Plotinus

The only thing verifiable is that I am aware/have consciousness, and even that is tenuous. It's all belief after that,
And I read some bits of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

>I'm a recreational mystic

Prove to me objectively and utterly indubitably that you are consciously aware and aren’t just a phantom that I’m experiencing.

There are a few other things too. Potential multiplicity of entities, space, time, etc. Read the Transcendental Aesthetic. It's really interesting

Thou fearest the fangs of the noumena

Please dont add another book to anons reading list op

Haven't read any Deleuze or Lang yet. Can you explain this meme to me?

Read more faggot

KYS.

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I can't, which is why I said "tenuous" but I was referring to myself. I literally could not prove that I'm aware to you.
I think I have heard of his take before, and isn't basically that space and time are constructions of the mind? Feel free to correct me if i'm wrong. I downloaded a pdf and will read it soon
Tell me what's verifiable, bud

Not constructs, more like hard-wired, unavoidable channels through which we take all experience

>that are impossible to verify from experience

Empiricism can only sustain itself inasmuch as you're willing to suspend your inquiry into further evidence of the evidence you claim is Epistemologically sufficient for any one thing. Turning Empiricism onto itself destroys it, whereas turning Reason onto itself consecrates it. God is not merely real. He is THE Truth.

Did you miss the parts of the thread where I'm a Kantian?

I don't deny the existence of a thing-in-itself (God) just that you can make positive statements about it and know that the statements are true

I think that's more what I meant. In either case, not things as they are, which I agree with fully. But, I don't necessarily believe that that unavoidableness means they have to be considered verifiable, although I guess it's pointless to deny their utility

That's where you're wrong kiddo

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>if we restricted ourselves to pure empiricism we'd have what we have now, which is pretty shitty desu
*blocks your path*

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>t. maximum solipsistic autist

buddhism is not pure empiricism but rests on a bunch of unfalsifiable metaphysical claims, get out of here with that bullshit

Only thing you can argue is metaphysical bullshit is the cosmology, but that is secondary to their observations of experience as impermanent and lacking in any identifiable self-entity (and therefore unsatisfactory), from which all their teachings are based. Buddhism is very strict about avoiding any metaphysical claims regarding any sort of objective external reality.

rebirth is unfalsifiable and without it the whole structure comes crashing down. Also, Buddha claimed to remember past lives so you can fuck off with this "strict about avoiding X claims"

kek what a retard. you're of the same german bugman mold as Luther. you inherited Kant's dense skull that didn't understand theology.

>verify from experience
you big dope, mystical experiences are by nature subjective. beyond the realm of language, yet they exist. inb4 buh buh but it's just like DMT and ayahuasca just chemicals in the brain man.

>I'm a recreational mystic
how the fuck can you claim to be a mystic if you don't accept the notion of God? God is not a body. ergo God is not verifiable. fucking freshman brainlets i swear.

You can be a mystic and deny God if you accept a premise like "the post-contemporary is that which alters the forms of human consciousness", idk probably find that in Frederic Jameson

There's no reason to infer the existence of God from experiences beyond language. Perhaps God is merely a label you put upon a chaos you cannot verbalize.

>rebirth is unfalsifiable and without it the whole structure comes crashing down
Not quite - the three characteristics (and all the practices) still stand whether rebirth is true or not. Rebirth is a conclusion that one comes to through following the practice, it is not the other way around (that the practice is dependent on belief in rebirth).

>I don't deny the existence of a thing-in-itself (God) just that you can make positive statements about it and know that the statements are true
you are a pusillanimous turd who read some hip and cool yuropoor philosophers who didn't know what they FUCK they were talking about. their bias against God was informed by a reactionary stance against church and religion, but they didn't want to say they were atheists. it's fucking dishonest garbage and you know it. faith is necessary at some point, to be able to claim any kind of knowledge. you can't put a velvet rope around God and reject him without actually rejecting him.

nonsense.

also nonsense. we have spent many thousands of years thinking about God, and two and a half thousand in the Platonic/Aristotelian/Christian tradition. that is not this.

Faith maybe, but not faithbin God. Read Kant faggot. He explicitly said one of his purposes was to open a space for faith to exist.

i'll go further in explaining it to you. i said:
>faith is necessary at some point, to be able to claim any kind of knowledge
and do you want to know why?

