PLOTINUS DISCUSSION THREAD

[Anonymous No.11600968]

Anyone else in awe at his gnosis? Plotinus discussion thread, post favorite excerpts from the Enneads, maybe talk about Neoplatonism in general, as well as Plotinus’s overlapping with other philosophies and mystical systems.

>We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing, a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use

>Before we had our becoming here, we existed There, men other than now; we were pure souls. Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, not fenced off, integral to that All. [...] Then it was as if One voice sounded. One word was uttered and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing; now we are become a dual thing, no longer that which we were at first, dormant, and in a sense no longer present.

[Anonymous No.11601149]

>>11600968
first great mystic I read, kinda stopped caring about him for a year or two, back at it now. Plotinus was right about everything

interesting that he was ashamed of his body and believed there was something of an evil principle in matter

[Anonymous No.11601167]

Let's be honest: does anyone here *really* understand Plotinus?

[Anonymous No.11601244]

>>11601167
yes. he's absolutely based

[Anonymous No.11601282]

>>11601244
Alright - lay it out for us. Your time to shine, baby

[Anonymous No.11601324]

>>11601282
expecting an exposition of his whole system would take too much time. basically, the soul divests itself of materiality the more it identifies with/contemplates the One, the universe is a gradated hierarchy of principles contemplating the principles that precede them, superiority is the contemplation of the Origin, the purpose of life is the epistrophe, the return and closing of the circle of emanation and ascent to the One, which gives Being to beings out of its intrinsic overflow like a Sun which emits light without purposiveness but because it can

[Anonymous No.11601336]

>>11601149
>interesting that he was ashamed of his body and believed there was something of an evil principle in matter

But not for the obvious reasons.

>>11594775

>The Gospel of Philip is a perfect example of the Empirical-Positivist-Materialist principle of ineffable conspiracy as actual Ontology, the intersection of lesser polar opposites as functionally generative of the greater whole, a Metadualism. Epistemology splitting and relegating its own prostration to the CHAMBER for the sake of maintaining any barrier between you and the Phenomenal vista. Such is Schizophrenia, and Catholicism.

[Anonymous No.11601519]

>>11600968
Reading Enneads is like reading really good poetry, Plotinus' merging, transformative language excites the mind the way 'inspiration' does. Just a fact. He can become addicting.

[Anonymous No.11601526]

>>11600968
What works by Plotinus should I read if my main goal is to become a better Augustinian?

[Anonymous No.11601563]

>>11601526
There's only the Enneads, get crackin'

[Anonymous No.11601700]

>>11601519
OP here, this feeling while reading the Enneads is exactly what inspired me to make this thread. Glad to know I’m not the only one.

>>11601324
Good summary.

[Motoko No.11601751]

The One is x and it also isn't x, if we were to contain the former predications within a single predicate x2, it also would be x2 and wouldn't be x2 and so on and so forth

Wow

[Anonymous No.11601762]

>>11601519
>>11601563

You're reading him in Greek or does this effect translate? If so, what translation are you reading?

[Anonymous No.11601814]

>>11601762
MacKenna's is aesthetic af and a labor of love

[Anonymous No.11601838]

Is Plato all I need to read in order to understand Plotinus?

[Anonymous No.11601855]

Good to see a Plotinus thread here. I'm greatly excited to start his Enneads.
I assume the only pre-requisite to his work must be Plato's works, right?
I was delving into some past and archived Plotinus threads and came across this:

>All the essences see each other and interpenetrate each other in the most intimate depth of their nautre.

Don't know if the sentence is from him, though.

[Anonymous No.11601887]

Who’s better, Plotinus or Proclus?

[Anonymous No.11601901]

>>11601887
>tfw Proclus' Elements of Theology still hasn't been refuted

[Anonymous No.11601911]

>>11601814

Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.11601947]

>>11601838
>>11601855
He’s pretty understandable (inasmuch as sometimes dense mystical philosophy is understandable) even without having read Plato.

[Anonymous No.11602450]

>>11601324
I read this over a few times. Went and had dinner. Came back and reread: still no clue what Plotinus is about from what you've said.

[Anonymous No.11602582]

>>11600968
Plotinus isn’t a Gnostic, he hatet them.

[Anonymous No.11602755]

>>11600968
Have any of you read Hadot's book on him?

[Anonymous No.11602964]

>>11602450
There is something like “The Absolute” — God, Plato’s highest form, something like that. It’s not good or virtuous in itself because it doesn’t need to be good, it’s already perfect in itself. It has no evil to be good to. Anyway, it radiates out, impartially, just like the sun gives out light and heat without losing anything of its own — it radiates out the world naturally. This emanation is imperfect compared to the creator and is in levels getting lower and lower until it reaches matter. Higher along in it, there’s thought and beauty and virtue — higher stuff than matter which is so good because it’s getting closer to the All/Absolute Principle.

But the Absolute Principle itself transcends all notion of good, beautiful and so on. We try to ourselves be good, beautiful, just etc to reach it because these are stages on the path upward to escape from matter, the lowest level of existence. We do this by impartially contemplating and observing ourselves and being detached from our material nature so we can get closer to our Intellect, the highest part of us which is itself a fragment of the All can can lead us back to the All, where the duality of subject and object is no more: we are that, we are one with the Absolute. Similar to nondual beliefs of Eastern philosophies and religions like Sufism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

[Anonymous No.11603055]

>>11602964
Emanations aren't exactly less perfect. There is a certain freedom of the absolute which allows obsession. It is circuitous but temporary.

[Anonymous No.11603083]

This nigga look like a supervillain

[Anonymous No.11603103]

>>11603055
Yeah, to be technical you could say that, because proper enlightenment is realized it’s all equally valid (or nonvalid), beyond notions of duality, beyond notions of seer and seen, object and subject. For clarity’s sake, though, we say the emanations, sleeping and being on a lower level of consciousness relatively, are “lower” — the same way Buddhists say there’s no difference between enlightened and unenlightened beings but, conventionally, it’s still “bad” to be unenlightened and “good” and desirable to be enlightened.

But yeah, as Plotinus points it, we already have “it” within us — higher consciousness, Divine Intellect — it’s just that we don’t use it, bring it to the light of consciousness. So matter isn’t “lower”, it’s just not cognizant of it’s unity with the Absolute. The Absolute is created by thinking and observing itself — a strange sort of quantum superposition of Subject and Object, Seer and Seen, hovering between the two like Schrödinger’s cat. A paradoxical union of opposites, being All and Nothing, emptiness, at once.

[Anonymous No.11603143]

>>11603103
Well... You are right, I have my own curious semantics. The divine is blinding in splendor, in it's giving, and in awe or addiction we forget to share our selves.

[Anonymous No.11603868]

>>11602582
Gnosis isn't limited to Gnostics, dude.

[Anonymous No.11603899]

>>11601947
Just finished the Enneads and I found this to be totally wrong. Neoplatonism is pretty difficult material without at least a basic working knowledge of Plato and Aristotle, understanding the Platonic conception of justice, platonic categories, the analogy of the divided line, and the form of the Good are pretty important. Aristotelian hylomorphism and his conception of potentiality and actuality are pivotal too. Was also surprised at how much space Plotinus devotes to refuting stoic physics and ethics. His exegesis on Parmenidean thought is also crucial to understanding the unity of thinking and thought in Intellect. You should know your classical philosophy before trying Plotinus

[Anonymous No.11603904]

I swear I've seen that guy in my dreams. I have a recurring dream where I'm taking a shit and it's taking a long time, I start to sweat and get the feeling that someone's watching me. I get paranoid that I'll be caught with my pants down, literally. Then I turn around on the toilet seat, look at the window behind me and fucking PLOTINUS is WATCHING me take a SHIT

[Anonymous No.11603922]

>>11603899
Can you suggest a plausible path to Plotinus? Assume I haven't read the Greeks at all

[Anonymous No.11603945]

>>11603922
Not that guy but if you wanna read Plotinus read some Plato and see if you like it. I personally think Plato->Plotinus is possible, just read some secondary sources on him and google something if it doesn't make sense. The biggest issue with The Enneads isn't just it's content but also it's length, make sure you actually wanna read him because it's gonna take a long time.

[Anonymous No.11603962]

Daily reminder

[Anonymous No.11603986]

>>11603962
lmao, saved

[Anonymous No.11603991]

>>11601751
>>11602964

Imagine two mirrors facing each other. The reflection and the refraction are fully themselves and fully each other. They detract nothing from each other, they do not depend on each other, neither for being fully themselves nor for being fully each other. Imagine a spherical mirror, the "inner" reflective side being God, Mind, Subject, etc. and the "outer" refractive side being the world, the body, objects, etc.

[Anonymous No.11604005]

>>11603991
That's interesting, it sounds very Hegelian.

[Anonymous No.11604011]

>>11603962
Why would the gnostic Demiurge try to save Plotinus from the gnostic Demiurge?

[Anonymous No.11604027]

>>11603103
Holy shit I have to read plotinus

[Anonymous No.11604034]

>>11603962
>Write against people who say the kosmos is evil
>Still write that hyle is evil
Plotinus was jelly

[Anonymous No.11604094]

>>11604011
The gnostic in the picture is Abraxas not the Demiurge

[Anonymous No.11604131]

>>11603962

I think Plotinus is against the Dualism of Gnosticism, not necessarily its introversion.

[Anonymous No.11604149]

>>11604131
The more scholars look at Plotinus, the harder it is to disentangle it from Gnostic thought except in its pessimism. An excellent read: https://archive.org/details/problemofevilinp00fullrich

[Anonymous No.11604166]

>>11602964
There's no reason why the One would diminish as it radiates outwards and its light becoming imperfect and give way to suffering and illusions and also evil. An infinite source of power does not "diminish" or give way to impotence.

>This emanation is imperfect compared to the creator and is in levels getting lower and lower until it reaches matter. Higher along in it, there’s thought and beauty and virtue — higher stuff than matter which is so good because it’s getting closer to the All/Absolute Principle.
There is no ontological divide between "creator" and its "emanation", the emanation is the creator, so whence cometh imperfection?

>Similar to nondual beliefs of Eastern philosophies and religions like Sufism, Taoism, Hinduism, and Buddhism.
They all suffer from this problem of explaining how delusion/imperfection/samsara arises within an allegedly flawless Totality/One that simply expresses itself out of abundance.

Basically they are replacing the "fall of man" with the "fall of the perfect One", at some instance the One stopped pondering itself and became distracted by its emanations and then got sucked up in them and confused and forced to reincarnate over and over believing itself to be distinct individuals...how could this even happen in principle? And what is the guarantee that once the soul "returns" to its source it remains there and doesn't just continually "fall" back into matter again and again....

Of course this doesn't even touch the fact of whether monism is "true", I'm just looking at the implications. There really isn't a way to answer the "how do you know Plotinus was right?" question, because the methodology is pure subjective introspection

[Anonymous No.11604184]

>>11604166

See:

>>11603991

[Anonymous No.11604192]

>>11604166
>They all suffer from this problem of explaining how delusion/imperfection/samsara arises within an allegedly flawless Totality/One that simply expresses itself out of abundance.

Well here's the thing - it actually doesn't. What you and I experience as delusion / dualistic thinking / ego etc. doesn't actually exist, and has never existed, and will never exist, and the only reason it feels like it does is because you haven't realised it doesn't exist *right now.*

It's a mindfuck, to be sure, but then again grasping the true nature of reality always is.

[Anonymous No.11604232]

>>11604192
>What you and I experience as delusion / dualistic thinking / ego etc. doesn't actually exist, and has never existed, and will never exist, and the only reason it feels like it does is because you haven't realised it doesn't exist *right now.*

If monism was correct then there is only one soul, and every realization and thought belongs to it. If delusions/evil/ego didn't actually exist in this soul then there would be no need for anything or anyone to engage in any "realizations" to transcend anything.

