Proclus' triad of goodness, wisdom, and beauty: "Now

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"if anyone who is devoted to things of sense imagines that the Good is wafting towards him, and flatters himself that he has encountered the Good, he is entirely in error. For, in truth, the attaining of it requires a method not easy, but rather divine; and the best thing is to neglect things of sense, and strive enthusiastically to master the mathematical sciences, contemplating numbers, and thus to develop by practice that science which teaches 'What is Being'."

- Numenius of Apamea, fr. 2

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Proclus on the consummation of dialectic in the One:

"Parmenides, then, is imitating this and ends by doing away both with the negations and with the whole argument, because he wants to conclude the discourse about the one with the inexpressible. For the term of the progress towards it has to be a halt; of the upward movement, rest; of the arguments that it is inexpressible and of all knowledge, a unification. For all these reasons it seems true to me that he ends by removing the negations also from the One. For this whole dialectical method, which works by negations, conducts us to what lies before the threshold of the One, removing all inferior things and by this removal dissolving the impediments to the contemplation of the One, if it is possible to speak of such a thing. But after going through all the negations, one ought to set aside this dialectical method... so here all dialectical activity ought to be eliminated. These dialectical operations are the preparation for the strain towards the One, but are not themselves the strain... Finally, when it has completed its course, the soul may rightly abide with the One. Having become single and alone in itself, it will choose only the simply One… It is with silence, then, that he [Plato] brings to completion the study of the One."

- Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Parmenides, Glenn Morrow trans, pp. 602-3

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“Platonism is the philosophical Odyssey and the Platonic dialectic is neither a dialectic of contradiction nor of contrariety, but a dialectic of rivalry (amphisbetesis) a dialectic of rivals and suitors.”

- Giles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, 1990, p.254

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"What Plato wants to get across here—and this is where he is pre-Cantorian—is that there is no form of object for thought which is capable of gathering together the pure multiple, the multiple-without-one, and making it consist: the pure multiple scarcely occurs in presentation before it has already dissipated; its non-occurrence is like the flight of scenes from a dream. Plato writes: ‘It is necessary that the entirety of disseminated being shatter apart, as soon as it is grasped by discursive thought.’ Wakeful thought (diano¨a)—apart from pure set theory—obtains no grasp whatsoever on this below the-presentable that is multiple-presentation. What thought needs is the— non-being—mediation of the one."

- Alain Badiou, Being and Event, Second Meditation, trans. Oliver Feltham, 2005, p. 34

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Heidegger on Plato's instantaneous event of being:

"The third passage of the Parmenides [155e4-157b5] is the most profound point to which Occidental metaphysics has ever advanced. It is the most radical advance into the problem of Being and time—an advance which afterwards was not caught up with [aufgefangen] but instead intercepted [abgefangen] (by Aristotle)."

- Martin Heidegger, Plato: Parmenides, 8, quoted in All of a Sudden: Heidegger and Plato’s Parmenides, by Jussi Backman

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'The wisdom of Plato is not a philosophy, a search for God by human reason. Such a research was made as well as it can be made by Aristotle. Plato’s wisdom is nothing but an orientation of the soul toward grace.'

- Simone Weil, Intimations of Christianity among the Ancient Greeks, via Tonio Kröger

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"If not to be is a godsend for the wicked, it follows that being, if it involves evil, is not good; if with the good it is a good, then being by itself is neither evil nor good; therefore the Good is beyond being."
- Damascius, Commentary on Plato's Phaedo

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"Timæus (says Proclus) being a Pythagorean, follows the Pythagoric principles, and these are the Orphic traditions; for what Orpheus delivered mystically in secret discourses, these Pythagoras learned when he was initiated by Aglaophemus in the Orphic mysteries."

Syrianus too makes the Orphic and Pythagoric principles to be one and the same; and, according to Suidas, the same Syrianus composed a book, entitled the Harmony of Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato. And again Proclus: it is Pythagorical to follow the Orphic genealogies; for from the Orphic tradition downward by Pythagoras, the science concerning the Gods was derived to the Greeks."

And elsewhere "All the theology of the Greeks is the progeny of the sacred initiations (μυσαγωγιαι) of Orpheus. For Pythagoras first learned the rites of the Gods from Aglaophemus; but Plato was the second who received a perfect science of these, both from the Pythagoric, and Orphic writings."

- Thomas Taylor, The Hymns of Orpheus

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"Socrates: May we not pursue the image of the doves, and say that the chase after knowledge is of two kinds? One kind is prior to possession and for the sake of possession, and the other for the sake of taking and holding in the hands that which is possessed already. And thus, when a man has learned and known something long ago, he may resume and get hold of the knowledge which he has long possessed, but has not at hand in his mind."

- Plato, from Theaetetus

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"Plato merely calls [fundamental axioms of mathematics] [hypotheses], "concessions which the participants in a discussion have agreed to make". The name clearly indicates the dialectical origins of the kind of statement to which it refers. All this suggests that mathematics and dialectic not only shared a common terminology but were also interconnected disciplines. In fact, it looks as if Plato was writing at a time when mathematics was just a branch of dialectic."

- Árpád Szabó, The Beginning of Greek Mathematics, 1978, p.238

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Proclus on the reflection of the soul:

"Therefore just as nature stands creatively above the visible figures, so the soul, exercising her capacity to know, projects on the imagination, as on a mirror, the ideas of the figures; and the imagination, receiving in pictorial form these impressions of the ideas within the soul, by their means affords the soul and opportunity to turn inward from the pictures and attend to herself. It is as if a man looking at himself in a mirror and marvelling at the power of nature and at his own appearance should wish to look upon himself directly and possess such a power as would enable him to become at the same time the seer and the object seen. In the same way, when the soul is looking outside herself at the imagination, seeing the figures depicted there and being struck by their beauty and orderedness; she is admiring her own ideas from which they are derived; and though she adores their beauty, she dismisses it as something reflected and seeks her own beauty. She wants to penetrate within herself to see the circle and the triangle there, all things without parts and all in one another, to become one with what she sees and enfold their particularity, to behold the secret and ineffable figures in the inaccessible places and shrines of the gods, to uncover the unadorned divine beauty and see the circle more partless than any center, the triangle without extension, and every other object of knowledge that has regained unity. Clearly, then, the self-moved figure is prior to what is moved by another; the partless prior to the self-moved; and prior to the partless is the figure which is identical with unity. For all figures attain consummation in the henads, the source from which they all entered into being."

- Proclus, Commentary on Euclid's Elements, Glenn Morrow translation, 1970, 113

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"Nous is set over understanding and dispenses principles to it from above, perfecting it out of its own riches, so in the same way dialectic, the purest part of philosophy, hovers attentively over mathematics, encompasses its whole development, and of itself, contributes the special sciences their various perfecting, critical, and intellective powers - the procedures, I mean, of analysis, definition, and demonstration. Being thus endowed and led towards perfection, mathematics reaches some of its results by analysis, others by synthesis, expounds some matters by division, others by definition, and some of its discoveries binds fast by demonstration, adapting these methods to its subjects and employing teach of them for gaining insight into mediating ideas. Thus its analyses are under the control of dialectic, and its definitions, divisions, and demonstrations are of the same family and unfold in conformity with the way of mathematical understanding. It is reasonable, then, to say [Rep.534e] that dialectic is the capstone of the mathematical sciences."

- Proclus, Comnmentary on Euclid's Elements, Glenn Morrow trans., p.35

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"What measures, then, shall we adopt? What machine employ, or what reason consult by means of which we may contemplate this ineffable beauty; a beauty abiding in the most divine sanctuary without ever proceeding from its sacred retreats lest it should be beheld by the profane and vulgar eye? We must enter deep into ourselves, and, leaving behind the objects of corporeal sight, no longer look back after any of the accustomed spectacles of sense. For, it is necessary that whoever beholds this beauty, should withdraw his view from the fairest corporeal forms; and, convinced that these are nothing more than images, vestiges and shadows of beauty, should eagerly soar to the fair original from which they are derived. For he who rushes to these lower beauties, as if grasping realities, when they are only like beautiful images appearing in water, will, doubtless, like him in the fable, by stretching after the shadow, sink into the lake and disappear. For, by thus embracing and adhering to corporeal forms, he is precipitated, not so much in his body as in his soul, into profound and horrid darkness; and thus blind, like those in the infernal regions, converses only with phantoms, deprived of the perception of what is real and true"

- Plotinus, from "An Essay on the Beautiful" as translated into English by Thomas Taylor 1917

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"Plato himself clearly affirms that mathematics purifies and elevates the soul, like Homer's Athena dispersing the mist from the intellectual light of the understanding, a light "more worthy of preservation than ten thousand bodily eyes," and thus dispenses Athena's gifts as well as those of Hermes."

- Proclus, Commentary on Euclid's Elements, Prologue I.X 28

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"Plato put over the entrance to his Academy the words: Ageometretos medeis eisito! "Let no one who has not grasped the mathematical enter here!” These words do not mean that one must be educated in only one subject―"geometry"―but that one must grasp that the fundamental condition for the proper possibility of knowing is knowledge of the fundamental presuppositions of all knowledge and the positions we take based on such knowledge. A knowledge which does not build its foundation knowledgeably, and thereby notes its limits, is not knowledge but mere opinion. The mathematical, in the original sense of learning what one already knows, is the fundamental presupposition of "academic" work."

