Does anyone want to do a read-along of picrel? (https://germanidealism.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/schelling-fs-english.pdf) I think it could work well for a few reasons.1) It’s fairly short (about 90 pages).2) Schelling’s work here intersects deeply with some of the most-discussed philosophers on /lit/ (Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer, Heidegger).3) It’s about something with a lot of relevance and interest for most, the problem of evil4) It’s relatively accessible at least for something from this school5) It has strong schizo elements because Schelling is drawing on gnostics and Christian mystics6) No one here is all that partisan for or against Schelling. I’ve seen people shit on his early work but this is middle period.7) It is generally highly regarded within continental philosophyI feel such a read-along could bring some of the disparate strains on /lit/ together and serve as a neutral focal point for discussion. I was thinking we do 10 pages a day; anyone participating should do a post about what they think and then we can converse or at least enjoy one another’s musings.
>>25186246>missing periodsIDIOT IDIOT IDIOT
I am too wise to indulge in such mortal activities
>>25186246We will uncover the secrets of Thule and complete the system of German idealism
>>25186246we're doing a book club for schelling's historical-critical introduction to the philosophy of mythology right now and we were planning to do kolakowski's presence of myth next but that book would work toohttps://discord.gg/EMq43xYNxq
>>25186342>discordNo lol
>>25186349wow-- that's :/
>>25186342Not looking to get groomed by men calling themselves Lilith fren
>>25186353I just don’t like how discotd works. On 4chan it’s public for one thing.
>>25186349The book club takes place entirely in the voice calls.
>>25186355>>25186794a dozen dudes on estrogen attempting vocal fry
Bump.
>>25186794>>25186829Discord just isn’t 4chan. I’ve been on 4chan for like 20 years now and I like it. I want to talk in a public forum not a little chat box.
Bump
>>25186246not really
>>25186246I'm down anon
>>25186246I've already read it, but go ahead, it's excellent.
>>25186342You should read Cassirer and Vico as followups in myth and the pre-Kantian mind.
>>25186829Topkek.
>>25186246Yeah, sure, I'll do it. Maybe I can give a layman's view of the piece, or something. I mostly associate Schelling with the LaRouche movement, curiously enough.
>>25189123OK dude it’s you and me. By midnight tonight we will both write on the first ten pages of this. Maybe others will join but even two people is fun. Not a big commitment here just read 10 pages and write some little post about it.
>>25189391Ok.
>>25186246>middle periodThere's no such thing.Schelling from late 90s to his death is essentially the same.
>>25187317What we want is something like discord, everyone can read posts without any invite or membership.But only members can post.Perhaps we could call it an 'online forum'.
So for a brief rapid fire orientation to Schelling - Fichte’s philosophy is all about ethics; nature is relativized to the subject, at least in the Jena presentations. Schelling thinks this is lopsided and thinks the absolute can’t be a moral “ought” but the unity of nature and freedom. Fichte would just say it’s impossible to make this abstraction and consider nature as a separate aspect which needs to be reunited in an indifference point - you can’t escape subjectivity; Schelling is actually introducing dualism, not overcoming it. Hegel points out that there are many profound antitheses in reality and it’s arbitrary to make any one of them The Antithesis (among many other attacks). Then Schelling says it’s time to turn away from being vs thinking to necessity and freedom. I don’t get it, this is already the central antithesis in Fichte and arguably in Kant as well. Schelling was kind of a pompous poodle. That doesn’t mean he has nothing to say but I must admit I’m already annoyed with the preface; I will try to suspend disbelief and read charitably.What does Schelling mean by “God”? Not a being of any sort or even a being that “is” everything in a representational sense. He means the first principle, the truth behind all truths, which cannot be either nature or subject but must be both at once for there to be a universe that contains both. That’s it roughly speaking. Someone who considers himself an atheist could still walk along with Schelling. Schelling thinks you can start from nature or freedom and pass into the other and to God as well. The completed system would bring together nature and freedom, realism and idealism, in one God while still preserving their relative independence.His defense of pantheism and Spinoza is on point imo. Spinoza is not saying “God = the totality of facts”. Also when he says freedom and system aren’t opposed - if freedom is really anything it must be logically related to everything else, it can’t be this mysterious surd. There are also innumerable systems that include freedom or even give it pride of place. If freedom was an irrational cipher it would just be a form of evil. It’s also good that he tells his readers to study Greek logic. He is correct that the law of identity in Aristotle does not exclude difference because what is affirmed is a unity of form and matter, though idk that he was thinking of Aristotle in particular here. And his account of identity is lucid and should help remove one of the greatest stumbling blocks to the apprentice in German idealism.>>25189461Yeah I was just parroting what I had heard. Even in the first few pages here he explicitly connects this with his earlier work lol. You can never let other people do your reading for you.
