Proclus vs. Iamblichus

[Anonymous No.16820827]

So at the end of the day, who came out on top?
Iamblichus and his poiesis or Proclus's insistence on theoria?
Theurgy or contemplation?
Who made the best innovations upon Plotinus?

[Anonymous No.16820863]

>>16820827
Iamblichus. Proclus was a good systematizer but Iamblichus was the better philosopher by far.

[Anonymous No.16820880]

>>16820863
Ohk why was that?
Did Proclus end up deracinating Neoplatonism by his extensive emphasis on systematisation?

[Anonymous No.16821094]

neoplatonism is just magic and demon worship. Decadent.

[Anonymous No.16821379]

>>16820827
>Theurgy or contemplation
the fuck you talking about
Theurgy, which Proclus wholly endorsed, originated from Iamblichus (which he got from the Chaldeans and Egyptians).
Likewise neither opposed "Plotinian contemplation".
Where they differed was in regards to the Ineffable, or twofold One.
Damascius followed Iamblichus, Simplicius sort of followed Proclus, Olympiodorus said eh, and Priscian cucked two emperors.

Pic related is the truly profound discovery.

[Anonymous No.16821408]

>>16821094
>daemon*
fixed

[Anonymous No.16821418]

>>16821094
i smell a (((prot)))

[Anonymous No.16821473]

>>16821094
what the fuck
mass is theurgic
the neoplatonic "daemons" are just the angels
>>16821379
I wasn't saying that Proclus was against theurgy or vice versa but rather that Proclus emphasises systematic theoria moreso than theurgy - not as a replacement in any means
thanks for the pic tho that's interesting

[Anonymous No.16821507]

>>16821418
>i swear my special snowflake version of (((Christianity))) is in fact )))Christianity(((
Wrong. Friendly reminder that both Proclus and Iamblichus would have enjoyed seeing all sorts of wacky Christian sects be eaten by lions in the colosseum.

[Anonymous No.16821526]

>>16821507
read Ficino and Dante anon
Catholicism is baste
remember that Christ submitting to Roman law means the submission of the Jew to gentile law

[Anonymous No.16821536]

>>16821526
>read Ficino and Dante anon
No thanks.

[Anonymous No.16821564]

>>16821507
They taught and were taught by Christians retard. Origen was a student of Plotinus.

[Anonymous No.16821581]

>>16821564
Well not everyone can be a straight-A student. Someone is finishing at the bottom of these classes!

Aaaaand so Christian "Neoplatonism" was born.

[Anonymous No.16821673]

>>16821581
And outclassed mere Neoplatonism in every conceivable way. Neoplatonism is just a shell without the direct revelation of Gods nature provided by Christianity. Why do you think all the Platonists became Christians?

[Anonymous No.16821678]

>>16821536
>no thanks i will never read one of the greatest writers of the west
this is the average pagan, they are exactly like atheists

>>16821507
Interestingly only the shittiest platonist (porphyry), who was a depressed suicidal retard, attacked christianity. the others lived among them, had christian students and never said anything bad about them.

[Anonymous No.16821735]

None of them because they ruined the essence of neoplatonism by dividing further through eastern mystycism a system which sought to be undivided and simple. I appreciate their efforts and contributions, but the only authors that I consider true neoplatonists are Plotinus and Damascius.

[Anonymous No.16821742]

>>16821673
>Why do you think all the Platonists became Christians?
Because the Christians closed down the academies and seized control of all learning.
>>16821678
Why would they attack their students? And why would they attack Christians after Christians had seized control over the empire? That would be a sure way to get executed/banished. There is a reason why later Neoplatonists did not write treatises against Christianity, and it wasn't because they didn't see Christianity as the perverted and superstitious religion that it is.

[Anonymous No.16821865]

>>16821742
>christians closed down the academies
justinian did but like in 500ad, before that a roman pagan closed the academy in 80 bc
>control of all learning
where knowledge is considered sacred there have always been control, the pythagoreans defamed, attacked and some tales tell us that even killed people who disclosed their secret teachings or discovered things that were in opposition to their teachings, see also the egyptians secretive tradition, etc.....

>why would they attack their students?
well, porphyry attacked christians who studied with plotinus under ammonius saccas, and christians who engaged with platonism and plotinian platonism

>And why would they attack Christians after Christians had seized control over the empire?
in the time of plotinus and iamblichus there was no control of the empire by christians, and they never attacked them (while porphyry did).