Because God, that first form, is that which illuminates all others. it was revealed in John, in Timaeus, in Plotinus, and in Christian tradition up to the present. Having faith in anything, any knowledge, is only possibly because you are a created being. You see? Cause and effect. You can reject the idea of God, or God's importance to knowledge as I've demonstrated, and that's a big brainlet move, but it doesn't make you correct.

What about is nonsensical? Or is your MO just to negate shit you don't like?

>big babby afraid of godless world
Pathetic.

all of it. really.

>"the post-contemporary is that which alters the forms of human consciousness",
explain this to me while also making a coherent argument for this idea's relationship to God as we understand it ITT.

for a start: post-contemporary is a bad term. the bible is relevant today. this instant. it is timeless human wisdom, easily applied, that follows from a theological starting point if one cares to think about it.

Ok. My ideas arent worked out because most people choose to negate or deny or claim ignorance.

I'll grant 1) some books can be relevant in historical periods they were not written in

I won't grant 2) the bible is universally intelligible without testimony

With the post-contemporary, you have options rather than just a selection between divine revelation and anything is not divine.

A) contemporaneity demarcates what is relevant to consciousness. The bible has not always existed.

that's a long way of saying "bible bad"

>My ideas arent worked out
I noticed. Okayyyy, thank you for playing.

Are you a demonstrative thinker?

The Bible is highly esoteric. Mysteries within mysteries. God himself is so unknowable I know not whether I know him.

Kant believes in progress within the field of philosophy. Hence why he has a book summarizing his beliefs called prolegomena to any future metaphysic that will be called science. I think science can be overly reductive but I do think being informed by science is important and learning the tradition in its ancient and modern forms is important.

Buddhism is the most radical empiricism there is. You are a brainlet

desu don't be mean to user, he's probably a Westerner alienated by some sort of Christian upbringing and as a result is averse and hyper-skeptical towards anything resembling a religion.
I'd give him a break

This book is good

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>materialist author
damn....

Traditional metaphysics is primitive metapsychology.

>Traditional metaphysics is primitive metapsychology.

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That's wrong, traditional metaphysics mostly focus on what is beyond and above the mind, while psychology limits itself to the mind

I don't know if you're referring to Buddhism when you say "traditional metaphysics" but it was just established a few posts above that Buddhism is radically empirical and avoids discussion of metaphysics.

Exactly, it's the liberal anglo-american Protestantism of eastern religion

>dude my self is like not whatever thought I have or whatever object I look at! * hits blunt*
>that means "I" don't exist, lol... mom's gunna freak!

how do people fall for this crap in 2019?

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>there's clearly no self to be found in experience upon even a moderate degree of investigation
>despite realizing this, we still intuitively perceive things as if this were not the case, as if our thoughts are indeed ourselves
>this is somehow not worth further investigation

>there's clearly no self to be found in experience
the self is the experiencer of experience, how dumb can you be, this is like 4th grade logic my man

>Exodus 3 14
>And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you

Is that "thing-in-itself" enough for you?

Reminder that Sankaracharya banished the Buddha like Plato banished the Sophist.

>individualist religion that encourages apathy
>liberal globalist scientistic shills love it

thats gonna be a big hmmm from me

to make it short, he fell victim to the zeitgeist of slave morality in his times.

>outright steal Nagarjuna's ideas but replace every mention of "emptiness" with "brahma"
>ask basic babby "gotcha" questions that have been answetered time and time again like "if there is no self in experience then what gets reborn?"
hmmmmmm

>>outright steal Nagarjuna's ideas but replace every mention of "emptiness" with "brahma"
All the stuff people accuse him of taking from Nagarjuna is already found in the pre-Buddhist Upanishads that Shankara cites extensively in his works, really go on, try to name something that he takes from Nagarjuna that you think isn't in them. The pre-Buddhist Upanishads explicitly say that Brahman is unborn (brihadaranyaka for example) and discuss a higher absolute truth which is "the truth of truth" (ibid). The concepts of the two truths and non-origination predate buddhism, and were assimilated by Buddha from the Upanishads along with many other concepts into his teachings and from Buddha to Nagarjuna, Shankara gets it straight from the source (which is not to say that different people cannot reach the same conclusion independently, but if there was a causal relation viz where the idea comes from here it played out like this).
>ask basic babby "gotcha" questions that have been answetered time and time again like "if there is no self in experience then what gets reborn?"
he btfos a bunch of hinayana and mahayana doctrines dozens of times in his works but pointing out how they are inherently self-contradictory and illogical, while not a single classic buddhist author/thinker ever wrote a comprehensive refutation of the doctrine of Advaita (if they could they would have) aside from a few scattered briefs mentions in some texts, don't pretend like you've read or have good responses to his arguments

