r/Neoplatonism

How does the acorn, transition into the tree?

And I don't mean act and potential. I am asking how an acorn can even be linearly related to the first step it takes to become a tree?

It feels like, the acorn becomes destroyed, and then created in a ever so slightly distinct item; until it becomes a tree.

The relation is almost worthless here though, and teleos doesn't even exist at this point.

I'm not sure if that's problematic, but I would like to know how motion processes at a teleological level and the issue of what is known as occasionalism.

What is Christian Platonism? How does it differ from other forms of Platonism and How does the trinity fit into it‘s cosmology?

Is a concept simply a network of implications, or does it have a core definition whereby one understands it, yet fails to grasp every implication?

Examples and simpleton wording would be helpful.

Is it a social construct, whereby anyone can choose whatever mannerisms fit their desire, insofar as it is "good"? Can a woman choose to identify as a man, as gender is simply social in this view?

The old question is this:
Is something good because the gods command it?
Or do the gods command it because it is already good?

This is the Euthyphro dilemma. It is usually treated as a trap. If goodness depends only on divine command, then morality seems arbitrary. If goodness exists before command, then even the gods appear subordinate to something higher.
But the dilemma only works because it collapses three different things into one field:
Truth. Goodness. Command.
The Pentivium separates them.

Grammar: What is being named?
The question uses words like good, pious, god, command, justice, and obedience as if they are already clear. They are not. “Command” is not the same as “good.” “Piety” is not the same as obedience. “Justice” is not the same as social approval.
Before the dilemma can be answered, its terms have to be cleaned.

Logic: How do the terms connect?
The false structure says there are only two options:
Goodness comes from command.
Or command recognizes goodness.
But there is a prior term missing:
Truth.
Truth is not created by command. Truth is what command must answer to if command is to remain just.
So the order is not:
Command → Goodness
And it is not merely:
Goodness → Command
The better order is:
Truth → Goodness → Justice → Valid Command
A true command does not manufacture the good. It speaks in alignment with truth.

Rhetoric: How does the language move people?
The danger in Euthyphro is that piety becomes a weapon. A person can claim sacred duty, legal duty, moral duty, or social duty while using those words to hide distortion.
This happens constantly.
People say “justice” when they mean revenge.
They say “order” when they mean control.
They say “compassion” when they mean indulgence.
They say “truth” when they mean victory.
Rhetoric reveals whether a word is being used to clarify reality or bend reality around appetite.

Praxis: What does the claim do in the world?
A belief is not fully known until it acts.
If “piety” produces cruelty without correction, it is not piety.
If “justice” produces corruption, it is not justice.
If “law” protects falsehood, it has lost contact with lawfulness.
Praxis tests the claim against consequence. The fruit reveals the root.

Presence: What will stands behind it?
This is the deepest layer.
Is the person faithful to truth?
Or are they using truth-language to preserve ego, status, fear, vengeance, appetite, or power?
Presence asks what awareness, agency, and willpower are actually operating behind the claim.
That is where the Euthyphro dilemma opens.
Piety is not obedience.
Piety is fidelity to truth.
Goodness is not arbitrary command.
Goodness is truth enacted.
Justice is not whatever power declares.
Justice is truth preserved in relation.
A valid command is not good because it is commanded. A valid command is good because it remains aligned with truth, produces justice in action, and preserves the agency of those living under it.

That means the real question is not:
“Did God command it?”
And not only:
“Is it good apart from God?”
The real question is:
Is the command true?
Does it preserve reality?
Does it repair distortion?
Does it produce justice?
Does it respect the agency of the living?
Does it bring speech, action, and will into alignment?

The Pentivium does not destroy the dilemma by choosing one horn.
It dissolves the dilemma by restoring the missing order.

Truth precedes command.
Goodness is truth embodied.
Justice is truth held between beings.
Piety is loyalty to truth above appetite, fear, tribe, law, or power.

That is the red work of thought:
To take an ancient trap, pass it through Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Praxis, and Presence, and return with a cleaner instrument.

I understand the word incarnation refers rather to the forms of existence, however I am a bit pressed for words here. After this life ceases, and you go through existence in other forms, do you eventually become a human again, or do you keep incarnating as something else basically forever

This video gives a pretty effective introduction to the concepts found in Heraclitean Paganism. In essence, in Heraclitean paganism 'harmoniē' is an idiosyncratically developed balance of tensions, which allow for functions to emerge that are principally and potentially volatile, but also potentially constructive.

The Goddess of Cancer would be best described as the Polemos, referred to as the father of all things, whereas the Goddess of Everything else is closest to Dike, who, though being literally Justice, represents the idiosyncrasies of all development building upwards.

