All hail the Divine Plato!
Pin this thread if you support Neoplatonism and understand the esoteric interpretation of Plato and have been fully initiated into the mystery cults.
Hide this thread if you support the monstrous abortion that is modern philosophy and think philosophy consists of sophism and word games rather than preparing for death.
Reply if you wish to engage in peaceful dialogue and shary comfy feels regarding knowledge of the forms at this late/early hour.
Other urls found in this thread:
theguardian.com
twitter.com
Plato was being ironic
That's called gatekeeping, user.
Why do people say that Timaeus is essential?
I haven't read it yet. I wish to engage in peaceful dialogue.
did he like minerals?
what is a distraction?
Does anyone else think Platonism was somewhat ruined by Christianity? Theology is the last remnants of exploring man's relationship with the divine and I think Christianity sort of eliminates the role of the philosopher, which Plato gave unique importance to.
Yes, yes, yes and yes. Plato would be ashamed if he could be reanimated and see how his doctrines, which championed the individual pursuit of wisdom and escaping from the Cave of ignorance which the masses are kept under by their rulers, became central doctrines by the very same rulers and public in the form of the Church and it's followers. Imagine the irony. The West hasn't believed in ideas like reincarnation/metempsychosis for 2000+ years now, thinking these are "Eastern ideas", and yet Plato and many of his peers, who founded Western civilization, held them central to their doctrine. It's really, really, really sad how different we are to the Ancient Greeks, and that they'd relate far more to say Indian civilization, of past or present, than they would to the Western world anytime after the first century CE up until today. Are we not ashamed of ourselves? Will we never return to our roots, and honor our civilization's forefathers? We are different to them in every way, and I doubt we'll ever be able to see the world the way they did again. It makes me really depressed to think about, so I wish you hadn't even brought this up. And this place is crawling with Christians, so it's not like I have any unbiased peers who would even agree with me on anything I've just said.
Just for Plato’s (or really, Timæus’) view of metaphysics
Good thread guise :3
>tfw you learned the proof that there are only five regular platonic solids
feels good lads
I wanna go deep into 'neo' platonism would a uniniate be able to comprehend the Enneads?
Based thread
>they'd relate far more to say Indian civilization
>they'd relate far more to pooping on the sidewalk and worshiping a two-headed purple rhinoceros god
But they were eastern ideas well before plato or the pre-soctatics talked about them, according to what we have from those days.
I've always imagined there can only be 3 possibilities for this.
1. Cultural exchange from the silk road.
2. Some sort of "pre-flood" civilization.
3. If you just sit down and think about ideas about math, thought, the self, reincarnation, etc., these ideas turn out to simply be the most reasonable ones and anyone would come to these conclusions.
I'm not so sure about 3 considering all the other different types of beliefs we have from civilizations back in those days, however it's probably likely.
I think 1 is super likely but I cant find any documentation on it.
2 would be my personal favorite as it would seem to explain so much of the historical stuff we do have already, but we have more of a chance of disproving 2 in the future than we do of ever proving it I think.
>. Some sort of "pre-flood" civilization.
it's called proto-indo-european culture. read Dumezil.
>2. Some sort of "pre-flood" civilization.
theguardian.com
It might actually be true
This is a no brainlets allowed thread
2 is obviously and without any doubt, true
Plato did not think of himself as having originated his ideas. He was merely an interpreter. It is clear that he is heavily influenced by both Egyptian religion and the Pythagoreans, who in turn received their influence from non-European lands. Plato is obviously one of the most important western philosophers for a reason, but trying to claim that one person or nation is a forefather to modern Europeans is laughably silly. If anything, Europe both Pagan and Christian had its spiritual origins in near east with Chaldea, Egypt and the surrounding areas. I don't know why you and /pol/ are so opposed with muh ancestors when in reality those ancestors were influenced by non-Europeans.
What is the best translation of the Enneads? It seems that every version has some major flaw to it.
My claim was that the Ancient Greeks who laid the foundation of Western civilization, regardless of where they had themselves received ideas from, and form the canon which everyone in our world (or wanting to be familiar with it) are expected to study first, believed in ideas that haven't even been slightly entertained of in our culture for 2000+ years now, regarding something like reincarnation for example. I was pointing out the contrast here, between the beliefs held by the men that made our canon, and those which have been held by every citizen here since them for the past two millenia. We have been so thoroughly Christianized, that the texts we read in our own canon contain alien doctrines to anything we've ever encountered in own culture, and this would be true even if I was saying it thousands of years ago. People here can't even conceive of impersonal Divinity's now, God can only be a parental figure who views all your actions and judges you according to their correspondence to his tiny set of cultural scriptures. All of this would be entirely alien to Plato, Pythagoras, Aristotle, and any other ancient Greek, but is all we ourselves can conceive of reality as being. Today's culture of nihilism and atheism in our societies could have been easily avoided if we returned to non-theistic conceptions of the universe like those found in our very own canonical foundation, which would restore some kind of transcendence and spirituality to our societies while simultaneously placing us back in contact with the original roots that made our civilization great in the first place.
I'm not /p*l/, I'm not a pagan LARPer, I'm a citizen of the Western world who believes Christianity has held us back intellectually and socially for 2000 years and wants to see a return to the much loftier and socially beneficial conceptions of the world that had preceded it, and are still available to us through the very literary canon that we read, and would help us get out of the horrible cultural swamp that we're currently mired in.
