/lit/ - Literature

First Alcibiades, Lysis, Gorgias, Phaedrus, Republic, Symposium, Book X of Laws, Crito, Phaedo.

Obviously Plato.

Recognition Sutras
Plato Complete Works
Plotinus Enneads
Tao te Ching
Proclus Ten Problems Concerning Providence and Evil (two books).
Simplicius Commentary on Epictetus Handbook
Olympiodorus Commentary on the Gorgias

Plato Complete Works
Leiden Hymns
Havamål
Iliad and Odyssey
Book of the Dead, Coffin Texts, Pyramid Texts.
Tale of Sinhue, The Debate Between A Man and His Soul, Shipwrecked Sailor, Ramsses II hymn to Amun at the Battle of Kadesh, Prophecy of Neferty...
Orphic Hymns.
Corpus Hermeticum, The Hymn of the Pearl, The Golden Ass.
Iamblichus De Mysteriis.
Julian's Orations
Aelius Aristides Hymns.
Orations of Themistius
Porphyry on the cave of the nymphs.
Sallustius On the Gods and World (less scripture more pseudo-dogma)
Plotinus Enneads (read with an eye for all the above)
Proclus Commentary on the Timaeus
My future exposition on the unity of the Neoplatonists.
All of these were from the top my head while taking a shit, there are a few more whole Egyptian legends, as well as Hesiod and other poets (all poets and artists are inspired in some way).

>>16662342
Philebus and Laws explicate the Golden Mean, the Mixed life.
In Gorgias and Protagoras he talks about how punishment is purifying for the soul.
Timaeus says the world is good, which requires more than a post here to fully explain, but a TL;DR is that, as Olympiodorus and Plotinus understood, some souls are punished in the next life or in this life and this, again, is ultimately good for you; but most of your suffering is brought upon you by your own damn choices and it's purely chance (not necessity) that is harming you.
In Republic the best life is not one of pleasurable abandon as a tyrant, but the simple hard-working life of a farmer/shepherd, which certainly not a life without discomfort or suffering (this is the life Odysseus chose).
OP doesn't mean that suffering is never bad, it's just never absolutely bad.
All suffering no matter how minor or major has the Justice of Providence behind it. A child who is killed by the free will of a murderer will be the arbitor of that person's fate in tartarus (only her forgiveness will set him free).

>>16634858
>early dialogues
All the dialogues were written in "short" period of time late in his life (as in the last 20). The autobiographical account at the end of Phaedrus is proof of this, there is no development in Plato, only an intentional enveloping of his thesis, the "spurious" dialogues are also proof of this, as being further exegeses of Plato's ideas, either because he was too old to write (most likely) or had died before he could. Such as Minos and Epinomis, or supposedly First Alcibiades and the Letters, although I don't think these are spurious (even if they were possibly co-written by one of his students).

>>16565750
>by Aquinas
Athenian
Come then,—if ever we ought to invoke God's aid, now is the time it ought to be done. Let the gods be invoked with all zeal to aid in the demonstration of their own existence. And let us hold fast, so to speak, to a safe cable as we embark on the present discussion. And it is safest, as it seems to me, to adopt the following method of reply when questions such as this are put on these subjects; for instance, when a man asks me—“Do all things stand still, Stranger, and nothing move? Or is the exact opposite the truth? Or do some things move [893c] and some remain at rest?” My answer will be, “Some things move, others remain at rest.”3 “Then do not the standing things stand, and the moving things move, in a certain place?” “Of course.” “And some will do this in one location, and others in several.” “You mean,” we will say, “that those which have the quality of being at rest at the center move in one location, as when the circumference of circles that are said to stand still revolves?” “Yes. And we perceive that motion of this kind, which simultaneously turns in this revolution both the largest circle and the smallest, distributes itself [893d] to small and great proportionally, altering in proportion its own quantity; whereby it functions as the source of all such marvels as result from its supplying great and small circles simultaneously with harmonizing rates of slow and fast speeds—a condition of things that one might suppose to be impossible.” “Quite true.” “And by things moving in several places you seem to me to mean all things that move by locomotion, continually passing from one spot to another, and sometimes resting [893e] on one axis4 and sometimes, by revolving, on several axes. And whenever one such object meets another, if the other is at rest, the moving object is split up; but if they collide with others moving to meet them from an opposite direction, they form a combination which is midway between the two.” “Yes, I affirm that these things are so, just as you describe.”

>>16359207
This is also how the One is nonexistent, and/or super-existent.
One-all (Monad, cause of individuality), All-one (Dyad, cause of difference, without itself being different), and the Many/Mixed/Unified (cause of Unity/Harmony between the One and the Many, simultaneously different from the One as Being and identical to the One as One-Being, aka One and Many in the Absolute sense, the Bridge and Chasm between the One and Being). Proclus could observe in his mind the reality of it but his "rationalism" refused a one to be both something and not that something.
This is how Platonism defends true distinction, plurality is not virtual. Oneness and Multiplicity are not a black and white this or that. But we must as Plato did in Sophist, when it comes to Rest and Change, cry out for both, and as we do reality cries out for the third. The hidden and the revealed. This is who we most of all call God.