Yet, the more I think about this particular poem, the more I feel like the poem is contradicting itself.

First, yes, this is a neo-myth, not history, and it doesn't try to be literally true. The story slices across layers of complexity, paralleling the development of forms of life, especially if we count memetics as life.

The story abruptly shifts from mythopoetic genealogy of complex life into prophecy and it claims that all the problems of the Goddess of Cancer are solved. Yet, the only thing the Goddess of Everything Else ever does is repackage the problem and claim victory.

The poem's emotional climax rests on one claim:

>"You are no longer driven to multiply, conquer, and kill by your nature."

This is the moment we're meant to feel we've broken free. Yet, following the logic of the poem, this is not true. At every layer, the Goddess of Everything Else has merely sanctified drives to multiply, conquer, and kill, and organizes them to build up towards a new layer of complexity. If we accept 'Cancer' as standing in for the drive to multiply, conquer, and kill, then under the hood of that newly achieved complexity is still cancer. The Goddess of Everything Else is as much a Goddess of Cancer. She only does the bare minimum necessary to habilitate those drives. At least the original Goddess of Cancer at least self-limits through her destruction, but the Goddess of Everything Else doesn't have to do even that.

While the poem consistently portrays the Goddess of Cancer as evil and unimaginative, it is actually her destructive tendencies that leave firebreaks that guard us from her own Heraclitean flames. She's self-limiting. Sometimes, you need that kind of firebreak to protect the diverse ecosystem that is the playground of the Goddess of Everything Else.

So I think that these names are not representative of their actions within the poem at all. The poem shows this most obviously when it says genomes are rewritten and the brain and body are "set loose from Darwinian bonds and restrictions." Yet, this is meant to be a response to tyranny? How? By what mechanism? The implication from silence is surely not something that the channel endorses. The actual solution to the problem is game theory and this is appropriate, given game theory is also applied in cancer treatment strategies.

In reality, the next step of the story would be that there will be a great diversity of posthuman catastrophes and salvations at scales hitherto unimagined. After all, the Goddess of Everything Else would seem anti-teleological. She should promote a diversity of experiments. The Goddess of Everything Else's work should fan outward into an open plurality of outcomes, many of them strange, harmonious in one context and disharmonious in the next. All that we can do and all that we have to do is to experiment with different ideas. We might experiment with transhumanism here, with deep ecology there, with this and with that and with the other thing.

While I love the way the poem is rendered and the mythology it creates, I think some of the moves are unfairly polemic: naming the Goddess of Cancer as such, and then concluding that everything has been redeemed when it pointedly wasn't.

I love the potential of this neo-myth, but I think some of the poetic liberties sneak certain cognitive biases under the radar that ease the listener into uncritical optimism. It's not that easy.

So Plato’s One seems to be the limiting principle while his indefinite Dyad is the unlimited principle?

Are these the ‘1’ and ‘2’ for Plato…?

What happened to the Intellect? Isn’t Intellect ‘2’ in Plotinus’ system? Eternal being?

Does the ‘2’ of Plato’s system (indefinite Dyad) not correspond to the ‘4’ of Plotinus’ (matter)??

I have so many questions that I don’t know where to begin!

Could someone please provide (or point in the direction of) a brief overview of this development?

Thanks!

Any Books on How Greek Philosophy influenced Christian theology?

Good evening everyone,

As a passionate student of ancient philosophy, I was thinking about this connection starting from Aristotle's idea of God, which becomes pure actuality and therefore the first final cause toward which everything tends.

The Stoics define Nature in a very similar way, as something toward which everything tends and which allows everything to reach its best form.

What do you think? Is this comparison too risky, or are there actually similarities between the two ways of thinking?

Here an article that I wrote trying to explain that

I think this is not a smart question and is high probably due to that I am not reading enough. However, when I looked into receptions of Neoplatonism in popular culture of late 19th century, I found that most of them were about Iamblichus, as we have in the novel Zanoni, or the French catholic decadents, I think it should be through the martinism. I am not actually looking for receptions which were correct according to nowaday's research but only browse on interesting stuffs and old stereotypes, like they were formed in such way in their time for some reason. until now I think Leopardi's dialogue between porphyry and plotinus was the only famous one we have in popular culture? I wonder whether porphyry was normally considered to be non esoteric writer so more omitted.

While the philosophers of the Neoplatonic tradition agreed in the broad strokes, there was plenty they disagreed on. Who do you think was most "correct" in their thinking?

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I am very interested in Platonism and Neoplatonism.