- Martin Heidegger, Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics

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"Socrates: I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were a philosopher, for wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. He was not a bad genealogist who said that Iris (the messenger of heaven) is the child of Thaumas (wonder). But do you begin to see what is the explanation of this perplexity on the hypothesis which we attribute to Protagoras?"

- Plato, Theaetetus

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That it is not a science of production is clear even from the history of the earliest philosophers. For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation had been secured, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake."

- Aristotle, Metaphysics

You're doing good work OP

>>9846871
imma read all this and give a proper reply gimme 10 minutes

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"Wonder is a kind of desire for knowledge. The situation arises when one sees an effect and does not know its cause, or when the cause of the particular effect is one that exceeds his power of understanding. Hence, wonder is a cause of pleasure insofar as there is annexed the hope of attaining understanding of that which one wants to know...For desire is especially aroused by the awareness of ignorance, and consequently a man takes the greatest pleasure in those things which he discovers for himself or learns from the ground up."

- Thomas Aquinas, from Summa Theologiae, Question 32, 'The Causes of Pleasure,' Article 8, 'Is Pleasure Caused by Wondering.'

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>>9846962
C-c-combo breaker!

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>>9846972
"Incommensurable; but also inseparable. No discourse worthy of being called philosophical, that is separated from the philosophical life; no philosophical life, if it is not strictly linked to philosophical discourse. It is there that the danger inherent to a philosophical life resides: the ambiguity of philosophical discourse."

-Piere Hadot, What Is Ancient Philosophy?

>>9846929
>In the same way, when the soul is looking outside herself at the imagination, seeing the figures depicted there and being struck by their beauty and orderedness; she is admiring her own ideas from which they are derived;

amazing

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>>9847032

>>9846938
I want always to agree with Plotinus in this way, but I often wonder if his rejection of the "corporeal" in favor of the intangible sublime was not in some way influenced by his own maligned physical condition .. nevertheless I hold Plotinus in perhaps the highest regard among the ancient thinkers. Neoplatonism is a refinement of the greatest tradition of thought, Platonism, a proper succession of visionary enlightenment

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>>9847039
Ain't that true for all of us on 4chan?

>>9847053
christ almighty, what is that image doing holy hell

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>>9847070
It's causing you to remember the form of the forms.

>>9847083
Forms are gay. There is no gay in the ideal.

>>9847093
What?

>>9846871

Fantastic Work OP

Are these quotes you've come across reading, or searching for quotes?

If the former, you would benefit the sub tremendously if you would please provide us a list (a good portion of the "start with the greeks" folks are among Plato even as we speak)

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>be me
>suppose truth is a woman, wat do
>no fucking clue, shitpost ad infinitum
>see this:

>>9846929
>in the same way, when the soul is looking outside herself at the imagination, seeing the figures depicted there and being struck by their beauty and orderedness; she is admiring her own ideas from which they are derived

OP fuck yes. yes yes
>also fuck yes OP
>thread is yes

this thread completely rules and you are a boss absolute for posting it. awesome

>>9848382

Not OP, but have you read Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy? Whole thing is a dialogue between Boethius and one 'Lady Philosophy'

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>>9848457
no. this is the thing with me, i scramble around trying to connect stuff and coming apart as it happens.

*proclus* tho. holy shitballs i had no idea. none this guy is *fucking* *wonderful.* ugh. so good. so so good.

i'm realizing this: that for me the tao is a way of coping with CTRL & capitalism. with all the dark stuff through which i find myself perpetually falling.

i am no neoplatonist but i love neoplatonists. i cannot find *anything* in proclus that i don't like. what a wonderful man. what an utterly wonderful man.
>and what a wonderful fucking thread also
>OP yes

& what a fabulous perspective. it's not like spinozism, but it's not not like it either. points converge at the top & so also below. religion & philosophy. amor intellectualis. cannot find a flaw. just that. nothing more.

i read too much dark shit & dwell on dark shit. i was raised on derrida & ten thousand forms of cynicism & hysteria & much else. my thing: what else besides darkness? nick land: darkness *confirmed.* the tao then: we work with darkness, we work with emptiness, we work with non-being. chairman sheng-ji yang:

>what do I care for your suffering?
>pain, even agony,
>is no more than information before the senses,
>data fed to the computer of the mind.

>the lesson is simple:
>you have received the information,
>now act on it.
>take control of the input
>and you shall become master of the output.
—Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang,
“Essays on Mind and Matter”
(The Virtual World)

this computes 1000% to me. ok. i get it. input/output. emptiness & CTRL. checks out. the tao: self-defense against CTRL. CTRL: what there is:
>earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalitization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. as markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip.

but. but but. *proclus* tho. neoplatonism tho. lights at the end of tunnels tho: and *not* the headlamps of approaching trains maybe.

i'm too spooked out to be a true believer at this point. too baudrillardicized. too derridified. too marxicized. run over too many times by the land rover. too fucking bitter & vengeful about it also.

acceleration for the situation; CTRL & the tao for survival. ok. can into. survival for what tho? maybe just for this. to get a sniff of *this* goodness. what the fuck else? what else.

what can i do for the neoplatonic community? bring coffee? catch mice? wash dishes? fix the photocopier? i can't be a member. i am covered with disgusting boils and fungal blooms & when i speak i make weird sounds & have facial tics. things i picked up from staying too long in unsightly & paranoid places. too full of ressentiment & melancholy & sentimentality & bad habits.

you guys are fucking all right tho. you guys are fucking where it's at.

>>9848566

Fascinating post man, and thanks for the input. That you still know it as "darkness" is a good sign tho.

"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."
(Thelonious Monk)

If you can't view the light as a positive, then perhaps you can have a 'negative' sort of faith. One can worship an antithesis in the service of one’s faith more effectively than a deity. The darkness is a good negative image for belief and luckily its deeply stamped on the world. In the depths of its fissures, where it perfectly negates everything that most others believe, you can see the impression of spires

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>>9848584
my man i shit you not this fucking place is the greatest goddamn thing i have ever seen in all my natural days. i cannot even begin to articulate how much shit i have worked out internally in these conversations & in these threads & only these places & in only these ways. /lit/ is permacool with me. however much i have been a shitposting all-star on these boards i am 14000% indebted to the /lit/ mimetosphere for having shaken out all my mimetic sillies on this board. being no academic philosopher & being ten thousand miles from ever being one threads like this & others are the best part of my day, full stop period.

having said this: goddamnit my guy i'm supposed to be getting shit done today & if you post quotes as interesting as that one my IRL life is only going to degenerate all the faster:

>"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light."
(Thelonious Monk)

this: extra-stolen. with thanks.

>That you still know it as "darkness" is a good sign tho.
aye. gotta respect the dark. that's psychoanalysis. but: also the good stuff. based proclus: Good Stuff by the fucking *bucketload.*

>If you can't view the light as a positive, then perhaps you can have a 'negative' sort of faith.
yes yes

>One can worship an antithesis in the service of one’s faith more effectively than a deity
the feels

>The darkness is a good negative image for belief and luckily its deeply stamped on the world
my man

>In the depths of its fissures, where it perfectly negates everything that most others believe, you can see the impression of spires

>you can see the impression of spires
>you can see the impression of spires

pic rel. this is all i'm saying. philosophy is humbling stuff. me: humbled. and very fucking *tired* also. but i am all about that neoplatonism.

negative faith: can into.
*worship* of *antitheses*: how fucking right you are. that *positive* mimesis. that *alternative* to seduction.

this is my thing. this is all of my thing. i have no answers except to support absolutely anything that is not yet another meme on planet meme. neoplatonism: no meme.

this is where i live. in liminalia. i'm fine with this. more than fine. my hope: positive karma. more neoplatonism; less ressentiment. nick land: a scary possibility. the tao: a good coping strategy. the endgame: who the fuck knows.

who the fuck knows. *proclus* tho. dat amor intellectualis dei. and maybe not so much deleuzian/spinozistic masochism. alternatives to sadomasochism/power-knowledge/&c: most appealing. v much so.

i like neoplatonists. muchly. muchly muchly. shit is beyond cynicism & hysteria, scylla & charybdis.

and you just gave me the fucking ending to my story, you slobberingly beautiful motherfucker, you. hence the retardedness. pardon me while i exile one absolutely archaic complex from my unconsciousness forever.

today, my guy, is a beautiful day. today - wasteland notwithstanding - is one goddamn beautiful fucking all-time day.

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>>9848566
The Dao is interesting. But it's about more than surviving off mystical platitudes. But about the praxis of an anthropotechnic. Pic reated. Much like Neoplatonism. You are already engaged in the practice of philosophy just by wondering and knowing the conceptual personae and coming into contact with the plane of immanence. What can anyone offer but their uniqueness? Imagine a Nietzschean daimon.

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>>9848382
"Yoga is the union of the seer and the seen..."