>There is a reason why later Neoplatonists did not write treatises against Christianity, and it wasn't because they didn't see Christianity as the perverted and superstitious religion that it is.
calling them ''neo''platonists already show how ignorant you are about the subject here. plotinus wrote treatises against the greatest menace to christianity that was gnosticism, ammonius saccas were sympathetic to christianity saying even that it was reconcilable with paganism.

if you think that tradition based on revelation is superstition (all knowledge is revelation fyi, you probably never read plato to ignore it) then you are proving my right that you are a materialist atheist that employs platonism just to attack what you irrationally hate. your kind is way worse and harmful than atheists and materialists.

[Anonymous No.16821874]

>>16821865
>if you aren't a caricature of me you're a materialist
Faggots like you made this board a cesspool

[Anonymous No.16821899]

>>16821865
Also it should be made clear that Porphyry is probably the single most sympathetic critic of Christianity in the Ancient World, specifically he attacks the prophecies that predict Christ.

Celsus, Julian the Apostate, et al attack Ritual Impurity and Christian Theology. Porphyry does not.

[Anonymous No.16821929]

>>16820827
Proclus. Specifically, Proclus' commentary on the Parmenides is one of the greatest works of Philosophy in the western Canon.

It should be considered equivalent to Shankara's commentaries on the Upanishads.

>>16820880
No. At worst the "deracination" of Late Antique Platonism is a consequence of Iamblichus' positing of full embodiment, as a justification for certain theurgic practices. This lead to the conclusion in Iamblichus and Proclus, though this is presaged in Porphyry's pseudo-distinction between intelligibles and the intellect, that the human intellect is incapable of grasping the forms, though it can grasp the universals produced by the forms. Namely it can grasp universals but not the causes of the universals.

This however is in general a problem due to the specifics of certain understandings of Platonic Forms. This I think is not really solved unless we attempt some kind of harmonisation between the positions of Aristotle and Plato. This was the path followed by most of the Muslims (except Ibn Rushd and Suhrawardi), Renaissance Italians, and Hegel.

[Anonymous No.16821952]

>>16821874
you yourself posit a caricature of christianity, of history and platonism and their relation.
also, where is the caricature in my post? you literally called christianity superstition without any argument, just resentment.

>>16821899
they are all nonentities, but porphyry stands out for being closer to the philosopher form. celsus was utterly btfo by origen btw why would you even cite him.

[Anonymous No.16821957]

>>16821929
>Proclus' commentary on the Parmenides
Have you read any other commentary on the dialogue? I'm eager to read Proclus' but also want to read Mitchell Miller's.

[Anonymous No.16822133]

>>16821952
>celsus was utterly btfo by origen
Origen's critique is heretical in Orthodoxy and Catholicism, since his total allegorization is condemned.

[Anonymous No.16822139]

>>16821865
>ammonius saccas were sympathetic to christianity saying even that it was reconcilable with paganism.
We know nothing of what he said.

[Anonymous No.16822163]

>>16821678
Christian Hermeticism is a cope, they are irreconcilable for the same reasons Protestantism is wrong. There can be no mixture.

[Anonymous No.16822181]

>>16821742
Proclus also wrote a critique of Christianity.
And Damascius slided in backhanded critiques in his fragmentary 'History'.

[Anonymous No.16822215]

>>16821865
>>>justinian did but like in 500ad, before that a roman pagan closed the academy in 80 bc
>>16821673
>without the direct revelation
>without
>direct
>revelation

[Anonymous No.16822232]

>>16822163
based Moreau poster

[Anonymous No.16822326]

>>16822133
No, his critique is not heretical, lol. And not all of his theological writings are, they have some parts that indeed are heretical but also have some parts that not only are orthodox but influential. Allegorization is not condemned, many fathers wrote about it. What is condemned is the explicit rejection of the literality of some accounts, like the Edenic era in Genesis.

>>16822139
>plato2051.tripod.com/ammonius_saccas.htm
We know his parents were christians, and it is very suspect that antichristians affirm his rejection of christianity and claim that another ammonius about whom nothing is known, was actually a christian. Reading about Ammonius Saccas is clear that he did not reject Christianity but chose to incorporate spiritually platonic metaphysics (and there is no problem with it, I basically do the same but don't think there is salvation apart from the Word).

>>16822215
what is wrong with the claim made in >>16822215?

[Anonymous No.16822340]

>>16821507
>(((Christianity))) is in fact )))Christianity(((
are equally wrong
>>16822163
Catholicism refutes Protestantism, but without Protestantism Christian Hermeticism can't be right (because it goes against dogma), but Orthodoxy beats Catholicism.
Oh now one might think I have to begome Ordodog?
No, because Morality beats Orthodoxy, for it demands a literal reading of the Bible, a bible where God commands genocides and kills children for banter and other sick shit. Which leads to Gnosticism. But Neoplatonism beats Gnosticism, ergo Neoplatonism beats Christianity.

