/lit/ - Literature

>>15616760
He doesn't exactly believe in a "personal" god, he leaned towards Pantheism (even talks of the term positively, at least in translation, dunno what the word is in german, probably doesn't mean the same exactly). Perhaps more like 'Pandeism'.

>>15173918
>arrangements of sub atomic particles
there are no particles in the universe

>>15164724
and that is equally as bad.
for you willingly fall into the sea of unlikeness
It is nihilism, the dissipation of good, of beauty, of proportion, of truth, of justice, of harmony; the turning of all purpose and meaning into dust, and all the world into non-being. Every act is invalidated, nothing is validated: thus the only legitimate capitulation is schizophrenia, utter indefinitity, indefinitely indefinite, nothing. Yet, self-evidently, something is, and so there is difference.

>Plato, then,...has left him ineffable and unnamed, in the knowledge that he has been given the rank ‘in the portion of the Good’ at the head of the universe. For in the entire rank of the gods he is the god who is analogous to the One. It is, at any rate, the monad in each cosmos who is of such a kind. But Orpheus, because he receives inspiration from the higher realm, has actually endowed him with a name, the Orpheus whom Plato himself has followed elsewhere. In his writings Zeus, the god who precedes the three Kronides, is Demiurge of the universe. At any rate, after the swallowing of Phanes, the forms of all things appeared, as the Theologian states:
For this reason, together with him, all things were again
produced within Zeus,
the gleaming height of the wide Ether and Heaven,
the foundations of the barren Sea and the splendid Earth,
the mighty Ocean and Tartarus, nethermost part of the earth,
rivers and the boundless sea and all the rest,
all the immortal blessed gods and goddesses,
all that has been born and all that will be born later,
all these were born and exist by nature together in the belly of Zeus.

>Because he was filled with the ideas, it was by means of them that he embraced the universe within himself, as the Theologian went on to reveal as well:

Zeus was born the first, Zeus of the bright lightning is the last,
Zeus is the head, Zeus the middle, from Zeus all things have been produced,
Zeus is the pillar of earth and starry Heaven,
Zeus is the King, Zeus on his own is the Primogenitor of all things,
born as sole sovereign, sole Daimon, great Leader of all,
a single Royal body, in which all things here revolve,
fire and water and earth and ether, night and day.

>Zeus therefore contains all these wholes in a monadic and intellective manner and according to these oracles of Night he causes all the creatures inside the cosmos to exist, both gods and the portions of the universe. When at any rate he poses the question to Night:

How will all things be one for me and also each separate from the other?

Wrap all things around with unspeakable Ether, and inside it in the middle place Heaven; then inside it place unbounded Earth, inside it place the Sea, inside it place all the constellations with which Heaven is crowned.

>Moreover concerning all the other works of creation she further proposed:

But when you stretch a powerful bond over everything,

>– this is certainly the powerful and indissoluble bond which proceeds from nature and soul and intellect, for Plato too says that ‘living things were born bound by bonds made up of soul’–

A golden chain suspended from the Ether,

>‘golden chain’ being the Homeric way of naming the ranks of gods inside the cosmos. Plato too emulates these verses when he says that the Demiurge created the universe by placing ‘intellect in soul and soul in body’ and that he caused the young gods to exist, through whom the parts of the cosmos have been ordered.

Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity and fuck the "occult".

And how, indeed, could it be known, if it is One alone? If we mean that the knowledge offers itself as an opposing reality, the One is not knowable, nor yet is the One knowable by means of spurious reasoning in the manner that has been written about by Plato, that is, in the way that we know matter, even though matter does not possess the character of being an intelligible object. The knowable is a particular form, that is, one of the real beings, whereas matter is not being and formless. As we come to an understanding of the curved by means of the straight line, they say, so we intuit the unknowable by obtaining clues from the knowable. Nevertheless, this does constitute a mode of knowing. So then, the One as well is knowable to the extent that it does not abide while knowledge advances, but instead it appears from far off as something knowable and grants familiarity with itself. And to the extent that the knower advances toward the One, it is not the case, as with other relationships between knower and known, that what approaches the One comes to know it better. In fact, the opposite occurs; it that is, what advances knows the One less, since knowledge is dissolved by the One into unknowing. And this is reasonable, since knowledge demands differentiation, as I said above, but differentiation as it approaches the One collapses into unity, so that knowledge disappears into unknowing. Perhaps this is what Plato intends by his analogy. We attempt to look at the sun for the first time and when we are far away, at least, we succeed. But the closer we approach the less we see it. And at last we see neither sun nor other things, since we have completely become the light itself, instead of an enlightened eye.
Is the One then unknowable due to its inherent nature, if the unknowable is something other than the One? The One wishes to be by itself and does not tolerate being with another. That which is contradistinguished from the knowable is the unknowable, but that which is beyond the One is entirely ineffable, and we confess that we have neither knowledge nor ignorance but rather transcendent ignorance with regard to that which, by its proximity, overshadows the One as well. For since it is nearest the principle that is inconceivable, it as it were abides in the sanctuary of transcendent silence.

Plato
Plotinus
Damascius (including pseudo-dionysius)
Schopenhauer
Blumenberg

>>14132868
>>14132803
You can die, and we can admit the existence of mind, but we can't admit the existence of any particular that 'caused' your death. For all we can say, your whole life and all eternity before your existence could be said to be the cause of your death. There are no natural perimeters.

>Knowledge Trilogy by Daniel J. Boorstin
>Plato - Selected Myths (Oxford World's Classics)
>Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History
>The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution
>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
>The Philosopher's Handbook: Essential Readings from Plato to Kant
>Quantum Ontology: A Guide To The Metaphysics Of Quantum Mechanics
>Montaigne - Complete Works (This might seem out of place, but it isn't: he encompasses all mankind, and accurately.)
>Penrose Road to Reality (full with advanced math)
The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community
>The Decline of the West (Unabridged)
>Understanding Human History: An Analysis Including the Effects of Geography and Differential Evolution
>Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are
>The Birth of Intersubjectivity: Psychodynamics, Neurobiology, and the Self
>Our Political Nature: The Evolutionary Origins of What Divides Us
>Legality and Legitimacy
>Collapse of Complex Societies
>Trust: The Social Virtue and the Creation of Prosperity
>On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth
>The Myth of Primitivism
>Induction: Processes of Inference
>Quintessence: Basic Readings from the Philosophy of W.V. Quine
>Action in Perception (Noë)
>Metaphor and Thought
>The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Blumenberg)
>The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion
>The Idea of the Holy
>Towards the Noosphere (John M. Dillon)
>Damascius' Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles

>>13929043
Cause and effect is solely an occurrence within taxonomy and does not exist outside an evolved projection of pattern recognition in the human mind that fits our evolutionary needs.