/lit/ - Literature

ATHENIAN: Come then, if ever we needed to call upon the help of God, it’s now. Let’s take it the gods have been most pressingly invoked to assist the proof of their own existence, and let’s rely on their help as if it were a rope steadying us as we enter the deep waters of our present theme. Now when I’m under interrogation on this sort of topic, and such questions as the following are put to me, the safest replies seem to be these. Suppose someone asks ‘Sir, do all things stand still, and does nothing move? Or is precisely the opposite true? Or do some things move, while others are motionless?’ My reply will be ‘I suppose some move and others remain at rest.’ ‘So surely there must be some space in which the stationary objects remain at rest, and those in motion move?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Some of them, presumably, will do so in one location, others in several?’ ‘Do you mean’, we shall reply, ‘that “moving in one location” is the action of objects which are able to keep their centers immobile? For instance, there are circles which are said to “stay put” even though as a whole they are revolving.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And we appreciate that when a disk revolves like that, points near and far from the center describe circles of different radii in the same time; d their motion varies according to these radii and is proportionately quick or slow. This motion gives rise to all sorts of wonderful phenomena, because these points simultaneously traverse circles of large and small circumference at proportionately high or low speeds—an effect one might have expected to be impossible.’ ‘You’re quite right.’ ‘When you speak of motion in many locations I suppose you’re referring to objects that are always leaving one spot and moving on to another. Sometimes their motion involves only one point of contact with their successive situations, some times several, as in rolling. ‘From time to time objects meet; a moving one colliding with a stationary one disintegrates, but if it meets other objects traveling in the opposite direction they coalesce into a single intermediate substance, half one and half the other.’ ‘Yes, I agree to your statement of the case.’ ‘Further, such combination leads to an increase in bulk, while their separation leads to diminution—so long as the existing states of the objects remain unimpaired; but if either combination or separation entails the abolition of the existing state, the objects concerned are destroyed.

Was plato really just Sócrates' scribe?

>>16490930

A gate with fire in front and hidden at the back, with a man in it who is bound, and it is a marvel for the length of a day. I am Nu, Lord of darkness; I have come that I may have power over the path, and he who has two faces is afraid of me. I am one who is heavy on your shoulders for you, and who bind shoulders for you ... I have come here from On that I may be be crowned as the Mighty Lady; that I may see the Bull of On in their (sic!) shape, that I may see my water in darkness. I speak to them, for I know them by their images, I saw their mother's delivery, and I guide them to you in my name of Bull of On, that they may illumine me within.

Open to me, and I will sleep; open to me, and I will be protected from them. It is an equipped spirit who guards the gate of the mansion of Many-faced. I have come and I have traversed the swamp, I have moved about since your lake was given, and I pass by the shoulders of Osiris, for he knows that the . . . who are in the gates who shall guard them, belong to me. See, I am a Lord of motion, and my back is not opposed. I have gone straight ahead, everything being about you like Jtn and the Companions. Movements here are mine, and he grants my dignity like one who raises himself; I am more of a spirit than the Lord of thrones, and I see him making them into their shapes.
I have come here from Dep that I may see the growing plant and see it in my day; the mansions belong to his face. My head is on me, my arms are on me, my legs are on me, I am the wearer of the royal headcloth who is in Dep; Dep is on him, having become him. I am he, I am the wearer of the royal headcloth who is in darkness.

noetic perception
Hume says nothing Plato didn't already say in Theaetetus

>>16106168
>>16106326
>thinking Plato andthe platonists deduced their doctrines

...the transcendent Forms exist by themselves; what exists by itself and of itself is not in us; what is not in us is not on the level of our knowledge; what is not on the level of our knowledge is unknowable by our feculty of knowledge; so then the transcendent Forms are unknowable by our faculty of knowledge. They may, then, be contemplated only by the divine Intellect. This is so for all Forms, but especially for those that arc beyond the intellectual gods; for neither sense-perception, nor cognition based on opinion, nor pure reason, nor intellectual cognition of our type serves to connect the soul with those Forms, but only illumination from the intellectual gods renders us capable of joining ourselves to those intelligible-and-intellectual Forms, as I recall someone saying under divine inspiration. The nature of those Forms is, then, unknowable to us, as being superior to our intellection and to the partial conceptions of our souls. And it is for this reason, indeed, that the Socrates of the Phaedrus (249d), as we said before, compares the contemplation of them to mystic rites and initiations and visions, conducting our souls up to the vault beneath the heaven, and the heaven itself, and the place above the heaven, calling the visions of those same Forms perfea and unwavering apparitions and also “simple” and “happy.” We have shown long ago, I believe, with explanations of great clarity, in our commentary on the Palinode passage {Phaedr. 243ab), that all those orders of being are intermediate between the intellectual gods and the primary intelligible ones; so that it is plain that a certain degree of truth is contained in the present passage. Knowledge of the intellectual Forms then, as has been said previously, has been instilled into us by the Demiurge and Father of souls, but as for those Forms that arc above Intellect, such as arc the Forms that are in the aforementioned classes, the knowledge of them is beyond our efforts to achieve and is of automatic provenance, achievable only by god-possessed souls

