/lit/ - Literature

>>16167638
Wrong. The world of forms affirm Greek paganism.

As the principle of all things is the one, it is necessary that the progression of beings should be continued, and that no vacuum should intervene either in incorporeal or corporeal natures. It is also necessary that every thing which has a natural progression should proceed through similitude. In consequence of this, it is likewise necessary that every producing principle should generate a number of the same order with itself, viz. nature, a natural number; soul, one that is psychical (i.e. belonging to soul); and intellect an intellectual number. For if whatever possesses a power of generating, generates similars prior to dissimilars, every cause must deliver its own form and characteristic peculiarity to its progeny; and before it generates that which gives subsistence to progressions, far distant and separate from its nature, it must constitute things proximate to itself according to essence, and conjoined with it through similitude. It is, therefore, necessary from these premises, since there is one unity, the principle of the universe, that this unity should produce from itself, prior to every thing else, a multitude of natures characterized by unity, and a number the most of all things allied to its cause; and these natures are no other than the Gods.

According to this theology, therefore, from the immense principle of principles, in which all things causally subsist, absorbed in superessential light, and involved in unfathomable depths, a beauteous progeny of principles proceed, all largely partaking of the ineffable, all stamped with the occult characters of deity, all possessing an overflowing fulness of good. From these dazzling summits, these ineffable blossoms, these divine propagations, being, life, intellect, soul, nature, and body depend; monads suspended from unities, deified natures proceeding from deities. Each of these monads, too, is the leader of a series which extends from itself to the last of things, and which, while it proceeds from, at the same time abides in, and returns to, its leader. And all these principles, and all their progeny, are finally centred and rooted by their summits in the first great all-comprehending one. Thus all beings proceed from, and are comprehended in, the first being: all intellects emanate from one first intellect; all souls from one first soul; all natures blossom from one first nature; and all bodies proceed from the vital and luminous body of the world. And, lastly, all these great monads are comprehended in the first one, from which both they and all their depending series are unfolded into light. Hence this first one is truly the unity of unities, the monad of monads, the principle of principles, the God of Gods, one and all things, and yet one prior to all.

>>16029461
>>16027236 (You)
>>has been to affirm multiplicity in face of the real existence of the One
>Affirm multiplicity in what way? If you don’t explain why it’s a meaningless statement. Affirm multiplicity as something which has a contingent existence which is dependent on its source, which we perceive in our consciousness, and which exists in its own right independent of our perception of it? Shankara also affirms all those things about multiplicity.
>Or do you affirm multiplicity to be absolutely real, just as real as its ultimate source, eternal, beginningless, undecaying and immutable? To apply these labels to the changing world of composite objects results in many contradictions. If you don’t affirm these about multiplicity as Shankara does not, than what even is your point of contention?
>results in many contradictions
how tiny shankara's mind must have been

Plotinus:
This life, however, is more clear and is the primary Life and primary Intellect, and these are one. And so the first life is intellection and the second life is a second kind of intellection, and the last life is a final form of intellection. And so all life is of this kind and is intellection. People might perhaps say that there are different kinds of life, though they do not say these are different kinds of intellection, but rather that some are instances of intellection, others not intellection at all, doing this because they do not investigate what life in general is. But we really must point out the following, that our argument demonstrates once again that all beings are a by-product of contemplation. So, if the truest life is life with intellection, and this is identical with the truest intellection, then the truest intellection is alive, and contemplation and the object of the highest kind of contemplation are alive and are life,and the two are together one.

>>15919445
The highest forms in the most generic way are the Perion/Monad Aperion/Dyad and the Mixed/Harmony, these are the highest Arches.
And the Circle (or rather sphere), Line, and Dot/Point, are also not among the Solids and do not exist in the cosmos---at least not in actuality, you can of course phenomenologically imply a straight line between any two imaginary points, but you can't actually find any straight lines empirically, likewise there are no perfect circles and the point has by definition zero-dimensions so it can literally not exist in space; before you say photons, they travel in lines but they don't make any physical lines).
And the forms aren't "patterns", at least not the "form-forms" wich are ineffable in-themselves, you can nly grasp them through their Mixture which produces the lower forms; and the at-least-five greatest kinds have nothing to do with patterns, the very idea of pattern is a form. Also the world of forms isn't truly immaterial since the Dyad is Matter to the One which produces Intellect and the Forms...