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>>9848625
"You must become the final angel."
- Eva 6.66

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>>9848784
>What can anyone offer but their uniqueness?

this i submit is one of the most interesting questions around to ask these days.

take, well, *me* for instance. i've already seen anons in other threads posting as me. that's super-weird. or something kind will be said about me that is then immediately presumed to be me, samefagging. hell, the only the reason i started using a name at all was because i met another anon in one of these threads who sounded *so much exactly like me* that i began referring to him as Other Me; and then *he* began referring to me as Other Me; and so i figured, okay, well, i guess i had better become a namefag then, just for *clarity.*

so *originality* is a huge thing: it's why i think philosophy & analysis are so important. it is our *sense of originality that fucks with us:* we think we are all alone in a thing until we encounter a philosopher, some concept, who articulates in a sentence whatever it is that we thought only we could or would understand. it's the origins of much hysteria & much ideology also: Only I Alone Can See This.

and it will land you in your therapist's office. sometimes elsewhere. but in the end, this is why lacan was the ultrasuperboss that he was: he btfo'd the sphinx, which is all hysteria, riddles, death, and punishment.

and he got this, or some of it, from heidegger too: the metaphysics of production. this is what hysteria is: the constant and never-ending stream of sphinx like riddles. IRL, when you confront this, it *sucks.* but deleuze is right also: desire is machinic in this sense. we want to produce and we do. the real psychoanalytic polarity switch - and this is a thing which i encountered well and truly by *accident,*
and in a context far far removed from philosophy - is to grasp the sound of your own voice.

i have told this story before & so i will not tell it again here. suffice it to say it was a Moment of Zen: the day i heard the sound of my own voice and realized how i sounded. the fly out the fly bottle, all the rest. it was the day i realized that philosophy was for realsies. very much like that scene in They Live. more gentle tho. and much more accidental.

hysteria a thing. it really is. *sanity* the deal. the fucking ultimate treasure. *be sane.* there *is* no way to know this perfectly & independently. you *think* you are sane until you understand from *another* that you are not. *insanity* the deal. *mindlessness* a thing. becoming-sphinx: bad look. bad scene. getting BTFOd: harsh, but 149% necessary. how to do this? not by playing defensively. defense wins NFL championships and fucking destroys minds. nietzsche knew.

but again: dat übermensch. me? i will absolutely support the becoming-ubermenschen i encounter, but i am no ubermensch myself. i am famed mimic gogo all the way. my guy. my favorite character in my favorite game.

the yeti was fucking great too. a yeti with a feeling for aesthetics.
>that tiny little skull in the cave
love it.

(cont'd)

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>>9848845
also, this is a neoplatonism thread & not Girardfag Speaks. but. but but. just so fucking interesting.
>and oh my god i just want to write so much shit on ff6 now holy fuck like you would not believe
>this is not the time
>this is not the place
>fack

>>9848784
> But it's about more than surviving off mystical platitudes. But about the praxis of an anthropotechnic
yes my guy. yes it most surely is. and that is something interesting to think about, i think. i was going to write this elsewhere: *the ethics of kungfu* are *not so easily resolved as mimetic violence* because they are predicated on the notion of *self-defense.* those monks needed to know how to kick some ass so they could go on contemplating the buddha. good scene. very good.

metaphysically, i think CTRL > capitalism but the Way - because the *Way* means *yielding* - > CTRL. that's the idea. we are all beholden to Nick Land's Wild Ride and i think the tao is the way off of it. much tao. much anthropotechnics also. they go very very well together. consider once again the wise words of based taoist ubermenschen chairman sheng-ji yang in pic rel.

cannot find a flaw here. cannot find a flaw. *except* for the fact that the chairman rules a brutal police state
>if that is in fact a problem for you &c

just cool-as-balls things to think about. cannot hold all the feels.

>You are already engaged in the practice of philosophy just by wondering and knowing the conceptual personae and coming into contact with the plane of immanence.
yes yes. and a *collective* and *overlapping* plane it be. it's why i like this idea, if the berserk pursuit of exactitude in science continues to bother us: how about that collective wasteland cartographical royal society? how about that fog of war? how about a little map-sharing? how about those schizophrenic cartographies? let's echolocate. let's get creative. let's take feels > reals at face value and collaborate. much else. let's Flaky Cosmic New Age Bullshit
>or, less foolishly, neoplatonize -

& much else.

>Imagine a Nietzschean daimon.
why the fuck not. suppose truth is a woman: what then? proclus clearly had an idea.

>>9848795
i'm too lazy & inflexible for yoga but hnng yoga.
>and esp hnng girls who do yoga
>sri aurobindo: life *is* yoga.
>yoga/taoism: no problems here. Be Flexible. learn Bendiness. i'm okay with this

>>9848810
first of all, nothing but Yes to based peter sloterdijk. i have read, i believe, everything he has translated into english. waiting on vol. III/foam. big fan.

see also girard: the apocalypse does not signify the end of the world; it also creates hope.

becoming-angel is a tall order. becoming-wasteland mimic: i can into this. but, i mean. in terms of apocalyptica: it's a fucking crazy interesting genre. eschatology. and *survival.* and Finding The Others. hnng.
>tfw you need to write a long long essay on why ff6 is such a great fucking piece of art

it's all just too fucking interesting, gents.

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>>9848270
A bit of both. Meant to make this a general thread for the divine Plato but forgot to add a title.

A list? I guess so.

First, I would suggest a general textbook to start. Something that includes the Presocratics and Plato and Aristotle et al and has commentary.

Then I would read up on Platonic interpretation. This article is a nice start:

Http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~davpy35701/text/platonic-interps.pdf

Next, start reading Plato fully including his epistles. And after that, Aristotle. Commentaries, ancient and modern, are often useful.

If you start getting bored, I would suggest Pierre Hadot for general inspiration. If you liked the Presocratics, you might try Kingsley as well.

Make sure to read about the other philosophical schools and not concentrate exclusively on Plato and Aristotle either. Stoics are a big influence on Neoplatonism.

For the hope of greater Eastern/Western dialogue, also supplement with The Shape of Ancient Thought. Maybe contemporaneous Eastern texts too.

For Neoplatonism, I suggest Iamblichus, Plotinus, Proclus, Poryphory, and Pseudo-Dionysius. Once again, secondary works recommended.

Finally, I would suggest Algiz Uzdavinys for a general geneaology of Neoplatonism.

And if you're still hungry for more get into Hermeticism and Gnosticism and Arabs and Medievals and Renaissance.

>>9848457
I had an experience like that but never read the book.

>>9848899
Becoming-angel playing at being-God.

Wu wei of control and surrender. The control that does not control. The surrender that does not surrender.

Find the Self in the Other. Find the Other in the Sef.

"It was the year they immanentized the eschaton..."

>life *is* yoga
Litte bit of tantra too.

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>>9848845
>dat ubermensch? me?
Guess you're not as manic as you come off. But some cannot escape their delusions of grandeur so easily. And so the question of how remains... dat ubermensch through philosophy? Psychology? Psychiatry?

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>>9849009
i believe proclus himself mentions something about this: the *proximate* good, how one can only become good by coming into contact with something *proximately* better.

my thing: desire. i am attracted to what i am attracted to. it seems "natural" in this way, but in the end it always, fucking *always,* points back to darkness and dissipation and much else. because of course i am a meatbag, and i am attracted to violence, sensuality, money, and all the rest. because i have read all of this continental shit and i have concluded - *like a fucking retard* - that that is all there is. it's Nick Land's Wild Ride. i went looking for the darkest parts of the darkest corners and boy i found them.

i am *wholly* ready for a different way of looking. can into tao/CTRL but neither sheng-ji yang nor kefka nor bane nor whoever the fuck else need be the endboss of philosophy. i would prefer a *happy* ending. i would prefer based Goodness.

>I am Proclus,
>Lycian whom Syrianus brought up to teach his doctrine after him.
>This tomb reunites both our bodies.
>May an identical sojourn be reserved to our both souls!"
what a fucking guy.

>>9849029
>Guess you're not as manic as you come off. But some cannot escape their delusions of grandeur so easily.
if for one hot second you thought that i believed this of myself then i apologize. i am a fucking *mollusc.* i am way way way small. dem ragged claws. wasteland mimic in a Zone Eater. that is me. all the way. and i am fine with this.

>And so the question of how remains... dat ubermensch through philosophy?
ok. so.

this *is* a thing. my feeling is that the Ubermensch within has to come out. this is therapy: metaphysics > politics. that's *my* mode: work your shit out internally so that you *don't* have to conquer poland. or whatever the fuck.

*only the Ubermenschen can cross the lacanian symbolic order.* that is why he matters. if this doesn't happen, you wind up with what lacan calls 'words trapped in the body' - fake speech, hysterical speech. sphinx-mode. i have *been* that. i have been fortunate enough to have had this pointed out to me.

i am *still* trying to unwind this from my fiction - but holy fuck a lot of philosophy has been required to do this, to feel as though i am, maybe, possibly, ever-so-slightly, *not shitting myself this time.* it does feel like it. it feels *more* like it when i feel as though i am making sense. however colourfully my sense-making apparatus thus appears. which i am certain it does.

but no. categorically no. i am no ubermensch. not remotely not ever. no no.

