Friday, May 4, 2018
Maximus of Tyre on the World as but a Game for Children
But by this, someone would say, the righteous man is abused and falsely accused and prosecuted, and his possessions and money are taken away and he is thrown into prison, and he is banished and dishonored and dies. What then, if also children establishing laws for each other, establishing a law court of themselves, would bring a man for judgment according to their laws, and then, if he appeared to do wrong, would vote him to be dishonored in the community of children, and would confiscate his child's possessions, his knucklebones and and toys? What is the man likely to do with regard to a court of such a sort {but laugh at them with their} votes themselves and adverse judgments themselves? And thus also Socrates was laughing at the Athenians, as at little children, voting and ordering a mortal man to die. And any other good and righteous man will laugh unmixed laughter, seeing the unrighteous rushing zealously upon him, thinking to do something, but doing nothing. But also when they are dishonoring him, he will cry the cry of Achilles, ‘but I understand myself to have been honored by the dispensation of Zeus’. And when they are taking away his money and possessions, he will let them go as toys and knucklebones being taken away, and he will die as by fever and stone, not at all being vexed towards those killing him.
(Maximus of Tyre, Dissertation 12, translated from Ancient Greek by ESF)
Translator's Note: To a true contemplative ascetic or Platonist or renunciant/philosopher (in the original, ancient sense of the word) all the business and affairs of the world appear as at best a children's game, and the principle advanced in the above is of more general applicability. For example, those who spend much time reading the newspaper and the like, may consider that it is just as if a bunch of children got together and decided, with crayons and construction paper, to report daily what happened in their playing--who played what games and won or lost and got upset or gloated, who fell and skinned their knee and cried and how it happened and could it have been prevented, who lost their toys, who got new toys and which ones, what new toys and cartoons will soon be available, and etc. Would any adult with pressing adult business spend more time concerned with such things than is absolutely necessary? The only pressing affair and concern of an adult soul is striving to get free from the cycle of birth and death, from repeated individuated existence in space-time with its concomitant suffering, and attain re-union with the Good or the One. Most regrettably, especially in this complex modern techno-world, the renunciant is in the meanwhile still entwined with and dependent on the world and the childish souls in it for his psycho-physical survival, but will try as best as possible not to get caught up in it and not to share the attitudes and concerns and thought patterns of the child souls in it while doing what is necessary to get by in it.
Ⓒ 2014 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com
Maximus of Tyre on Homer and Plato
But those ancient things, in which the song of Homer has still been being powerful, have educated and brought up noble and true and genuine nurslings of philosophy. A nursling of that song was Plato: for even if he would forswear a teacher, I see the tokens and I perceive the seeds:
Of him indeed were feet of such a sort and hands of such a sort,
and glances of the eyes and head and loose flowing hair above
so that I myself would dare stand firm to say that Plato is more similar to Homer rather than to Socrates, even if he should flee Homer and pursue Socrates. ...
(Maximus of Tyre, Dissertation 26, draft translation from Ancient Greek by ESF)
Note: The divine Plato does not actually forswear or flee Homer, or chase Socrates. He just protects the proper interpretation or undermeaning of Homer from profanation (though desecration of Homer's sacred text is almost all that is done now by professor-types who claim to study and teach it!), and uses the literary symbol of Socrates as nous or the divine part of the soul or self to indicate the self-contained-ness and independence of the true contemplative ascetic and renunciant from human concerns and socially constructed reality.
Of him indeed were feet of such a sort and hands of such a sort,
and glances of the eyes and head and loose flowing hair above
so that I myself would dare stand firm to say that Plato is more similar to Homer rather than to Socrates, even if he should flee Homer and pursue Socrates. ...
(Maximus of Tyre, Dissertation 26, draft translation from Ancient Greek by ESF)
Note: The divine Plato does not actually forswear or flee Homer, or chase Socrates. He just protects the proper interpretation or undermeaning of Homer from profanation (though desecration of Homer's sacred text is almost all that is done now by professor-types who claim to study and teach it!), and uses the literary symbol of Socrates as nous or the divine part of the soul or self to indicate the self-contained-ness and independence of the true contemplative ascetic and renunciant from human concerns and socially constructed reality.
Thursday, May 3, 2018
Plotinus Ennead I.3: On Dialectic
Plotinus' Ennead I.3: On Dialectic
translated from Ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick
What skill or method or practice brings us back to where it is necessary to journey? Where it is necessary to go, that it is to the Good and the First Principle, let it be assumed as having been granted and having been shown through many things—and indeed even through which things that is shown there was a certain bringing up. But who is it necessary for the one being brought back up to be? Is it not then the one, he says, having seen all or most things who in the first birth takes birth as a man who will be a philosopher or some musician or lover? Truly, the philosopher (ascends) by nature—the musician and the lover have to be brought up. What, then, is the way? Is it one and the same for all these, or is there a certain one for each one? The journey, then, is twofold for all—either going up or having come to be above. For the first is from the things below, but the second indeed is for those who are already in the noetic realm and, so to speak, have put their foot in there, for whom there is the necessity to travel until they would come to the furthest point of the place, which then is actually the end of the journey, when someone would be at the noetical topmost endpoint. But let the second wait—before that it is necessary to try to talk about the bringing up.