I am quite familiar with several of Plato’s dialogues but have not read most. I have read from the Enneads a little bit but I haven’t really jumped in yet.

I just read Plato’s Parmenides and I think a neoplatonic exegesis would be very helpful.

My questions are as follows:

1. Would this commentary give me a decent understanding of a Neoplatonic interpretation of the Parmenides in general, or will it be highly specific to Proclus’ own system?
2. Will it help me to understand Plato’s original meaning or will this get obscured by Proclus’ own innovations?
3. Is it very difficult to read and understand? I am somewhat used to reading philosophy at this point but I want to know what I’m getting into…

The book is rather expensive and lengthy so it is not a purchase I can make without hearing some reviews haha. Thanks!

[Edit: typo]

First off.

We need to define what we mean by Theurgy.

And then we need to outline what'd be considered a Plotinian Platonist Perspective as such.

And taking the answers to the aforementioned into consideration we'd be able to outline what'd be a Plotinian Platonist "Theurgy".

Now. What is Theurgy?

I am going to define theurgy as activity as such that is partaken in in an institutionalized manner (ritual with daily prescriptions) that partakes in activities like invocation and supplication to elicit supernatural aid.

The aid is for awareness (knowledge) and directive (based on knowledge that one receives). Supernatural invocation to know and guidance to be.

Alright. Now what'd be a Plotinian Platonist Perspective?

A Plotinian Platonist Perspective would be one that claims that what is referred by the concepts The One, The Intellect, Forms, The Soul, and The Hyle are actual realities. They have ontology (being/ways of existing). And they explain why existence is the way it is. Such Metaphysics (what is unchangingly the case about existence) may be known via immediate experience. And via such perspective comes perspective about psychology, ethics, and what is beautiful & good. Thus, initiative for spirituality (how one is to be) following via the awareness of the aforementioned. One becomes aware and finds initiative to be.

Now. From a Plotinian Platonist Perspective "Theurgy" necessarily is nonsense. Why? Because one's intellect is undescended.

What certainty (evidence) do we have that our intellect is undescended via immediate experience?

The very fact that one is able to be aware of the relativity of one's conceptions means that non-discursively and intuitively one has a sense of the absolute. If a part of one's intellect were not undescended one would not be able to be aware of the relativity of conception or anything as such. Everyone has a sense of total & complete existence (absolute existence) even though one's existence is finite/relative. It's our undescended intellect that allows such intellection/intuition. It's the source of our ascent because it allows us to have a sense of proportion and allows us to give things their due.

Thus, the "theurgy" (as was defined) is unnecessary. Because via one's intellect (via virtue) allows one ability to know and find directive. The invocation to supernatural entities is based on a false metaphysical premise; one's immediate experience makes evident it to be the case. What is demanded is the participation of the virtues. The lower virtues and higher virtues that will allow the functioning of the intellect that'd allow one to "see".

That said.

And taking the aforementioned into consideration would not the Plotinian Platonist "Theurgy" not but be personal institutionalization of process of being that facilitates virtue of being as such?

What I mean by that is that Plotinian Platonist "Theurgy" is not the invocation of supernatural entities but the use of symbols and triggers (thus the use of one's imaginative faculty) as such in one's process of being to trigger/ignite the fire for virtue of being and consequent activity of intellect?

I like to think I am practicing Plotinian Plotinism as a lived reality; so I have not resorted to finding claim true or false based on dialectic (in the peripatetic sense of the term) but via the practice of philosophy. This is to say that something is not true because Plotinus says it is true. Something is true because it is. Plotinus is the person that we rally around because he is precedence and institution for perspective that is "Philosophy as Principle and as Way" and also his "System"/Concept of Metaphysics is pragmatic. Thus, our gratitude and the love we find ourselves having and giving him. He is valued because he's a Sage. The Sage is valued because his/her being is a participation & communication of The One (and this via intellect). One becomes what one loves. One cannot help but love The Sage (because one is compelled to love the beautiful & good; and The One alone is Beautiful & Good). Thus, one cannot help but love a Plotinus.

Yeah. That said. I'd be interested in people's perspectives on Plotinian Platonist "Theurgy" that I have argued for above.

Do all possible forms exist within the Nous? Do all physical things in the universe have its own form? And if so, do there exist multiple materials realms to house the physical versions of these infinite forms?

Just exploring Kupperman’s liturgical text. I am curious to know, if anyone knows, did he come up with hymns completely new? Or are these derived from Plethon? From what I’ve read so far it wasn’t clear.

Not a judgy question, just curious as either way this was an immense amount work.

Thanks!