Are you guys /x/ anons? Do you believe in Atlantis, which Plato himself described? Did the OT God, possibly Enlil from Sumerian culture, somehow flood the Earth? Who were the Annunaki, and those depictions found of them giving "handbags" everywhere? Are they higher-dimensional, angels of some kind? They were drawn with wings - were those real, or symbolic?
Well you are simply incorrect if you think that the Greeks had no conception of a personal God. Every peasant and the vast majority of intellectuals believed wholeheartedly in the Gods a personal entities. Additionally, even the most impersonal of schools in Hinduism recognize devotion to God as a perfectly valid path. The personal aspects of God represent characteristics of the Godhead in their specific manifestation. It is not so simply as you make it out be, implying that traits of the Gods are nothing but incidental and provide no metaphysical use. Nothing could be further form the case. The issue in the west is not that devotion to God in his personal manifestation exists, but rather that all other metaphysical conceptions are pushed aside. I agree with you on that. However, I simply cannot concede that this is specific to Christianity in its traditional form. In its modern form that simply sees God as just your friend, I agree: Modern Protestantism has little value with regards to metaphysical realization. But traditionally speaking, there are many great insights to be gained. To simply brush off Christian thinkers as having ruined the legacy of the Greeks is quite naive and lacks any sort of nuance. Surely there were times in which a simplified metaphysical doctrine did arise. Yet, surely there were other times in which Christian theology helped to provide an Orthodox platform upon which theology, partially borrowed from the Greeks, could manifest itself in sacred rites. Like it or not, there was no conception of European identity until after Christianity united the continent. Before, one could have easily said that Greece was part of the near east and had little to do with continental Europe. In terms of culture, it was completely different from Germanic lands.
I agree with you on many things, but I think that it is very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that Greece was some intellectual golden age. As I stated in the last post, that was surely not the case, and even Plato agreed that Greece was in a decadent period where religious worship was beginning to decline.
Ancient Geography had a much different purpose than that of modern geography. There was a qualitative element contained within it, contrary to modern geography which is nothing but quantitative representations of different areas. I do think Atlantis existed, but exactly how Atlantis is to be defined is not easy within the mind of modern man. As man progresses down the cyclical manifestation of the universe, the world becomes solidified within his mind. If you don't ask, you won't receive. Modern man does not see the spiritual because he has systematically reduced his mind to see nothing but the material and doesn't even wish to see beyond it. It is Stockholm syndrome, wherein modern man has took his mind captive and has came to love it, and see nothing beyond the facade of his captor, materialism. The modern mind is completely different from the ancient mind.
>1. Cultural exchange from the silk road.
What is The Questions of Menander. Bactrian king discusses the nature of reality and knowledge with his host, the philosopher king Nagasena. ~150BC.
I am aware Greece had it's mythologies and personal Gods, and the cultures which revolved around them. I was personally only referring to Plato onwards, who personally seemed to align differently, and whether he was trying to or not, formed his own theology that people after him followed. Now, in my earlier post I might have seemed to want Christianity to be done away with entirely, and if so that's my mistake. It isn't the case, people here can still believe in a singular or multitude of personal Gods if they desire to. The problem inherent to Christianity is the rigidity of the doctrine, wherein it simply does not admit external metaphysical conceptions to exist alongside its own, these being blasphemous and unacceptable by its inherent tenets. The NT is quite clear on the inferiority of every other spiritual practise or belief system, and a believer's need to avoid these entirely or else not be a valid member of their faith. This leaves a problem for us, in that, even if I wanted people here to retain the insights which Christianity contains in it, them doing so faithfully would prevent them from being able to move on to other metaphysical conceptions at all, by nature of what Christianity requires. If they could bypass this, and find a synthesis, I'd have no problem, and am not trying to vilify Christianity to any extent: but Christian doctrine would call those same eclectic practitioners a litany of alienating slurs for doing so. One can't simultaneously believe in reincarnation and an eternal heaven/hell one is sentenced to after their one and only lifetime, of worshipping One God versus worshipping several, of supporting homosexual behaviors and condemning them, of personal enlightenment without external resources or one mediated through a divinely-appointed Church. These and many other policies are simply contradictory, and can't be married to eachother. One could not hold a worldview that holds them both at once; and it is by nature that a citizen is either a faithful Christian and a faulty Neoplatonist (or some other metaphysical tradition), or the inverse; and such dichotomies can only be dysfunctional. If these could be straddled, then by all means could the modern West follow the Christian doctrines of past, while also following those previous to it. But this cannot be done with any quality, and is why I perceive that our modern spiritual bog could only be removed if Christianity were followed culturally, namely for the moral teachings, while Neoplatonist ones were held to metaphysically. I see no other solution.
I completely agree with the historical facts you mentioned, like the lack of any united European identity prior to Christianity making it so. I wouldn't agree, however, that the tremendous loss of distinct culture which made this possible is to be counted as a positive thing, nor that something better, which we cannot comment on, might not have done the same for Europe if Christianity hadn't done so first.
Please explain what you mean by qualitative element to geography that we dont have today. I'm about to call bullshit on ancient minds being completely different (if reason is what brought us from then to now then reason is the link between our minds), but I'll hold off until you explain.
Plato died almost 200 years before those kings had that discussion according to wiki.
What do you guys make of the Egyptian Mysteries referenced in Timaeus? Do you have any information on them?
bump
I like the Atlantis myth in Critias myself. It seems like it was explaining something regarding God or whatever too when it cut out.
based and christpilled