>the only reason it feels like it does is because you haven't realised it doesn't exist *right now.*
Or the reason it *feels* like delusion, lies, suffering, evil and ego actually exist is because they actually do exist and manifest often, and are observable, because the world isn't a perfect Monad and we aren't all extensions of an abstract World Soul that has somehow become "confused" for no reason.
Any philosophy that can't distinguish between good and evil, finite and infinite, delusion and wisdom is incoherent. And that's what monism does when it tries to reduce all dualities to delusions or mirages.

[Anonymous No.11604266]

>>11604232
>If monism was correct then there is only one soul
Well, I don't describe myself as a monist precisely because it would logically lead to an understanding like this, which I don't think is necessarily the case

>and every realization and thought belongs to it.
"It" (as much as there's an "it" to begin with) owns nothing, possesses nothing, creates nothing and destroys nothing. It's totally and utterly subverts all distinctions between selfhood and otherhood, owner and owned, etc. I'm not enlightened so I obviously can't put it into better words than that, but my gut tells me the experience of it is much like this.

>there would be no need for anything or anyone to engage in any "realizations" to transcend anything.
Which, funnily enough, is the exact sort of teaching a lot of Zen masters and secular enlightened folk take up. Thinking that "you" need to "get" to the "place" of "the absolute" is exactly what's stopping you from getting to the place of the absolute, lol

>ego actually exist is because they actually do exist and manifest often
Only to the mind unawakened to emptiness, and an mind unawakened to emptiness is still only extant in mind awakaned to emptiness. Again, it sounds like a mindfuck, but that's *precisely the point*, if it could be grasped just by thinking about it, then everyone would be enlightened already.

>Any philosophy that can't distinguish between good and evil, finite and infinite, delusion and wisdom is incoherent. And that's what monism does when it tries to reduce all dualities to delusions or mirages.
Any philosophy breaks down under intense scrutiny and the more you dive into inner psychology to more you see that everything - even including our deepest, core conceptions of "good" and "evil" - are just projections layered onto what is by nature a totally pure, undefiled, illuminating reality. So yes, even things like the holocaust, mass rape, nuclear annihilation and suppression of global warming evidence aren't actually evil, it's just our (limited) minds that make us think this is so.

[Anonymous No.11604273]

>>11603922
Start with some Pre-socratic fragments. Parmenides, Heraclitus and Empedocles are the most important of these. Move on to Plato. Plato is a behemoth himself, but Plotinus uses the later dialogues like Republic, Timaeus, and Parmenides as jumping off points for his discussion. I'd say read the 4 dialogues that make up the trial and death of Socrates first (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo). Read Sophist, which is extremely important. Then finish it off with Republic, Timaeus, Laws, and Parmenides (the second half of which will bewilder you - grasp what you can and move on).

Aristotle is extremely dense but extremely important. His work is heavily interrelated but I'd start off with the Categories before pivoting to Physics, Metaphysics, De Anima, and Nicomachean Ethics. The matter of which concepts we might deem suitable for categorizing, the psyche and the soul and the nature of the divine intellect as postulated by Aristotle are major concerns for Plotinus

As for the Stoics, a collection of Epictetus's writings should do fine. Some say you should have some understanding of the middle platonists and gnostic thought as well, but the footnotes my edition filled in the blanks just fine

[Anonymous No.11604293]

>>11604273
Thanks. Here's a screenshot of this post for anyone else.

[Anonymous No.11604465]

>>11603962
>>11603991
>>11604166
>>11604184

>That mystery is I, and I am that mystery.

[Anonymous No.11604508]

>>11604465
According to Nishida's argument, the thinking self (the acting self) cannot think about itself, just as the eye cannot see itself. We need something other than logic to apprehend the self: it is intuition in the present moment that enables the self to see itself. Nishida defines life as self-identity of contradiction. We must admit that the whole argument of Nishida here is based on Fichte's concept of "deed-act," which involves dialectical process as the essence of self-consciousness. Nishida's line of argument is as follows: since the historical reality includes the acting self, it contains in it a world of contradiction. The self as an acting agent is best understood as the contradiction of determining its own self. To act is to change the external world, which is originally opposed to self, into tools for man's use. Nishida discovers that in the human body contradiction of self and the world is fully met. In our body the acting subject unites with the seen object. Our act is always both subjective and objective. It is subjective because our body is intuited in time, and it is objective because our body is seen as a thing in space. In our act, things become our body, and at the same time our body becomes things. The fact that we become things indicates that we are losing our selves. The compatibility of the contradictory natures in our physical body is the essence of life. Thus life is the self-identity of contradiction. The dialectic of absolute negation implies convertibility of the individual and the universal, and of time and space. Here we find that Nishida employs the logic of illogical Zen, or the "logic of Sokuhi (即非)." The proposition of Zen, "A is not-A," is reiterated in Nishida's concept of life. For Nishida, life contains death, and death is essential to life.

[Anonymous No.11605119]

>>11604232
>>11604166
This is where the classic “darkness doesn’t exist in itself, it’s just the absence of light” begins to make sense. Evil doesn’t exist in itself, it’s just the privation of good.

[Anonymous No.11605138]

>>11605119
(Although, to be even more exact, the One transcends all duality, transcends both good and evil).

[Anonymous No.11605412]

Relating to Plotinus vs. the Gnostics:

The Problem of Evil in the Gnostic sense suffers from a Dual dishonesty. One one hand Evil is actually qualitatively underestimated in that the tenuous connection between bodily harm and pain is mostly ignored, and the awful realization of "idiopathic" suffering is avoided. On the other hand Good is likewise shied away from in the ignorance of Henosis, and the awesome realization of irresistible salvation is likewise avoided. A perfect example of synthesis by negation and why shouldn't do it, its name being most fitting in light of realizing this. As many and as delirious the avenues of misery, as total and as clear God's triumph over them.

Though Plotinus himself ascertains a fundamental Creator-Creation boundary, and thus a fundamental Dualism whether he admits it or not so...

Overflow, emanation, free will, or "desire to be born" can be subsumed into the simple idea that perfection has nothing to fear, nothing to hide, and neither reason to keep itself to itself, nor means to keep itself from itself even through oblivion.

[Anonymous No.11605663]

>>11604508
absolutely based, very Hegelian too. I always like to put it this way: the eye can't see itself except as just the /act/ of seeing

[Anonymous No.11606231]

[Anonymous No.11606611]

[Anonymous No.11606665]

>>11604232
In Advaita Vedanta at least this is the wrong understanding. There is only the infinite Brahman which is undivided in an absolute sense, although it can conventionally be separated into the manifest and the unmanifest. All states of manifestation and all possible distinctions exist only conventionally/as illusions within It, and all manifestation is considered as nil in comparision to the infinite nature of the unmanifest (while Brahman in its entirety includes and is beyond both). Brahman is made of pure awareness, but not the kind that engages in discursive thought, simply pure awareness without any distinction of subject-object, a helpful symbol for picturing it is the ouroboros. The mind, memory, thoughts, the body etc are all regarded as being part of manifestation and are all equally as illusionary as the rest of it. The only real aspect of beings is the Atma residing at the heart of them, observing them without being affected by anything (Atma, being the same as Brahman is also pure unchanging awareness).

>If monism was correct then there is only one soul, and every realization and thought belongs to it.

Atma does not engage in realization or thought, but rather it is the multiplicity of minds existing conventionally within Brahman that do. One text uses the metaphor of the moon (Atma) causing in the water (manifestation) a reflected image of the moon in the water (mind) which is dependent on the moon for its illusionary existence and which does not affect the moon at all, and just as the moon can cause many separate reflections while remaining unchanged and One, so the one Atma can cause a multitude of separate and illusionary minds.

>If delusions/evil/ego didn't actually exist in this soul then there would be no need for anything or anyone to engage in any "realizations"

Just because manifestation is not strictly real does not mean that it is not a greatly-degraded state of being compared to the One remaining as itself. The knowledge that we are part of the all-pervading whole and not really separate does not change that we seem to experience suffering and decay. Though only existing conventionally the illusion of individuality is self-perpetuating in how it leads from one life to another and it's incumbent upon the conventionally-existing 'individual' to attain liberation. The mind itself does not attain knowledge of the complete truth (which is beyond the subject-object distinction) but rather there is a process of destroying illusion until all everything is perceived as just transient superimpositions of form upon Atma, which as well as animating the being is the substratum of everything. The self-perpetuating illusion destroys the root of its continued existence so that only the Atma giving a (conventional) reality to this illusion remains. One metaphor used to illustrate how an illusion can end itself is how the grating togather of bamboo trees in the wind can cause a spark which then burns down the forest.

[Anonymous No.11607056]

>>11605119
>privation of evil
Damn now I’m hearing Spinoza in this guy. Actually the emanation of the one really sounds like infinite substance expressing itself through modes. I really gotta read this guy now he sounds like a mix of Hegel, Buddhism and Spinoza. Did this guy really write in the 3rd century?

[Anonymous No.11607078]

>>11607056
*privation of good

[Anonymous No.11607217]

How much does Plotinus have in common with Advaita/Madhyamaka/Daosim?

[Anonymous No.11607239]

>>11604508
Sounds nice, where is this from? What writings of the Man Nishida are there? ( I don't know anything about him )

[Anonymous No.11607245]

>>11607239
>According to Masao Abe, "During World War II right wing thinkers attacked him as antinationalistic for his appreciation of Western philosophy and logic. But after the war left wing thinkers criticized his philosophy as nationalistic because of his emphasis on the traditional notion of nothingness.
Kek, fucking horseshoes

[Anonymous No.11607276]

>>11607239
He was a zen philosopher who incorporated Hegel into his ideas during the Meiji era when German Idealism was making big waves in Japan. Zen and Hegel have some interesting similarities which I was reading about here: http://enlight lib ntu edu tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/ew27066 htm. I had just read that article the other day and this thread reminded me of it.

[Anonymous No.11607689]

>>11607217
Plotinus is perhaps the single closet thing to Advaita Vedanta in western thought, the same could be partially extended to Daosim insofar as most of the descriptions of the Dao/principle in the Zhuangzi are identical with Upanishad descriptions of Brahman. Buddhism in its origin largely just took the metaphysics of the Upanishads and put a different spin on this and so later Buddhist schools are either closer to or farther away from this influence depending on their respective innovations; by extension the one with ideas that bring them closer to Vedanta are generally closer to Neoplatonism (Theravada being an example of one that's farther away from it).

[Anonymous No.11608663]

courtesy bump

[Anonymous No.11609484]

>>11600968
Name 3 reasons why Zoroastrianism didn't do it better when it comes to The One?

[Anonymous No.11610064]

>>11609484
Can you provide any quotes or samples from Zoro texts that talk about the One? Is it clearly stated anywhere that Ahura Mazda and Ahriman are aspects of the same principle? I see people posting that its actually monist/non-dualist but nobody seems to have any source to back up what they're saying.

[Anonymous No.11610718]

[Anonymous No.11610740]

Degeneration.....

[Anonymous No.11611051]

>>11610738
>>11611039

[Anonymous No.11611110]

The One is a "sun" that emanates the hierarchy of being into infinite night of chaos. The absolute is a spotlight in the void that creates form and symmetry wherever it gazes, simultaneously defining its Outside: sight is the mother of darkness. That is, Plotinus locates evil somewhere in the relation between soul and body, and not squarely in the material principle itself, like with Schelling. Schelling knew evil wasn't a consequence of being's self-privation but the condition of freedom itself, freedom as the (self-)transgression of the neutral prereflexive medium of nature, applied metaphysically we can say God is a recursivity in the Naught that, like a cell's membrane, converts non-being into intelligibility by way of its self-identity A = A: Ouroborous.

God is a Boltzmann brain that collapses the null into intelligibility. Plotinus' Intellect thinks itself as it goes; the intelligibility of the Forms is the very condition of its thinking. Thought is intelligible because the intelligible is thought. Systems articulate themselves out of an abyssal Depth in and through the immanent consistency of their ontological syntax. The Intellect is an infinitely self-reflected mirror contemplating itself as just this contemplation.