[Anonymous No.16822354]

>>16822326
meant the claim made in >>16821865 about Sulla

[Anonymous No.16822385]

>>16822340
You are either a Christian or a gnosticist (the term gnosis, gnostikos should be separated from the dualistic mode of thought of the people who ascribe to it, gnosticism). If you think Divine Providence commands evil and therefore it is evil, then you are a gnosticist desecrating and reducing Divine Providence to your own subjective moralism.

[Anonymous No.16822395]

>>16822326
>what is wrong with the claim
jay dyer's knowledge of neoplatonism is a single book about Plotinus (the Cambridge companion to Plotinus), your comment about "revealed X" literally makes zero sense since we literally believe the whole ordeal of all Platonising is to attain direct communion with God and Divinity, a communion all the major Platonists achieved. Except perhaps Simplicius since he seems to not talk about it.
We also don't just call Plato divine for no reason, he is our scripture. You assert an idea that begs the question since it presupposes the Jewish monopoly on prophecy and revelation, when we believe that the only thing that stops you from having mania is yourself. Not to even say that all beautiful art is inspired.
The day itself is direct revelation.

[Anonymous No.16822397]

>>16822385
dunno how anything you just said has any direct relevance to what I said

[Anonymous No.16822455]

>>16822395
I'm not that anon, I'm the one who made the comment about Sulla closing the Academy in ~80BC. Now I ask you again, what is wrong with that claim?
>All major platonists achieved
How do you know it? Even someone like Porphyry?

>We also don't just call Plato divine for no reason, he is our scripture.
I'm a Christian and I believe Plato was as divine as the most divine saints.

>Jewish monopoly on prophecy and revelation
The Hebrew-Christian Revelation is something not restricted to the Intellectual Revelation (which Platonism really is ''Wisdom is justified by her children''), but shows more than anywhere Divine Providence.

>The day itself is direct revelation
Yes, the World is.

[Anonymous No.16822547]

>>16822455
>what is wrong with that claim?
it's utterly irrelevant, the philosopher is above the priest
>>16822455
>How do you know it?
Their unanimity of 'it' and the unparalleled virtue of their person (which your church fathers affirm), including their nigh 1-1 correspondence with bronze age Egyptian theology which they or anyone at the time couldn't read (the same with Mesopotamian myths), this shows both that the gods inspired both and that the tradition was far older than Plato, and this they openly proclaim proudly, for Plato was not the seed or roots of the seed but the stem of all wisdom; as well as parallels with much eastern lines. Parallel lines.
And the fact your beloved fathers copied from them, as much as they could, like looters in a store before the cops arrive, evinces their supremacy. Now that modern "philosophers" arrive and derive with slow brute force towards the same axioms of reality and thought that these divine men resolved also glaringly validate us.

[Anonymous No.16822603]

>>16820827
>So at the end of the day, who came out on top?
Minor disagreements isn't opposition.
some need initiatory rites, some by recognition in the horizon, or by stoic hardiness, or artistic inspirational creations, or in a helping hand seeing God... they're all legitimate ways 'upwards', even if not all equally, to be lesser is not to be bad. Even the lowest is beautiful and good in and of itself.

[Anonymous No.16822905]

>>16822547
>its utterly irrelevant the philosopher is above the priest
what the fuck are you talking about? i will ask for the last time what is wrong with saying that Sulla closed the academy before justinian?

>unanimity of it
unanimity of 'it' what? what does it mean? their metaphysical unanimity? then it is false because there were disagreements between them. their unanimity about a One? how is the assertion about a One followed by direct communion with Divinity?

>1:1 correspondence with bronze age egyptian theology
ehh i would not affirm that this assertion of yours is free of controversy, but you can see that as traditions both the egyptian and christian one display a more striking similarity in both elegy and texts, rites, sacred art, etc. platonism is not separated from them intellectually.

>mesopotamian
no, the mesopotamian myhts have a different emphasis from platonic understanding.
ill continue when i get home

[Anonymous No.16823189]

>>16822547
>>16822603
also are you the autistic platonist anon? i'd like to know if you have read modern secondary literature on plato that is not lloyd gerson

[Anonymous No.16823271]

>>16823189

[Anonymous No.16823297]

How do Platonists explain intrinsically disgusting things like feces and corpses?

[Anonymous No.16823337]

>>16823271
oh yeah that's you with your incoherent attached pictures! have you read reale's toward a new interpretation of plato?

[Anonymous No.16823360]

>>16823297
Just because we are disgusted by things does not mean they lack a divine Form. How would life be possible without a way to recycle organic matter? We as humans may be disgusted by these things, but tyat repulsion is due to man being an organism with specific physical needs and aversions. The soul, however, is capable of intuiting the divine purpose behind these things without disgust.

