!" from early on. But then his being branded a heretic also had to do with precisely this sort of question.

>>24815307
>Christians diverge in the fundamental belief that creation is good and destined for eternity.
This is fundamentally Platonic though. It's the whole zenith of the Republic.

Frankly, I think it's one thing for bishops and scholars to understand this, but I think the reality amongst monks, hermits, priests, and the layity was more towards what I'm saying (now of course most Christianity is just hypocritical liberalism). And I think it's just the outgrowth of an orthodoxial religion as opposed to an orthopraxial one. Also, it's easy for scholars to have this positive outlook towards what Christian scholars wrote because it survives, the practice of pagan peoples doesn't survive (at least in the west, but we can draw comparisons with Indian and Chinese polytheisms).

All this said, I think there was probably tones of weird, denialist behaviour of the part of pagans and their priests too, so it's kind of a mute question. We'll never really know what the average pagan thought. And I guess looking at text's like the Golden Verses of Pythagoras and the other writings in that text, they do tend to have strong denialism in them.

>>24816216
Except it's not destined for eternity, it is eternal.

People like Socrates and especially Diogenes were pretty austere too.

Chapter IV. The theological types or forms according to all which Plato disposes the doctrine concerning the Gods.

Notes:

1. Does Plato actually right anywhere about Orpheus or Pythagoras? I was reading Cratylus last night at he mentioned Orpheus as a originator of certain names of gods.

2. Any good secondary sources on the Pythagoreans? Anything about maths in nature would also be cool.

>>24816225
1) Not in any depth. Orpheus is occasionally mentioned offhandedly as one of several ancient poets, usually alongside Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod. And there's not so much reference to Pythagoras himself than Pythagoreans (Timaeus is from Sicily with evident Pythagorean interests, and Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo are both Pythagoreans).

2) Look for Carl Huffman's editions of the fragments of Philolaus and Archytas. Archytas was apparently a friend of Plato.

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>>24816246
Thank you

There is a YouTube Channel "Understanding Plato" that has a 4.5 hour walkthrough of Proclus' Elements and some other good videos. Looks like the guy did classes for people awhile back. I am normally skeptical of YouTube stuff outside of conferences that have been taped, but I am finding these to be quite good.

>>24815316
Yes, but the fact that a big way to attack Origen as a heretic was to say he hated the body and marriage says something about predominant norms even if it was slander. The Patristics often have good things to say about marriage and even the Sayings have some stories about holy married couples (and lay people) who show up the monks.

>>24816762
Yeah, good call anon. Thanks.

https://youtu.be/yuY4nI3uGWU?si=F23_27v0WTNJOP9D

>>24816820
But isn't the fact that Christ himself said that celibacy is superior to marriage. (Matthew 19:1-12)

I think another factor here is that for Christians Christ is the one that glorifies the body, through eating his flesh you and keeping the commandments you can become glorified. Not so with paganism. There is no Messiah or saviour, no fall nature needing to be redeemed. There are hero's we can emulate, wisdom to learn, beauty to cultivate, virtues to practice. The world is not fallen but divine. Fundamentally sin is a Abrahamic idea. What's the pagan equivalent? It has to be ignorance doesn't it?

Given the subject of the chapter at hand, I'd be interested to hear anons favourite fables from Plato. Probably because it's fresh in my mind, I like Diotima's exposition of the parentage of love being plenty and poverty, iirc. The whole symposium is just fantastic especially the interplay between Alcibiades and Socrates.

>>24817243
You are trying to treat 'paganism' like it is a homogonous thing when it isn't (or wasn't).
In a 'pagan' mystery cult like that of Dionysus you can see many of the same 'abrahamic' ideas, and as with many other ancient cults. There is next to nothing in common between the Etruscan wisemen and the Platonic thinkers (best exemplified by Julian Apostate's dying because he listened to his philosophy friends over these Etruscans).

>>24817419
I am generalising and abstracting but I still think most people will get what I mean.

>>24799538
no

>>24817657
I thought the word 'pagan' was pejorative to anyone that was viewed as heretical to the christian framework of the time. Or am I confused?

>>24817687
It was a term that basically meant country bumpkin to urban Christians, who were predominantly city dweller, who thought polytheists were backwards or unfashionable. So you're right. I don't feel bad about using it though. Polytheism is probably better though I guess as it's more accurate.

How many anons are in this thread readin at this level? It's makes me want to finish the early stuff so I can make it. Megamind action here.

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Gotta read Euclid's elements to understand proclus

>>24818396
Chapter V. What the dialogues are from which the theology of Plato especially may be assumed; and to what orders of Gods each of these dialogues refers us.

No notes on this chapter.

>>24818396
Wow deep cut Plato meme here folks. Too much gatekeeping here though. If you want to read it go ahead. No one is stopping you.

Proclus has a whole book where he talks about euclids elements, obviously you should read euclid's elements in order to understand what Proclus is talking about

>>24819867
He wrote a commentary on Euclid's Elements. This text doesn't have anything to do with that except it has the same author.