>Psychology? Psychiatry?
whatever works. if it's poetry it's poetry. if it's professional wrestling it's professional wrestling. if it's the NFL it's the NFL. whatever. whatever it is that resonates with the butterflies in your stomach. for me it's fiction.

and my fiction is teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrible. it really is. but that's where i want to end up. not philosophyfag plateau. *pulp fiction.*

(cont'd)

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I feel as though Deleuze is right about metaphysics insofar as he captures uniqueness and mutation but ancient metaphysics somehow map onto modern metapsychology better than psychoanalytic theory... Schizo-analytic cartographies should have been about Neoplatonism! At least insofar as it seeks to be utilitarian. Human instrumentality. Make yourself into an instrument of the divine. Let Thine will be as mine. Love is the law, love under will.

>>9848913

Lovely, thanks anon

Now, I'm mostly on my way to exploring the stuff as you've laid out already. However, where is it, if you don't mind, that you found the more "random" quotes. The Deleuze, or the Weil? Were those interspersed throughout introductions of larger volumes, or have you read those materials as well, and then later aggregated them into your more strictly neo-platonic materials?

>>9849059
I appreciate your opinions but I think you really need to contain yourself. Your demeanor is off-putting and actively distorts my-and I'm sure others'-openness to your thoughts. I don't mean to be hurtful or anything, but this is just general life advice. It is possible, and healthy, to express joy and interest without coming off as overeager and abrasive.

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>>9849059
Trust your desire...

"The steeds that carry me carried me as far as ever my spirit
desired, since they brought me and set me on the renowned
Way of the Goddess, who with her own hands leads the man
who sees through all things. Along that way I was led..."

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>>9849009
the kefka pic was intended for this phrase:
>Becoming-angel playing at being-God.

i have a High Holy Shitload of things to say about ff6. a lot. because of this idea. or that other anon and the ubermensch. and all of this. much else.

i can talk about kefka for miles and miles and miles b/c of how perfectly he encapsulates so much of this shit. it's why i needed deleuze to explain it. but. anyways.

>Wu wei of control and surrender. The control that does not control. The surrender that does not surrender.
yes. this. the Way is *yielding* - and everything about Capitalism is, CTRL. that is why it matters. because the Way is superior. but CTRL is the context we live in. deleuze was right about this. land also. much else.

you know what's a good look? *love.* intellectual, spiritual, or, you know, with puppies and shit.

>Find the Self in the Other. Find the Other in the Self.
this, in other words. just this. and - to do this - *dropping your own hysterical voice.* traditionally more of a problem for me than anyone else. but this was *The* insight of my life. the only one. Be Sane. accept that you are probably Not Sane most of the time. pay attention to this. the whole history of continental theory from Nietzsche to Girard can help illuminate this: Do Not Think You Can Repress That Shit. you cannot. it must come *out,* but you also cannot force it. the psyche is *complicated.* language is *not* the end-deal. and therapy *works.*

>little bit of tantra too.
i only have mad respect for buddhists. i know a few and they are wise af. tantra from what i understand is some endgame buddhism, along with tibetan stuff. i am not well-versed in it but i am wholly certain that those guys know the deal.

>>9849029
>dat ubermensch through philosophy?Psychology? Psychiatry?
dat übermensch *however.* but he must come out, and he must do his shit and conquer the things that only the ubermensch can do. that's the whole deal. because if he does not, it's politics all the rest of the way. bad scene. not sane. mimetics everywhere. not cool. you get what i am saying.

>>9849080
>I appreciate your opinions but I think you really need to contain yourself. Your demeanor is off-putting and actively distorts my-and I'm sure others'-openness to your thoughts. I don't mean to be hurtful or anything, but this is just general life advice. It is possible, and healthy, to express joy and interest without coming off as overeager and abrasive.

yes. understood. and i apologize. i sincerely do not mean to be an overbearing dick. IRL i am lower than low. here i get excited. v much so. it is a mindfuck indeed.

so i will respect the space. 100% no probs. totally.
>abrasive? wow
but again, this is the thing. *you cannot always know how you sound.* me especially. tone is not always communicated over the /lit/. overeager yes; abrasive, 158% not or ever my attention. straight facts. understood.

>>9849062
fucking love it.

>>9849085
my guy this shit just wrecks me.

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>>9849070
A bit of both. Many are found by friends.

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>>9849108
One must reconcile the stoic sage and the nietzschean ubermensch. Surrender not to the control of Gnon, seek not to express power of the self or ego, express fully the will of the psychic totality, personal God, genius/daemon by whom tat tvam asi. Brahma is to maya as the atman is to the jiva and brahma and atman are one and the same.

>>9849115
Have you personally written anything that aggregates all/some of these sources or know anyone that has? I'd like to read, if so.

>>9849115


Nice. Any more?

>>9849164
>>9849167
http://transhumantraditionalism.blogspot.com/?m=1

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>>9849144
Seek the self-identity of absolute contradiction. Theoria. Metanoia. Anamnesis. Ataraxia. Nibbana. Moksha. Total recall. Buddha nature. Abide in becoming-non-becoming.

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>>9849144
that's the fucking *deal* my man. i wholly and not partially agree with this. all the way. all the way.

>reconcile the stoic sage and the nietzschean ubermensch.
yes. to me the ubermensch has to go *first.* he has to attempt his impossible limits, or *get to the point where he understands that idea.* where he gets a sniff of the Real. stoicism is a good place to begin and not a bad place to end. but the ubermensch has to do *his* shit also.

>Surrender not to the control of Gnon, seek not to express power of the self or ego, express fully the will of the psychic totality, personal God, genius/daemon by whom tat tvam asi.
*yes.* shit must be *integrated.* but it can never be done *fully:* you have to leave some room. this is where heidegger > freud. psychoanalysis has to *get you okay with postmodernity.* so you can have a tolerance for ambiguity, so you are *not* chasing exactitude in science for ever.
>sloterdijk: 'float'

>Brahma is to maya as the atman is to the jiva and brahma and atman are one and the same.
that's it. that is all of it. *and you too are there.* you also. there is ecstatic sufi bliss:

>the final end and ultimate return of the gnostics...is that the Real is identical with them, while they do not exist.

all points converge at the top and at the bottom. that which can be called well & truly Sublime *can not be looked at directly* - but *it can be reflected.* it can be *invoked* - but it can not be *simulated.* see heidegger on poetry and much else.

beyond a certain horizon the words don't work. this inspires horror in some but something quite else in the mystic. and mysticism is where it is at, imho.

back to the fucking greeks, back to the neoplatonists, back to anywhere at all that gives you the feels which cannot be mistaken for anything else.

it's an embarrassment of riches. i can talk again about kefka here: he had no mask. he was the embodiment of the terror of immanence, All Things Revealed - but this is no deity. this is a jester who has had run upon him one too many experiments. an exquisite parable, that. but that's Art for you. Art says things that would take a lifetime to grind out the usual way.

and life is too short for this. especially when there are so many others who already know & already sense the same things you are sensing. and so the only thing left is silence. just silence. just fucking silence and trust.

and love. love is a good scene. love is that for which there is no substitute, that from which no souvenirs can be taken. most of consumption is disenchantment: you see a book, you buy it, the cash register rings, and - 'magically,' though this is shit magic - it becomes just another one of the books you own, and loses all its power.

taking things out of the world disenchants them and disenchants you. leaving beautiful shit right where it is in the world, no fingerprints: way better.

>>9849177
Are you him?

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>>9849239
No.

>>9849216
You're leaving your dirty fingerprints everywhere. Have you not attempted the impossible limits of the ubermensch yourself first? Or are you trying to find someone who has? Or create someone?

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>>9849258
>You're leaving your dirty fingerprints everywhere.
i know. this is why i am what i sound like. i am *the guy who attempted to leave no trace* - and what it led to was one psychic fracture after another. because i still have to live in this fucking world. however much i am a Constant Problem for everything i come in contact with.

>Have you not attempted the impossible limits of the ubermensch yourself first?
i did. in *thought.* you can see the results for yourself. i am still trying. i have an old, old project of mine that i would like to sum all of this up in. it is a game-world setting with a lot of insects, violence, dragons, and other things. it is not a pandora's box closed but a portrait of a pandora's box opened. my IRL life has *epically sucked* because of my obsession with these things.

i have *not* made a sincere effort. i *have* tried to cheat and game the system. the result: absolute *comedy.* you cannot fool Nature.

>Or are you trying to find someone who has?
i have found no small number of these. i have marked bent for charismatics & gurus. in general they have not disappointed. but this is to describe an addiction and a cycle. some things you have to work out on your own. i do not like this. i prefer laziness. it's not working. i have Big Stupid Dreams. they get disenchanted. i read very quickly and i learn very slowly. i am a *massive* fuckup as fuckups go.

but philosophy yo. you just can't hate on it. it's always so damn good.

>Or create someone?
i have one. i have created a few. my thing, the thing that i am making: part ff6, part SMAC, part memories of philosophyfag plateau. a work-in-progress that has ruined my whole shit for years. failing, and failing, and failing again. then more failure. plus failure on the side.

all this philosophy shit: just incidental. all of it. i never intended to turn out this way. i am fucking exhausted, most days. i genuinely am.

neoplatonism tho. this tho. the tao tho. this anon:
>>9848584
>in the depths of its fissures, where it perfectly negates everything that most others believe, you can see the impression of spires

i have not tried hard enough in a *balanced* way. i have tried only in the busted & one-sided way that i *prefer.* and i know this. and i would like to stop. i would like to *desire something different.*

quite a process. quite a process, to train yourself to desire something different in this way. phenomenology of spirit? can into. evopsych? hells yes. everything ITT? hells yes once again.

i would like to advance the neoplatonic cart where it has been stuck in the mud for a while, perhaps. stuck in toxic death-mud: me. & again i'm fine with this. i am okay with suffering. i do it to myself. but i also like the idea of enlightenment. esp if it's somebody *else's.* b/c *this* girardfag is busted. but he intends to make that bustedness into something perhaps useful. by being *useful* to his fellow man and less of a mimetic black hole.