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>guenonfag
>again

>not an argument
>again

Hey this is interesting. Wondering what I should read to get into Advaita Vedanta? Do you have a collection of introductory texts to recommend?

i read this fuck in the original greek in undergrad. weirdest class of my college career

The best course is to ignore everything else written about it and just read Shankara's works and see him completely explain it himself in his own words. However, in order to do this, you sorta have to read at least 2 goods books on Indian philosophy and vedanta first to understand his commentaries well because they contained lots of untranslated sanksrit words denoting key philosophical/metaphysical concepts. Some examples of books that would be good to read before trying out Shankara's works include the various books on Advaita and/or Indian philosophy by Chandradhar Sharma, Elliot Deustch, Rene Guenon and S. Radnakrishnan. You could also begin by reading the Ashtavakra Gita, which is a short text considered to be one of the better expositions of Advaita teachings and which requires no reading first.

realization.org/p/ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita/richards.ashtavakra-gita.html

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also, i'd recommend reading shankara's upanishad commentaries before his other works

>Rene Guenon
WOOP
THERE IT IS

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Nothing.

He was the Fichte to Kant's Plato. Both of them saw Plato/Kant talk about unsolvable contradictions and derived a dialetheic generative worldview. Both of them also claimed to be reading Plato/Kant literally and attributed their ideas to Plato/Kant rather than fully recognizing them for the novel developments they really were.

German Idealism (as in Hegel) is very similar to Middle Platonism and Neo-Platonism in some ways, they both start with some kind of absolute, and then derive various ontological realities from it. However Plotinus and his crew are emanationists, which is something like the reverse of the German Idealists. Emanationism goes from greatest reality downward to lesser and lesser reality, whereas German Idealism goes from some simple origin (pure being/pure nothingness for Hegel) upwards to greater and greater reality (the ideal).

AK Coomaraswamy called his book on Vedanta "the best book on the Vedanta in any European language", there is a reason he gets recommended, of course not everyone likes him but but I also listed 3 other good authors

lolol imagine reading a LARPing 20th century Westerner to understand a 1200-year-old Eastern religious tradition

I merely recommended some intro texts that help the reader know enough terminology and concepts to read and understand the core texts themselves from way back when it all started, and I specifically stated that it's best to read the original writings and not books about it unless its necessary

Leprosy

Guenonfag needs to get a job

>pi in the sky

>t.

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Hermeticism is based

>The only thing verifiable is that I am aware/have consciousness, and even that is tenuous. It's all belief after that,

read Hegel.

Anatta, no-self, is the notion that there is no permanent
subject, no soul or substance of that sort. Conciseness is a process.

>self is the experiencer of experience
Homunculus argument. There is no ''experiencer'', furthermore there is no separation between the aggregate which produces self-consciousness and the determinate causes f the objective world.

Whence and whereto is the process? If it is from and to itself, maintaining itself as process, then it is not only ironically permanent, but prominently so. Permanence entertaining the illusion of change and such. If it is from and/or to something permanent proper, not a process, then it is all the more permanent, even in common non-Dialectical ways.

>Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

> If it is from and/or to something permanent proper, not a process, then it is all the more permanent
?

>Whence and whereto is the process?

Of consciousness? I will not use any specific Buddhist strain of thought to respond.

>Whence and whereto

To abstract and simplify: between subject and object.

>If it is from and to itself, maintaining itself as process, then it is not only ironically permanent, but prominently so

It can not maintain itself, that would lead to pure being, that is, nothing. It is dependent, thus not permanent. With that, it also appears that anything that is permanent would have to exist for itself, but by the virtue of this--- would itself be nothing.

>Permanence entertaining the illusion of change and such

I can't say much about that, other than it seems to be a necessary outcome.

>If it is from and/or to something permanent proper, not a process, then it is all the more permanent, even in common non-Dialectical ways.

Covered above. It seems very much dialectical.

weeb anons with yellow fever pls go. this is not an oriental philosophy thread, shill your advaita buddha mumbo jumbo elsewhere

A train wreck of a reply, even below rhetoric. Practically Chinese or Roman diary entries. Sad.

Plotinus believed in souls. Why are you talking about your Chinese garbage cope doctrine

Why.

Was I talking about Plotinus?

No. Now look at what the thread is about. Read the title, dimwit.