[Anonymous No.11611162]

The physical universe is nestled at the fringes of being's gradation into non-being. Mysticism is the reflexivity of the Center: because God just is the self-identity of his Sense (paradoxically constituted by his non-identity with the 0, if we're gonna get into Hegel), religion is fundamentally the self-relating of God. Always keeping Him in mind, and to keep Him in mind to keep the Origin in mind, with death to go. Every being not only performs but just is this reflexive longing for the Good: evil is this longing become thirst. Orpheus looks back and loses the object = x because he looked back, he lives inside desire and desire is a looking back also. Memory is the mother of addiction, obsession wants to touch the core even atoms don't.

Ultimately suffering in Buddhism is a consequence of self-denial: the denial of the anatman's essential transience, non-existence, that the self produces death in/as the waste of its own propulsion. There's a higher way: you look back until it's your back you see. You can't save yourself by walking the world, the universe is bounded, the trick is to climb high enough to see the loop for what it is, because every loop is cut by your seeing: Hegel's radicalization of Kant. (Properly) looking back is the epistrophe. One times one is one.

[Anonymous No.11611175]

>in the highest life, the life of Intellect, where we find the highest form of desire, desire is eternally satisfied by contemplation of the One through the entire array of Forms that are internal to it. Soul is the principle of desire for objects that are external to the agent of desire.


Desire is the reflexivity of the One turned outwards, towards the edge of its illumination. Porn is a dark goddess.

[Anonymous No.11611806]

>>11610064

Zoroastrianism was the first monotheistic religion which is why Ahura Mazda literally translates as Time-Space, i.e everything that surrounds us while at the same time being flanked by good and evil being in perpetual battle

[Anonymous No.11612743]

>>11601700
There are some writers that help one's own writing, and Plotinus is definitely one of them. A few surprising ones- Adam Smith (his perspectivism), Charles Darwin (he's kind of an entry level Plotinus!), and Joseph Addison (for more than a single reason). They are not only of interest for what they convey, but HOW they convey what they do. Along these lines Adam Smith helps prepare one for Nietzsche (a master perspectivist who attempts to carry many of his points aesthetically or 'through the senses,' e.g. that smells bad..) as he too is one, but of a far more simple type.

[Anonymous No.11612910]

>>11611806
So are you basing that just on the etymology of the name or does it actually explicitly say in any of the canonical texts that Ahura Mazda is everything and that we are part of it? I'm genuinely curious but already have big reading list and don't want to order and read a bunch of Zoro texts if there is no basis for it,

[Anonymous No.11614641]

>The Good is He who gives all things and naught receives. God, then, doth give all things and receive naught. God, then, is Good, and Good is God.

[Anonymous No.11615206]

>>11601901
Has Plotinus' Enneads been refuted?

[Anonymous No.11615431]

>>11615206
Well there are disagreements within the tradition itself - like Iamblichus strongly rejecting the gnostic connotations of the undescended portion of the human soul - and other traditions reject Platonism outright, but yeah, if youre not a soullet, no they never have

[Anonymous No.11615487]

Thoughts on Hermeticism?

[Anonymous No.11615576]

>>11612910
Not who you were talking to, but I came across the 101 names of God and their meanings. Here are the ones that seem relevant:
>Abadeh (Without Beginning)
>Abi-anjam (Without End)
>Frakhtan-taih (Endless Bliss)
>Jamaga (Primal Cause)
>Ain-aenah (Never Changing)
>An-aenah (Formless)
>Harvastum (All in All)
>A-dui/A-Duee (One Without a Second/Without Duality)
>Ham-Chum (Ever the Same)
>A-jaman/A-Jamaan (Ageless/Timeless)

[Anonymous No.11615586]

>>11615576
Source:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_Names_of_God

[Anonymous No.11615781]

>>11615586
>Yazad - Worthy of Worship

God not as Ontological tyrant barricaded behind countless terrors but as the Good itself, the immanent and free principle of principles.

[Anonymous No.11616450]

"Now, therefore, amēn, I say unto you: Every man who will receive that mystery of the Ineffable and accomplish it in all its types and all its figures,--he is a man in the world, but he towereth above all angels and will tower still more above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all archangels and will tower still more above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all tyrants and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all lords and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all gods and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all light-givers and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all pure [ones] and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all triple-powers and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all forefathers and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all invisibles and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above the great invisible forefather and will raise himself above him.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above all those of the Midst and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above the emanations of the Treasury of the Light and will raise himself above them all.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above the Mixture. and will raise himself entirely above it.

"He is a man in the world, but he towereth above the whole region of the Treasury and will raise himself entirely above it.

"He is a man in the world, but he will rule with me in my kingdom.

"He is a man in the world, but he is king in the Light.

"He is a man in the world, but he is not one of the world.

"And amēn, I say unto you: That man is I and I am that man.

[Anonymous No.11616546]

>For truly first of all, eternal and transcending birth, is God the universals’ Maker. Second is he “after His image,” Cosmos, brought into being by Him, sustained and fed by Him, made deathless, as by his own Sire, living for aye, as ever free from death.

>Now that which ever-liveth, differs from the Eternal; for He hath not been brought to being by another, and even if He have been brought to being, He hath not been brought into being by Himself, but ever is brought into being.

>after His image
>ever is brought into being
>after His image
>ever is brought into being
>after His image
>ever is brought into being
>after His image
>ever is brought into being
>after His image
>ever is brought into being
>after His image
>ever is brought into being

[Anonymous No.11616560]

>>11615576
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_Names_of_God

Interesting, those are all identical with Upanishad descriptions of Brahman. It would seem that Zoroastrianism was even less of a split from Hinduism as commonly thought.

>tfw the root of the downfall of western thought was when the Kikes misunderstood Zoroastrianism and inserted dualism into their larping version of it after the Persians freed them from babylon; resulting in western society being characterized by dualistic thought in a way that cut it off from the non-dualistic wisdom of the Indo-Europeans

[Anonymous No.11616593]

>>11616560
the innate kike receptivity to what is evil and base probably had a lot to do this, remember that for them the Fall was a seduction, by Nature/Woman/Matter, whereas for the Greeks it was a punished ascent: Prometheus stealing fire from the gods

[Anonymous No.11616609]

>>11616560
Yet again, the jews are to blame.

[Anonymous No.11617284]

>>11616560
Zoroastrians were dualist monists tho. Like, aside a monotheistic god it was also accompanied by angels as the good guys and demons as the bad guys, so the israelites just took this theological template, and developed it by inserting into it various tribal folk beliefs. One of which, was judgement after death, taken from the ancient egyptians.

It was only Jesus that truly understood the true nature of the monotheistic god of the Zoroastrians, as well as the true meaning behind the battle of good vs evil

[Anonymous No.11618463]

>>11600968
Bumpin

[Anonymous No.11618583]

>>11617284
>It was only Jesus that truly understood the true nature of the monotheistic god of the Zoroastrians, as well as the true meaning behind the battle of good vs evil

Yes, but his demonstration of his understanding of that in his recorded talks was so lacking that the vast majority of church denominations will deny that's the actual nature of god. The only exceptions are certain strains influenced by Platonism/Neoplatonism and even then that's just a few thinkers and mystics which the church hierarchy still will deny it. If he really did understand it then he sure didn't do a great job of clearly explaining it to his disciples.

[Anonymous No.11619136]

>>11618583
>Yes, but his demonstration of his understanding of that in his recorded talks was so lacking that the vast majority of church denominations will deny that's the actual nature of god.

That's because most churches and most priests are from mentally primitive country with a lack of abstract thinking which base their understanding of god from the jewish bible, whereas in the NT he is exactly the way he was suppose to be, with a universal nature

>The only exceptions are certain strains influenced by Platonism/Neoplatonism and even then that's just a few thinkers and mystics which the church hierarchy still will deny it

That's the entire fundamental basis for the entire Orthodox Church tho and one of the main things that differentiate it from the western church.

> If he really did understand it then he sure didn't do a great job of clearly explaining it to his disciples.

He explained it pretty good, at least when i read the NT

[Anonymous No.11619301]

>"If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

[Anonymous No.11619476]

>[Some] confess that the Father of all contains all things, and that there is nothing whatever outside of the Pleroma (for it is an absolute necessity that, [if there be anything outside of it,] it should be bounded and circumscribed by something greater than itself), and that they speak of what is without and what within in reference to knowledge and ignorance, and not with respect to local distance; but that, in the Pleroma, or in those things which are contained by the Father, the whole creation which we know to have been formed, having been made by the Demiurge, or by the angels, is contained by the unspeakable greatness, as the centre is in a circle, or as a spot is in a garment . . . .
So much for Gnostic "dualism"

[Anonymous No.11619751]

>>11604266
>dude, lobotomise yourself lmao

[Anonymous No.11619753]

>>11604508
Cool word salad bro.

[Anonymous No.11619797]

>>11607056
Sophistry is perennial.

[Anonymous No.11619848]

>>11619797
>spinoza
>excommunicated
>barred from teaching
>Plotinus
>lived like a weird monk
>works only survived due to his student
The only person who could qualify as a sophist is Hegel.

[Anonymous No.11619874]

>>11619136
Yes, but compared to how explicitly and directly the subject is explained at points in the Zhuangzi or the Upanishads he could have done a better job. Orthodox Christianity is based IMO but if the message is so vague/indirect in its parables that the largest church denomination on the planet disagrees with it that's kind of a problem.

[Anonymous No.11620057]

>>11619751
It’s not self-lobotomization, not at all. It’s learning how to be able to stop or detach from a morass of contradictory, unfocused and rambling thoughts and emotions which split us off from perceiving reality more directly. Actually, studies of meditators show they have stronger brains in various respects than non-meditators.

>>11619874
The Gnostic works as quoted in >>11619301 were suppressed pretty brutally by mainstream Christians who were themselves being oppressed by the Romans. These Gnostic works give generally more sophisticated explanations of such stuff as you’re talking about. (Conspiracy theory time: I think it’s these works which show even more genuine facets of Christ’s teachings, although I also respect and appreciate the wisdom of the Gospels greatly). You’re right it’s an issue that the mainstream churches can’t understand Jesus — but then again, He says He speaks in parables so that the masses won’t understand Him, and that not everyone who calls on Him and performed miracles on His name will be saved.

[Anonymous No.11620388]

>>11619874
I completely agree, there definitely needs to be a more clearer message when it comes to Christ's teachings, but unfortunately, most, if not all orthodox christian priests prefer to indulge into the lazy explanation that god's nature is "mystical" and for some reason should remain that way.

What OC needs is scholarly learned priests to keep sending the message of the Good News further

[Anonymous No.11620421]

>>11601324
>says ‘basically’
>actually makes no sense
Every fucking time

[Anonymous No.11620447]

>>11620421
What would Zizek think of Plotinus?

[Anonymous No.11620452]

>>11602755
Hadot is amazing.

[Anonymous No.11620463]

>>11620447
What would plontius think of zizek ?

[Anonymous No.11620485]

>>11620447
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n02/malcolm-bull/hate-is-the-new-love

[Anonymous No.11620502]

>>11615487
Possibly the source of (neo-)Platonism... yes?

[Anonymous No.11620516]

>>11620463
>This man, known as Zizek, proves to be the immovable thorn in the side of my understanding of the cosmos. Truly no person can speak so readily in the name of the Good with such accuracy and beauty and yet fail to grasp the nature of the Good countless times over if the Good was truly said to exist. It is therefore that I abandon my quest for God and devote myself to caressing the forms of sweet Berber children.

[Anonymous No.11620522]

>His disciples said to him, "When will the repose of the dead come about, and when will the new world come?" He said to them, "What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognize it."

[Anonymous No.11620594]

>>11620057
>Actually, studies of meditators show they have stronger brains in various respects than non-meditators.

Those are garbage studies, like most studies in psychology.