>>9849308
"The sons of Pythagoras then placed the One in a position of transcendence over the class of things conceived by themselves. For it is through this One that this class has self-existence, so that each distinct entity is a single thing and can be contemplated on its own. And over the things spoken of oppositely, they placed as ruling genus the equal [Monad] and Unequal [Dyad]... Relatives, however, fall under the genus of excess and defect... Plainly equality is subsumed under Unity [Monad] - for Unity is the prime case of self-equality - while inequality is seen in excess and defect, since unequal things are those which one exceeds while the other is exceeded. But excess and defect are ranged under the account of the Indefinite Dyad, since the prime excess and defect occurs among two terms, the exceeding and the exceeded terms. The highest principles of all therefore emerge as the first [One] Monad and the Indefinite Dyad."

- Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, X, 248-83

>>9849308
Get on disability. You're pretty spectral. Or is that a spook?

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>>9849347
that's it my guy. the heraclitean Logos is high holy torture. if you are looking for consonance, harmony, and coherence among the dissonance
>and *especially* if you suck at math and try to sort it all out v/the unconscious

but maybe there is no other way. see deleuze on leibniz:

>the resolution of dissonance is tantamount to displacing pain, to searching for the major accord with which it is consonant. Just as the martyr knows how to do it at the highest point and, in that way, not suppress pain itself, but suppress resonance or resentment, by avoiding passivity, by pursuing the effort to suppress causes, even if the martyr's force of opposition is not attained. All of Leibniz's theory of evil is a method to prepare for and to resolve dissonances in a "universal harmony.” A counterexample would be furnished by the damned. whose souls produce a dissonance on a unique note, a breath of vengeance or resentment, a hate of God that goes to infinity; but it is still a form of music, a chord - though diabolical- since the damned draw pleasure from their very pain. and especially make possible the infinite progression of perfect accords in the other souls.

>such is the first aspect of harmony, which Leibniz calls spontaneity. The monad produces accords that are made and are undone, and yet that have neither beginning nor end, that are transformed each into the other or into themselves, and that tend toward a resolution or a modulation. For Leibniz even the diabolical accord can be transformed. It is because the monad is expression; it expresses the world from its own point of view (and musicians such as Rameau forever underscore the expressive character of the chord). point of view signifies the selection that each monad exerts on the whole world that it is including, so as to extract accords from one part of the line of infinite inflection that makes up the world.

it's not really a good idea to hate on the One too much, in other words. especially if you plan on seeking It out later on. hatred of the divine: so sexy at first. later: less so.

kojima has a nice line: To Let The World Be. pic rel is good too. or zizek: that the gods are not too far away, but much too close.

so yeah. i fucked up. by believing in the wrong things. by *still* believing that i can get away with believing in the wrong things. some people are so gobsmackingly selfish & stupid & arrogant that things have to really, really sting before they can get the message. i am one of those.

>>9849376
>Get on disability.
weakness. would rather work. i mean being on the DL would probably give me more time to write but it's unbecoming. would rather flip burgers & sulk.

>You're pretty spectral.
thx. i also do birthday parties

>Or is that a spook?
i read Ego & Its Own and it was probably the only work of philosophy that i really *didn't* enjoy. wanted to fling it across the room. i just don't get the hype for stirner. just not built that way.

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>>9849376
anyways, why talk about me? talk about proclus & neoplatonism. you know what you're going to get with me: weirdness.

talking with me is a kind of a trap. a swirly black hole of meme references and whatever else. true, i enjoy it, and often i wind up having some new thought percolated; but you should know by now how this works. i left the jung thread because anons wanted to talk about jung & were complaining that people were only responding to my stuff. now i'm in a neoplatonism thread and this is for neoplatonizing & saluting the ultrabased OP who started it.
>salutes

talking to me, *about me,* is an exercise in mimetics & recursion, name-drops, whatever. that other anon was right: i don't want to be the guy who derails every thread he comes into by talking about himself.

i have no gospel and i am shilling no book. i have no answers and only ever more questions. it is known. the girardfag girardfags.

so if you do not want this, and would prefer a cooler conversation about this awesome topic, then don't ask me silly bait questions and i will not be required to respond. and then there will be Great Harmony and peace in the land and we can praise how awesome all of this is.

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>>9849394
>>9849427
"The thinking activity--according to Plato, the soundless dialogue we carry on with ourselves--serves only to open the eyes of the mind, and even the Aristotelian *nous* is an organ for seeing and beholding the truth. In other words, thinking aims at and ends in contemplation, and contemplation is not an activity but a passivity; it is the point where mental activity comes to rest. According to traditions of Christian time, when philosophy had become the handmaiden of theology, thinking became meditation, and meditation again ended in contemplation, a kind of blessed state of the soul where the mind was no longer stretching out to know the truth but, in anticipation of a future state, received it temporarily in intuition. (Descartes, characteristically, still influenced by this tradition, called the treatise in which he set out to demonstrate God's existence *Méditations*.) With the rise of the modern age, thinking became chiefly the handmaiden of science, of organized knowledge; and even though thinking then grew extremely active, following modernity's crucial conviction that I can know only what I myself make, it was mathematics, the non-empirical science par excellence, wherein the mind appears to play only with itself, that turned out to be the Science of sciences, delivering the key to those laws of nature and the universe that are concealed by appearances. If it was axiomatic for Plato that the invisible eye of the soul as the organ for beholding invisible truth with the certainty of knowledge, it became axiomatic for Descartes--during the famous night of his "revelation"--that there existed "a fundamental accord between the *laws* of nature [which are concealed by appearances and deceptive sense perceptions] and the laws of mathematics"; that is, between the laws of discursive thinking on the highest, most abstract level and the laws of whatever lies behind mere semblance in nature. And he actually believed that with this kind of thinking, with what Hobbes called "reckoning with consequences," he could deliver certain knowledge about the existence of God, the nature of the soul, and similar matters."

- Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, from Introduction

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"Only barely [mogis] when... names, propositions, as well as appearances and perceptions, are rubbed against each other, each of them being refuted through well-meaning [i.e. nonadversarial] refutations in a process of questioning and answering without envy, will wisdom [phronêsis] along with intelligence [nous] begin to cast its light in an effort at the very limits of human possibility."

- The Seventh Letter, 344 b–c

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"The force of Aristotle's critique against radically separate Ideas prevents us from observing that the critique has no force whatsoever against the claim that Ideas are necessarily separate from finite individuals because they are the logical (in the Greek sense) condition for their intelligibility and existence. A logical condition is prior to its consequences ; for this reason alone the Ideas cannot be mere classificatory terms (somewhat analogous to Aristotle's categories) for sorting out things a posteriori. Every finite thing reflects a way in which its Idea (or Ideas) exhibits the relationship between the One and the Dyad. The relation between the things and their Ideas is itself the exhibition of a relationship between the One and the Dyad of what we may call the "Idea" of the cosmos or of Being altogether. In this "Idea," the One is not really One but rather the totality of Ideas, whereas the Dyad is matter altogether. And so this "Idea" is not really an Idea at all: as the "Idea of Ideas" it is the "Idea of the Good" which is "beyond Being" because it is the form of Being altogether."

- Stanley Rosen, On Ideas

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"[The studies of Pythagorean music and astronomy] are, as we see, dreaming about being, but the clear waking vision of it is impossible for them as long as they leave the assumptions which they employ undisturbed and cannot give any account of them... When the eye of the soul is sunk in the barbaric slough of the Orphic myth, dialectic gently draws it forth and leads it up."

- Plato, Republic

>>9848810
>"You must become the final angel."
>- Eva 6.66

What is this from? I don't remember this in NGE.

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"'There remained one construction, the fifth; and the god used it for the whole, making a pattern of animal figures thereon...'"

"The dodecahedron visibly incorporates in itself all the surtaces that combine and recombine to form the other four regular solids of Platonic physics. In so doing, it constitutes a geometrical matrix in the formation of the physical universe."

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>>9849651
“For the angelic is analogous to being, or the intelligible, which is first unfolded into light from the ineffable and occult fountain of beings.”

- Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus

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>>9849610
you are some kind of wonderful, anon.

A great thread ruined by girardfag's eyesore wall of spam.

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> all these motherfucking footnotes

>>9849729
>>9849744
>>9849755
"Ride the panther"
- Quetzacoatl

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>>9849771

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>>9849744
>mfw i realize this is objectively true

>>9849771
>>9849777
fortunately it doesn't look entirely ruined yet tho. just an anomalous Moment in time and space with the Zone Eaters on Triangle Island. now resolved.

so i'm going to zip it and let him work then.
>& thx again op

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>>9849820
"Nor, again, should I be justified in concealing the lofty actions of Socrates when I come to praise him. Moreover I have felt the serpent’s sting; and he who has suffered, as they say, is willing to tell his fellow-sufferers only, as they alone will be likely to understand him, and will not be extreme in judging of the sayings or doings which have been wrung from his agony. For I have been bitten by a more than viper’s tooth; I have known in my soul, or in my heart, or in some other part, that worst of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than any serpent’s tooth, the pang of philosophy, which will make a man say or do anything."