>>25189471Yeah, there's Fichtean fanboy club with Hegel, then there's Plotinus Reborn.
>>25189471>never let other people do your reading for you.Same with Hegel.Best way to tell if someone relies on Secondary works is if they say that "if you apply the thesis-antithesis-synthesis to Hegel you haven't read Hegel'. A hilarious irony because anyone who's read Hegel would know this triad, though slightly revised into an Ennead, suffuse everything Hegel writes.
>>25189477Platonists don’t even see the antithesis Schelling saw. It was only a problem for materialists like the Epicureans and Stoics. They would actually agree with Fichte that you can’t have a realist system standing against an idealist one, it’s a false division.
>>25189511There's no Realism apart from Platonism.
>>25189563We’re using the word in different senses. This is something that makes the idealists hard to interpret really, they have a shared common core of autism-speak but they use all these words in slightly different ways and at least two of them reject definition of terms on principle.
>>25189576A good heuristic whenever a modern philosopher makes references to the Neoplatonists but claims 'they didn't go far enough in X direction, or didn't affirm Y as I do' that this person hasn't fully understood them, and that they in fact are more radical in both directions than any of their modern revisers could dare.
>>25189593In the next bit he will criticize Platonic emanationism head on so it would be a good place to try your theory.
>>25189607All being is in between the Dyad, Limit and Unlimited.Matter is nothing but one extreme of the Indefinite Dyad with the Infinite Dynamis of God the other extreme, but really that's just a conceptual distinction.Ergo Ascent out of Matter towards the Good through Being/Mikton is the one same movement of All from the One.As such, Prodoos and Epistrophe are really only two stages of the one and the same Ineffable movement.Matter is the Canvas of the Mind of God.
>>25189620I get that but you haven’t read his criticism yet. Actually when you say the difference between the dyad and the One is merely ‘conceptual’ you’re closer to Schelling than Plotinus imo. But Platonism is diverse of course. And Plotinus, Augustine, Boethius, Porphyry are the only Neoplatonists I’ve read.
>>25189634The Dyad is not the Indefinite Dyad, the latter is the second half of the first.I.e. the Dyad = Limit and Unlimited. And this is nothing but the First Moment of the One's Autotheosis.All Being ascending out of chaos is the Second Moment.All Being returning to God (the Good) is the Third Moment if God's Autotheosis.
>>25189649As such, bodily reality is no less the last World than it is the very first twilight of all existence.
>>25189654Or in other words.Matter might be the farthest from the Good, but it is the closest to The One.
>>25189634If you haven't read Iamblichus/Damascius (as Schelling hadn't nor had any German Idealist) you haven't understood Neoplatonism.
>>25189649> The Dyad is not the Indefinite Dyad, the latter is the second half of the first.Are you sure? That’s not what Aristotle says anyway as I recall. There are two ‘dyads’: the Great and Small, or the Indefinite Dyad he also calls it. He doesn’t think Plato derives this from the One (this is one of his criticisms) and similarly in the Parmenides Plato does not derive Being from the One, and in Laws 10 posits an evil principle as well. Then there is the dyad as Idea, the principle of difference, one of the ten Ideas. The Great and Small is not limited and unlimited, it is indefinite or “infinite” hence the name. That’s how he talks about it in the Philebus as well. You seem to think the One + the Dyad is the Dyad.
>>25189734That might be so, I don’t pretend to be an expert on Platonism, not even a 4chan expert. Follow along and enlighten us. Still saying more or less “screw Plotinus and Proclus (the guys the idealists read most, the two most prominent Neoplatonists) they’re nothing without Iamblichus” makes me suspect you’re full of it.