First, then, it is necessary for us to distinguish those men beginning from the musician, saying who he is by nature. It is necessary then to reckon him as easily moved and being excited towards beauty, but not very able to be moved by beauty-in-itself, but ready to be moved by its chance reflections, as it were. As the timid are towards noises, thus also that one is towards sounds and ready for the beauty in them, but always fleeing the out of tune and the not one in songs and harmonies and pursuing the rhythmical and graceful. So after those sense-perceptible sounds and harmonies and figures, he needs to be thus brought to separate the material stuff from that from which come the proportions and formulas and needs to be brought to the beauty in those and taught that those were concerning which he had been excited, the noetical harmony and the beauty in that and universal beauty, not any certain beauty only, and the understandings of philosophy need to be put into him, from which he needs to be brought to confidence in what things he doesn't know he has. But what understandings these are will be dealt with later.
But the lover, into whom the musician may also be transformed and being transformed either remain or go beyond, has a good memory somehow of beauty—but he is unable to get knowledge of it being separate, but being struck by the beauties in the sense of sight has been excited about these. He needs to be taught not to have been excited having fallen down around one body, but needs to be brought to all bodies showing by the understanding the beauty that is the same in all of them and that is other than the bodies and that needs to be said to be from elsewhere and that it is more in other things, showing, for instance, beautiful practices and beautiful customs—for this is already becoming accustomed to the lovely in things without body—and that beauty is also in arts and in knowledges and in virtues. Then, next, these need to be made into one and he needs to be taught how they come to be. But from the virtues already one can go up to Nous, the Divine mind-thought, to Being—and from there one needs to traverse the journey above.
The philosopher, however, is this one who is ready by nature and winged, so to speak, and not in need of separation, as are those others, having been moved to the above, but being at a loss is only in need of being shown. He needs to be shown, therefore, and released, himself wanting to be by nature and long since having been released. He needs to be given mathematical-type lessons for habituation in apprehension of and confidence in the bodiless—for he will accept this easily being a lover of learning—and, being virtuous by nature, he needs to be brought to the completion of virtues and, after the mathematical-type lessons, given understandings of dialectic and made wholly a dialectical one.
But what is the dialectic, which it is necessary to give over to the previous ones also? It is the practiced condition being able to say with understanding about each thing what each thing is and why it is different from other things and what is common with the things in which it is and where each of these is and if it is what it is and how many real beings there are and, on the other hand, the not really beings, different from the real beings. It also reckons about good and about not good and how many things are under the category of the good and how many things are under the opposite and what is the eternal, clearly, and the not of such a sort—by knowledge about all things, not by opinion. Stopping the soul from wandering around the sense-perceptible, it settles it in the noetical realm and there has its business getting rid of the false and nourishing the soul in what is called the plain of truth, using the dividing of Plato for distinguishing the Forms and also for knowing what is, using it for the primary genera, and noetically plaiting the things coming from these, until it would go through all the noetical, and back again unloosing them—it would come to which point it has covered the principle—but then it rests, as as far as certainly the soul being There in quiet no longer busying itself about anything looks, becoming gathered into one. It gives the so-called logical business about premises and syllogisms, as it would the knowing how to write, to another skill—some things of which it thinks are necessary before the actual art, but judging these things as also all others and considering some things useful and others superfluous and of the method that wants them.
But from where does this knowledge have its principles? In fact, the Divine Mind-Thought gives clear principles, if a given soul is able to receive them. Then, next, it puts together the things in order and twines together and takes apart, until it has come to complete intelligence, nous. For this, he says, is the purest part of intelligence and wisdom. It is a necessity, therefore, that being the most valued practiced state of those in us, it is about Real Being and the most valued thing—wisdom being about Real Being and intelligence, nous, about that beyond Being. What then, isn't philosophy the most valued thing? Or, are philosophy and dialectic the same thing? In fact, it is the valued part of philosophy. For it is, then, necessary not to think this to be an instrument of the philosopher. For it is not bare theories and rules, but it is about actual things and has the Real Beings as its material, as it were—it comes to them by a journey, however, having actual things with its theorems. But the false and the sophistical it knows as something it happens to have come across as being made by another, as alien, judging the false by the truths in itself, knowing, whenever someone brings it forth, whatever is contrary to the measuring rod of the True. About propositions, therefore, it does not know—for these are (just) letters—but knowing the True, it knows what they call propositions, and it universally knows the movements of the soul, what it posits and what it denies, and if it denies what it posits or something else, and if things are different or the same. Apprehending by intuition whatever is presented, as also sense-perception does, it gives concern for exactness of language to another skill that is fond of that.
