Can be telegram or discord or whatever./lit/ is not the best place for this due to threads dying and you never knowing who you're speaking with, which would save time. Also I'd like to be able to continue exchanges and keep track of them etc.I'm a complete amateur, and haven't read/written in a while, but I like neoplatonism, french spiritualism, that sort of thing. I like theology (of the apophatic sort, if one wants to make that distinction), insofar as it is metaphysics. But I mean I'm interested in anything and everything, as long as it's an honest effort.Last authors I was reading prior to going on a break were Raymond Ruyer, Graham Harman (not the best but it made me think), and Felix Ravaisson. I think the last books I read cover to cover were probably Kitaro Nishida's "Inquiry into the Good" and Harman's "The Quadruple Object". Lost most of my notes recently, unfortunately. Now I'm interested in reading Eriugena and Nicholas of Cusa more seriously. (I skimmed through book one of the Periphyseon at one point, and only read a couple pages of Cusanus here and there). I dislike neo-scholasticism, which is why I'm more than interested in exchanging with people who are into it.Anyway, if anyone has a group/server I'm interested. Or if there is any interest ITT we could make one. Everyone could think about a program, a question they really want to solve, an angle they really want to work through, and then we could share notes and arguments and whatnot. Maybe make /lit/ friends along the way.
>>25243167I'll be honest with you OP, back in 2018 I would have been all over this initiative but the older I get (I'm 36 now) the less I identify with intellectualism as an ideology or pass time.
>>25243255I never got it as an ideology either. I mean don't think it's all that important or that everyone should study theology or whatever. I just like doing philosophy and discussing it.
>>25243167Been reading pic related, since it's supposed to be a classic. It starts with Cusa. It's good so far, but it is really straw manning scholasticism quite hard (claiming it thinks God is describable through discursive reasons and even more ridiculous, that it sees reason as wholly discursive, which would be a caricature even if the late nominalists). Still, it seems good on the area it is actually focusing on.Have you read Eric Perl's book on Dionysius? I found that helpful for the tradition leading up to Eriugena. D.C. Schindler's Retrieving Freedom on divine and human freedom is quite good in that regard too. It doesn't do Eriugena, but it does do Plotinus, Augustine, Dionysius, Maximos the Confessor, Bernard of Clairvaux, Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, and the a closing part of Ockham and Scotus.What don't you like about scholasticism? I would think Eriugena would be mostly continuous with later thought, until more significant ruptures after 1300 (granted, I am not wild about Anslem and his influence).I've mostly kept to secondary sources that late though, except for Dante and his more direct sources (and I read a ton of Aquinas in grad school). My focus is early monastics during the Patristic period though.
>>25243167I would but I don't trust anons on here
I am down, I study analytic philosophy so we could have interesting discussions
>>25243669Only continentals can have interesting discussions
>>25243672The phenomenology of having your head up your ass, please describe it to me
>>25243167what exactly is the purpose of those books? do they exist because professor twatbreath of cunnilingus university has to publish a book every 5 years to stay on staff
>>25243167apophatic theology is discussed by paul at the areopagus and extensively by thomas in summa theologiae prima pars
>>25243167I am down. I am personally interested in questions about the problem of evil
>>25243640>>25243640Yes, I've read both of Perl's books, I would say they were a great entry point though I don't know how I would rate them nowadays if I were to re-read them.>What don't you like about scholasticism? I would think Eriugena would be mostly continuous with later thought, until more significant ruptures after 1300 (granted, I am not wild about Anslem and his influence).I say I dislike neo-scholasticism mainly because I dislike the whole pura natura thing, I've enjoyed Blondel and Duméry, and regarding contemporary writers I find myself agreeing more with the likes of Hart than with the likes of Feser on most things. I can read some thomists but ultimately I never agree with them.I also dislike the notion of "universal being" *not* being God (see the Thomas/Bonaventure debate).On a related note, I agree with Anselm on the fact that atheism is not just bad or wrong, but impossible, and with the whole framework that underlies his argument (blondelian Joseph Moreau has a book on it and why Aquinas was wrong to reject it). In short, iirc, the argument is not a modal argument about possibility -of course- but is rather a reflexive method which names the a priori assumption that makes any a posteriori proof work, and in fact makes it a tautology. The being by which things apprehend each other or by which they commune with each other *is* God (qua economic, I guess), which is in a sense "in" all things, and yet in another sense contains all things, etc.All in all, I can sense that overall there is a specifically religious concern to not "fall" into pantheism, which verges on the political. Or to speak of reversion (conversion, reditus, epistrophe) in the prescriptive, rather than in the descriptive. In short, to separate God from the world, and not have the historical be merely the unfolding of God's eternal movement-in-repose, inner life, etc.You'll have to forgive me if I'm all over the place, but there's much to say and I haven't read or written anything in 4 months.
>>25243640>that it sees reason as wholly discursiveI haven't read the book but isn't it possible he's simply referring to the fact that "ratio" to a lot of them meant precisely "discursive reason"?I've noticed a lot of them are quite tricky with this, and even a lot of neo scholastics seem to not make that distinction. >>25243869That can be a great way to approach things, I feel it ties neatly into ideas of tolma/"original sin", time as the ever-passing-ness of "evil", etc. Or you can go the other way and think about just why evil is evil and realize at that very moment you are already thinking of "it" as privation. It's a good exercise. I started getting into philosophy thinking about acrasia which is close enough, and it's never really left me.
>>25244002>the fact that atheism is not just bad or wrong, but impossibleasserted by paul in [Rom 1]
>>25243167Modern philosophers killed philosophy centuries ago. All that's left is sophistry
>>25243834Paul is not a scholastic, much less a neo-scholastic, and Thomas isn't a neo-scholastic either. Obviously every culture has some idea that theology can or should be apophatic, the issue is how one goes about doing it or what one takes it to mean.>>25245099I think that's debatable but yeah, could be.
>>25245210Depends what you mean by modern. I don't find Descartes particularly intersting but even so, that wouldn't prevent me from doing philosophy the way I think it should be done.
>>25243167>Eriugena and Nicholas of CusaI’m interested in them too. Count me in
If anything it's impossible since we can't take it to discord. The /lit/ servers I joined were either dead or off-topic failed normalfags with their heads up their asses and giving each other advice on how to look at women in the eyes