>>16036712
i have the pdf from scribd

>library ghost read Plato and now won't stop LARPing as Socrates in the philosophy section
>poor souls trying to reach the self help section can regularly be seen walking out of there in tears, utterly broken and unsure of anything

>>15993055
Eros is desire, literally how Plato defines it in what people call the gayest dialogue. Yes this mean bodily attraction is a form of Eros, but it is not the only form of Eros. In-fact Eros is the category of all forms of love, Agape, Phileo, Storge, these are all subsumed under Eros, which is desire for X and Y goods. The solely sexual definition of Eros is a later medieval connotation.

And yes, you can use intercourse analogically with soulbonding and beholding and reaching the Good, it is indeed a type of intercourse. This is the very point of Plato's objections, real Eros is Divine and Spiritual, any bodily Eros especially something barren, is a poor imitation that hinders true Eros.
This is also a problem with modern and christian interpretation of the 'Orgies of the Gods' since it superimposes bodily carnal pleasure into it.

>>15971512
>>15971516
>>15971523
>>15971529
>>15971540
>>15971547
And yet how will the One be threefold?
[We reply that] it is threefold because although it is one, nevertheless it is sufficient for the three of the Unified. Let this Unified be tripled, as has been said, with a certain unified triplicity. But the One turns this triplicity toward itself, so that the One as the One begins to manifest itself as triple. And yet the power, which is a dyad, becomes like the One by agreeing with the One, and by agreeing with the Unified, it also appears as triple. Therefore the dyad is in the middle of the One and the triad. The Unified as third by nature is a triad, and what comes before the Unified is [three] in a more transcendent way. Therefore, it is not surprising or difficult to conceive the One as becoming triadic in this way, not because it is subject to number or definition, but because it anticipates in itself the triplex of the Unified, and because it is a triadic one, as if it were in the triad as a whole. Whatever one conceives this kind of One to be, let him conceive [anything] rather than [imagining] the differentiation of the One. Unless it is also more suitable to hypothesize a descent from the One, so that the one father is also three, with the same father being one and trimorph, or rather, one but manifesting something triadic, and I mean not divided into three, but the partless one of the triad.
If the one is triadic, how is it absolute?
This was a previous difficulty with the argument, and rightly so. [Didn’t the argument go as follows, that is,] hypothesizing the One as absolute and the many as absolute and all things as absolute in the Unifi ed, from these absolute monads we made an absolute triad, as we thought, so that also the triad belonged to the absolute One, to the extent that the absolute One anticipated that entire triad and, as it were, realized itself in it and was numbered together with the other absolute principles, as the first principle ruling over the second and the third? Therefore the absolute One in reality is without number, and it is necessary to say more clearly, that it cannot become either a triad or a monad. For neither is it monadic, when it is not One in truth, and is only called one for the sake of illustration. And so it is with the absolute Unifi d. But the many are in the middle of these in a unique way without any distinction and without any addition.

>>15935855
>If 2 is true, then Christianity was never necessary to begin with.
people aren't set in stone, they need to be told wisdoms in order to change their way of being towards virtue, presumably the NT teaches things not as explicitly taught globally, by creating an organization that spreads "wisdom" (supposedly) it helps flawed individuals to fix their wrong ways. But yes, the NT is not necessary for everyone as it itself says >>15936008
The Question then is whether there are immoral teachings that then counteracts Christianity from within as a book of conscience.
Which is also true, and thus it cannot as a whole have been divinely inspired, this collapses the church's and bible's legitimacy. Protestants are retarded and thus the bible as a perfect whole has to be denied, and you're forced elsewhere. Wherever this perfectly moral sanctuary of the soul hides in the world.