Clearly I was responding to a conversation between two posters, where what I posted was relevant.

>No.
You can't back up the critique?

My critique is that Buddhist superstition and weak metaphysics of the orient are off-topic.

How old are you?

Not an argument.

>Not an argument.
Neither is:
>A train wreck of a reply, even below rhetoric. Practically Chinese or Roman diary entries. Sad.

That wasn't me dummy. I'm above and below that user. Learn to read minds.

None of those are coherent arguments either.

I'm not going to engage with an off-topic argument. This thread is about Plotinus, not incoherent guru prattle about nothing being real.

I really don't know what's worse. White Buddhists or pagan larpers?

>pagan

Plotinus is literally Christian, as per Jesus, not as per Paul or God forbid A*gustine.

Who said otherwise?

Only on Yea Forums would non-dualists and Neoplatonists get into an argument. Fucking pseudlets

>as per Jesus, not by Paul
Retard deteced.

The closer things are, the more important it is to tell them apart.

>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.

kek

Now Buddhists are invading non-Buddhist threads to shill their retarded neovedanta nonsense about how you don't really exist
Is there anything more cringe-worthy?

>The Bible is highly esoteric
tell us the secerets behind ezekial 4:9 when yhwh tella ezekial to lay in the mud and eat bread cooked over burning shit

>9 “Take wheat and barley, beans and lentils, millet and spelt; put them in a storage jar and use them to make bread for yourself. You are to eat it during the 390 days you lie on your side.
>10 Weigh out twenty shekels of food to eat each day and eat it at set times.
>11 Also measure out a sixth of a hin of water and drink it at set times.
>12 Eat the food as you would a loaf of barley bread; bake it in the sight of the people, using human excrement for fuel.”
>13 The Lord said, “In this way the people of Israel will eat defiled food among the nations where I will drive them.”
>14 Then I said, “Not so, Sovereign Lord! I have never defiled myself. From my youth until now I have never eaten anything found dead or torn by wild animals. No impure meat has ever entered my mouth.”
>15 “Very well,” he said, “I will let you bake your bread over cow dung instead of human excrement.”
>16 He then said to me: “Son of man, I am about to cut off the food supply in Jerusalem. The people will eat rationed food in anxiety and drink rationed water in despair, >17 for food and water will be scarce. They will be appalled at the sight of each other and will waste away because of their sin.

That God hates the Jews is hardly a mystery.

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it represents the ego-annihilation (fanāʾ) which is indispensible to the realization and experiencing of the Absolute, the willingness to lay down in the mud corresponding to a willingness to 'give up' your personhood and corresponding dreams, attachments, senses of self-worth etc, a process which clarifies the intellect and prepares it for coming face to face with the reflection of the Absolute which is finally revealed in itself.

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Advaita is the esoteric truth behind all religions and philosophy and is 100% the same truth realized by Plotinus but most Advaitins are the ultimate bros who just accept that some people don't get it so they kick back and laugh and post about it when it comes up on Yea Forums. The Buddhists are the ones angrily beating down doors and going in threads about other subjects to demand that people accept the truth of Buddhas word

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an ENORMOUS leap, and contradicted by Moses who saw and spoke with God and remained Moses. even Ezekiel who spoke with angels had the wherewithal to take notes

no, it's made up garbage you shoehorn into other people's beliefs because you are a deranged pseud who has only read nonsensical eastern garbage

>an ENORMOUS leap,
that was just a joke but its unironically probably whatever the esoteric significance of the passage is anyway, if any

you retards coudent tell what buddhism is if it came out your ass, the buddhism all you twats refer to comes from the Hīnayāna which is the shitty retarded version of the original doctrines compared with the Mahāyāna which stays way truer to the doctrines. You all are fascinated with a buddhism that is most likely the farthest and least familiar with any eastern doctrines aka not buddhism but some shit Westerners love to praise. As a student studying Traditionalism but more so the orientals i can't help but cringe everytime I see you discuss "Buddhism" its more so some-shit the Westerners took in and adapted to their imagination. You guys some chart (like pic-related ) and become a Eastern monk and maybe even understand Buddhism itself? gtfo, read guenon's first book so you can get rid of your western prejudices

no I'm pretty sure yhwh is a sadistic and petty volcano demon who just wants to humiliate and debase people. imagine worshiping a god who LITERALLY forces people to eat poopoo bread

>"it was only an act!"