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>>9849834
"O Pericles, to me the dearest of friends, I am of opinion that the whole philosophy of Plato was at first unfolded into light through the beneficent will of superior natures, exhibiting the intellect concealed in them, and the truth subsisting together with beings, to souls conversant with generation (so far as it is lawful for them to participate of such supernatural and mighty good); and again, that afterwards having received its perfection, returning as it were into itself, and becoming unapparent to many who professed to philosophize, and who earnestly desired to engage in the investigation of true being, it again advanced into light. But I particularly think that the mystic doctrine respecting divine concerns, which is purely established on a sacred foundation, and which perpetually subsists with the gods themselves, became thence apparent to such as are capable of enjoying it for a time, through one man, whom I should not err in calling the primary leader and hierophant of those true mysteries, into which souls separated from terrestrial places are initiated, and of those entire and stable visions, which those participate who genuinely embrace a happy and blessed life. But this philosophy shone forth at first from him so venerably and arcanely, as if established in sacred temples, and within their adyta, and being unknown to many who have entered into these holy places, in certain orderly periods of time, proceeded as much as was possible for it into light, through certain true priests, and who embraced a life corresponding to the tradition of such mystic concerns. It appears likewise to me, that the whole place became splendid, and that illuminations of divine spectacles every where presented themselves to the view.

These interpreters of the *epopteia* (or mystic speculations) of Plato, who have unfolded to us all-sacred narrations of divine concerns, and who were allotted a nature similar to their leader, I should determine to be the Egyptian Plotinus, and those who received the theory from him, I mean Amelius and Porphyry, together with those in the third place who who produced like virile statues from this, viz.: Iamblichus and Theodorus, and any others, who after these, following this divine choir, have energized about the doctrines of Plato with a divinely-inspired mind. From these, he who, after the gods, has been our leader to everything beautiful and good, receiving in an undefiled manner the most genuine and pure light of truth in the bosom of his soul, made us a partaker of all the rest of Plato's philosophy, communicated to us that arcane information which he had received from those more ancient than himself, and caused us, in conjunction with him, to be divinely agitated about the mystic truth of divine concerns."

- Proclus, from The Theology of Plato. Book I, Chapter I. Translated by Thomas Taylor

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>>9849871
"... in the midst of the light, they saw the ends of the chains of heaven let down from above: for this light is the belt of heaven, and holds together the circle of the universe, like the under-girders of a trireme. From these ends is extended the spindle of Necessity, on which all the revolutions turn. The shaft and hook of this spindle are made of steel, and the whorl is made partly of steel and also partly of other materials. Now the whorl is in form like the whorl used on earth; and the description of it implied that there is one large hollow whorl which is quite scooped out, and into this is fitted another lesser one, and another, and another, and four others, making eight in all, like vessels which fit into one another; the whorls show their edges on the upper side, and on their lower side all together form one continuous whorl. This is pierced by the spindle, which is driven home through the centre of the eighth. The first and outermost whorl has the rim broadest, and the seven inner whorls are narrower, in the following proportions --the sixth is next to the first in size, the fourth next to the sixth; then comes the eighth; the seventh is fifth, the fifth is sixth, the third is seventh, last and eighth comes the second. The largest (of fixed stars) is spangled, and the seventh (or sun) is brightest; the eighth (or moon) colored by the reflected light of the seventh; the second and fifth (Saturn and Mercury) are in color like one another, and yellower than the preceding; the third (Venus) has the whitest light; the fourth (Mars) is reddish; the sixth (Jupiter) is in whiteness second. Now the whole spindle has the same motion; but, as the whole revolves in one direction, the seven inner circles move slowly in the other, and of these the swiftest is the eighth; next in swiftness are the seventh, sixth, and fifth, which move together; third in swiftness appeared to move according to the law of this reversed motion the fourth; the third appeared fourth and the second fifth. The spindle turns on the knees of Necessity; and on the upper surface of each circle is a siren, who goes round with them, hymning a single tone or note. The eight together form one harmony; and round about, at equal intervals, there is another band, three in number, each sitting upon her throne: these are the Fates, daughters of Necessity, who are clothed in white robes and have chaplets upon their heads, Lachesis and Clotho and Atropos, who accompany with their voices the harmony of the sirens --Lachesis singing of the past, Clotho of the present, Atropos of the future; Clotho from time to time assisting with a touch of her right hand the revolution of the outer circle of the whorl or spindle, and Atropos with her left hand touching and guiding the inner ones, and Lachesis laying hold of either in turn, first with one hand and then with the other... "

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>>9850115
"As Badiou argues, this seems to be but a variant of the Plotinian metaphysics of the One - so determinative for Avicenna's metaphysical innovations, and therefore for the modem outlook in general. The One has to emanate. In a sense, it is one only within and over-against the many that it constitutes. The Plotinian One is beyond being - not like the Platonic good with a hyper-reality ofthe irradiating ideal, but rather with an ineffable emptiness of perfect simplicity. Likewise, for Deleuze, the virtual does not possess even the latent being of the possible. It exists only in those regimes which disguise it in manifesting it, since their manifestation of the new also restricts the power of innovation...

Here Badiou reveals himself to be still Platonist, offering a "Platonism of the multiple" that expresses the radical thrust of the later Platonic dialogues. Refreshingly, he points out that all the "anti-Platonic" and "antimetaphysical" moves against Plato that appeal to difference and indeterminacy are anticipated by Plato. Not only that, he suggests that Plato's self-critique is the more thoroughgoing, because the tendency of Heidegger and Deleuze is to retreat into the monist or dualist cosmologies of the pre-socratics. If everything is really the flux of difference, then the life of the city, mathematics, erotic encounters, exchanges in the agora, the shaping of statues of the gods - becomes epiphenomenal and illusory.

For Badiou, however, Plato was the first philosopher as opposed to cosmologist, because he claimed that there is the cosmos, and there is love and politics and art and mathematics, and then asked what reality comprises it all. This is why true philosophers can only proffer "platonisms." Plato's own answer, according to Badiou, eventually half-acknowledged the primacy of the multiple in both the cosmos and the city, but also struggled to explain why certain humanly contrived practices were absolutely and universally compelling. Yet, Badiou rejects far too hastily the continuing role of the Forms in the later Plato, together with his account of methexis. He unwarrentedly ascribes to Plato a recognition of the univocity of being. This leaves a flattened out ontology of the multiple, in multiple combinations. In this cosmos, the absoluteness of human practices is not guaranteed by participation in the forms, in Being, in the One or in God."

- Catherine Pickstock, Postmodern Scholasticism: Critique of Postmodern Univocity

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>>9850143
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 smooths there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also; cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is in shadow; labor to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiseling your statue until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendor of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness established in the stainless shrine.

- Plotinus, Enneads

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>>9850205
"The One cannot be alone... If this is true, how will Plotinus account for that which is ‘produced’ without reducing the status of the One? In other words, how can the One remain One? This ancient problematic here gives rise to certain philosophical moves which predispose the generation of the aforementioned nihilistic logic. Plotinus develops a meontological philosophy in which non-being is the highest principle. The One is beyond or otherwise than being. This will, it is hoped, protect its simplicity. The consequence of such a move is a series of negations which will give rise to a fully immanentised realm, one that may accommodate the nihilistic logic of nothing as something. We can identify at least four prophylactic negations. The first is that of ‘tolmatic’ language, which is to say, language that implies a fall from a state of grace: to be is to be fallen. Although Plotinus sets himself against the Gnostics on just this point he cannot, it seems, help but utilise their logic of creation as a fallen state. By so doing, he ensures that that which is becomes subordinate to that which is not, a consequence to be continually repeated. The second negation arises because in simply not being the One that which is is not: to be is not to be. So all that which emanates from the One is nothing, because it has being. The third negation is the ‘negation of negation’: the ineluctable return to the One. This return, as has been said, in a sense precedes every exit. The fourth negation concerns a series of repetitions of the original negation of the One itself. At some point each hypostasis imitates the One in its contemplative nonproduction of that which is. Plotinus, contra the Gnostics, relies on contemplation to engender production. But the nature of this contemplation is, in a sense, non-production, since being consults nothing (the One) and repeats nothing in the innermost core of everything."

- Conor Cunningham, The Genealogy of Nihilism, p.5

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>yfw you experience the knowledge of the One without leaving the realm of multiplicity and have a shadow of perfection hanging over your mind for the rest of your life afterwards

nightime bump

See y'all in the morning

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>>9850956
bumping bc i dont want this to die

bumping b/c i have to go babysit my shithead sister's brood for 3 hours (which then magically turns into 6 hours) and the thought of reading this thread with a few cups of coffee when i get back is the only thing keeping me going

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“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”

― Werner Heisenberg

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Socrates compares the written texts Phaedrus has brought along to a drug (pharmakon). This pharmakon, this “medicine,” this philter, which acts as both remedy and poison, already introduces itself into the body of the discourse with all its ambivalence. This charms, this spellbinding virtue, this power of fascination, can be - alternately or simultaneously - beneficent or maleficent…

...The leaves of writing act as a pharmakon to push or attract out of the city the one who never wanted to get out, even at the end, to escape the hemlock. They take him out of himself and draw him onto a path that is properly an exodus..

- Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy”

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>>9852714
>the based OP returns
>the thread continues
>fuck yes

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Kind neoplatonic friends of 4chan, please help me out. Recommend me a list of books that you would recommend for someone interested in mysticism and philosophy.

I bought pic related and am currently planning to read Pierre Hadot's What is ancient philosophy, then move on to read the most important of Plato's dialogues (I have already read The Republic). Is this a good path?

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"Thus when Plotinus speaks of "the flight of the alone to the Alone," and the positivist or the empiricist asserts that these words are meaningless, he is right. Yet this does not import that the words are nonsense locutions, mere senseless noises which a makes like a cough or a sneeze though it is possible that this is what the positivist intends. If this were so, it would be impossible to explain why generations of men have quoted those famous words. The explanation is that the words evoke in us a measure of the same experience which the author of them had. Our experience may be but a dim reflection of what was in him bright and clear. Our spirits vibrate faintly in unison with the soul of the great mystic, as a tuning fork vibrates faintly in response to the sound of the clear bell. But it is our own spontaneous experience which is evoked; it is not his experience which is communicated to us. His words are as grappling irons let down into the depths of our subconsciousness, which draw our own inner experiences nearer to the conscious threshold."

- Stace, W. T. (1952) Time and Eternity

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>>9852809

>First, I would suggest a general textbook to start. Something that includes the Presocratics and Plato and Aristotle et al and has commentary.
>Then I would read up on Platonic interpretation. This article is a nice start:
>Http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/~davpy35701/text/platonic-interps.pdf
>Next, start reading Plato fully including his epistles. And after that, Aristotle. Commentaries, ancient and modern, are often useful.
>If you start getting bored, I would suggest Pierre Hadot for general inspiration. If you liked the Presocratics, you might try Kingsley as well.
>Make sure to read about the other philosophical schools and not concentrate exclusively on Plato and Aristotle either. Stoics are a big influence on Neoplatonism.
>For the hope of greater Eastern/Western dialogue, also supplement with The Shape of Ancient Thought. Maybe contemporaneous Eastern texts too.
>For Neoplatonism, I suggest Iamblichus, Plotinus, Proclus, Poryphory, and Pseudo-Dionysius. Once again, secondary works recommended.
>Finally, I would suggest Algiz Uzdavinys for a general geneaology of Neoplatonism.
>And if you're still hungry for more get into Hermeticism and Gnosticism and Arabs and Medievals and Renaissance.

>>9853249
I saw this, thanks, no need to copy it. I was asking if my books were a good start as well + you never provided any of the general textbooks you were mentioning.

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>>9853421
I used the Cohen edition in undergrad.

If you wanna be cheap then lots of older translations can be found online as well.

I've never read your alchemy book.

You might like The Golden Thread by Joscelyn Godwin. She/he is a modern esoteric scholar of erudition and taste.

Of course, MPH has interesting lectures on Ancient Greeks and Secret teaching of All Ages. But he is a whackjob mason too.

Look into Prometheus Trust as well.

>>9853421
lots of books here https://mega.nz/#F!AE5yjIqB!y7Vdxdb5pbNsi2O3zyq9KQ

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>>9853735
I wish there was a more philosophy centered version of this. Probably wouldn't be too hard to make given how much is in public domain...

>>9853724
Cohen edition of what?

>>9853990
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1603844627/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1501973100&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=cohen+ancient+greek&dpPl=1&dpID=51m5u2CxxOL&ref=plSrch

>>9854086

Sweet.

Anymore of your tasty quotes? I'm about to settle down with a cup of tea and stitch these

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>>9854141
"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) (translated by William Wallace with foreword by J. N. Findaly)

nightimebumparooni

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>>9854968
"The idea of the connection between the unity and the manifold, or the many, is the one dominant idea throughout all of Plato that he applies not only logically but rather also as a natural concept... It is everywhere considered as one form that embraces the whole of nature, and through its application upon formless matter not only are individual objects brought forth, but rather also the relation of objects to teach other and their subordination to genera and kinds becomes possible. In all these ways Plato must hold that every object corresponds to an original idea in divine understanding. This idea embraces all the individual kinds, and can exist only insofar as it comes to be in divine understanding, not first through an abstraction from individual objects but rather by first making these objects possible. It can be only by being ungenerated, indestructible and utterly not subordinate to the form of time. According to this, the world as a great Soul would have to be grounded in an idea in divine understanding, and idea that would not only exhibit a particular genus or kind of organic being, but rather would be able to serve as the universal kind of all beings."

- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Commentary on the Timaeus, p. 215

>>9855020
B U M P

keep it alive, lads

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In the Phaedrus, blessed Plato introduces the doctrine of an organism as self-moving as the notion that living things, possessing souls, are to be defined by their self-motion:

"since that which is moved by itself has been seen to be immortal, one who says that this self-motion is the essence and the very idea of the soul, will not be disgraced. For every body which derives motion from without is soulless, but that which has its motion within itself has a soul, since that is the nature of the soul." (Phaedrus, 245e)

In the Sophist, Plato further defines motion as the succession of presence and absence of being and non-being, in which non-being is ontologically derivative from being:

"Then we must admit that motion is the same and is not the same, and we must not be disturbed thereby; for when we say it is the same and not the same, we do not use the words in the same sense. When we call it the same, we do so because it partakes of the same in relation to itself, and when we call it not the same, we do so on account of its participation in the other, by which it is separated from the same and becomes not that but other, so that it is correctly spoken of in turn as not the same." (Sophist, 256a-b)

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Keep in mind that the entire Greek vantage point is corrupted by a golden mean fallacy. Abomination is ascertained as complementary or at the very least hierarchically relevant to the Good for no reason other than Aesthetic Formalism.

>>9856506

Indeed, causa sui is the only true causality.

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can this just be an infinite & ongoing thread? i feel like such an ass for shitting it up w/my own hysterical brand of taoist/accelerationist horseshit and literally all i want to do now is absorb neoplatonic incredibleness. i'm fucking tired of dwelling in the dark like a cave troll with a basketful of psychoanalysis. this shit is just in every way so vastly superior.

tao & the rest for survival of CTRL + nick land's wild ride, but only imho to fucking contemplate this goodness. i don't see what the fuck else there is to do.

>>9847039
>but I often wonder if his rejection of the "corporeal" in favor of the intangible sublime was not in some way influenced by his own maligned physical condition

It wasn't.

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>>9856720
"Every one sees that love is a desire, and we know also that non-lovers desire the beautiful and good. Now in what way is the lover to be distinguished from the non-lover? Let us note that in every one of us there are two guiding and ruling principles which lead us whither they will; one is the natural desire of pleasure, the other is an acquired opinion which aspires after the best; and these two are sometimes in harmony and then again at war, and sometimes the one, sometimes the other conquers. When opinion by the help of reason leads us to the best, the conquering principle is called temperance; but when desire, which is devoid of reason, rules in us and drags us to pleasure, that power of misrule is called excess. Now excess has many names, and many members, and many forms, and any of these forms when very marked gives a name, neither honourable nor creditable, to the bearer of the name. The desire of eating, for example, which gets the better of the higher reason and the other desires, is called gluttony, and he who is possessed by it is called a glutton–and the tyrannical desire of drink, which inclines the possessor of the desire to drink, has a name which is only too obvious, and there can be as little doubt by what name any other appetite of the same family would be called;–it will be the name of that which happens to be eluminant. And now I think that you will perceive the drift of my discourse; but as every spoken word is in a manner plainer than the unspoken, I had better say further that the irrational desire which overcomes the tendency of opinion towards right, and is led away to the enjoyment of beauty, and especially of personal beauty, by the desires which are her own kindred–that supreme desire, I say, which by leading conquers and by the force of passion is reinforced, from this very force, receiving a name, is called love."

- Plato, Phaedrus

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>>9856720
This book is good.

>>9853421
http://www.iapsop.com/ssoc/1919__guthrie___pythagoras_source_book_and_library.pdf

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>>9857386
yeah. i'll track down a copy soon. got a few other things to take care of first before i start on what may well be a long-term neoplatonic adventure. neuroplasticity, you know.

i don't know what it is tho, these quotes that you are selecting just resonate with me like you wouldn't believe. maybe it's because i've ventilated all my shit that needed to get ventilated at this point. connecting signals, connecting dots. girard into deleuze into mcluhan into land into laozi into baudrillard into sheng-ji yang into ???. into into. maybe it's this.

it's been a fucking long time in the darkness is what i mean. on planet meme. wherever it is that you're getting these quotes from, they're awesome as fuck and wonderful to read. i read the republic some time ago and my head felt about three pounds heavier afterwards. then later nietzsche & all the rest.

but these days? i don't know man. i feel like i could happily drive a garbage truck around the post-apoc wasteland and just have the neoplatonist broadcast coming over the radio. i will be in that place and reading the Little Red Book of Chairman Yang for a while yet i think, or at least i've had enough of all of these things i chase after that ruin my life. it's just nice to think that there might also be an alternative to that fuckface oroboric tail-chasing.

whatever it is, it's pretty goddamn wonderful. so thanks once again for the awesome thread, and the thoughtful quotes. it's very much appreciated. and please do not let me & my dumb shit interrupt the signal. i need to work on my silence.

