/lit/ - Literature

It's the Nous.

The inbetween.
Plato's Sophist 247b to 249b.
This is why it is Plato whose work remains complete, while the two extremes cannot exist without harmony, for it is Harmony, Unity, the One that causes the two antitheses.

More a revision than refutation.

Simplicius Commentary on Epictetus Enchiridion.
Iamblichus Life and Way of Pythagoras
Macrobius Saturnalia and Commentary on the Dream of Scipio.
Everything by Cicero.
Plato ofc
Nicomachean Ethics
Damascius' Life of Isadore/Philosophical History (a fucking crime against humanity that this is fragmentary).

>>14338481
>idk lol
>he doesn't know about the thing

>>14322473
>>14322457
>>14322451
Yeeep.
You should go like this:
Alcibiades 1&2; Cratylus, Charmides, Ion, Meno, Protagoras, Clitophon; Last Days of Socrates; Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman (should be read together), Gorgias, Lysis, Laches, the two Hippias, Symposium, Euthydemus, Phaedrus, Republic; Parmenides, Philebus; Minos-Laws, Epinomis, Timaeus-Critias.

Even gayer than the nongnostic gospels.

>>14292813
Also how infinite lines drawn from the circumference of a circle to the center converges into one singularity.

You put yourself here.

The Enneads is the Philosopher's Stone. And I mean the entire book, the whole text itself. And it has been available for almost 2000 years. To understand him is to

>>14155179
>"Prophet Plotinus"
>the one who's writings survive 99.97% intact (the only one after Plato) is dubious
>he who so beautifully describes the joy of true theoria with all divine realms, teaching all after him how (with successful reproduction) now called mysticism
>this god in flesh, who even made Christian unable to insult him, is questionable
>but this other guy who all around him condemned, that we know almost nothing verifiable about, is trustworthy

>>14087942
Yes.

>>14053703
>He took ancient secrets and tried to make a science of them
Also known as Neoplatonism.

It's just Schopenhauerian Neoplatonism. (No object without subject, no subject without object).

Aquinas has zero actual influence post-descartes. He is left behind. While the rediscovery of Plotinus basically gave birth to German Idealism and all continental thought.
Not to ignore the massive influence on Christian theology and mysticism.

>>14035343
Yes, but to say that all is one is an affirmation. It can easily just be everything disconnected, and all patterns of coherence and unity are mere illusions, that all is i chaos. Each infinitesimal pixel/grain is insular, each its own existence apart from everything else. Infinitely-infinite. But this is paradoxical, since it implies that all things we call things (the trees, that stone, this snail–every thinkable object) are each real, but that each being all that is denies the reality of every other thing. This does not allow One-and-Many, only Many-Many, the platonists argued that Many-Many (infinite-infinity) is an impossibility. But only Mind can make Heraclitean Flux impossible, and Mind/Being affirms Plato's One-and-Many.

>>14034443
>thoughts occurring without a thinker.
fucking middle platonists

>>13749457
He was a man of the truth and did his business in the light. As was Christ. You are a liar and deceiver.

>Olympius, a fellow-philosopher envious of Plotinus's intellectual superiority tried to harm him by magic spells. He did so by directing star-rays against him. But he had soon to give up, because he found that the soul of Plotinus was powerful enough not only to resist these spells but even to turn them back on his enemy so that they were harming him.

>nonsense by aesthetically inclined people
We must ascend, therefore, once more to the Good, which every soul desires. If anyone has beheld It, he will know what I say, and in what manner It is beautiful, for it is as good that It is desired, and all appetency is towards goodness. But the attainment of the Good is for those who mount upward to the heights, set their faces towards them, and strip off the garments with which we clothed ourselves as we descended hither. Just as those who penetrate into the innermost sanctuaries of the mysteries, after being first purified and divesting themselves of their garments, go forward naked, so must the soul continue, until anyone, passing in his ascent beyond all that is separative from God, by himself alone contemplates God alone, perfect, simple and pure, from Whom all things depend, to Whom all beings look, and in Whom they are, and live, and know. For He is the cause of Being, Life and Intelligence. If, then, anyone beheld Him, with what love would he be inspired, with what desire would he burn, in his eagerness to be united with Him! With what bliss would he be overcome! He that has not yet beheld Him may desire Him as Good, but, to him that has, it is given to love Him as Beauty, to be filled with wonder and delight, to be overwhelmed yet unharmed, to love with true love and keen desire, to laugh at other loves, and to despise the things he formerly thought beautiful. Of such a nature is the experience of those who have beheld visions of Gods or angels—no more do they seek aught of the beauty of other bodies. What, then, shall we think of one who beheld The Beautiful Itself and by Itself, pure and untouched by flesh or body, existing neither in earth nor in heaven, because of Its very purity? For all these are contingent things and mixed, nor are they primary but proceed from It. If, therefore, he beheld That which provides for all things, which, remaining in Itself, gives to all and receives nothing into Itself, and if, remaining in the contemplation of This and tasting of Its bliss, he should be assumed into Its likeness, of what other beauty would he then have need? For This, since It is Beauty Itself and the First Beauty, makes those who love It beautiful and beloved. And this is the greatest and ultimate task which lies before the soul, for the sake of which all her toils are undertaken— not to be left without portion in that most sublime vision, to obtain which is to be blessed by the vision of blessedness, but not to obtain it is wretchedness. For not he that has no share of beautiful colours or bodies, or of power or dominion or kingship, is unfortunate; but he that lacks this one thing alone, for the sake of which it were well to let go the possession and kingship and rule of the whole earth and of the sea, aye, and of the heaven itself, if a man, by leaving behind all these and looking beyond them, might be converted to This and behold It.

Plotinus discussion thread. I don't think I've understood what the Good actually is.

>Olympius, a fellow-philosopher envious of Plotinus's intellectual superiority tried to harm him by magic spells. He did so by directing star-rays against him. But he had soon to give up, because he found that the soul of Plotinus was powerful enough not only to resist these spells but even to turn them back on his enemy so that they were harming him.

Is Plotinus worth getting into? Are the Enneads good?

>>11039898
this man is all I need