>white male w no gf
>reads guenon
>tells others they don't know buddhism

What are you talking about? Kant clearly says that you cannot make any statement about the existence of God through pure reason. Also the thing-in-itself is not God, it's just the trascendental object identified through the synthesis of intuitions. It has nothing to do with religion or theology.

>you big dope, mystical experiences are by nature subjective. beyond the realm of language, yet they exist. inb4 buh buh but it's just like DMT and ayahuasca just chemicals in the brain man.
According to Kant those experiences would be contingent determination of your internal perception. Since they're at best part of you empirical apperception, no metaphysical claim can be derived from them.
>how the fuck can you claim to be a mystic if you don't accept the notion of God? God is not a body. ergo God is not verifiable.
Two notes:
a) if God cannot be grasped through intuitions, this means that nothing can be determined in its concept, not even its existence (and other essential property, like personality).
b) subjective experiences are still intuitions. Kant calls their domain "internal sense". As I've said above, trying to derive from these empirical internal intuitions a knowledge of God is impossible, due to both their contingency and the fact that intuitions only relate to objects in space and time.

If you want to shittalk Kant you should at least tell us what's your source of knowledge when it comes to mysthical claims.

>I'm a recreational mystic

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>a) if God cannot be grasped through intuitions
but he can therefore a is dead and
>b) subjective experiences are still intuitions
therefore b is also dead.

If you want to play with the big boys you're going to have to have learned from a better master.

>inb4 buh buh buh you said god is not verifiable
I did. And that is very different from unknowable. Learn to read.

>And that is very different from unknowable.
It isn't, although Kant is willing to say that it is possible to think about this Idea, although no specific determination can be attributed to it (not even that it exists, or wether it has a personality or not, or wether it is immanent or trascendent, etc). Also, I'll repeat myself:
>If you want to shittalk Kant you should at least tell us what's your source of knowledge when it comes to mysthical claims.

I cannot know God in a personal, mystical sense without belief. God IS knowable, but belief is often negated by doubt. We can however deduce the qualities of the One. Plotinus did, in fact, and so did other theologians. Kant rejected their thought out of hand because there is no empirical evidence proving that God is a body. He was a dummy like you.

You have proven yourself a rare brainlet of cosmic magnitude. I'm not sharing my bona fides with someone who can't read English.

>Kant rejected their thought out of hand because there is no empirical evidence proving that God is a body.
WRONG and FALSE. Re read sections four, five, and six of the Transcendental Dialectic, if you ever read them to begin with. He says that the ontological argument fails because the concept of a being possessing perfect reality already includes the predicate of existence, and also because IN THE MAJOR the copula is treated without reference to an object, while IN THE MINOR it is treated as having referred to the object the existence of which the predicate of existence was already intended to prove ("existence is evidently not a real [i.e. it is a logical] predicate.")

daaa your all cunts
and i have no idea what your all ranting about
but if i w3as to guess
your all using memes to discribe memes
as is the way of the old
anwyas hmm heres a meme i guess i dont know

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>"existence is evidently not a real [i.e. it is a logical] predicate."
in other words...?
>God is not a body

>the ontological argument fails because the concept of a being possessing perfect reality already includes the predicate of existence
Not relevant because
>God is not a body

newadvent.org/summa/1003.htm

Again, I tell you, Kant was driven by his bias against the Church but didn't want to be labeled an atheist. He's a pseud who spouted fashionable nonsense that has been adopted as credible philosophy when in fact the love of wisdom is farthest from his thought.

youtube.com/watch?v=Ld-gi--yJ7M

nice pic

>Kant rejected their thought out of hand because there is no empirical evidence proving that God is a body.
Nope, he proved by demonstraying that (to summarize it brutally) any couple of opposite thesis can both be proven both true or false. We cannot decide between those determinations because they are equally reasonable (and obviously one cannot resolve the dilemma by using sensory intuitions). It looks like you're the one dismissing Kant like a dummy who doesn't even know what he said.
>You have proven yourself a rare brainlet of cosmic magnitude. I'm not sharing my bona fides with someone who can't read English.
I've asked you what are your sources of knowledge, you responded by saying that God can be known. Are you sure I'm the one having reading comprehension problems here?

>Again, I tell you, Kant was driven by his bias against the Church but didn't want to be labeled an atheist. He's a pseud who spouted fashionable nonsense that has been adopted as credible philosophy when in fact the love of wisdom is farthest from his thought.
Worthless comment, since you clearly have no idea about what Kant said.