[Anonymous No.11620758]

1/20

[Anonymous No.11620762]

>>11620758
2/20

[Anonymous No.11620795]

>>11620762
3/20

[Anonymous No.11620799]

>>11620795
4/20

[Anonymous No.11620803]

>>11620799
5/20

[Anonymous No.11620807]

>>11620803
6/20

[Anonymous No.11620813]

>>11620807
7/20

[Anonymous No.11620821]

>>11620813
8/20

[Anonymous No.11620827]

>>11620821
9/20

[Anonymous No.11620830]

>>11620827
10/20

[Anonymous No.11620837]

>>11620830
11/20

[Anonymous No.11620843]

>>11620837
12/20

[Anonymous No.11620848]

>>11620843
13/20

[Anonymous No.11620851]

>>11620848
14/20

[Anonymous No.11620860]

>>11620851
15/20

[Anonymous No.11620866]

>>11620860
16/20

[Anonymous No.11620871]

>>11620866
17/20

[Anonymous No.11620877]

>>11620843
>>11620848
>>11620851
>>11620860
>>11620866
>it's a series of a shitskin pretends to read post

[Anonymous No.11620878]

>>11620871
18/20

[Anonymous No.11620881]

Before anyone asks, it looks like Paulina Remes' book on Neoplatonism

[Anonymous No.11620886]

>>11620878
you forgot your pic

[Anonymous No.11620897]

>>11620878
Retry: 18/20
>>11620877
I thought I would offer free knowledge since I bought and enjoyed the book and found it helpful. Idk if anyone will read it but I am bored and feel like being helpful.

[Anonymous No.11620898]

>>11620881
Correct.
>>11620897
19/20

[Anonymous No.11620905]

>>11620898
20/20

[Anonymous No.11620919]

The words had all been spoken
And somehow the feeling still wasn't right
And still we continued on through the night
Tracing our steps from the beginning
Until they vanished into the air
Trying to understand how our lives had led us there

Looking hard into your eyes
There was nobody I'd ever known
Such an empty surprise
To feel so alone

Now for me some words come easy
But I know that they don't mean that much
Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch
You never knew what I loved in you
I don't know what you loved in me
Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be

Awake again I cant pretend
And I know I'm alone
And close to the end
Of the feeling we've known

How long have I been sleeping?
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been dreaming I could make it right
If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might
To be the one you need

Awake again, I cant pretend
I know I'm alone
And close to the end
Of the feeling we've known

How long have I been sleeping?
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been running for that morning flight
Through the whispered promises and the changing light
Of the bed where we both lie
Late for the sky

[Anonymous No.11620987]

>>11620877
Also, lol. I'm a pale cracker. It's just the lighting.

[Anonymous No.11621011]

>>11600968
>>We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing, a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use
>THAT quote

>2 Corinthians 5:16
>"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"
pic related. Good thread OP.

[Anonymous No.11621117]

Neoplatonism is a mystic degeneration of philosophy proper. Fite me.

[Anonymous No.11621129]

>>11621117
We can't all study the ancient Atlantean oracles

[Anonymous No.11621130]

"This direction of consciousness back into itself takes the form―very markedly in Plato―of asserting that man can learn nothing, virtue included, and that not because the latter has no relation to science. For the good does not come from without, Socrates shows; it cannot be taught, but is implied in the nature of mind. That is to say, man cannot passively receive anything that is given from without like the wax that is moulded to a form, for everything is latent in the mind of man, and he only seems to learn it. Certainly everything begins from without, but this is only the beginning; the truth is that this is only an impulse towards the development of spirit. All that has value for men, the eternal, the self-existent, is contained in man himself, and has to develop from himself. To learn here only means to receive knowledge of what is externally determined. This external comes indeed through experience, but the universal therein belongs to thought, not to the subjective and bad, but to the objective and true. The universal in the opposition of subjective and objective, is that which is as subjective as it is objective; the subjective is only particular, the objective is similarly only a particular as regards the subjective, but the universal is the unity of both. According to the Socratic principle, nothing has any value to men to which the spirit does not testify. Man in it is free, is at home with himself, and that is the subjectivity of spirit. As it is said in the Bible, "Flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone," that which is held by me as truth and right is spirit of my spirit. But what spirit derives from itself must come from it as from the spirit which acts in a universal manner, and not from its passions, likings, and arbitrary desires. These, too, certainly come from something inward which is "implanted in us by nature," but which is only in a natural way our own, for it belongs to the particular; high above it is true thought, the Notion, the rational. Socrates opposed to the contingent and particular inward, that universal, true inward of thought. And Socrates awakened this real conscience, for he not only said that man is the measure of all things, but man as thinking is the measure of all things. With Plato we shall, later on, find it formulated that what man seems to receive he only remembers."

―Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Greek Philosophy to Plato

[Anonymous No.11621134]

>>11621117
Not entirely wrong, but what came later from it has been interesting. Seems to all rest on a foundation of an unproveable assumption, yeah, but the bits in common with other wisdom traditions are interesting.

[Anonymous No.11621147]

"Dialectic, it may be added, is no novelty in philosophy. Among the ancients Plato is termed the inventor of Dialectic; and his right to the name rests on the fact that the Platonic philosophy first gave the free scientific, and thus at the same time the objective, form to dialectic. Socrates, as we should expect from the general character of his philosophizing, has the dialectical element in a predominantly subjective shape, that of Irony. He used to turn his Dialectic, first against ordinary consciousness, and then especially against the Sophists. In his conversations he used to simulate the wish for some clearer knowledge about the subject under discussion, and after putting all sorts of questions with that intent, he drew on those with whom he conversed to the opposite of what their first impressions had pronounced correct. If, for instance, the Sophists claimed to be teachers, Socrates by a series of questions forced the sophist Protagoras to confess that all learning is only recollection. In his more strictly scientific dialogues Plato employs the dialectical method to show the finitude of all hard and fast terms of understanding. Thus in the *Parmenides* he deduces the many from the one, and shows nevertheless that the many cannot but define itself as the one. In this grand style did Plato treat Dialectic. In modern times it was, more than any other, Kant who resuscitated the name of Dialectic, and restored it to its post of honour. He did it, as we have seen, by working out the Antinomies of the reason. The problem of these Antinomies is no mere subjective piece of work oscillating between one set of grounds and another; it really serves to show that every abstract proposition of understanding, taken precisely as it is given, naturally veers round into its opposite."

—Hegel's Logic, Being Part One of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830)

[Anonymous No.11621187]

>>11621129
Atlantean oracles can be fascinating but Platonism's primary value is scientific not mystic.
>>11621134
It is interesting to compare so long as one does not draw overwrought conclusions about primordial traditions.

[Anonymous No.11621464]

>The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us how our end will come to pass." Jesus said, "Then have you laid bare the beginning, so that you are seeking the end? For the end will be where the beginning is. Blessed is the person who stands at rest in the beginning. And that person will be acquainted with the end and will not taste death."

[Anonymous No.11621661]

>>11621117
Completely reverse the picture from top to bottom and you have the truth.

[Anonymous No.11621667]

>>11620594
Elaborate.

Oh wait, you won’t and I won’t get a response, classic /lit/. Fling shit, don’t explain your reasoning, and promptly withdraw.

[Anonymous No.11621706]

>>11621117
Western philosophy is a degeneration of Neoplatonism proper. Reverse the picture from top to bottom and you have the truth. The influence of the Greek Mystery Schools on Plato is underrated. He does not deify reasoning in itself beyond the fact that it can be used to order one’s faculties so one can imitate and be like the One. The mysterious heart behind Plato’s works is actually that man has to order his faculties to escape from the pull of irrationality and matter and attain ecstatic union with the One. Western philosophy is a bastardization of its metaphysical roots, glorifying the useless repetition of shallow reasoning without a wider view of reality.

[Anonymous No.11622169]

>>11621706
That was inevitable because thise ideas sprung from a few independent thinkers instead of forming the basis of a revealed religion, the only way to properly ensure those ideas are transmitted throughout the ages is to have them as part of a religious tradition. Examples of this being done right would be Hinduism, Daoism and Zoroastrianism, which were all teaching non-dualistic ideas before Plotinus and in some cases before Plato and the pre-Socratics. The arising of philosophy as a degeneration of Neoplatonism is correct, but Neoplatonism itself is a degeneration of traditionally religious non-dualism because of it not being a major aspect of any established and traditional religion, ensuring that it would only be a passing fad (albiet an influential one) rather than a living tradition that has been preserved to the present day as are Hinduism, Daoism and Sufism. Plato and other traveling Greeks may have even received an initation in this knowledge by the Egyptians, Persians or Indians but without it being central to a religion it just became one of dozens of ideas which were popular and then faded away.

[Anonymous No.11622239]

>>11621706
absolutely based

[Anonymous No.11622336]

>>11621667
They had laughably bad methodology (low number of subjects, poor controls, poor measures etc etc etc).
Putting a handful of monks' heads through a scanner does not a study make.

[Anonymous No.11622341]

>>11621706
Neoplatonism is a profound misunderstanding of Plato and the fact that it is associated with him in the first place is one of history's greatest crimes and tragedies. Western philosophy was born when neoplatonism died (starting with St. Augustine).

The ancient Greeks are sui generis.

[Anonymous No.11622349]

This thread is full to the brim with pseuds.

[Anonymous No.11622444]

>>11622341
“Neo”Platonism is what Plato actually taught, more or less. I understand your reservations completely but there’s some things it’s hard to understand about Plato from a strictly academic viewpoint. His works are esoteric. The Republic is a work of spiritual psychology, for instance.

>>11622169
This is Guenon’s shtick, right? I’m all for the perennial philosophy idea but not quite for Traditionalism. I see nothing “corrupt” in Neoplatonism, Plotinus wrote of non-duality and mystical self-transformation excellently, he was a mystic par excellence. I don’t think wisdom has to be bound up so strictly in religious forms; in fact, this can kill instead of propagate the spirit at times. The great truths are beyond labels and forms. Plotinus’s enlightenments are not invalid just because they’re not part of a mainstream religion. And evidence points to some esoteric schools/the Greek Mystery Schools playing a heavy role in all this.

[Anonymous No.11622491]

>>11622169
>Hinduism, Daoism and Zoroastrianism
Lol. Zoroastrianism is deader than Neoplatonism. And the spooky bullshit in religious Taoism seems to contradict the idea that the religion is more pure than the philosophy considered apart from it. Hinduism as it is currently known is roughly contemporaneous with Presocratics unless you wanna make a bad faith argument about the vedas being formalized metaphysics and more than mere ritual hymns.

[Anonymous No.11622507]

>>11622444
>“Neo”Platonism is what Plato actually taught, more or less.

[Anonymous No.11622514]

Did you reach the ecstatic union with the One yet?

[Anonymous No.11622519]

>>11600968
Nobody talkin bout philo

[Anonymous No.11622875]

>>11622491

>Lol. Zoroastrianism is deader than Neoplatonism.

Yes, that's why I mentioned it in the list of ones that were pre-plotinus but not in the second list of ones I gave that are still alive today.

>And the spooky bullshit in religious Taoism seems to contradict the idea that the religion is more pure than the philosophy considered apart from it.

Not sure what you meant by this. My point was that religious non-dualism is not more 'pure' than the philosophical variety, but rather that it's a better vehicle for carrying it because it actually ensures its continuation and it better meshes with the overall culture. A philosophy is always going to be a specialized teaching that only a few study and it will always have a comparatively high chance of fading into irrelevance. When there are non-dualistic texts/teachings at the heart of a traditional and popular religion it allows for the masses to fulfill their religious needs while simultaneously offering in the same religion an extremely profound and subtle teaching for most intelligent in every society who are capable of deeply understanding it, both the masses and the brightest participate in the same religious tradition and the latter make it more accessible for the former by composing texts and commentaries that enriches their experience, this is what underlies a lot of the eastern mentality; where many of the masses of average intelligence people still have a rough understanding of very profound concepts because they share the same religion as brilliant people who made the profound teaching at the heart of it more accessible.

>Hinduism as it is currently known is roughly contemporaneous with Presocratics unless you wanna make a bad faith argument about the vedas being formalized metaphysics and more than mere ritual hymns.