>>25190098 (me)And here's some Aristotle that says what I said, on top of the three places I mentioned in the Dialogues themselves. This is from Meta 14.1>But these thinkers make one of the contraries matter, some making the unequal which they take to be the essence of plurality-matter for the One, and others making plurality matter for the One. (The former generate numbers out of the dyad of the unequal, i.e. of the great and small, and the other thinker we have referred to generates them out of plurality, while according to both it is generated by the essence of the One.) For even the philosopher who says the unequal and the One are the elements, and the unequal is a dyad composed of the great and small, treats the unequal, or the great and the small, as being one, and does not draw the distinction that they are one in definition, but not in numberSo you see he is opposing the Dyad to the One throughout, not speaking of your "dyad" of the limit and the unlimited. There is such a "dyad" but it is a "dyad" of the One and the Dyad. He is not talking exclusively about Plato here but you'll see he always talks about this issue this way, there are many other passages like this in Aristotle too. I think you're trying to say 'matter comes from the One alone' (true for Plotinus, not necessarily for Plato, at least on Aristotle's understanding). (Plato's "Dyad" shows up in Plotinus in the way Nous is divided against itself in its first moment; the Dyad is the 'yearning' as it were to look upon the One; and then Plato's "Decad" becomes a metaphor for the Forms or Ideas in Nous).So it is a complex issue and you can insist that some later thinker (like Plotinus) has the true understanding of what Plato was getting at but, regardless, the Dyad/the Great and Small/(in Parmenides) Being is somehow or other opposed to the One throughout. You might say "Well that's impossible because Plato was a monist influenced by Parmenides who believed in the Good" but I just pointed you to passages that sound a lot more dualistic and directly contradict you. We'll never know what Plato really thought anyway.
>>25190105Everything in Iamblichus is hinted at in Plotinus.Proclus, in his own words, rejects Iamblichus and as a result is the first incomplete German idealist who couldn't complete German idealism (proclean neoplatonism)."My system seems incomplete here." Proclus own words at the end of his Parmenides Commentary.
>>25190098The Dyad, as some Platonists around Aristotle's time said, is the One acting upon the Great and Small.But this contradicts Plato's Philebus. Where the Good is clearly above the Limit and the Indefinite Dyad.
>>25190154>Proclus says somewhere something is incomplete>He also rejected Iamblichus>ergo Proclus is a German who can’t complete the system OK. What do you think Iamblichus got right that Plotinus didn’t explain well enough? Doesn’t he actually part with Plotinus on the nature of the fall?
>>25190159The full vs partial descent is a difference of perspective that's really a false dichotomy.If Soul Hypostasis is timeless and indivisible and the temporal self can ascend to that station. Then clearly we were always there since it cannot change. And thus we would wake to awareness of our descended self as an Other to ourselves and retroactively extended our being backwards across time. Ergo this future state is already present to our fully descended self even though out fully descended self have yet to reach That.
>>25190156But there is nothing above the limit and unlimited in Philebus. He also talks about the unlimited in terms of increase and decrease just like Aristotle would say, ie it is the Dyad. Plato contradicts himself of course in other places, you can’t get a coherent philosophy out of the Dialogues alone. Then you’ll probably say “the whole Dialogue is about the Good!” I don’t even want to argue with you man I know you don’t know what you’re talking about and I already cited passages that say the opposite in Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. You’re going to keep trying to save face and land a punch and the whole thing is tiresome.
>>25190169>But there is nothing above the limit and unlimited in Philebus>>whatever is said to be consists of one and many, having in its nature limit and unlimitedness. Since this is the structure of things, we have to assume that there is in each case always one form for every one of them, and we must search for it, as we will indeed find it there. And once we have grasped it, we must look for two, as the case would have it, or if not, for three>>SOCRATES: We agreed earlier that the god had revealed a division of what is into the unlimited and the limit.>>SOCRATES: Well, then, if we cannot capture the good in one form, we will have to take hold of it in a conjunction of three: beauty, proportion, and truth. Let us affirm that these should by right be treated as a unity and be held responsible for what is in the mixture, for its goodness is what makes the mixture itself a good one.God revealed the Limit and Unlimited, or One and Many, cannot himself be known by any 'one form's but only through the conjunction of the Three (Limit Unlimited Mixed). I.e Being/Mixed is the Way to the Ineffable beyond Identity and Difference.