He doesn't deny any attribute of God you monumental ignoramus, he denies that it is possible to enumerate the attributes of God through the conception of absolute perfection without presenting a tautology, for the reason stated above. There is a difference between "God is not a body" and "It cannot be proved whether or not God is a body." He wasn't even asking for empirical evidence of it, because that would already assume knowledge of God as a body, he was asking for a valid logical demonstration, which none of the three proofs are.

The tautology was revealed in John and in Genesis, and proved in the first century. Kant rejected the evidence out of hand, as I've said before.

We've put Kant's thesis into practice. He (and you) trust in doubt rather than belief that anything about a divine metaphysics can be known. Now read some Pascal.

>He (and you) trust in doubt rather than belief that anything about a divine metaphysics can be known.
What's your source on Kant? Ayn Rand? Stephen Hicks?

Not an argument. Start with the Greeks, bucko.

lol you're so full of shit. Will you say anything substantial or is this it?

Nice ad hominem. You lose.

I've stated actual arguments multiple times, I'm still waiting for an intellegible answer.

I proved you wrong (and incapable of following an argument) ten posts ago.

Where did you prove me and Kant wrong?

>God is not a body
How is knowledge of God even possible then. How is defining what God even is even possible. Any immediate experience that leads you to it is going to be empirical.

>How is knowledge of God even possible then
because God is the transcendent self who is the foundation of all knowledge, read Shankara he explained all of this in the 8th century

>because God is the transcendent self who is the foundation of all knowledge, read Shankara he explained all of this in the 8th century
why/how is god a transcendent self, how does this not collapse into immanence?

His ON Beauty essay was fucking garbage

Kant calls that "trascendental apperception". Obviously it has nothing to do with God.

>why/how
see his Upanishad commentaries, short answer is it's the answer for existence and explanation for existence which most conforms to reason, perception and inference in addition to it being directly taught in revealed texts.
>how does this not collapse into immanence?
Because the immanence is only a unreal superimposition made on by ignorance on the non-dual substratum of pure consiouness-bliss; which acts as the efficient but not material cause of existence; and which is the Absolute into which all conventional knowledge and truths are sublated. The effect is only an appearance of the unchanging cause. It doesn't collapse because the immanent is projected from and contained within the transcendent Self as it were.

What is the necessity which causes projection/emanation, and what is the substance of phenomena, and why is it structured into objective determinations.

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it's you again, lol. anatta means not-self. without an immortal soul buddhism falls apart completely. consciousness is a filter for the immortal soul, not the foundation

>consciousness is a filter for the immortal soul, not the foundation

How can the immortal soul exist without substance derived from the world? Consciousness would be that process, not a filter, that is, there is nothing on ''the other end'' for this to be filtered to, other than a temporary aggregate which brings about this reflexive loop through all kinds of circuitry. Point me to you self, to your soul, and you will find it without content.

you still confuse experiential reality with the totality/absolute. every living thing has a soul. when i say consciousness is a filter i mean that you must separate it from your soul. the makeup of your consciousness which would be things like your previous experiences, genes, and sensory capabilities...which by taking the time to isolate them, you find that they aren't your soul.

furthermore, all metaphysics are pointless if you want to argue that there is no immortal soul. if you honestly subscribe to the idea that there is no aspect of 'you' that is permanent, then 'you' will be completely annihilated with the death of your body, and any kind of spiritual transcendence is meaningless.

Just think of the depth of conversations occurring in this thread and then realize that virtually all of the mass media and celebrities of the West consider you to be dumb racist rednecks because you’re on Yea Forums. Really shows how little they know.

lol this thread was supposed to be about plotinus

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>furthermore, all metaphysics are pointless if you want to argue that there is no immortal soul. if you honestly subscribe to the idea that there is no aspect of 'you' that is permanent, then 'you' will be completely annihilated with the death of your body, and any kind of spiritual transcendence is meaningless.

Sure. But that's irrelevant to the inquiry.

>you still confuse experiential reality with the totality/absolute.

Would it not necessarily be immanent to the totality. We ought to be able to discover it through experiential reality.

> every living thing has a soul. when i say consciousness is a filter i mean that you must separate it from your soul. the makeup of your consciousness which would be things like your previous experiences, genes, and sensory capabilities...which by taking the time to isolate them, you find that they aren't your soul.

And what is left after that line of reasoning? Nothing substantial, only something which without all those phenomenal detemrinations you listed-- would be nothing. I don't see how you can essentially presuppose the end product here, a soul. Though I don't think you're doing that. Either we can arrive at some knowledge of it, through the necessary implications of what we can experience, or we have no knowledge of it.