>>9856720
>i feel like such an ass for shitting it up w/my own hysterical brand of taoist/accelerationist horseshit and literally all i want to do now is absorb neoplatonic incredibleness

Then shut up and just read like the rest of us. Don't bother responding. It's pretty clear everyone's had enough of your attention-hungry ass.

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>>9857503
thank you anon.

this then will be my final post on /lit/ for a while. lets's say until next month. enjoy the thread.

>>9857483
"Even in the history of philosophy we can witness the tremendous incisiveness of our age. Hegel is a consummation of two and a half millennia of thought. True, in his basic philosophic attitude, although not in his concrete positions, Plato is as alive today as ever, perhaps more than ever."

>>9857522
Just remove the name and conduct yourself like a civilized anglo.

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thank you glorious OP.

Bump for the best thread in months.

>>9857648
"Plato’s dialogues are self-consciously incomplete or enigmatic. What he has written down invites interpretation, seems intended to demand it. This does not necessarily presume interpretative audacity, but is perhaps in accord with the Socratic method: something must come from the reader if we are not to be debased, passive recipients of an impersonal, written record, our souls divided and unawakened, our pockets full of obols, and our cloaks bulging with the dubious stockpile of others’ written traces. Perhaps it is as the Delphic Oracle advised, that in order to receive its enigmatic utterances, one must know oneself."

- Catherine Pickstock, The Late Arrival of Language: Word, Nature, and the Divine in Plato's Cratyluso

>>9858786
"Some may wonder why I go about in private giving advice and busying myself with the concerns of others, but do not venture to come forward in public and advise the state. I will tell you why. You have heard me speak at sundry times and in divers places of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign, which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids but never commands me to do anything which I am going to do. This is what deters me from being a politician. And rightly, as I think. For I am certain, O men of Athens, that if I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself. And do not be offended at my telling you the truth: for the truth is, that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly striving against the many lawless and unrighteous deeds which are done in a state, will save his life; he who will fight for the right, if he would live even for a brief space, must have a private station and not a public one."

- Plato, Apology

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"I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing...as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. And so I go on my way, obedient to the god, and make inquisition into anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and this occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god."

- Plato, Apology

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“Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that the time has arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble; wherefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not angry with my condemners, or with my accusers; they have done me no harm, although they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.

Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing–then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.”

- Socrates, from Plato's “Apology”

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>>9858971

And in all these matters, [the philosopher] knows not even that he knows not; for he does not hold himself aloof from them in order to get a reputation, but because it is in reality only his body that lives and sleeps in the city. His mind, having come to the conclusion that all these things are of little or no account, spurns them and pursues its winged way, as Pindar says, throughout the universe, ‘in the deeps beneath the earth’ and geometrizing its surfaces, ‘in the heights above the heaven,’ astronomizing, and tracking down by every path the entire nature of each whole among the things that are, never condescending to what lies near at hand.

- Socrates, from Plato’s Theaetetus

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>>9859118
"For the mathematical numbers one must posit two things, the first and highest principles, the One (which indeed one ought not yet even call a being, because of the fact that it is simple and because of the fact that it is a principle for the things that are, while the principle is not yet such as are the things of which it is a principle), and again another principle, that of plurality, which can in its own right provide division as well, and for this reason we may, by way of making a comparison appropriate to its capacity, assert it to be like some moist and completely pliable matter; from which, the one and the principle of plurality, there is produced the first kind, of numbers, from both of these when combined with the help of some persuadable necessity."

- Iamblichus on the generation of numbers from the One and the Indefinite Dyad

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>>9859301
"Proclus organised the studious life as a kind of monastic life ... the program of study as part of a true life of contemplation and prayer; it was he who viewed the philosophy of Plato as a "mystagogy," as an "initiation into the holy mysteries themselves... installed, for eternity, in the home of the gods on High... That is why ... the spirituality of Proclus heralds the spirit of medieval philosophy."

H.-D. Saffrey, "From Iamblichus to Proclus and Damascius,"

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"[S]ince it is made up or contrived words which “give” us things, and since also every human being enters into language as something “pre-fabricated”, it becomes spontaneously natural to view language also as a “given”, in the sense of a gift which discloses the reality of things to us. For this reason, perhaps, we discover a religious understanding of the nature of language in many cultures (in Hinduism, for example, this idea is developed with great philosophical sophistication by the “Hindu grammarians”) and its fabricated character is not so much ideologically disguised as rather interpreted as being the work of divine inspiration. This seems to be the perspective of Plato in this dialogue: one could say that for him speaking is fundamentally “in the middle voice”; it is willed and active, volunteered and intended, and yet also passively received. The sense of divine descent into our fabrications that is summoned here was later understood by the Neoplatonists Iamblichus, Proclus and Damascius as the “theurgic” dimension that exceeds philosophy at its very heart.

- Catherine Pickstock, The Late Arrival of Language: Word, Nature and the Divine in Plato's Cratylus

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"... Therefore, we cannot defer to precedent and must raise the question, Why do we study Plato in particular?

When we look at the present situation in the world, this side of the Iron Curtain, we see that there are two powers determining present-day thought. I call them positivism and historicism. The defect of these powers today compels us to look out for an alternative. That alternative seems to be supplied by Plato rather than anyone else... "

- Leo Strauss, from On Plato's Symposium

>>9859562
"... First positivism. Positivism makes the assertion that the only form of genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge. Physics is the model of all sciences and therefore of political science in particular. But this is more a promise than an achievement. This scientific political science does not exist. In spite of this fact, we must take this position very seriously. Its motives can be crudely stated as follows: The same science―scientific method―which produced the H-bomb must also be able to prevent the use of the H-bomb. The science which produced the H-bomb, physics; the science dealing with the use of the H-bomb, political science. Now, you see immediately that this reasoning, that the same method which produced the H-bomb must also be able to prevent the use of the H-bomb, is very poor: the distinction between the use and misuse of anything―H-bomb included―means a distinction between good and bad, and this kind of distinction is now called a value judgment. According to the positivistic view value judgments are outside the scope of science. Therefore this positivistic political science promises something which it is, strictly speaking, unable and unwilling to supply. The characteristic thesis of positivism can be said to be that all values are equal. Positivistic science claims to be able to distinguish between attainable and unattainable ends. This is all. It cannot and does not claim more. It cannot even say that the quest for unattainable ends is inferior to the quest for attainable ends. Positivists sometimes reject the imputation that according to their views all values are equal. But I can only say that this is merely an attempt to befog the issue. What they say in fact is that as far as human knowledge or reason is concerned, or as far as we know, all values are equal. This they certainly say, and there is no practical difference between the assertion 'as far as we know and shall ever be able to know' and the assertion that all values are equal.

The positivistic position can be characterized as follows: There is no position between the objectivity of science and the subjectivity of evaluations. The principles of thought, of thinking, of understanding, are objective. The principles of preference or action are necessarily subjective. I leave it at these brief remarks in order to characterize in a few words an alternative to positivism which I call historicism. There are all kinds of overlapping between these two areas of thinking, but it is unnecessary for us to go into them..."

- Ibid

>>9859566

"In the clear case, historicism admits that a value-free social science is impossible. But it asserts that both principles of thought and principles of action are essentially variable, or historical, and therefore in a radical sense subjective. In the vulgar form of this position we cannot arrive at any higher principles of understanding and of preferring than those of Western civilization. There are no principles of understanding and principles of preferring which belong to man as man, who can never go beyond a historically qualified humanity such as Western civilization. Historicism stems from Germany and is, therefore, far more developed there than, for example, in this country. But even in this country you find it in various forms. Carl Becker, I believe, was the most famous representative of historicism who denied the impossibility of any objective inquiry. All historiography is based on the climate of the country and the age and can never transcend it. The difficulty with historicism, simply stated, is this: it cannot help transcending history by its very assertion. If we say every sort of man is radically historical, this assertion is no longer meant to be historical and therefore refutes the position. I cannot go into any further detail. I can only assert here that both positivism and historicism are not viable. But this is not the subject of this course. Assuming that they are viable, they are admittedly late positions. They are based on the experience of the failure of an earlier approach. This earlier approach is called in the loose language of this kind of literature the absolutist approach.

The absolutist approach asserts that there are invariable, unchangeable, universally valid principles of thought and action. This, it is said, has been destroyed by man's deeper reflection or by man's longer experience. From this it follows that if we as positivists or historicists want to understand ourselves we must understand our own ground, i.e., the absolutism of the past and the experience of the failure of that absolutism. Therefore a historicist or relativist, if he reflects on his position and wants to understand what he says, is compelled to understand the older position, the absolutist position, which he replaces. In other words, reflection, of which I have given here barely a specimen, on the defects of the views prevalent today, leads us to take a serious interest in the opposite view, in an evaluating social science that refers to invariable and universal principles. Such a social science was in existence at least until the end of the eighteenth century. The notion of a value-free social science emerged only in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The most talked about form of this older form of social science is the natural law teaching. This natural law teaching has its roots in the teachings of Aristotle and Plato..."

- Ibid