>>25190216Yes, God ‘reveals’ a division, but he isn’t putting some Good above the other two. This is just a conceit of the dialogue, with a god or God ‘revealing’ something in the argument. He does that all the time. Meanwhile the third is not something outside that brings the two principles together, it is their union - just like in Aristotle the transition from One + Dyad to the Decad. “I treat all the joint offspring of the (limit + unlimited) as a unity… through the measures IMPOSED BY THE LIMIT.” And the dialogue isn’t ultimately about the Good from the Republic, it’s about what is good for us, though if the Good does make an appearance it is as limit. As for the Demiurge, who the hell knows what he is (hotly debated in Platonism) but he certainly isn’t the Good or the first principle (he gazes on the Eternal Animal etc). This whole discussion is cited all the time in scholarship on Plato’s unwritten doctrine for this reason, because it’s so suggestive of Aristotle’s more ‘dualist’ Plato. So you did exactly what I thought you would do, you opened up your copy of Philebus and went hunting for a cheap ‘gotcha!’ That’s what you’ll do for this too I’m sure. You could have done like this:>Ah yeah I was confused about what the indefinite Dyad was. I was just talking about the ‘duo’ of the two principles and forgot that one of these principles is called the Indefinite Dyad. Regardless my basic point stands. You can’t understand Platonism without Iamblichus and here’s how he handles these issues better etcInstead, you refuse to admit you were wrong and try to wriggle into a side argument about the Philebus. And you just vaguely and trollishly affirm Iamblichus rather than tell us anything interesting about him.
>translator renders Wesen as ‘essence’ or ‘being’ depending on what he takes to be ‘the particular shade of meaning’
>>25190429Western means essence.That it has lost that meaning since retarded anglo materialist is too bad.No impersonal thing has an essence, essence is spirit is soul is heart is. There's no essence to stones, only surface.
>>25190610Schelling uses it in a weird way though, it is closer to ‘being’ for him. But the translator should have been consistent.
>>25190688All beings are agents/unfathomable wells of free intentionalities
>>25190390The first thing I said was >>25189649literally that there are two dyads, its called the Indefinite Dyad because it's not merely a dyad but an indefinite one The Dyad itself is the Limit reigning in the Infinite, and this is the first relationship and first Being.Some Platonists whom Aristotle is talking about there conceived of the Limit as the First Principle, and thereby there's the One acting on the Infinite Dyad/Matter. And my point was that this evidently can't be Plato's idea since he literally says in the Philebus that there's something beyond Limit and Unlimited.
>>25191031And it's called Indefinite Dyad because it's a borrowing from earlier Pythagoreanism that didn't conceive of the One Beyond Being.(This is also the problem with Proclus, he often conflates the Limit-Unlimited with the One in his early works.)
>>25190390>Meanwhile the third is not something outside that brings the two principles together, it is their unionPlato, Timaeus:"But it isn’t possible to combine two things well all by themselves, without a third; there has to be some bond between the two that unites them. Now the best bond is one that really and truly makes a unity of itself together with the things bonded by it, and this in the nature of things is best accomplished by proportion..."Directly affirming Philebus that Proportion is the Mixture that is the Unified of Limit and Unlimited. That every Being is a unique balance of the two. Some lean towards Limit (men) some lean towards the Unlimited (women). And everything between.>>25190390>And the dialogue isn’t ultimately about the Good from the RepublicMixture/Proportion is the Immanence of the Good. Aka the unity of the three monads manifests God.
>>25190390And all the "Unwritten Doctrines" are stated in the dialogues (all of them in the Timaeus alone) by means of synonyms (receptacle, Unlimited, sea of unlikeness, Difference)Read Gerson, educate yourself.
>>25191053See:It is a receptacle (υποδοχή), place (τόπο?), seat (έδρα), nurse (τιθήνη), mother (μ ητέρα), invisible (άνόρατον), shapeless (άμ ορφον), all receptive (πανδεχε?), and ‘not permitting itself to be destroyed.’Doesn't sound unwritten to me.