That's wrong actually. There were only a few 7th C. BC pre-socratics, with the vast majority being 6th-5th C. BC. There are profound Hindu texts pre-dating all of the pre-Socratics which contain the seed of almost all later developments in Hindu thought. The Chandogya and Brihadaranyaka Upanishads are some of the oldest, largest and most important of the primary Upanishads. The entire basis for Hindu non-dualism such as Advaita Vedanta can be found in them. Scholars give Chandogya a rough estimate of 800-600 BC and Brihadaranyaka between 900-600 BC, and they openly admit the texts or parts of them could be older because they were likely assembled from other preexisting texts passed down orally.

[Anonymous No.11622880]

>>11622491
>>11622875

Then there are the Vedas themselves, which contain the seed of the ideas in the Upanishads, the idea that the Vedas are just ritual instructions and religious hymns is only a meme. The Vedas predate every significant Greek thought, and were composed before the fall of the Minoan civilization. They're not as explicit as the Upanishads because they take the ideas in it for granted but you have occasional passages explicitly saying that kind of stuff and many others hinting at it in the same way that one can find passages subtly hinting at mystical platonic/eastern ideas in Jesus's gospels. As an example of what I'm talking about:

>Lord of creation! no one other than thee pervades all these that have come into being. May that be ours for which our prayers rise, may we be masters of many treasures!

Rig-Veda 10.121.10

>All this is He-what has been and what shall be. He is the Lord of immortality. Though He has become all this, in reality He is not all this. For truly, He is beyond the world. The whole series of universes-past, present, and future-express His glory and power; but He transcends His own glory. All beings of the universe form, as it were, only a portion of His being; the greater part is invisible and unchangeable. He who is beyond all predicates appears as the relative universe; He appears as all sentient and insentient beings.

Rig-Veda x.90.1-5

>"Without any want, contemplative, immortal, self-originated, sufficed with a quintessence, lacking in naught whatever: lie who knoweth that constant, ageless, and ever-youthful Spirit, knoweth indeed himSelf, and feareth not to die.

Atharva Veda x.8.44

[Anonymous No.11622892]

>>11622507
I came to that conclusion independent of the work of the Tubingen School, which more or less says the same thing. Plato had an oral component to his teachings he didn’t deem fit to write down. He also had an esoteric component to his written teachings.

[Anonymous No.11622918]

>>11622880
Dope. What do you make of the Egyptian and the Mesopotamians? Surely if you want to argue for a primordial tradition you cannot focus on indo-europeans only... Uzdavinys treats this idea but his books are quite heady and I get stuck on his endless vocabulary dumps.

Not to mention, philosophy predates the presocratics if you take the speculations of Kingsley seriously. Philosophy derives from an earlier shamanic, oral, and esoteric tradition according to him.


I wonder how the American fit in as well. Supposedly Understanding a World in Motion is good but I haven't read it. Seems very Tao-ish. African comparison is neat too. Stratton-Kent does this well.

What do you make of Judaism?

I hope you don't have some antisemitic, antichristian, antiscience, antiphilosophy, antimodern mentality...

[Anonymous No.11622919]

>The lifestyle of Plotinus was celibate, and it is clear that he opposed orators who expressed sensual preoccupations
>Plotinus was not alone in rejecting the flesh: as is well known, this attitude was common in late antiquity. It is this enviroment which gives birth to Christian Celibacy
Chaste and breadpilled

[Anonymous No.11623140]

>>11622514
Well, no one knows for sure what was Plotinus ACTUALLYdoingduring these moments of mystical union with the One, so now all we can do is speculate on hypotetical possibilities.

[Anonymous No.11623147]

>>11622918
I think the Mesopotamians and Egyptians were definitely onto something but with both of them and especially the Mesopatamians it's hard to tell exactly what because so much was lost and it's so long ago. I've heard Uzdavinkys books that mention Egypt are good and also Schwaller de Lubicz's 'Temple of Man'. I don't think only the Indo-Euros were 'right' or whatever and as an example the Chinese with Daoism came to mostly the same conclusions as Vedanta on their own, although they played a huge role in recorded history with how the I.E. traditions gave birth to Hinduism>Buddhism and also Zoroastrianism>Judaism>Christianity/Islam. I would assume the Mayans/Aztecs were bright enough to have metaphysical insights if they were so good at astronomy.

>What do you make of Judaism?
The evidence would suggest that most of it's major doctrines actually come from Zoroastrianism. I don't deny that the Jews could have realized some perennial wisdom on their own but I have not seen any evidence for it being present in Jewish thought before they were ruled as a subject peoples of Persia. This is not to belittle Judaism and in the course of adapting it the ideas aquired a slightly different context/form suitable to the Jews but the facts remain as they are.

>I hope you don't have some antisemitic, antichristian, antiscience, antiphilosophy, antimodern mentality...
These are not all related and dependent upon one another. The deeper implication of studying Neoplatonism/Vedanta makes any sort of ingrained hatred irrelevent because everything is fundamentally the same. I agree with much of the points the traditionalist authors make about science and modernity but that doesn't mean I want everyone to have horrible lives as peasants doing backbreaking work all day. There is a middle ground where scientism/new athiesm/nihilism/bland and empty religion is not the Zeitgeist but where you can still have nice lives. The Islamic, Indian and East-Asian worlds all had golden eras with wise and fair rulers who had low-taxes, widespread welfare/charity, relatively sophisticated advances in medicine, leisurely activities, the arts etc. It's more just a matter of getting the starting principles right which is where the west/modernity went wrong.

[Anonymous No.11623156]

such a great thread

[Anonymous No.11623157]

>>11623147
Based and readpilled

[Anonymous No.11623227]

>>11601519
Interesting to encounter a Plotinus thread. It seems like nobody I interact with in real life ever talks about him. For me, reading the Enneads often feels like a tough hike through the mountains, scrambling up steep grades, navigating fields of boulders, looking down into deep, unfathomed precipices, but every now and then a certain passage seems to open up a vista where I can see all the surrounding country shimmering in the sun.

[Anonymous No.11623236]

>>11601324
this is the dumbest shit I've ever read

[Anonymous No.11623262]

>>11622514
>>11623140
So, any progress on this matter?
Its seems to be the "final goal", isn't it?

[Anonymous No.11623402]

>>11622919
Sexual abstinence is the best practice. All others are slaves

[Anonymous No.11623952]

>>11623402
What if you enslave your partner by tying and gagging them during sex like I do? Then I'm not a slave, I HAVE slaves

[Anonymous No.11624347]

>>11621706
This. The philosophia perennis is universal, and only renewed periodically. Plato's uniqueness is in using dialogues to point the reader towards a metaphysical conclusion through a process of deduction. He states as much in his letters.

[Anonymous No.11624477]

I am a perennial philosopher and am interested in all adherents of mysticism, and advocates of a divine source or a higher reality.

So did Plotinus in fact see God?

It is my interpretation that God is pure existence itself, which by virtue of its informational structure gives rise to it's own harmonious awareness of itself. Existence and God is whole, so Reality is One as a single totality. God's omniscience (all-knowing) reaches a crescendo when knowledge of the totality applies to itself. God's self-knowing moves outside of itself to form the Logos. The Logos is a contemplation of the divine of itself, a Divine Idea. Because God is the totality of existence, the Divine Idea in essence is God too. All of our universe is composed of divine thoughts, owing their reality to God.

Where I primarily diverge from Plotinus, is that I see God as creating with purpose. What is this purpose? Mysticism, of course. You see, if God is creating the greatest creation possible, and he starts with the idea of the mystical soul, what is greater than that? Why, it is a mystical soul who lifts its own awareness to Godhood. There is no greater mystic than that which takes credit for its own divinity. The universe then is seen as a means for the mystic to produce its potential glory.

[Anonymous No.11624581]

>>11624477
>did Plotinus in fact see God?
Porphyry tells us Plotinus attained henosis at least four times.
>>11623140
Why, let's ask Plotinus:

Let us, therefore, re-ascend to the good itself, which every soul desires; and in which it can alone find perfect repose. For if anyone shall become acquainted with this source of beauty he will then know what I say, and after what manner he is beautiful. Indeed, whatever is desirable is a kind of good, since to this desire tends. But they alone pursue true good, who rise to intelligible beauty, and so far only tend to good itself; as far as they lay aside the deformed vestments of matter, with which they become connected in their descent. Just as those who penetrate into the holy retreats of sacred mysteries, are first purified and then divest themselves of their garments, until someone by such a process, having dismissed everything foreign from the God, by himself alone, beholds the solitary principle of the universe, sincere, simple and pure, from which all things depend, and to whose transcendent perfections the eyes of all intelligent natures are directed, as the proper cause of being, life and intelligence. With what ardent love, with what strong desire will he who enjoys this transporting vision be inflamed while vehemently affecting to become one with this supreme beauty! For this it is ordained, that he who does not yet perceive him, yet desires him as good, but he who enjoys the vision is enraptured with his beauty, and is equally filled with admiration and delight. Hence, such a one is agitated with a salutary astonishment; is affected with the highest and truest love; derides vehement affections and inferior loves, and despises the beauty which he once approved. Such, too, is the condition of those who, on perceiving the forms of gods or daemons, no longer esteem the fairest of corporeal forms. What, then, must be the condition of that being, who beholds the beautiful itself?

Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer. ... Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labor to make all one glow or beauty and never cease chiseling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue.

[Anonymous No.11625408]

1/6

[Anonymous No.11625413]

>>11625408
2/6

[Anonymous No.11625415]

>>11625413
3/6

[Anonymous No.11625421]

>>11625415
4/6

[Anonymous No.11625423]

>>11625421
5/6

[Anonymous No.11625430]

>>11625423
6/7*

*sorry, miscounted at first

[Anonymous No.11625433]

>>11625430
7/7

[Anonymous No.11625465]

>>11623952
You're still a slave. You lack true autonomy

[Anonymous No.11625480]

>>11623262
You'll achieve that "final goal" only when you die. I suppose you can peak behind the curtain with psychedelics and meditation but reach for the secret too soon and now there's a look in your eyes like blackholes in the skies.

[Anonymous No.11626297]

Bumping... one of the few very good threads occasionally on /lit/, people actually talking about something interesting they read

[Anonymous No.11626853]

>Jesus said: This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away; and those who are dead are not alive, and those who are living will not die. In the days when you ate of what is dead, you made of it what is living. When you come to be light, what will you do? On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you have become two, what will you do?

[Anonymous No.11627332]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_that_I_Am

[Anonymous No.11627416]

>>11622919
breadpilled

[Anonymous No.11627442]

this edition a good one?

[Anonymous No.11627461]

>>11627442
That's an abridgement. Never read it tho so kant comment on quality. Uzdavinys has a short abridgement as well. As well as a general neoplatonic compilation. Dillon has a overview of key thinkers as well. I would say get Thomas Taylor. Or Mackenna.

[Anonymous No.11627477]

>>11627442
>Essential
No, and what >>11627461 said.

[Anonymous No.11627495]

>>11627442
I have this one. I think it's pretty good for beginners. One thing to remember about the Enneads is that they're pretty much transcriptions from Plotinus's lectures and they're not arranged for the sake of the non-initiate. An edition like the one you posted is going to be more systematic about introducing you to the overarching principles of the philosophy, key terms, etc. Pic related is also pretty good. O'Brien's is an easier read, but this one has more extensive commentary.

[Anonymous No.11627638]

>>11626297
This thread has unironically convinced me to drop my current reading list and start delving into Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.11627686]

>>11627638
Noused and monadpilled

[Anonymous No.11627788]

>>11601324
this is the exact same shit as evola and the ur group wtf?

[Anonymous No.11627818]

Opinions on this edition?

[Anonymous No.11627905]

Can somone explain what this chart is supposed to mean, please?

[Anonymous No.11627910]

>>11627788
you only now realized the Evola is Plotinus for hooligans?

