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| Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 | | 2:58 pm |
"Just as Heraclitus conceived time, so also for instance did Schopenhauer, who repeatedly says of it that in it every instant exists only in so far as it has annihilated the preceding one, its father, in order to be itself effaced equally quickly; that past and future are as unreal as any dream; that the present is only the dimensionless and unstable boundary between the two. -- Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Greeks" (Published 1890) | | Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | | 10:05 pm |
Pseudo-Dionysius and Iamblichus
"illuminated by the understanding of visions, we shall be able to become consecrated and consecrators of this mystical knowledge, images of light; theurgic: perfected and ones who perfect." (EH I.1 372B) ' what our minds lay hold of is in fact nothing other than certain activities apparent to us, activities which deify, cause being, bear life, and give wisdom. (DN II.7 645A) "For the truth is that everything divine and even everything revealed to us is known only by way of whatever share of them is granted. Their actual nature, what they are ultimately in their own source and ground, is beyond all intellect and all being and all knowledge. When, for instance, we give the name of "God" to that transcendent hiddenness, when we call it 'life' or 'being' or 'light' or 'Word,' what our minds lay hold of is in fact nothing other than certain activities apparent to us, activities which deify, cause being, bear life, and give wisdom. (DN II.7 645A) "A hierarchy is, in my view, a sacred order and knowledge (episteme) and activity (energeia), the whole of which is assimilated as closely as possible to the divine, and uplifted to the imitation of God in proportion to the illuminations granted it by God. CH III.1 164D "The aim of a hierarchy is assimilation as near as possible to God and union with Hom, having Him as the leader of every sacred knowledge and activity... Therefore one who speaks of a hierarchy indicates a certain arrangement all of which is sacred, an image of the comeliness of God. It celebrates the mysteries of its illumination in hierarchical orders and states of knowledge, being assimilated so far as is lawful to its source. Perfection for each allotted member of the hierarchy consists in being led upward, in his own proper degree, to the imitation of God. Even more marvellously, it is, as the Scriptures say, to become "a co-worker of God" (theou synergon) and to exhibit in oneself the divine activity, which is thus made manifest so far as possible." CH III.2 165A-B "each will actually imitate God according to its role." (CH III.2 165BC) [the real lovers of holiness] "alone have the simplicity of mind and the receptive, contemplative power to cross over to the simple, marvelous, transcendent truth of the symbols." Ep. 9 1105C "we have therefore to run counter to mass prejudice and we must make the holy journey to the heart of the sacred symbols. And we must certainly not disdain them, for they are the descendents and bear the mark of the divine stamps." Ep. 9 1108C "we are raised upward toward the truth of the mind's vision, a truth which is simple and one." (DN 1.4 592C-593A) and a couple by Iamblichus "Extended practice of prayer nurtures our intellect, enlarges very greatly our soul's receptivity to the gods, reveals to mean the life of the gods, accustoms their eyes to the brightness of the divine light, and gradually brings to perfection the capacity of our faculties for contact with the gods, until it leads us up to the highest level of consciousness (of which we are capable); also, it elevates gently the disposition of our minds, and communicates to us those of the gods, stimulates persuasion and communion and indissoluble friendship, augments divine love, kindles the divine element in the soul, scours away all contrary tendencies within it, casts out from the aetherial and luminous vehicle surrounding the soul everything that tends to generation, brings to perfection good hope and faith concerning the light; and, in a word, it renders those who employ prayers, if we may so express it, the familiar consorts of the gods." DM V.26 "we preserve in their entirety the mystical and arcane images of the gods in our soul; and we raise our soul up through these towards the gods and, as far as is possible when it has been elevated, we experience union with the gods." DM VII.4 Current Mood: contemplating nameless deedsCurrent Music: TMBG Unrelated Thing | | 9:41 pm |
| | 2:28 pm |
Pico note--does Dionysius have decisive impact on his poetics as well as his metaphysics?
