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/lit/ - Literature

File: 21 KB, 330x499, enneads.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Anonymous Fri May 13 10:50:52 2022 No.20363648 [Reply] [Original]

I just bought pic related.
What am I in for?

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 10:53:55 2022 No.20363657 >>20363648 A lot of equivocating boring drivel along with some beautiful poetic flourishes.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 10:53:58 2022 No.20363659 Good but dense neoplatonist philosophy. I hope you’ve read: - Plato - most of Aristotle - some stoics, cynics and epicureans Much easier to read if you have.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 12:08:18 2022 No.20363892 >>20363657 Filtered

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 14:09:58 2022 No.20364276 >>20363892 Do individuals have forms? Quick crib the relevant ennead and come back with the answer, I'm sure Plotinus is very direct and enlightening on the question.

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 19:56:19 2022 No.20365744 >>20363648 Why aren’t you reading it? Is making this useless thread more important than reading a book?

Anonymous Fri May 13 21:51:02 2022 No.20366213

>>20363648
That's a bad edition for beginners because there is virtually no explanatory material or commentary other than the dictionary of greek terms at the back. Get the Essential Plotinus first, which is a much smaller book and has an excellent commentary that will introduce you to Plotinus thought nice and easy. Then get Theophany by Eric Perl which provides a little bit more in depth analysis of Neoplatonic philosophy in an easy to read manner (though it's mostly focused on the Neoplatonism of Proclus it's easily transferable to Plotinus).

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 21:52:31 2022 No.20366218 >>20363648 it has driven me mad

>>	Monadon Fri May 13 22:51:02 2022 No.20366463 >>20363648 Balls

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 22:57:00 2022 No.20366477 >>20363657 Imagine thinking that one of the most important philosophers of antiquity made constant elementary philosophical mistakes because that’s easier for you to accept than the fact that you got filtered

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 22:58:53 2022 No.20366487 >>20363648 bad translation from a Gordian knot of a text in ancient greek metaphysical shorthand

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 23:31:11 2022 No.20366574 >>20366487 What would be a better translation, friend?

>>	Anonymous Fri May 13 23:48:37 2022 No.20366615 >chapter 1 >OOGA BOOGA FUCC YT PEPO IM FINNA SHAKE MUH ASS

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:07:42 2022 No.20366680 >>20363648 Start reading and tell us freak

Anonymous Sat May 14 00:14:05 2022 No.20366699

>>20366477
>made constant elementary philosophical mistakes
That was the view of those who came after him within his own school; Iamblichus, Proclus, etc. You're basking in mystification and treating your mind fog as a virtue. Answer the question here>>20364276, quickly go and actually read the book, or just the few pages from it on individual forms, before posting drivel.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:16:08 2022 No.20366709 >>20363648 >i am ashamed to poop

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:17:18 2022 No.20366714 Plotinus was a self-hating crypto-gnostic who butchered Plato. He's wishy-washy on key questions and basically was just an ugly vegan who couldn't wait to die.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:18:37 2022 No.20366720 >>20366574 MacKenna's has more of the muses divine madness, whereas Gerson is more precise and dry.

Anonymous Sat May 14 00:18:54 2022 No.20366722
File: 107 KB, 518x613, 1645340774283.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>20364276
>Do individuals have forms?
Yes and no. Individuals have forms in so far as the finite is unable to grasp the infinite. Individual forms are a logical distinction but not a real one. Next question.

Anonymous Sat May 14 00:24:25 2022 No.20366737

>>20366699
>That was the view of those who came after him within his own school; Iamblichus, Proclus
Iamblichus and Proclus were both wrong for varying reasons, but the main one would be that both were too preoccupied with trying to justify the Pagan Pantheon of their time to engage in true philosophy. The works of Iamblichus and Proclus are largely polemical in the style of Nietzsche rather than being actual works of deep philosophical thinking. There is absolutely no reason to accept Proclus henads but he needs them because Proclus wants to retain polytheism and thus leads to his basic error in trying to justify something he wants to be true rather than exploring what is true.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:24:51 2022 No.20366739 >>20366722 >yes and no There it is, the Plotinus ramble without conclusion. And even the meaning, in as far as it ever existed, of that ramble is heavily contested between different translators.

Anonymous Sat May 14 00:30:25 2022 No.20366761

>>20366739
If you struggle with Plotinus you're going to get completely filtered by Trinitarian Theology. Paradox is pretty key to understanding the metaphysics of the interaction of the finite and infinite. Heck you don't even have to go into theology to understand this, do you think Hilberts Hotel is rambling without a conclusion? That's just how the infinite is. Understanding that there are aspects of infinity that are different in finititude than they are in the infinite itself is key, and a reason why Plotinus was a far deeper thinker than you are who encounters the paradox and gives up

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:36:08 2022 No.20366784 >>20366761 Mystification.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:36:52 2022 No.20366788 >>20366784 >Math is mystifcation

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:45:20 2022 No.20366815 >>20366714 >ugly vegan who couldn't wait to die. I feel like that explains most great thinkers

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:53:43 2022 No.20366839 >discover incoherence in your ideas >place incoherence in a giant and ever expanding "mystery/paradox" box >be dumbstruck in awe at your own problem solving genius Many such cases.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 00:55:05 2022 No.20366844 >>20366839 But enough about modern scientific atheism