[Anonymous No.11627957]

[Anonymous No.11627961]

>>11627957

[Anonymous No.11628017]

Finished this thread, was very nice to see a whole thread that isn't just shitposts.
>>11627910
Well I remember in the Traditionalist threads that Plotinus was mentioned a lot, but I'm still working on Intro to Magic and Meditations on the Peak before I go back to the Greeks.Of course there are some discrepancies, like he used the Solar and Lunar analogy, which does fit well for certain traditions. Like the Christians want blessings of divine inspiration, but they don't want to be Jesus himself coming from God/the One

[Anonymous No.11628105]

>>11627818
It was already edited by Poryphry. Why does it need a new editor?

[Anonymous No.11628110]

>>11627905
That chart sucks. Use these: >>11627957
>>11627961

[Anonymous No.11628147]

>>11628105
Because it's a different edition in a completely different language.

[Anonymous No.11628151]

>>11628110
>That chart sucks. Use these:
Ok but please explain what that chart is even tring to purvey.

[Anonymous No.11628170]

>>11628147
As long as it is an editor of the translation only and not a rearrangement of the text themselves I suppose it make sense.
>>11628151
The first chart is a /pol/ nutjob chart, the second chart is a collection of books on modern esoterica written by academics, and the third chart is a good number of source texts of western esoterica from Neoplatonic to Hermetic and Judeo-Christian.

[Anonymous No.11628285]

>>11600968
>gnosis
I think you mean theoria :^)

[Anonymous No.11628407]

>Aus jener wahrhaften und einen Welt nun hat diese nicht wahrhaft eine Welt ihr Dasein. In der That ist sie vielfach, in Vielheit getheilt, so dass ein Theil von andern räumlich getrennt und ihm entfremdet ist; in ihr herrscht nicht mehr bloss Freundschaft, sondern auch Feindschaft durch die Trennung, und in Folge seines mangelhaften Zustandes ist nothwendig der eine Theil dem andern feindlich gesinnt.
woah!

[Anonymous No.11628411]

>>11627442
Yeah, that's the Spring Publications edition, the one that kindled my interest. Read it and youll commit. It's a good little volume.

[Anonymous No.11628446]

>>11623227
Youre surely directly in touch with the something that *actually* keeps a book like this in circulation for as long as it has been. Enjoyed reading that, anon. Happy trails!

[Anonymous No.11629765]

bump

[Anonymous No.11630128]

>>11627905
>>11628151
Hermetica and Timaeus/Cririas are must-read books to understand the teachings of The Enneads (and of everyrhing else regarding metaphysics/religion). Fellini's Satyricon is a fucking masterpiece, watch it. The Upanishads and The I Ching are optional, but worth it. The rest of the chart are random books/films tbqfh.

[Anonymous No.11630913]

>>11630128
The rest of the chart I assume is to try and make you a warrior of detached violence, The Argonautica, Storm of Steel, and The Peloponnesian War are all tales that give off warrior vibes, and mastery of your fear of death. Should have chosen Jungers On Pain or "War as an inner experience" though, Storm of Steel proper isn't that metaphysical.
Should have also put the Mahabharata or just the Bhaghavad Gita in there.
The Lotus Sutra is just a buddhist classic, haven't read it myself but it's common to hear about it

[Anonymous No.11631409]

What are some arguments for the world as emanation like Plotinus would claim vs. the world as creation as found in Christianity?

[Anonymous No.11631421]

>>11631409
Meditations on the Tarot has a section where the author tries to reconcile different cosmological views as being true of different layers of reality. Interesting reading. Defends creation circumspectly.

[Anonymous No.11631445]

Does anyone else feel mysticism is making a comeback in the collective conscious?

[Anonymous No.11631451]

>>11631445
yes

[Anonymous No.11631465]

>>11631445
It's just two or three schizos trying to force meme mysticism here.

[Anonymous No.11631494]

>>11631465
its not just here tho, and i believe schizos are just people that that on contemplating the truth, refused it and didnt let go

[Anonymous No.11631499]

>>11631445
Yeah I'm blown away by all the eastern and Plotinus posting on /lit/ lately

[Anonymous No.11631514]

>>11631499
i recently read the conference of the birds, i arrived to it by reading a BORGES short story

[Anonymous No.11631534]

Is this your podcast plotinusfag?

[Anonymous No.11631553]

>>11631409
If you take it as a given that God/One is infinite then the universe could not exist separately from It because that would mean that something exists other than God which by the fact of that thing existing would mean God was no longer infinite (being limited by that which It was not e.g. the universe). Hence if you accept the starting premise that God is infinite the logical conclusion is that the universe, living beings etc are all just emanations/manifestations of God that are contained within It's totality, while not being that totality themselves.

[Anonymous No.11631562]

>>11631553
>never heard of tzimtzum
laughingkabbalists.jpg

[Anonymous No.11631687]

>>11631562
Well, like a lot of Jewish thought tzimtzum is a bunch of cluttered and contradictory nonsense. There are massive disagreements among Kabbalists themselves about what tzimtzum means and the exact course that it takes. They recognize it as paradoxical and there are a range of interpretations that some of them they take where God is still present or active in some way within the space he withdrew from which implies the the withdrawal was only in a conditioned way and not in an absolute sense. God would not really be infinite if it withdrew in an absolute sense from anything, because the fact that the previously non-existing space now existed would be a limit on God, simply stating that tzimtzum teaches He withdrew does not resolve this paradox. The notion of God contracting also contradicts divine simplicity. Attempting to resolve this led various many kabbalists and Jewish mystics to settle for an interpretation where there is not a literal space existing separate from God, Gaon's and Chabad's views being just two examples of this.

This is just an example of Jewish mysticism trying to grasp with the classic problem of the infinitive unchanging nature of God being at odds with the finite and transient nature of the phenomenal world that we participate in. I think Vedanta cut through the knot best by stating that the phenomenal world is only a conditioned reality within the all-encompassing unconditioned reality of God as a develop of one particular set of infinite possibilities contained within It, and that from the omniscient and unconditioned perspective of God Itself that conditioned reality does not exist.

[Anonymous No.11631754]

>>11631445
Not just here as >>11631465 said, but in general I think it is due to the politicization that occurred in the US election and how much more our world is politicized, as that happens more people also generally like to get interested in what makes our world the way it is.
In short: Politics -> Philosophy/Religion -> Mysticism

[Anonymous No.11631795]

>>11631687
Conditioned, non-conditioned, is just as much mental gymnastics. You live in the conditioned. Can your omni God make himself non-infinite? If no, then he is not omnipotent...

[Anonymous No.11631805]

>>11631687
>There are massive disagreements among Kabbalists themselves about what tzimtzum means
It just wouldn't be Judaism if the rabbis weren't disagreeing with each other over every single thing, be it the most or the least important.

[Anonymous No.11631822]

>>11631805
Lol. But desu western and eastern philosophy have massive disagreements within themselves as well to be fair.

[Anonymous No.11631910]

>>11631795
>Conditioned, non-conditioned, is just as much mental gymnastics.

Wrong, it's actually one of the best ways to explain and phrase it. Every other attempt at explaining the paradoxes just end's up revolving around "well we don't actually know", "It's like kind of a mystery or illusion", "only God knows" etc. Stating that there is One absolute reality and conditioned realities within It that appear to contradict It but don't really is the most concise and direct way of resolving the contradiction.

>Can your omni God make himself non-infinite? If no, then he is not omnipotent...

The concept of an infinite God is inseparable from that of Divine simplicity (which is found in Daoism, Hinduism and all three strains of Abrahamic mysticism) for good reason. The reason the infinite Divine is simple is that if It were to take an absolute action or to have any absolute attributes or qualities than It would no longer be infinitive but would be delimited by those very things themselves. There is no action that It could possibility take, attribute It could acquire or modification that It could make of Itself because in order for that to be the case those things would have to exist as something other than God (making it non-infinite). Infinite is inseparable from unchanging.

[Anonymous No.11631935]

>>11631910
Calling this world illusory results in antimonies like the unreality of good and evil and so forth. It is also what Nietzsche would call passive nihilism. One might say that speculating that there is something unchanging at all is unnecessary. For example, a process view would align with Buddhism and Hinduism on transient nature of reality but rather than speculate on a God who is a polar opposite, it admits there may simply be relationships and structures between transient objects which are eternal such as mathematical and physical truths.

[Anonymous No.11632013]

>>11631935
>Calling this world illusory results in antimonies like the unreality of good and evil and so forth.

But that's not an antimony, it makes sense.

>It is also what Nietzsche would call passive nihilism

Nietzsche had an incredibly poor understanding of eastern doctrines (not helped by the small amount of translated texts available to him). He only did a very shallow study of Buddhism, largely basing his views of it on Schopenhauer's, and the only Hindu text he ever read was a notoriously poor translation of the Manusrmiti which is itself a fairly unimportant text. There is nothing nihilistic about the way most eastern doctrines phrase it. Hinduism for one teaches that everything is characterized by the righteous harmony of dharma and that one is effectively according in harmony with the Absolute by living in accordance with Dharma. Daosim teaches the same thing about the omnipresent and unchanging Dao.

The fact that the phenomenal world itself is not absolute reality does not mean that nothing at all matters. There is a graduation and hierarchy of reality with each stage having their own considerations and consequences. The idea of nihilism results from mistakenly interposing the implications of one stage onto another, i.e. thinking that because the Absolute is Itself unchanging and beyond good and evil means that good/evil actions have no real consequences or effects while in actuality they have very real implications for us as manifested beings within conditioned reality.

[Anonymous No.11632051]

>>11631935
Nietzsche criticized stoic harmony. Why would dharmic harmony be immune to critique?

Otherwise, tend to agree. I have always been attracted to the (mahayana?) Buddhist two truth doctrine.

[Anonymous No.11632059]

>>11632051
Sorry. Quoted wrong person. Meant: >>11632013
Two truth doctrine also nicely explains initiation rites. You are literally ascending to a higher truth.

[Anonymous No.11632156]

>>11632051
>Nietzsche criticized stoic harmony. Why would dharmic harmony be immune to critique?

I'm not very familiar with his criticism of stoic harmony. If you explained it and how it might extend to eastern harmony it I could probably point out why it wouldn't make sense or be applicable from the concept of most eastern doctrines themselves, but it would just inevitably involve explaining how he didn't understand the starting principles of these doctrines and so preceded from the wrong basis as with the last explanation with regards to nihilism which might not be very interesting and can get repetitive.

> I have always been attracted to the (mahayana?) Buddhist two truth doctrine

The two truths doctrine is also explored at length in Advaita Vedanta, where they expound their own concept of it, some of it may have been influenced in terminology by Indian Mahayana, although it's doctrinal basis can be found in pre-Buddhist Upanishads. In addition to the levels of absolute and conditional reality Shankara added a third level of 'existing in mind only' e.g. the false perception of a snake when you see a rope (being distinct as an example from the conditional reality of the empty desert existing on its own without any animal or person there observing it).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta#Levels_of_Reality,_Truths

[Anonymous No.11632195]

You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just endeavoring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise-- and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.

[Anonymous No.11632230]

>>11632156
So is that like a trinitarian doctrine? We exist on all three? Tripartite soul? I know Neoplatonists loved triads. And trikaya in Buddhism is remarkably similar to Christology, as well.... triangles all the way down! Lol.

[Anonymous No.11632524]

Is this book a good intro to Plotinus?

[Anonymous No.11632554]

>>11632524
Look up the thread a ways- already has four or five opinions..

[Anonymous No.11632560]

>>11632554
Damn, you're right. My apologies.

[Anonymous No.11632638]

>>11632195
absolutely BASED and REDPILLED neetchan

[Anonymous No.11632788]

Where do I find a legitimate version of the Enneads? I refuse to purchase Penguin’s pathetic “abridged” version for retards and millenials.

