/lit/ - Literature

>>18265895
Is it different translation than penguin? What makes this edition good?

>>18265954
>Is it different translation than penguin?
Yes.

>What makes this edition good?
Each tractate has it's own book with a full commentary by experts like Lloyd Gerson, Stephen Clark and Eric Perl, if it was ever released in full it would be the definitive edition of the Enneads. They started releasing it in 2015 and are up to 19 of 54 tractates.

https://www.parmenides.com/publications/publications-plotinus.html

>>18265971
Are these translation better than Armstrong's on Loeb Classic?

>>18266027
Yes, but they're slightly worse than Lloyd Gersons translation that came out in 2019

So does Gerson think Plotinus leans more towards a theistic or monistic union?

>>18265971
>Gerson and Perl
>not finished

AAAAAAAAAAAAA

>>18266204
monistic i think
in his book on Plotinus he does contrast it with Aquinas' theism but there are many notable similarities

>>18266229
Hmm, that's probably accurate. Always felt like the theistic interpretation was a bit too forced, but Plotinus does give some reasons for thinking he could be in either camp.

I thought the note in the Penguin version introduction was interesting about how the three primary Hypostases can correspond to the three conceptions about God at the time. With World Soul corresponding to the Stoic idea of the imminent Logos, the Nous being Aristotle's Prime Mover which is thought thinking of thinking and finally the One which corresponds to Platos Form of the Good.

>>18266266
desu with Ps. Dionysius all these categories of monism/dualism/theism/pantheism just get utterly obliterated in a manner inclusive of the likes of Aquinas and Maximus on the one hand and Plotinus and Proclus on the other

massively recommend reading "Theophany" by Gerson's collaborator and colleague Eric Perl

>>18266416
yea this note from the Penguins intro was albiet a bit reductive, kind of correct nonetheless
following this logic

>>18266649
Theophany is the best introduction to Neoplatonism I've read. A lot didn't click until I read that.

>>18266649
I need to get around to reading him. I still don't know what to make of a guy larping as Paul's disciple centuries afterwards while plagiarising entire sentences from Proclus.

>>18266649
I read some of Perl and I'm not sure how accurate he really is. It sounded like he was just translating terms and saying they're actually equivalent. He also thinks the Paulist Press edition of the complete Pseudo-Dionysius is a garbage translation, for what it's worth.

Which translation of Pseudo-Dionysius is good btw?

>>18265971

I didn't know Perl was involved in this project. He's great.

This series is based on a similar French effort by the way. Worth looking into if you can read that language.

Also, I love that Parmenides Press operates out of Vegas. Cool place for a center of Platonic activity.

>>18268427

This is your best bet, but it's an old translation done by a religious man lacking in philosophical sensitivity. Key words aren't translated consistently. A critical word might be translated one way in one sentence, and another way in another sentence. It makes it more difficult for the reader to engage with the philosophical concepts.

They need to do a second printing of Coxon's parmenides. Too expensive on the used market.

>>18268484
Is there any edition of Pseudo-Dionysius on the internet? Seems that Pseudo-Dionysius is very unpopular, what is strange.

>>18268567

You'd think there'd be more English translations, but there really haven't been many. There are reasons for this. Basically, Protestants hated the guy, and Catholics were embarrassed by him. That alone explains a couple of hundred years missing scholarship. I'm not exactly certain about why he isn't bigger today though. Early promoters of Plotinus in the 1960's positioned him successfully as an important figure in the history of thought, being a sort of bridge between the ancient world and the Medieval one. Couldn't Dionysius fulfil a similar role?

>>18267218
>I still don't know what to make of a guy larping as Paul's disciple centuries afterwards
There's a pretty strong argument to be made that it was the original Dionysius from Acts. It's more likely that the Platonists stole Dionysius' ideas than the other way around.

>>18268658
There's always Ficino. He's the go to man for understanding how to bridge the gap between Neoplatonism and Christianity. He did a commentary on the Divine Names too.

Is thomas taylors translation any good?

>>18267234
Hes right about the Paulist press translation that's for sure.
If you read his dissertation Methexis on St. Maximus the Confessor, he makes it clear that he's not just drawing equivalencies.
>>18269866
>>18267218
Yea I'm not sure either if the author of the Corpus Areopagiticum was actually pseudo anymore.

If he is, then much of how he writes and his choice to self-insert fanfic himself into scripture and the apostolic tradition makes sense as a kind of apophasis of the "I" - totally coherent with the mysticism he was talking about.

Papa Benedict XVI has a nice paper on this

Rev. John Parker probably made the strongest arguments for the authenticity of the Corpus Areopagiticum and I'm yet to see them fully refuted.

Basically the argument against the authenticity of Dionysius assumes that if St. Jerome and Eusebius didn't mention the works as attributed to Dionysius, it wasn't. As they made no mention of it, the Corpus Areopagiticum must have been later. This gives St. Jerome and Eusebius far broader of a historical scope than is necessary in any sense. It's perfectly possible that there were writings from prior to their time which they either did not mention or did not know about. A good example is Pantaenus who was mentioned by Eusebius but his works were not.

I'd recommend reading the introduction to the Divine Names by Rev. Parker in this copy [its like 8 pages]:


https://1lib.us/book/13107902/21024b

>>18269897
Ficino is great
I just picked up his commentaries on the Enneads and they are amazing desu
>>18268658
read the version here>>18271041

>>18268567
https://sacred-texts.com/chr/dio/index.htm

>>18271041
>Basically the argument against the authenticity of Dionysius assumes that if St. Jerome and Eusebius didn't mention the works as attributed to Dionysius, it wasn't. As they made no mention of it, the Corpus Areopagiticum must have been later.
I notice secular scholars do this a lot with religious texts. It's basically the same reasoning they use to call the gospels "anonymous" despite there being no record of their traditional authorship ever having been disputed and no extant manuscripts that are unnamed or misnamed.

plotinus is great

>>18271382
Who would trust a secular scholar on a subject like this. That's like asking Kim Jung Un for details about the U.S. Constitution

>>18271463
Some people do. They think an academic being secular means they're "neutral".

>>18266032
Why slightly worse?

>>18271382
yea its an incredibly flimsy line of reasoning hey
>>18271463
kek
>>18271761
oh absolutely
the notion of secularism being neutral is a fucking joke
let alone "neutrality" as a concept itself
aside from the most purely deductive metaphysical rationalism perhaps, nothing is neutral

>>18268484
Also note that this "translation" is more paraphrase than an actual translation. French, Italian, German or Dutch translations are superior in every way.

>>18271894
Gersons translation is done to maintain consistency in terminology so every philosophical term is translated the same way. The translation in the Pemenides series is done by the person who is providing the commentary so it's slightly less consistent between volumes whereas the Gerson translation is complete in the one volume by the same team.