IIRC somewhere Pico defended himself saying he was just speaking in the mode of Dionysius. I want to take this as an assumption for reading all his stuff. At least we should understand PD as part of where he's coming from, if not where he ends up. Much of what seems like heresy in Pico should be understood not as heretical metaphysical positions but rather mystical poetic style. he gets in trouble like Eckhart not for his literals but for his metaphors. Current Mood: thanks for the interrogations | | 2:26 pm |
notes this morning on Pico thesis
theurgy intro 1. show that theurgy in Iamblichus-Proclus is not what Augustine or Dodds thought it was (demonic/dominating/irrational) 2. show that theurgy changes in PD's usage (terms/metaphors for what God does) 3. show that MP behind theurgy is still relevant to Thomas's Platonism, although he doesn't use it to understand theurgy, and doesn't do Dionysian theurgic theorizing 4. MP behind theurgy makes a comeback with Pico's Sefirot/Henads comparison 5. Pico is not doing late NP style theurgy but he may be doing PD-style theurgic theorizing. BPC says in one of his articles Pico likes KBL b/c it's "a theurgy." I want to explore whether he likes it as a Dionysius or an Iamblichean theurgy ... Pico's Heptaplus shows that the metaphysics of Dionysius has decisive impact. Pico's conclusions are tentative, showing his mp interests but not necessarily his final conclusions. he didn't live to give us those when he went to late neoplatonism, Pico went through a door that Thomas opened in his interpretation of Dionysius. This would be a great irony if I thought he was a sorceror, but I want to see a non-ironic Pico who really believes that he's not doing an illicit magic PD=Dionysius btw Malkhos raised an interesting point asking whether Pico was more Iamblichean or Plotinian. Same was debated over PD in my grad courses on him. I'm still not so sure. I can barely understand the debate in the secondary literature. Of course Plotinus is still of vital importance to any Iamblichean position so that makes things complicated. BPC's translation of the Plotinus stuff in Pico's 900 is one of the things I'm deciding whether or not to integrate into my 80-120 pages. Stephen Clucas' stuff on Giordano Bruno as doing a "Plotinian Magic" is a big influence on my whole approach to renaissance magic, and BPC's emphasis on Proclus resonates with my understanding of Thomas Aquinas as being fundamentally influenced by Proclan Metaphysics in his work on PD. But Proclus is elaborating this basically Plotinian insight. Current Mood: thanks for the interrogations | | Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | | 7:56 pm |
witchy quote, supports PKD
God useth the divels by his providence to accomplish the woorke which he determineth -A discourse of the subtill practises of deuilles by witches and sorcerers Current Music: AKA Driver-They Might Be Giants-John Henry | | 7:37 pm |
A deed without a name.
Philosophy is the battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language. -Wittgenstein (attributed) Current Mood: not to say I was invitedCurrent Music: TMBG: Pet Name | | 7:06 pm |
| | 6:51 pm |
| | 6:15 pm |
zizekspeaks Please, do not ask me questions that are better answered by Daniel Dennett. He has the market on meaningless cognitive inquiries. Current Music: Lazyhead & Sleepybones-They Might Be Giants-No! | | 4:51 pm |
note on the MA thesis, indicates new direction
BPC says Pico liked KBL b/c it was a "theurgy" but I'm not so sure. Pico doesn't use the term theurgy (right?) I haven't found much evidence that he wanted to practice theurgy. Some aspects of Iamblichus' theurgical metaphysics are an influence on Dionysius and these elements are an influence of Pico's theory of contemplation, but he does not use this material to do a magical theurgy theory in the style of Iamblichus. His poetic theology and angelizing metaphors sound magical, especially since they were taken seriously by later actual angel magic practitioner, but all Pico was advocating was a mystical contemplation, not a magical theurgy. Current Music: otis redding | | Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 | | 9:14 pm |
lady m
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under't. | | 8:45 pm |
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2007.10.42
David Ambuel, Image and Paradigm in Plato's Sophist. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2006. Pp. 296. ISBN 10: 1-1930972-04-0. ISBN 13: 978-1-930972-04-9. $32.00. Reviewed by Elsa Bouchard, Université de Montréal (elsa.bouchard@umontreal.ca) Word count: 2567 words This thorough study of the Sophist, one of Plato's late dialogues, is accompanied by a translation by the author (henceforth A.). A.'s major interpretative axes are stated in clear terms in the introduction. Firstly, he sides with those who view the Sophist as a "metaphysical" dialogue, thereby rejecting the modern fashion of treating it as a purely logical treatise. Subsequently, A. presents the three principal points that he sets out to establish, namely: 1) the Sophist is in reality an aporetic dialogue in which the apparent conclusion is invalidated by the dialogue's internal argument; 2) the Sophist offers a criticism of Parmenides' limited insights; 3) with its aporetic conclusion, the Sophist demonstrates the destructive consequences of a strictly Eleatic logic for Plato's fundamental account of reality and participation, and thus makes "an indirect argument for the necessity of the ontological distinction between paradigm and image" (p. xv). | | 8:27 pm |
| | 8:25 pm |
| | 8:23 pm |
Aquinas and NP