This thread is about to die, but Proclus reacts really well to the bullshit that Plotinus gets on with. Elements of theology is a very, VERY worthwhile read. De Malorum Substantia is also great for seeing how Aristotelian thought combined with Platonic idealism makes for a much more grounded and consistent philosophy than Plotinus' nonsense.

I really appreciate having access to the Enneads, but its a very contradictory work that should really serve as a benchmark for the development of neoplatonism, because it certainly isn't the most profound work of the neoplatonists.

you obviously discover the soul (and any higher ideal) through experiential reality, since you can't do anything else. our logical and reasoning faculties are still bound up by the senses. however, if you imagine your soul as a needle and the rest of the phenomenal world as a haystack, you find the needle by essentially burning down the haystack. this is why anatta is "not-self", instead of "no self".

i'm also skeptical of you saying that there is nothing substantial after going through a process of figuring out what your soul 'is not'. do you think that i'm implying that they don't exist at all? that would be ridiculous. we're using retroduction/via negativa to arrive at a conception of the soul.

he believed in god.

>falling for the evil genie's tricks

this post make being a wageslave suburbanite breeder sound like touching the absolute.

>this is why anatta is "not-self", instead of "no self".

Yes, the error in writing ought to have been negated by the other content. Idk why I wrote no instead of not. I'm not making ''dude nothing is real'' claims.

>i'm also skeptical of you saying that there is nothing substantial after going through a process of figuring out what your soul 'is not'. do you think that i'm implying that they don't exist at all? that would be ridiculous. we're using retroduction/via negativa to arrive at a conception of the soul.

You end up negating all phenomena.
You arrive at pure being, that is thus without content.
The only positive outcome is non-duality.
But there is no positive self-substance.

bamp

God is not perfect is a negative way, to the exemption from attempts to prove otherwise, but in a positive way, to, not BY, his maintenance despite such attempts. Though I think it is merely a Materialist phantom haunting otherwise good faith inquiries, the question of necessity is curiously damning precisely to Yaldaboths, Demiurges, Catholic Janitor and Bureaucrat Gods, etc. and decidedly not to a positively perfect God. If anything it should regard continence instead. What is the necessity of Omninunnery?

On the Phenomenal: this is another case of superfluous or even malignant questions. That any one Phenomenon is indeed not enslaved to Man, and indeed does not uniformly maintain itself, is no reason to think that they are Ontologically Other, or worse still that there is a homunculus of Otherness operating at the core of their otherwise honest existence. By the same standard, you yourself fly in your own face to a much higher degree, not despite your Self-identity, but because of it. And I don't suppose your fellow man arouses such inquiry, even though he should vex you tenfold.

>beyond the realm of language,
wrong, everything is linguistical

I think that Plotinus sounds tenuous if you think he is a poet who means what he does not say or says what he does not mean. For example:

>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.

Confusion only arises by trying to interject an anchor of "common sense", to soften the awfulness of INFERNAL and PHANTOMS, which he means quite literally, regardless of metaphor.

Greatest philosopher.

God is not perfect in a negative way, to the exemption from attempts to prove otherwise, but in a positive way, to, not BY, his maintenance despite such attempts. Though I think it is merely a Materialist phantom haunting otherwise good faith inquiries, the question of necessity is curiously damning precisely to Yaldaboths, Demiurges, Catholic Janitor and Bureaucrat Gods, etc. and decidedly not to a positively perfect God. If anything it should regard continence instead. What is the necessity of Omninunnery?

On the Phenomenal: this is another case of superfluous or even malignant questions. That any one Phenomenon is indeed not enslaved to Man, and indeed does not uniformly maintain itself, is no reason to think that they are Ontologically Other, or worse still that there is a homunculus of Otherness operating at the core of their otherwise honest existence. By the same standard, you yourself fly in your own face to a much higher degree, not despite your Self-identity, but because of it. And I don't suppose your fellow man arouses such inquiry, even though he should vex you tenfold.

>God is not perfect is a negative way, to the exemption from attempts to prove otherwise, but in a positive way, to, not BY, his maintenance despite such attempts

Your style is confused, can you define and format your claims in a clearer way.

>that they are Ontologically Other
They're not.

>, or worse still that there is a homunculus of Otherness operating at the core of their otherwise honest existence.
I have no idea why you'd think that.