>>15918972
>If Jesus is the only way to God (understood in a classical sense), that Christianity is the only door to salvation, and the most complete of doctrines, how can the effectiveness of mystical ways from outside the Church be explained?
Christ is not a name nor an abstract concept.
Shahada doesn't open the gates of heaven.
Faith without works does not exist.
Good works without faith does not exist.
To feed a beggar solely because you think it will get you heaven is worse than the self-honesty that you don't actually care.
To feed a beggar with no notion of reward or even knowledge about some distant gospel, but solely because of the conscience in your heart, that will raise you to the highest abode.

Better?

>>15881827
Be an ascetic towards peakless heights. Schopenhauer laments the lack of true closure, that whenever happiness is reached inevitably that ascendance goes down again towards some pain. Thus the way to bliss is to abandon this unreasonably attachment to permanence.
Especially when you realize that it is the very fact of everything's impermanence, this 'fleetlessness', that the meaningful is so yearned for and why all that is beautiful is so very beautiful. If all the stars shone like the sun there would be no dawn.

>"Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man."
>Gilgamesh, however, refuses to be deflected from his quest. After a series of harrowing experiences, he finally reaches Utnapishtim, a former mortal whom the gods had placed in an eternal paradise, and addresses him.
>Oh, father Utnapishtim, you who have entered the assembly of the gods, I wish to question you concerning the living and the dead, how shall I find the life for which I am searching?"
>Utnapishtim said,
>"There is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand forever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep forever, does the flood-time of rivers endure? It is only the nymph of the dragon-fly who sheds her larva and sees the sun in his glory. From the days of old there is no permanence. The sleeping and the dead, how alike they are, they are like a painted death. What is there between the master and the servant when both have fulfilled their doom? When the Anunnaki, the judges, come together, and Mammetun the mother of destinies, together they decree the fates of men. Life and death they allot but the day of death they do not disclose."

This certainly does not call for utter hedonism, for you'll find nothing more pleasurable than virtue, but rather as Plato suggested: Let the old become young again with wine.

>>15828095
A cup and a Bowl and two cupped hands are all species of the Same Form, 'a form' that includes the Sea and every Lake, and inversely the dome of heaven, a skull, a fist, your eye socket, your Mouth; all of these being "semi-circles" (in crude essence). But also of something that Contains or Compass something , thus they are in reality species of Sphere, which goes as high up as even to the Monad and Dyad (which you'll eventually find that all things do).
This is what Participation means and what Form/Paradigm means, the archetypal patterns of Being. But a Mouth doesn't just participate in one form, nothing participates in merely one form (except when Calling the Good a "Form"), a Mouth can surround something actively, it can "consume", while a bowl has to be manually filled. And a Mouth can spit, eject something. Here we can see the intuitive myth of the Ancient Egyptians with Atum-Ra, which you'll have to look into yourself.
But nothing is as close to God in Paradigmatic fulfillment as the Forms of 'Procreation, Pregnancy, and Midwifery' in the Form of Marriage, Love, and Philosophy: leading to fecundity in all things, divine life itself; or the Artist's High and creation of true beauty; or even the Heroic leader who leads and lifts up others in fellowship, a form of midwifery.
The One Good can only be comprehended through these three 'Henads' in the process that is reality. Also observed in collapsing stars or Quasars, or geysers, or the whole Earth and entire harmony of the global eco-system and tectonic movements.
All things flow from God to God to the gods, and all will return eternally to both (there's no such thing as permanent "liberation", only the selfish would wish to not have any duties to others).
And this is merely a part of the genius of Plato.

>>15733500

I decided to take a look back in this shithole after leaving most of 4chan behind back in late 2015, and holy shit this board has the most stagnant culture I have ever seen in my lifetime. Legitimately nothing has changed
>John Green threads
>Litgirl fetishism
>"Where do I start with x"
>"What's the best translation of Homer?"
>"Theists BTFO" threads
>Someone posting with a Butterfly tripcode
>Some utterly incomprehensible bickering between bored grad students about Heidegger or whatever
I bet I could legitimately compare a screengrab of the catalogue of this very board from 2014 with a screengrab from today's catalogue and not find one variation in content. Good job resisting the normie invasion I guess.
t. Anon published in TLoTiaT

It's not like you could make yourself functionally believe that your actions are predetermined even if that was the case. People believe that they have agency and couldn't survive if they didn't. I personally don't believe in free will, but I still have to act like I have a choice to be a functioning member of society

>>10954526
>posts no recs
>judges others

Thank you, master. We should all bow before your superior intellect.

>>10929822
You probably should read at least some, but at the same time you don't need to restrict yourself and go chronologically like an aspie - it's not like you won't understand anything modern unless you read the greeks first.