/lit/ - Literature

>>17439852
He should have been a better platonist.

i wait for a plato related thread then start an argument which usually eventually inspires me to write a big paragraph worth saving in my cloud document

>>16362081
In the case of weakness of the intellectual power of the soul, humans resort to action as a lower substitute for knowledge, not being ‘filled’ by it (4, 35). But action can also result as a by-product in the case of the soul that does not suffer from this lack, a soul which possesses knowledge. The latter case corresponds to the example of Minos in Enn. VI 9, who is ‘filled’ by his union with the One and consequently acts. Thus political action, as indeed all action, may arise as a result that accompanies the fulfilment of philosophical knowledge. A further step must be made, however, in the explanation of how knowledge can be fecund so as to issue in political action. Soul, in reaching union with the One, is united with the absolute Good whose nature is such as to ‘overflow’, to communicate its goodness and thus give rise to the rest of reality.237 Union with the One must involve sharing in its metaphysical fecundity, its nature as the self-giving and self-communicating Good. For Plotinus' Minos this means that communion with the One is communion with its fecundity as the Good, a fecundity that produces communication of the Good in the form of laws as images of the Good—just as, in general, the lower levels of reality are images of the higher and produced by the higher in a cascading series of images of the One. We can infer from these ideas that the motivation of the Plotinian philosopher-king relates to sharing in the metaphysical fecundity of the absolute Good: the philosopher descends to political matters as a consequence and expression of the union reached with the One.

there isn't
because they are gnostic frauds

>>16321406
true platonist ethos

Yes. Read Damascius.
>The ruler must do everything for the sake of those he rules. But Hegias maintained that the ruler should not merely take care of those whom he rules but of his own self in priority to them, since everyone desires the good for himself before others. Isidore on the other hand says that the ruler qua ruler looks after the ruled and for this reason they obey him; but if he looks after himself as well, he does so as one of the ruled who is in need of being cared for. The ruler in the strict sense of the word needs nothing, though in his capacity as a man he may have needs. In the same way the expert in his capacity as a man may have need of expertise, as a doctor needs medical skill if he falls ill, But medicine itself can never fall ill, nor can the doctor when defined in terms of the art of medicine nor the ruler when defined in terms of the science of ruling. If we attempt to put this in terms of logic, we would say that the connection between the two things is not only a matter of words but a reality too.Therefore the connection between ruler and ruled and that between ruled and ruler is both theoretical and real, so that if the act of ruling benefits the ruled it will also benefit those to whom it is assigned.

What about when men who are unworthy of education approach philosophy and consort with her unworthily? What kinds of thoughts and opinions are we to say they beget? Won’t they truly be what are properly called sophisms, things that have no thing genuine about them or worthy of being called true wisdom?
That’s absolutely right.
Then there remains, Adeimantus, only a very small group who consort with philosophy in away that’s worthy of her: A noble and well brought-up character, for example, kept down by exile, who remains with philosophy according to his nature because there is no one to corrupt him, or a great soul living in a small city, who disdains the city’s affairs and looks beyond them. A very few might be drawn to philosophy from other crafts that they rightly despise because they have good natures. And some might be held back by the bridle that restrains our friend Theages—for he’s in every way qualified to be tempted away from philosophy, bu this physical illness restrains him by keeping him out of politics. Finally, my own case is hardly worth mentioning—my daemonic sign—because it has happened to no one before me, or to only a very few. Now, the members of this small group have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and at the same time they’ve also seen the madness of the majority and realized, in a word, that hardly anyone acts sanely in public affairs and that there is no ally with whom they might go to the aid of justice and survive, that instead they’d perish before they could profit either their city or their friends and be useless both to themselves and to others, just like a man who has fallen among wild animals and is neither willing to join them in doing injustice nor sufficiently strong to oppose the general savagery alone. Taking all this into account, they lead a quiet life and do their own work. Thus, like someone who takes refuge under a little wall from a storm of dust or hail driven by the wind, the philosopher—seeing others filled with lawlessness—is satisfied if he can somehow lead his present life free from injustice and impious acts and depart from it with good hope, blameless and content.
Well, that’s no small thing for him to have accomplished before departing.
>But it isn’t the greatest either, since he didn’t chance upon a constitution that suits him. Under a suitable one, his own growth will be fuller, and he’ll save the community as well as himself.

>>15975293
Damascius

>>15815885
>rationalistic philosophy
you probably think Thales was the first scientist and demystifier, when what fragments we have are anything but, that all is water is reminiscent of Nun the primordial waters. And another is "everything is full of gods".
This enlightenment rationalism about the Greek philosophers is at best only true of Aristotle.
Greeks as peak of truth I refer solely to Plato—everything you need philosophically exists in his dialogues if read as a whole and through a "neoplatonic lens"—and the Neoplatonists. Damascius at the precipice of truth's destruction gave us its completion.
We only have hymns and prayers from egypt, not exegesis of correct interpretation of them, this is what the Greeks give us, and is connected to my bashing of prots and praise of tradition up above. Even if their exegesis is about mostly hellenic myths, the pyramid texts and coffin texts show us that the Greek author Plutarch's rendition of the Osiris and Isis mythology in around 80AD has survived for 2500 years intact, the neoplatonists around Damascius time had even begun revive the understanding of hieroglyphs (but probably crude, and yet their ontology is in harmony with them), but thanks to Christians we lost all capacity to read any variation of Egyptian script, up until now of course.