[Anonymous No.11632907]

>>11632788
yeah but it's the mackenna translation which is aesthetic af

you find the full Enneads on sacred texts.com

[Anonymous No.11632928]

>>11632788
https://www.amazon.com/Plotinus-Enneads-LP-Classic-Reprint/dp/0943914558/ref=mp_s_a_1_4_twi_har_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1534449956&sr=8-4&keywords=mackenna+enneads

[Anonymous No.11632949]

>>11632907
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/plotenn/

[Anonymous No.11633155]

>>11632928
fucking costly, more than I paid for the complete Plato

I guess there's no other choice though if I wanna be cool like you guys, I won't stoop to reading digitally

[Anonymous No.11633194]

>>11633155
You're supposed to buy this first:

https://www.amazon.com/Uniform-Thomas-Taylor/dp/1898910332/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1534452333&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=thomas+taylor+prometheus&dpPl=1&dpID=41xPaj4XArL&ref=plSrch

http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/html/complete_catalogue.html

[Anonymous No.11633209]

>>11633194
hahhhahahahahahah..

[Anonymous No.11633238]

>>11633209
>>11633194
Sorry. Here's the Thomas Taylor list:

http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/html/tts_catalogue.html


I've only read Majercik's Oracles from the other more general prometheus trust list but it's probably pretty good too.

[Anonymous No.11633267]

>>11633238
Jokes aside. Commodity fetishism and materialism are against the spirit of Neoplatonism. The MacKenna is a good translation and Thomas Taylor did not translate the full Enneads.

[Anonymous No.11633289]

>>11631553
That which we are is not "new" or "extra", rather we are born out of lessening itself. All content of our essence is given by God, it is not missing from Him, but that gives no right to dismiss the limit also apparent to us as not really part of us and think we are the same as the source. What hubris it is to suggest that what is finite can add up to the infinite, that we are a part of the composition of the totality, finitude is still infinitely inferior and estranged to the infinite in every multiplicative amalgamation of itself as finite thing.

[Anonymous No.11633331]

>>11633289
Qualified non-dualism is king. Man is but the dream of a shadow.

[Anonymous No.11633482]

https://youtu.be/5_09IAg12q8

[Anonymous No.11633490]

Anyone read this?

[Anonymous No.11633558]

>>11633331
Neither the dreamer nor the dream but a mere projection?

[Anonymous No.11633562]

>Jesus says: "I am the light which is on them all. I am the All, and the All has gone out from me and the All has come back to me. Cleave the wood: I am there; lift the stone and thou shalt find me there!"

[Anonymous No.11633663]

>>11633289
While we are not the entire source in our present state as human beings, we (like everything else) are one with the source. Nothing can exist aside from the source, the infinite source contains it's own fruit within itself. Root and fruit, cause and effect, past and present, subject and object, these are themselves distinctions which can only exist within the finite of the manifest they have no meaning in the infinite and cannot exist in the infinite as anything other than distinctions characterizing conditional and limited realities that actualize (conditionally) within It, but the infinite in It's totality cannot be reached by these distinctions.

>finitude is still infinitely inferior in every multiplicative amalgamation of itself as finite thing (in comparison to the infinite)
yes

>and estranged
wrong

Vedanta teaches the first perspective within regard to the manifest vs the unmanifest, but both are still contained within the Para Brahman which is beyond both, which is where western theology tends to get confused aside from occasional mystics. The nil that is the worth of manifestation in comparison to the infinite does not change the fact that it cannot exist separably from the infinite as anything other than conditioned and lesser realities contained within It, because if the manifest were not contained within It but were separate (or estranged) then It would no longer be infinite.

[Anonymous No.11633853]

Is the One similar to Anaximander's apeiron?

[Anonymous No.11633858]

>>11633663
Circular reasoning brohmin

[Anonymous No.11633979]

>>11633853
Somewhat, predicating boundlessness or endlessness of the One would mar its simplicity though.

[Anonymous No.11633997]

Camus' Doctoral Dissertation was on Plotinus and his influence on Christian thought. It's pretty good.

[Anonymous No.11634026]

>>11633979
Why is infinite not a predicate?

[Anonymous No.11634172]

>>11633858
not an argument

[Anonymous No.11634176]

>>11633663
this book is absolutely based

[Anonymous No.11634268]

>>11634026
because it's not finite, and thus we're imposing a ruleset on the absolute: what it can or cannot be, etc.

[Anonymous No.11634281]

ok, i memed myself into the undivided universe, we are all one and all thing
where to now?

[Anonymous No.11634295]

>>11634281
actually experience it instead of just feeling it intellectually

[Anonymous No.11634310]

>>11634295
i actually felt it, like the realization made my pulse shoot up and had to take a warm shower to calm down, then i went for a walk and the colors were brighter, and the sounds clearer, felt like i was coming up on LSD

[Anonymous No.11634316]

>>11634172
You first. You committed a logical fallacy.

[Anonymous No.11634340]

>>11634268
If the atman is the moon's reflections in the waters then why would you you identify with the moon and not the waters?

How do you know something non finite exists if all one can experience is finite? Not even mystical bliss lasts forever...

[Anonymous No.11634374]

>>11634340
hegel says the infinite is just our abstracting from finitude

maya is the water, the moon proper is the atman. is the moon a trick of the light?

[Anonymous No.11634416]

>>11634374
It is the jiva, no? But why presume the moon of atman is equivalent to the sunlight of brahma that it too reflects?

[Anonymous No.11634482]

>>11634416
because the light has to come from somewhere

[Anonymous No.11634535]

>>11634416
The Sruti texts are taken as an infallible and divine source of doctrine and they state that Atman is Brahman, but you can also reach that conclusion logically if you start from the premise that Brahman is infinite, which is also stated by the Sruti.

[Anonymous No.11634732]

>>11634482
But why apply the transitive property to identity?
>>11634535
So you're arguing on religious grounds. I agree that it is possible, in the same sense that christianity is possible, but remain unconvinced.

[Anonymous No.11634791]

>>11634732
>But why apply the transitive property to identity?

why not? how could finitude be independent and self-subsistent compared to the infinite?

[Anonymous No.11634826]

>>11634732
It's not the job of students or practitioners of this stuff to convince you, it's for you to make up your own mind. Studying the texts and learning about this stuff from a teacher allows people to reach transcendental states and experience bliss. If some anonymous poster on 4chan or even in someone IRL says they disagree with it, that leaves the former person unaffected, they are still blissful and personally experience it as true. If others disagree because it's not backed by 'science' etc than its only their loss.

[Anonymous No.11634867]

>>11634281
Reading the texts helps you understand it better and turns it into a unceasing reality instead of a flash of insight that fades (if you read them closely and reflect on them). This is an Advaita text that's a good place to start, although you can find the same ideas clearly stated in Neoplatonism, Sufism, Daosim, and select Buddhist texts, it's just a matter of reading different stuff until you find a style of expounding it that you vibe with the most.

https://realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita.html

[Anonymous No.11635016]

>>11634791
Co-dependent inter-arising. With excess.

[Anonymous No.11635119]

>>11635016
A reminder that Buddha never gave an explanation of why Pratītyasamutpāda existed in the first place or how it could possibly arise independent of Brahman or any other source

[Anonymous No.11635201]

>>11632928
The Great Books version uses the same translation and is far cheaper.

[Anonymous No.11635204]

>>11633155
See >>11635201

[Anonymous No.11635262]

>>11635119
Neither do you except "muh infallible scripture"

[Anonymous No.11635428]

>>11602450
>>11601324

its just repackaged plato.

one=the good
being=forms / the particularization of the forms into particulars (lul)

[Anonymous No.11636002]

>>11635262
Buddhists do the exact same thing with Buddha and take everything he said as infallible realizations that he allegedly came up with independently despite him clearly being influenced by the pre-Buddhist Upanishads and despite him never giving satisfactory answers to many important questions regarding metaphysics and cosmology, and this is made even more absurd by the fact that the actual record of what Buddha taught is far less certain than the continuity of the Vedas and there are many basic unresolved questions between various schools about whether he taught this or that idea. The impersonality of the Vedas and their commentary layers such as the Upanishads indicate that at the very least they were worked on and refined by a large group of people starting from their very origins and continuing over time as they were compiled, edited and passed down, meaning that they could not be dominated by one person's particular errors or misunderstanding.

The premise of dependent arising (setting aside that in it's original explanation it's rejected or taught as a flawed understanding of the truth by a non-small number of Buddhist schools who teach their own spin on it in ways that often have little to no basis in the most authentic discourses) of ultimately non-existing phenomena is itself quite ridiculous. If there was ultimately no reality to anything then there would be no concious observing of it by beings. That fact that we are aware of existence in whatever state we find ourselves indicates that at there is a reality or starting grounds/source which is real. Even if the phenomonal world is itself not the absolute reality it cannot exist (even as illusion) without there being something real which causes it. A non-existent or illusionary thing cannot give itself apparent existence out of nothing, if there was no real source or grounds of anything then there would just be void. The idea that an infinite series of causes-and-affects of ultimately non-existent phenomena exists (as illusion) for no reason at all is a laughable basis for a doctrine. In order for dependent arising to be consistent at all there would have to be something which gave rise to it in the first place which Buddha did not explain.

[Anonymous No.11636011]

>>11635262
>>11636002

Lastly, the astonishing amount of humongous paralells (often even using identical symbolism and imagery) between the Hindu Upanishads and Daoism, Neoplatonism, Sufism and various Christian and Jewish mystics indicates that there is a common metaphysical truth accessible to all who have the capacity for it and that the worlds mystics and sages have largely reached a consensus on this, except for Buddhism which is the outlier. The only redeeming thing about Buddhism in comparison to this is the possibility explored by Coomaraswamy in his study of early Pali and Sanskrit texts (he was one of the few people proficient in both) that early Buddhist commentators and subsequently most later schools misunderstood that Buddha never denied atma and that anatta refers to the non-atma aspects of the being as unreal, in which case Buddhism would only be as far a deviation from Hinduism as Tantra, which is to say not really a deviation.

[Anonymous No.11636028]

>>11636011
>that early Buddhist commentators and subsequently most later schools misunderstood that Buddha never denied atma and that anatta refers to the non-atma aspects of the being as unreal, in which case Buddhism would only be as far a deviation from Hinduism as Tantra, which is to say not really a deviation.
I'm not saying I don't believe you, but is there a source for this?
>A non-existent or illusionary thing cannot give itself apparent existence out of nothing, if there was no real source or grounds of anything then there would just be void. The idea that an infinite series of causes-and-affects of ultimately non-existent phenomena exists (as illusion) for no reason at all is a laughable basis for a doctrine.
Does this mean Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were right when they called Buddhism a nihilist religion? If such a judgement is a classic western mistake, how were they wrong?

[Anonymous No.11636124]

>>11636028
>I'm not saying I don't believe you, but is there a source for this?

Ananda Coomaraswamy's book 'Hinduism and Buddhism'. According to him early Buddhist commentators lacked an understanding of the nuances of the Sanskrit that was the norm when Buddha was alive and when his teachings were finally written down in Pali there were some aspects lost in translation. You can download it on libgen

http://libgen.io/book/index.php?md5=84A6FD24EA0511980AF2B1207B6B92A9

>Does this mean Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were right when they called Buddhism a nihilist religion? If such a judgement is a classic western mistake, how were they wrong?

Assuming that Buddha did deny Atma as typically understood then it's less inaccurate a label than if he didn't but even if he did deny it Buddhism is still not very nihilistic because it's concerned primarily with transcending and ending suffering, even if the beings experiencing it don't actually exist Buddhism still recognizes the real value and utility in ending suffering. By imposing the assumption of nihilism or 'life-denying' on Buddhism it implies meaninglessness or pointless austerities undergone for the wrong reasons, which ignores the fact that transcendental states (reached through Buddhism or otherwise) tend to be extremely blissful. If anything the seeker of transcendence/enlightenment/moksha is closer to the Übermensch than the nihilist in that the person doing so drops all considerations for other people/society and directly strides towards attaining the highest goal irrespective of any contingencies.