Neoplatonic Principles in Thomas Aquinas’ Theory of Natural Law The general intention of this paper is to highlight the Platonic and Neoplatonic themes that are explicit and implicit in Thomas’ discussion of the unity of being and the good and the three fundamental precepts of the natural law. The Platonic themes I concentrate on are participation, the unity of being and good, and the three principles of Being, Life, and Intellect. I attend to these themes because scholars who treat Aquinas’ conception of the natural law tend to emphasize his debt to Aristotle rather than to the Platonists. Yet the Platonists incontestably had a great influence on Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy as a whole. 4 Aquinas, we must remember, had the Neoplatonic texts of the Liber de Causis, Proclus’ Elements of Theology 5 , Dionysius’ The Divine Names, and the Theology of Aristotle. Thomas also indirectly encountered Platonic philosophy through Augustine and Boethius, two of the main transmitters of Platonism, and the Arabic authors Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides. While my approach is not fundamentally at odds with scholars who see mostly Aristotle in Aquinas, I argue that being attentive to the Platonic aspects of Aquinas helps us see how he unifies the human person with the whole of being through the natural law. In addition, it is my hope that this paper will contribute to clarifying three issues in the secondary literature: (a) outlining how being and the good are one and the same in reality, 6 (b) showing that the natural law is based on 4 For a compelling treatment of Aquinas’ Neoplatonism see Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself, Aquinas' Doctrine of God as Expounded in the Summa Theologiae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Also see Wayne J. Hankey, "Aquinas' First Principle, Being or Unity?," Dionysius 4 (1980). 5 Thos. M. Johnson indicates that William of Morebeke finished translating Proclus’ Elements of Theology from Greek into Latin on May 18 th 1268. Thos. M. Johnson, Proclus Metaphysical Elements, trans. Thos. M. Johnson (Osceola: The Platonist, 1909). Footnote 10. 6 For instance, Pamela M. Hall and Ralph MacInerny argue that the natural law is based upon nature, and accordingly does not consist of a set of practical principles of value distinct from being. I want to contribute to the argument that “values” can be logically derived from “facts” by clearly and briefly laying out how Thomas converts “being” and the “good”. See Pamela M. Hall, Narrative and the Natural Law: An Interpretation of Thomistic Ethics (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). See also McInerny’s response to Finnis and Grisez in Ralph McInerny, "The Principles of Natural Law," The American Journal of Jurisprudence 25 (1980). While Grisez and other new natural law theorists maintain that the natural law is metaphysically based on nature, they argue that epistemologically it is illicit to logically derive the first principles of the good from metaphysical truths. Moreover, Grisez argues that “Some interpreters mistakenly ask whether the word ‘good’ in the first principle [of the natural law] has a 4 http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/6/1/4/0/pages361400/p361400-4.php Current Mood: the city lights got in my wayCurrent Music: Ant-They Might Be Giants-Istanbul (Not Constantinople) [EP] | | 6:14 pm |
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| | 5:24 pm |
Pico cultural references
Cultural references Of minor interest is a passing reference to Mirandola by H. P. Lovecraft, in the story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927). Mirandola is given as the source of the fearsome incantation used by unknown evil entities as some sort of evocation. However, this "spell" was first depicted (as the key to a rather simple form of divination, not a great and terrible summoning) by, and in all likelihood created by, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim in his De Occulta Philosophia. This was written several decades after Mirandola's death and was the first written example of that "spell", so it is almost impossible for Mirandola to have been the source of those "magic words". One has to wonder what error of research, or perhaps deliberate misquote, led to this attribution by Lovecraft. Psychologist, Otto Rank, a rebellious disciple of Sigmund Freud, chose a substantial excerpt from Mirandola's Speech on the Dignity of Man as the motto for his book Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, including: "...I created thee as a being neither celestial nor earthly... so that thou shouldst be thy own free moulder and overcomer...". In Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum the protagonist Casaubon claims that the idea that the Jews were privy to the enigma of the Templars was "a mistake of Pico Della Mirandola" caused by a spelling mistake he made between "Israelites" and "Ismaelites." In July of 2007, his remains were exhumed, with plans to use the filming of the process as the central element in an upcoming television documentary. Pico della Mirandola discusses the interrelations between sublunary world, celestial world and the supercelestial world in the introduction to his Heptaplus: 'For euen as the...three worlds being girt and buckled with the bands of concord doe by reciprocall libertie, interchange their natures; the like do they also by their appellations. And this is the principle from whence springeth & groweth the discipline of allegoricall sense' (translated by Pierre de la Primaudaye in The French Academie, London, 1618, p. 671). In Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666, the philosophy professor Oscar Amalfitano begins his three-columned list of philosophers with Pico della Mirandola. Adjacent to Mirandola, Amalfitano writes Hobbes, while beneath him he writes Husserl (p. 207, 2008). Current Mood: the party who will be partial to youCurrent Music: West Virginia-John Linnell-State Songs | | 5:12 pm |
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