[Anonymous No.16823459]

>>16822905
the closing of the academy by Sulla led to proliferation of Platonism in the Hellenic world
the closing of the reborn academy led to the end of Platonism in the nolonger Hellenic Byzantium.
>unanimity
of mone-proodos-epistrophe of the One-Being-Soul-Body hierarchy (within which M-P-E "occurs"). Theurgy and Contemplation and Virtue is the means of achieving Epistrophe.
>mesopotamian
see pic related

When on high the heaven had not been named,
Firm ground below had not been called by name,
Naught but primordial Apsu, their begetter,
And Mummu-Tiamat, she who bore them all,
Their waters commingling as a single body;
No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared,
When no gods whatever had been brought into being,
Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined––
Then it was that the gods were formed within them.

[Anonymous No.16823466]

>>16823337
effort posting here is not worth it

[Anonymous No.16823684]

>>16823466
im literally asking if you have read and what are your thoughts on an esteemed book about plato's most discussed doctrines and agrapha dogmata. is saying yes or no and if it is good or not too much?

[Anonymous No.16823714]

>>16823684
all the neoplatonists are "secondary" works
this is what I think about contemporary ""scholars"" who don't take them into account

[Anonymous No.16823737]

>>16823459
>end of platonism
yeah i wonder how the number of platonists and christian platonists after the closing of academy by justinian increased in an entire millenium

>mone-proodos-epistrophe
ah yes, but did they all think intellect = being? i thought there was a distinctive hierarchy of being-life-intellect, but at the same time these being ''a one''.

>pic related
wew god is transcendent and his energies immanent so original and platonist!
come the fuck on

[Anonymous No.16823745]

>>16823737
being-life-intellect isn't a hierarchy
1 3 9

[Anonymous No.16823755]

>>16823714
obviously dismissing ''''''''''neo'''''''platonists in order to expose and interpret plato is an error that may lead one further from plato and his platonism, so to speak. but can you answer what i asked you or not? you havent read any modern secondary literature on plato?

[Anonymous No.16823836]

>>16823714
oh also are you aware of any good commentary on sophist?

[Anonymous No.16823940]

>>16823755
Dillon, the various introductions to all the translations, Uzdavinys, Gerson, various essays by numerous guys in this sphere.
I usually skim read modern thinkers since there's mostly fluff or repetition.
But after Gerson and Dillon, and CO, it's the "Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Platonic Tradition" series that you want. like >>16823271

[Anonymous No.16823946]

>>16823836
no, nut the the commentaries regularly reference
>>16823940
also pic related if you want the mythology behind it all

[Anonymous No.16823998]

>>16823940
>>16823946
oh yeah im aware of all these guys, i just wanted to know your opinion on other acclaimed but more mainstream literati on platonism like reale, thanks

[Anonymous No.16824033]

>>16823998
Reale is likely outdated, at least the translated works, but I can't exactly read Italian.

>I am glad to echo the caution of Reale (1997, 130) that “two worlds” should not be taken to suggest that the intelligible world contains “superthings” that are somehow physically separate from the sensible world. The primary meaning of “separate” for the intelligible world is “ontological independence.” That is, the intelligible world could exist without the sensible world, but not vice versa. Here, “separate” is synonymous with prior in “nature or substance (φύσιν καὶ οὐσίαν).” See Aristotle, Meta. Δ 11, 1019a1–4.

[Anonymous No.16824108]

>>16824033
oh yeah, eric perl's thinking being does an excellent job in showing how plato used spatial imageries about forms and instances as metaphors of ontological, and not physical, transcendence

[Anonymous No.16824431]

Iamblichus is more interesting to read but it's obvious Plotinus won the war of ideas in Western thought.

[Anonymous No.16825131]

>>16822163
>Moreau
fucking based

[Anonymous No.16826043]

When did Neoplatonist philosophy stop being written?

[Anonymous No.16826226]

>>16822340

[Anonymous No.16826794]

>>16826043
It hasnt. The Golden Chain is unbroken

[Anonymous No.16826802]

>>16821957
I have read Hegel, and I quite like Miller.

[Anonymous No.16826805]

>>16821952
Because I think the critique that Porphyry stands out compared to literally all other Pagan critiques of Christianity. Namely that all other Critiques focus simply upon ritual purity, and the impurity of brutishness of Christians, cowardice etc.

Only Porphyry actually advances a critique, like actually tries to criticise Christianity. The rest just cope about not respecting traditions

[Anonymous No.16827958]

>>16826794
Who's the best modern Neoplatonist then