/lit/ - Literature

I read about 40 pages and i haven't really understood much, but it reads very nicely.
What's your opinions on it?

Is it very important to read all of Plato before Plotinus? I haven't read anything except the first tetralogy and the Republic yet, and some passages. I'm gonna read Plato later, I was just wondering if I can read Plotinus in the meanwhile? (since it's time sensitive)

Why didn’t you guys tell me that Plotinus was so easy to read? Sure, the subject manner is difficult and esoteric, but the lucidity more than makes up for it.

>"A man who has achieved such a state no longer commits such faults; for he has become corrected. But his desired goal is not to cease failing, but to be divine. In case he still allows within himself the occurrence of some of the above-mentioned unreflecting impulses, he will be simultaneously divinity and guardian, a double being; or rather, he will contain a principle of another nature (Intelligence), whose virtue will likewise differ from his. If, however, he be not troubled by any of those motions, he will be wholly divine; he will be one of those divinities "who (as Plato said) form the attending escort of the First." It is a divinity of such a nature that has come down from above to dwell in us. To become again what one was originally, is to live in this superior world. He who has achieved that height dwells with pure Intelligence, and assimilates himself thereto as far as possible. Consequently, he feels none of those emotions, nor does he any more commit any actions, which would be disapproved of by the superior principle who henceforth is his only master."
- Plotinus (pbuh)

I have ascended

How do I refute Aristotelian epistemology as a neoplatonist? I believe in the One and its transcendental simplicity, but I'm struggling to come to terms with the Platonic epistemological arguments. Are there any valid arguments to justify the existence of a collective Intellect from which individual intellects draw knowledge?

The animals devour each other: men attack each other: all is war without rest, without truce: this gives new force to the question how Reason can be author of the plan and how all can be declared well done. This new difficulty is not met by the former answer; that all stands as well as the nature of things allows; that the blame for their condition falls on Matter dragging them down; that, given the plan as we know it, evil cannot be eliminated and should not be; that the Matter making its presence felt is still not supreme but remains an element taken in from outside to contribute to a definite total, or rather to be itself brought to order by Reason. The Divine Reason is the beginning and the end; all that comes into being must be rational and fall at its coming into an ordered scheme reasonable at every point. Where, then, is the necessity of this bandit war of man and beast?

This devouring of Kind by Kind is necessary as the means to the transmutation of living things which could not keep form for ever even though no other killed them: what grievance is it that when they must go their despatch is so planned as to be serviceable to others? Still more, what does it matter when they are devoured only to return in some new form? It comes to no more than the murder of one of the personages in a play; the actor alters his make-up and enters in a new role. The actor, of course, was not really killed; but if dying is but changing a body as the actor changes a costume, or even an exit from the body like the exit of the actor from the boards when he has no more to say or do, what is there so very dreadful in this transformation of living beings one into another? Surely it is much better so than if they had never existed: that way would mean the bleak quenching of life, precluded from passing outside itself; as the plan holds, life is poured copiously throughout a Universe, engendering the universal things and weaving variety into their being, never at rest from producing an endless sequence of comeliness and shapeliness, a living pastime.

>>12479437
>whoa man what if like everything's One man, moms gunna freak!

Have you accepted Plotinus as your saviour?