/lit/ - Literature

>>16021835 not me

>all me
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>>16021569
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>>16019303
there's another, or two, honorable gentleman arguing the same case

>>16001494
because Plotinus had trouble grappling with the ineffable, just as he sometimes say the One-Being is the One in a way, he sometimes calls the One the same with Beauty. He also calls the Dyad the One. Plotinus was incomplete, but never truly wrong. My original post was also PROCLUS and OLYMPIODORUS nor Plotinus, nobody denies Plotinus requires addition and clarification, of which Damascius & Co completed.

Philebus:
SOCRATES: But now we notice that the force of the GOOD has taken refuge in an ALLIANCE with the nature of the BEAUTIFUL. For measure and proportion manifest themselves in all areas as beauty and virtue.
PROTARCHUS: Undeniably.
SOCRATES: But we did say that truth is also included along with them in our mixture?
PROTARCHUS: Indeed.
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 [The One of the Traid], for its goodness is what makes the mixture itself a good one.

>>15140255
“I don’t think I have anything clearly in view, at least not at present.”
“Socrates, that’s because you are trying to mark off something beautiful, and just, and good, and each one of the forms, too soon, before you have been properly trained. I noticed that the other day too, as I listened to you conversing with Aristotle here. The impulse you bring to argument is noble and divine, make no mistake about it.But while you are still young, put your back into it and get more training through something people think useless–what the crowd call idle talk. Otherwise, the truth will escape you.”
“What manner of training is that?”
“The manner is just what you heard from Zeno. “Except I was also impressed by something you had to say to him: you didn’t allow him to remain among visible things and observe their wandering between opposites. You asked him to observe it instead among those things that one might above all grasp by means of reason and might think to be forms.”
“I did that, because I think that here, among visible things, it’s not at all hard to show that things are both like and unlike and anything else you please.”
“And you are quite right. But you must do the following in addition to that: if you want to be trained more thoroughly, you must not only hypothesize, if each thing is, and examine the consequences of that hypothesis; you must also hypothesize, if that same thing is not.” “What do you mean?”
“If you like, take as an example this hypothesis that Zeno entertained: if the many are, what must the consequences be both for the many themselves in relation to themselves and in relation to the one, and for the one in relation to itself and in relation to the many? And, in turn, on the hypothesis, if many are not, you must again examine what the consequences will be both for the one and for the many in relation to themselves and in relation to each other. And again, in turn, if you hypothesize, if likeness is or if it is not, you must examine what the consequence swill be on each hypothesis,both for the things hypothesized themselves and for the others,both in relation to themselves and in relation to each other. And the same method applies to unlike, to motion, to rest, to generation and destruction, and to being itself and not-being. And, in a word, concerning whatever you might ever hypothesize as being or as not being or as having any other property, you must examine the consequences for the thing you hypothesize in relation to itself and inc relation to each one of the others, whichever you select, and in relation to several of them and to all of them in the same way; and, in turn, you must examine the others, both in relation to themselves and in relation to whatever other thing you select on each occasion, whether what you hypothesize you hypothesize as being or as not being. All this you must do if, after completing your training, you are to achieve a full view of the truth.”

>>13904451
>Stranger
>The sophist runs away into the darkness of not-being, feeling his way in it by practice,1 and is hard to discern on account of the darkness of the place. Don't you think so?
Theaetetus
It seems likely.
>Stranger
>But the philosopher, always devoting himself through reason to the idea of being, is also very difficult to see on account of the brilliant light of the place; for the eyes [254b] of the soul of the multitude are not strong enough to endure the sight of the divine.
Theaetetus
This also seems no less true than what you said about the sophist.
>Stranger
>Now we will make more accurate investigations about the philosopher hereafter, if we still care to do so; but as to the sophist, it is clear that we must not relax our efforts until we have a satisfactory view of him.
Theaetetus
You are right.
>Stranger
>Since, therefore, we are agreed that some of the classes will mingle with one another, and others will not, and some will mingle with few and others with many, and that [254c] there is nothing to hinder some from mingling universally with all, let us next proceed with our discussion by investigating, not all the forms or ideas, lest we become confused among so many, but some only, selecting them from those that are considered the most important; let us first consider their several natures, then what their power of mingling with one another is, and so, if we cannot grasp being and not-being with perfect clearness, we shall at any rate not fail to reason fully about them, so far as the method of our present inquiry permits. Let us in this way see whether it is, after all, [254d] permitted us to say that not-being really is, although not being, and yet come off unscathed.
Theaetetus
Yes; that is the proper thing for us to do.
>Stranger
>The most important, surely, of the classes or genera are those which we just mentioned; being itself and rest and motion.
Theaetetus
Yes, by far.
>Stranger
>And further, two of them, we say, cannot mingle with each other.
Theaetetus
Decidedly not.
>Stranger
>But being can mingle with both of them, for they both are.
Theaetetus
Of course.
>Stranger
>Then these prove to be three.
Theaetetus
To be sure.
>Stranger
>Each of them is, then, other than the remaining two, but the same as itself.
Theaetetus
Yes.