[Anonymous No.11636127]

>>11636028

Near the beginning of Huxley's book 'The Perennial Philosophy' he mentions the 'Buddha never denied Atma' theory (he references Coomaraswamy and briefly cites Guenon in the book):

>I am not competent, nor is this the place to discuss the doctrinal differences between Buddhism and Hinduism. Let it suffice to point out that, when he insisted that human beings are by nature 'non-Atman/ the Buddha was evidently speaking about the personal self and not the universal Self. The Brahman controversialists, who appear in certain of the Pali scriptures, never so much as mention the Vedanta doctrine of the identity of Atman and Godhead and the non-identity of ego and Atman. What they maintain and Gautama denies is the substantial nature and eternal persistence of the individual psyche. 'As an unintelligent man seeks for the abode of music in the body of the lute, so does he look for a soul within the skandhas (the material and psychic aggregates, of which the individual mind-body is composed).' About the existence of the Atman that is Brahman, as about most other metaphysical matters, the Buddha declines to speak, on the ground that such discussions do not tend to edification or spiritual progress among the members of a monastic order, such as he had founded.

>But though it has its dangers, though it may become the most absorbing, because the most serious and noblest, of distractions, metaphysical thinking is unavoidable and finally necessary. Even the Hinayanists found this, and the later Mahayanists were to develop, in connection with the practice of their religion, a splendid and imposing system of cosmological, ethical and psychological thought. This system was based upon the postulates of a strict idealism and professed to dispense with the idea of God. But moral and spiritual experience was too strong for philosophical theory, and under the inspiration of direct experience, the writers of the Mahayana sutras found themselves using all their ingenuity to explain why the Tathagata and the Bodhisattvas display an infinite charity towards beings that do not really exist. At the same time they stretched the framework of subjective idealism so as to make room for Universal Mind ; qualified the idea of soullessness with the doctrine that, if purified, the individual mind can identify itself with the Universal Mind or Buddha-womb ; and, while maintaining godlessness, asserted that this realizable Universal Mind is the inner consciousness of the eternal Buddha and that the Buddha-mind is associated with 'a great compassionate heart' which desires the liberation of every sentient being and bestows divine grace on all who make a serious effort to achieve man's final end. In a word, despite their inauspicious vocabulary, the best of the Mahayana sutras contain an authentic formulation of the Perennial Philosophy a formulation which in some respects (as we shall see when we come to the section, 'God in the World') is more complete than any other.

[Anonymous No.11636433]

Just got this, what am I in for?

[Anonymous No.11636464]

>>11636028
>that early Buddhist commentators and subsequently most later schools misunderstood that Buddha never denied atma and that anatta refers to the non-atma aspects of the being as unreal

man, isn't this obvious, what do you think they're talking about otherwise? atma emphasizes the positivity of the self in its identity with brahman, anatman the nothingness of its contingent properties

[Anonymous No.11636489]

>>11600968
>trying to conceive the inconceivable via mental contortions
That's not gonna work! And that's a good thing!
I'm so glad God incarnated and revealed himself to us, so we don't have to engage in futile attempts to pull ourselves up by our metaphysical bootstraps.

[Anonymous No.11636491]

>>11636433
nice sounding "principles" and spiritual dead-ends.

[Anonymous No.11636536]

>>11636433
It's a must-read. You're in the right path.

[Anonymous No.11636542]

>>11636489
t. henosislet

[Anonymous No.11636863]

>>11636002
>>11636011
Never gonna make it

[Anonymous No.11636880]

>>11636542
Expound on why you think that you can, on your own accord apart from the divine pull that is, without saying that really you are just God. Because conventionally we are unfathomably distinct and our existence is this conventionality.

[Anonymous No.11636975]

>>11636028
You are refusing to engage with Nietzsche on his own terms and redefining things so as to avoid troubling engagements.

[Anonymous No.11636981]

>>11636975
Sorry. Meant for: >>11636124

[Anonymous No.11636982]

>>11636880
He's a nihilist. He doesn't believe in conventions. It's all an illusion. He only believes in his mythical moksha and samadhi and nirvana

[Anonymous No.11636991]

>>11636433
The truth according to Hermes

[Anonymous No.11636993]

>>11636880
Expound on why you think that conventionally we are unfathomably distinct and our existence is this conventionality without saying that really you are not God.

[Anonymous No.11637017]

>>11636993
Just admit you fell for an irrational cult and aren't interested in real philosophical discussion or even believe in making philosophical progress progress because you prefer feels over reals and according to you there is nothing to be gained from discussion that cannot be gained through traditional texts and it is impossible to improve upon tradition anyway.

[Anonymous No.11637024]

What's the equivalent of bible-thumping for hinduism? Might as well claim sola scriptura for the vedas. I thought only Hare Krishnas were this annoying but Guenonians appear just as bad.

[Anonymous No.11637027]

>>11637017
Oh please. I mean, did you even read this before posting it? Jesus christ. Pretentious dick.

[Anonymous No.11637036]

>>11637027
Wrote progress twice but could be read as "progress(ing) progress".

[Anonymous No.11637040]

>>11637017
>feels over reals
Says the fucking christfag charging headfirst into a so far wonderful Plotinus thread. It’s a shame we’ve nearly nearly reached the bump limit and we have to end a great thread on such a sour note. But hey I’m sure you’ll get far with your faith being based on rationality and reals>feels lmao.

[Anonymous No.11637051]

>>11636975
extrapolate

[Anonymous No.11637056]

>>11637024
Hindutva

[Anonymous No.11637066]

>>11637040
I'm a schizophrenic Kantian Theosophist CIA shill, mind you. But ya. Brilliant thread. Thanks for having me on. It's been great effortposting and shitposting and trolling and counter-trolling and counter-counter-trolling. Make another one and maybe I'll post more blurry phone pics of books.

[Anonymous No.11637067]

>>11627818

Currently the best one out there. Very expensive, but if you are serious about studying Plotinus it's either that or the Loeb.

[Anonymous No.11637070]

>>11637051
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0020174X.2011.559050?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=sinq20

[Anonymous No.11637078]

>>11637066
Get a job

[Anonymous No.11637080]

finally this mysticist garbage hit the bumb limit. get fucked faggotsss

[Anonymous No.11637097]

>>11636863
>t. butt-blasted Buddhist

[Anonymous No.11637101]

>>11637078
Stop projecting.

[Anonymous No.11637110]

>>11637066
>>11637024
O B S E S S E D

[Anonymous No.11637112]

>>11637097
What I am or what doctrines I follow is irrelevant, what is relevant is your insistence on mistaking the metaphysical map for the metaphysical territory and being too dogmatic in your approach to the experiential truths of the cosmos

[Anonymous No.11637117]

>>11637101
I have a job. You might need something stronger to get this larping faggotry out of your head.

[Anonymous No.11637125]

>>11637080
>tfw only come to /lit/ for mysticist garbage

[Anonymous No.11637156]

"Well, my art of midwifery is in most respects like theirs; but differs, in that I attend men and not women, and I look after their souls when they are in labour and not after their bodies: and the triumph of my art is in thoroughly examining whether the thought which the mind of the young man brings forth is a false idol or a noble and true birth. And like the midwives, I am barren, and the reproach which is often made against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself, is very just--the reason is, that the god compels me to be a midwife, but does not allow me to bring forth. And therefore I am not myself at all wise, nor have I anything to show which is the invention or birth of my own soul, but those who converse with me profit. Some of them appear dull enough at first, but afterwards, as our acquaintance ripens, if the god is gracious to them, they all make astonishing progress; and this in the opinion of others as well as in their own. It is quite clear that they never learned anything from me; the many fine discoveries to which they cling are of their own making. But to me and the god they owe their delivery. And the proof of my words is, that many of them in their ignorance, either in their self-conceit despising me, or falling under the influence of others, have gone away too soon; and have not only lost the children of whom I had previously delivered them by an ill bringing up, but have stifled whatever else they had in them by evil communication, being fonder of lies and shams than of the truth; and they have at last ended by seeing themselves, as others see them, to be great fools."

[Anonymous No.11637194]

>>11637117
>t. there is no soul and everything is dependent origination because Buddha said so, also don't be dogmatic

[Anonymous No.11637222]

>>11637194
I’m not a Buddhist or a neo-plat but I am interested in Plotinus like I’m interested in Buddha. You know that you can read and learn about things without fully adopting that worldview but then again you are a schizo so you probably don’t.

[Anonymous No.11637236]

>>11627818

Get it, but wait for the paperback. It's projected to come out in 2019 I think.

[Anonymous No.11637243]

>>11636975
In order to engage with Nietzsche on the topic of eastern thought he'd have to understand it in the first place, which he didn't. But if you really want an in-depth explanation of why he didn't feel free to start a new thread asking about it.

[Anonymous No.11637272]

>tfw every arguing jiva in this thread is really the same atman which is either analogical or equivalent to the relationship of maya to brahman

[Anonymous No.11637285]

>>11637222
that was actually meant for >>11637112

but anyways there's hardly anything schizo about studying eastern thought and neoplatonism

[Anonymous No.11637333]

>>11637272
That's what I don't understand:

If brahman = god and maya = creation, and if atman is Self and jiva is ego, shouldn't the relationship be analogical? Thus qualified nondualism? If you want to speculate on equivalencies it seems more likely that atman would be maya being a product of maya and all and jiva some sort of meta-maya.

[Anonymous No.11637343]

>>11637243
I feel like this is a dishonest technique to claim his arguments are irrelelvant because we did not have as good translations or whatever. Western and eastern philosophy are not so different as to exclude dialectic and argument - in fact, both can engage with the other without diminishing either.

[Anonymous No.11637583]

>>11637343
Yes, but in order to coherently criticise Buddhism or another eastern doctrine you have to accurately understand it, otherwise you are just criticizing the distorted version that exists only in your mind

[Anonymous No.11637871]

>>11637333

>If brahman = god and maya = creation, and if atman is Self and jiva is ego, shouldn't the relationship be analogical?

Maya is not creation per se but the word more means 'illusion or 'divine art' depending on the mode of emphasis. The term refers to the indescribable nature of the phenomal world (manifestation) in the sense that it's not unreal being that we experience it, but that it's not the absolute reality itself and therefore from the perspective of reality it's illusionary. It's taught that Maya only persists because of ignorance, that once you totally realize Brahman, that you realize and directly perceive everything as Brahman and no longer are subject to the illusion of Maya. The ego, like the body, the mind, objects, air etc are all part of manifestation, which is all equally unreal; but at the same time there is a hierachy within it which is the order they manifest in and return back the source, formless aspects of manifestation like Ishvara and Buddhi are higher in the hierarchy but still ultimately unreal in an absolute sense. So they are roughly identical but not exactly because Atma is strictly identical with Brahman while jivas are just one aspect if Maya. Everything that's not Atma is ultimately just false superimpositions upon Atma, which is the only thing that exists. Qualified non-dualism only differs in that it holds that the multiplicity of beings within the undivided One are actually different from each other (while all being part of the One), that the multiplicity within the unity is not illusionary. Advaita recognizes the multiplicity as existing conditionally but views it as ultimately illusionary.

>atman would be maya being a product of maya and all

Atma is not the product of Maya, everything that appears to be other than Atma is just an illusionary apperence within it, superimposed on Atma which is the substratum of everything.

[Anonymous No.11637872]

>>11637333

Brahman = reflection

Maya = refraction

Atman = the refractive vista

Jiva = individual refractions

[Anonymous No.11637970]

>>11637080
lmao give me a break, at least half of the philosophers /lit/ likes to talk about focus on the same shit

[Anonymous No.11637990]

>>11637194
You idiot, I said what I follow is irrelevant, and honestly so is what you follow. You could be an esoteric Christian for all I care, so long as your devotion to continuous revelatory Truth was strong and were willing to let go of old doctrines as they proved no longer necessary. Arguing about nitpicky metaphysical details on a Laotian basket weaving forum is a sure sign of being embedded in intellectual scholarhood and not being true on your path to liberation.

[Anonymous No.11638063]

>>11637080

Not one of the existing things doth perish.

[Anonymous No.11638144]

>>11637990
I enjoy discussing the details and subtleties of these things, which inevitably leads to a debate about what's true or whats a higher or more direct truth, especially when several dozen people are posting about metaphysics in the same thread. Unlike some of the people here I actually took the courtesy to explain my reasoning so people could reply in detail if they wanted instead of just posturing and shitposting.