>By the same standard, you yourself fly in your own face to a much higher degree, not despite your Self-identity, but because of it.
>And I don't suppose your fellow man arouses such inquiry, even though he should vex you tenfold.

I have n idea what you are trying to communicate.

Fixed spelling, "IN a negative way". See: Otherwise still sad as per:

whats the conclusion ?

What is soul?
thats good, hope they dont come here

>Fixed spelling, "IN a negative way".
That wasn't the issue.

Look, I can assume all kinds of things from what you wrote, idioms and flowery language are not really useful.
So if you want to talk, then tell me in plain language, what are you claiming about God, ontology and phenomena etc.

That reply IS literal.

tell me what soul is

alright, can you break this down for me friend?
>or worse still that there is a homunculus of Otherness operating at the core of their otherwise honest existence. By the same standard, you yourself fly in your own face to a much higher degree, not despite your Self-identity, but because of it. And I don't suppose your fellow man arouses such inquiry, even though he should vex you tenfold.

I have no reason to believe in a soul. You'd have to define it as there are different definitions.

That demanding explanation of Phenomenal Ontology as distinct from Theology, or even demanding an irreducible Phenomenal aspect as distinct from your own judgement, on the pretense of any one Phenomenon's apparent separation therefrom, is unwarranted since you yourself regularly embody such separation from yourself, precisely because of Self-identity and non-contradictory participation in and of yourself. I don't suppose you regret any one thing you've done in the Ontological sense, and think of it as such to the degree that you impose on any one Phenomenon. Moreover, that your fellow man is intuitively closer to you not by being less like a Phenomenon, but by the same standards being MORE Phenomenal through inviolable autocracy, metamorphosis, disappearance proper, etc. and that you do not likewise inquire about him; it is at least intellectually dishonest, if not malignant.

> is unwarranted since you yourself regularly embody such separation from yourself, precisely because of Self-identity and non-contradictory participation in and of yourself

Show me the separation. If we were to assume the same dialectical mode of being onto God, then God is immanent, and in accordance with being absolute, he would be *collapsed* into the process and as the process of all phenomena.

> I don't suppose you regret any one thing you've done in the Ontological sense, and think of it as such to the degree that you impose on any one Phenomenon

What are you referring to with this.

>Moreover, that your fellow man is intuitively closer to you not by being less like a Phenomenon, but by the same standards being MORE Phenomenal through inviolable autocracy, metamorphosis, disappearance proper, etc. and that you do not likewise inquire about him; it is at least intellectually dishonest, if not malignant.

I don't see how that is relevant to anything I've posted.

Don't ask for the jug if you can't drink it. Also, stop smoking weed.

no response?

second this, please

Materiality.

I feel like you have some valid ideas which are being obscured by too much philosophical jargon and obscurantist language.

>Emanationism goes from greatest reality downward to lesser and lesser reality, whereas >German Idealism goes from some simple origin (pure being/pure nothingness for Hegel) upwards to greater and greater reality (the ideal).
Doesn't this hint at the same horseshoe process if the lesser-most reality of the Neoplatonists comes to resemble the Greatest reality and if Hegel's Ideal is conceptually identical to pure being/pure nothingness? And furthermore, wouldn't these two systems just be saying in different language what Advaitan's are gesturing towards with the concepts of atman and brahman?

Indeed. Another example being Jesus, in Incarnation vs. Docetism:

"Canon": Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.

"Heresy": He whom you saw on the tree, glad and laughing, this is the living Jesus. But this one into whose hands and feet they drive the nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute being put to shame, the one who came into being in his likeness. But look at him and me.

That original sin and Jesus' atonement are not in the Gospels is common enough knowledge, BUT note how the passages that ostensibly confirm this doctrine actually rebuke it. That he might take his life again makes "sacrifice" null, that the Father loves HIM for doing it, not the "sinners", that he does not acquiesce to death, but renounces his life proactively. This is Docetism, not only ironically, but more radical than per "Gnosticism". In being fully man, but essentially making light of human life, enough that he seems to trivialize it by liking it to a Docetic "apparition", he is actually coinciding Incarnation and Docetism, and consecrating man AS SUCH. That this is not Kenomic, but in fact most magnanimous is as startling as how it relates to sin, whereto the old things pass etc. It makes the "heretical" passage sound like menopausal finger-wagging. The Phenomenology of Spirit and Plato's Parmenides both weep with joy.

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he's the final boss.....

You can’t become self-conscious without social experiences with other consciousness that reflect your own consciousness back to you.