Also Pierre Grimes has read Damascius if you watch his post-2010 videos.

We realize that dianoetic thought can only glimpse the truth and there hasn't been an enlightened Enlightenment philosopher, they're all flawed in their protestant spirit of Arrogance.
Footnotes.

The Idea that magnets disprove the idea that 'like is drawn to like', must be a shortsighted understanding of magnets.
Don't you see that they only attract once made alike? Once they're positioned in the same way, when their Poles are aligned, only then do they become one.

>>15780958
Heraclitus and Parmenides arrive at the same conclusions! (monism) from opposite sides. Plato is the reconciliation of both sides, and their single conclusion, simultaneously. Read Sophist.

Convergent Evolution.
If we ever explore the stars, and if ever we meet another intelligent species, they will resemble us.

https://www.academia.edu/39757061/Plato_Platonism_and_the_History_of_Philosophy

Fate is optional

>>14897441
>>14897072
“It is the duty of us, the founders, then,” said I, “to compel the best natures to attain the knowledge which we pronounced the greatest, and to win to the vision of the Good, to scale that ascent, and when they have reached the heights and taken an adequate view, we must not allow what is now permitted.” “What is that?”
“That they should linger there,” I said, “and refuse to go down again among those bondsmen and share their labors and honors, whether they are of less or of greater worth.”
“Do you mean to say that we must do them this wrong, and compel them to live an inferior life when the better is in their power?”
“You have again forgotten, my friend,” said I, “that the law is not concerned with the special happiness of any class in the state, but is trying to produce this condition in the city as a whole, harmonizing and adapting the citizens to one another by persuasion and compulsion, and requiring them to impart to one another any benefit which they are severally able to bestow upon the community, and that it itself creates such men in the state, not that it may allow each to take what course pleases him, but with a view to using them for the binding together of the commonwealth.” “True,” he said, “I did forget it.”
“Observe, then, Glaucon,” said I, “that we shall not be wronging, either, the philosophers who arise among us, but that we can justify our action when we constrain them to take charge of the other citizens and be their guardians.

Absolute becoming is absolute rest, since there's never a many, never a single thing, since to become a cease to be requires rest of some kind, and therefore there's only the One.
But if the One is...

What if my philosophy is that such a life to degree is the true life? And that I reject the very life I myself live but accept its reality that I might not escape it—is this cope?
Love, friendship, adventure, play, conversation, tragedy, loss, music, dance, longing, passion, creation. These are the purpose of descent of the soul free of worry from up above—its so-called perfection and omniscience lack one thing, truly experience what it knows of the Ideals. It is only in forgetful becoming that the divine can fulfill all things, how can omniscient perfection know what true loss is?
Perhaps it is the loss of the meaning of philosophy that has lead you into these statements, but what you fan philosophy is nothing but aimless dianoia, blind sophistry.

Philosophy is an older man's pursuit

>>14686412
The high brow position is the kneeling through the realization of the limits of knowledge before the Ineffable roots of reality.

>>14610304
Furthermore, the One and the Unified, and the many deriving from them and
undergoing differentiation, comprise all things. For as many things as undergo
differentiation, so many are the Unified from which they are distinguished, and
as multiple as the many are, so multiple is, in fact, the One from which they are
unfolded. However, the One is not less [One] on that account; rather it is more so
because the many are after it and not in it; and the same is the case for the Unified, because it is a gathering together of the many distinct items prior to their
differentiation. Whether one views them according to their coordinate existence
or according to their own unique nature, in either case they constitute all things,
but all things cannot be first nor can they be a principle, either in terms of their
coordinate existence, because the last elements will be among the all, or in terms of the oneness in them, because they will be both one and many together (we have not yet discovered what is completely beyond all things) and the One, as the cause of the things from it, will be the summit of the many.
In addition to these arguments, on our part it is we who think of the One by
purifying our speculation in the direction of what is simpler and of greatest
compass. But the most venerable thing of all cannot be apprehended by any
conception or by any speculation, since even among things here, whatever escapes toward that which is higher with respect to our thoughts is more lofty
than whatever is ready to hand, and so that which escapes our conceptions most completely is the most valuable of all. If this is nothing, then “nothing” must be of two kinds, one greater than the One, the other inferior to it. If therefore we are “stepping into the void” when we speak this way, then “stepping into the
void” also has two meanings, the one falls out of speech into the Ineffable, and
the other falls into what has no kind of existence at all. The latter is also ineffable, as Plato says, but in an inferior way, while the former is so in a superior way.
If we are in search of the function of this entity, this is the most useful and
necessary of all functions, namely, that from that realm everything proceeds as
from an inner shrine, but in an ineffable and secret manner. For it does not
produce the many as does the One, nor the distinct as does the Unified, but
rather it is as ineffable that it produces all things in a like way.

But it is a good dream.

>>14573518
Being particular implies rest, otherwise 'it' wouldn't be, something rests and stays the same across time.
If there is no resr then there are no things, if there are no things there's nothing that moves, since movement requires that something moves, ergo all is rest.

Read the Original.