Anonymous Sat May 14 01:12:45 2022 No.20366901

>>20364276
>within his own school
There was no "school", "Neoplatonism" is coined by modern scholars.
>Do individuals have forms?
Yes, they do, but the soul is not the form of the body so it differs from Aristotle's view, because as you would know the soul is closer to the pilot of a ship rather than everything that makes the ship what it is (which is the proximate matter). What you probably got confused by is the "individual forms" are not corporeal and are fewer than the logoi they contain and express, so from one perspective (grosser) individuals do not have forms (your individuality as "human being" is illusory), from another (subtler) they do (an individual undescended intellect). It seems like you got confused because Plotinus is broadly read enough to consider and display the thought of other philosophers, especially Aristotle, before he presents his own, which you've conflated with being vague, likely because you couldn't pay attention or did not understand what was being referred to.
>You're basking in mystification and treating your mind fog as a virtue.
And you're basking in ignorance and treating your inability to think about complex subjects as a virtue.
>>20366714
>He's wishy-washy on key questions
Just like Plato. It's almost as if reality is complicated.

Anonymous Sat May 14 01:15:06 2022 No.20366906

The Enneads are lovely, I recommend everybody pirate Gerson's edition and read 1.6 "On Beauty" as their first introduction to Plotinus. You can also read Porphyry's Life of Plotinus (beginning of the book) quickly.

I recommend ignoring most of this thread.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 05:33:16 2022 No.20367570 >>20366737 Platonism is polytheistic Henads are a necessary plurality of Nous you pseud

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 05:56:52 2022 No.20367616 >>20367570 The henads are not necessary at all, the nous is the totality of the forms as a result of the One contemplating itself and fragmenting its absolute ineffable unity into intelligible finite fragments which are objects of thought.

Anonymous Sat May 14 06:07:40 2022 No.20367635
File: 153 KB, 700x603, henads_proclus.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>20367616
>"If then this Essence may justly be called one, if unity may be predicated of its being, it must, in a certain manner, seem to contain the nature opposed to its own; that is, the manifold; it must not attract this manifoldness from without, but it must, from and by itself, possess this manifold; it must veritably be one, and by its own unity be infinite and manifold"—Plotinus, Enneads 6.5.9

They are needed to retain the perfect unity of the One

Anonymous Sat May 14 06:18:39 2022 No.20367655

>>20367635
That's not talking about henads, it's discussing the unity of all things within the One. Aquinas talks about the same thing and obviously Aquinas does not affirm the existence of henads. Proclus system was simply a cope to try and retain polytheism, but it's not necessary and in fact does violence to the whole Neoplatonic schema by trying to introduce multiplicity into the One itself

Remember that Christian theology is the true successor of Platonism and perfected Neoplatonism in Trinitarianism.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 06:25:37 2022 No.20367673 >>20366761 What's so hard about the trinity? An immaterial substance can defy laws of logic, but that anon asked you about individuals and you said "yes and no". Having paradoxes wrt the material world and individuals is lazy philosophy.

Anonymous Sat May 14 06:33:45 2022 No.20367689

>>20367673
He was talking about the forms. Forms are not the material world they're the intelligible world. A problem with interpreting Plotinus is that people don't think he's clear on whether individuals have forms. In middle Platonism only archetypes have forms, so there's one "form of a human" which informs all individual humans, but there's no "form of Billy Bob Thornton" because Billy Bob Thornton himself is an instantiation of countless other forms combined to create him as an individual.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 06:40:02 2022 No.20367707 >>20367689 >but there's no "form of Billy Bob Thornton" Then the answer is "no" not "yes and no"

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 06:43:04 2022 No.20367714 >>20367707 I was talking about middle Platonism. Plotinus has a different view.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 06:45:29 2022 No.20367721 >>20367714 Whatever, I don't care what you're talking about. The answer is yes or no.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 06:51:03 2022 No.20367739 File: 13 KB, 300x562, achvergisses.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>20367570 >Henads are a necessary plurality of Nous you pseud yeah, well where does plato say that

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 07:24:12 2022 No.20367830 >>20367721 >get BTFO >w-whatever I don't care Should've just dipped out silently and kept your dignity.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 07:32:12 2022 No.20367854 >>20366761 >immediately changes the subject lol

Anonymous Sat May 14 07:39:47 2022 No.20367875

>>20367854
The question was already answered there was nothing more to say and "plotinus rambling" is not a counterpoint or response. Plotinus affirms a logical (but not real) existence of individual forms. They exist because of our finite perception of infinity. This is explained in more depth by Aquinas who talks about the attributes of God, power, goodness, mercy, etc being finite expressions of the singular unified essence of God. In God there is no "power and goodness and mercy", they're all identical with God and we only perceive them as different things because our finitude.

Hope that helps.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 08:36:46 2022 No.20368032 >>20367830 Where did you BTFO anyone retard. You BTFO yourself when you said "yes and no". If your answer requires you to drop the law of non-contradiction, you already lost.

>>	Anonymous Sat May 14 13:13:44 2022 No.20368847 >>20363648 >What am I in for? If you bought it, why haven't you read it?

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