That then is the valued part—for philosophy also has other things—for it also observes about nature receiving help from dialectic, as also the other arts use arithmetic besides, though this receives more closely from the dialectic. It also looks concerning moral customs from There in the same way, but adding the practiced states and the practices, from which the practiced conditions come forth. The rational practiced states even already have the things from There as their own—for this is the case even though they are mostly with material stuff—and the other virtues have rationality in their own experiences and actions, but lower wisdom is a certain higher reflection and more to do with the universal and if things are reciprocally implied and if it is necessary to follow or not a certain course now or later or if another is wholly better. But the dialectic and the higher wisdom still more universally and immaterially bring forward all things for use by the lower wisdom. But are the lower virtues and wisdom below able to be without dialectic and higher wisdom? In fact, imperfectly and incompletely. But is it possible to be a wise and dialectical man without those lower virtues and wisdom? In fact, it could not be at all, but they would either be present before or increase together at the same time. And perhaps someone might have natural virtues from which the complete ones come as wisdom comes to be. Wisdom, therefore, comes after natural virtues—then next it would complete the moral characteristics. The natural virtues being in existence both they and wisdom already increase together and are completed—the one going before has completed the other. For altogether the natural virtue has an incomplete eye and moral character, and the principles from which we have them are the greatest thing for both.
Translation © 2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
translated from Ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick
What skill or method or practice brings us back to where it is necessary to journey? Where it is necessary to go, that it is to the Good and the First Principle, let it be assumed as having been granted and having been shown through many things—and indeed even through which things that is shown there was a certain bringing up. But who is it necessary for the one being brought back up to be? Is it not then the one, he says, having seen all or most things who in the first birth takes birth as a man who will be a philosopher or some musician or lover? Truly, the philosopher (ascends) by nature—the musician and the lover have to be brought up. What, then, is the way? Is it one and the same for all these, or is there a certain one for each one? The journey, then, is twofold for all—either going up or having come to be above. For the first is from the things below, but the second indeed is for those who are already in the noetic realm and, so to speak, have put their foot in there, for whom there is the necessity to travel until they would come to the furthest point of the place, which then is actually the end of the journey, when someone would be at the noetical topmost endpoint. But let the second wait—before that it is necessary to try to talk about the bringing up.
First, then, it is necessary for us to distinguish those men beginning from the musician, saying who he is by nature. It is necessary then to reckon him as easily moved and being excited towards beauty, but not very able to be moved by beauty-in-itself, but ready to be moved by its chance reflections, as it were. As the timid are towards noises, thus also that one is towards sounds and ready for the beauty in them, but always fleeing the out of tune and the not one in songs and harmonies and pursuing the rhythmical and graceful. So after those sense-perceptible sounds and harmonies and figures, he needs to be thus brought to separate the material stuff from that from which come the proportions and formulas and needs to be brought to the beauty in those and taught that those were concerning which he had been excited, the noetical harmony and the beauty in that and universal beauty, not any certain beauty only, and the understandings of philosophy need to be put into him, from which he needs to be brought to confidence in what things he doesn't know he has. But what understandings these are will be dealt with later.
But the lover, into whom the musician may also be transformed and being transformed either remain or go beyond, has a good memory somehow of beauty—but he is unable to get knowledge of it being separate, but being struck by the beauties in the sense of sight has been excited about these. He needs to be taught not to have been excited having fallen down around one body, but needs to be brought to all bodies showing by the understanding the beauty that is the same in all of them and that is other than the bodies and that needs to be said to be from elsewhere and that it is more in other things, showing, for instance, beautiful practices and beautiful customs—for this is already becoming accustomed to the lovely in things without body—and that beauty is also in arts and in knowledges and in virtues. Then, next, these need to be made into one and he needs to be taught how they come to be. But from the virtues already one can go up to Nous, the Divine mind-thought, to Being—and from there one needs to traverse the journey above.
The philosopher, however, is this one who is ready by nature and winged, so to speak, and not in need of separation, as are those others, having been moved to the above, but being at a loss is only in need of being shown. He needs to be shown, therefore, and released, himself wanting to be by nature and long since having been released. He needs to be given mathematical-type lessons for habituation in apprehension of and confidence in the bodiless—for he will accept this easily being a lover of learning—and, being virtuous by nature, he needs to be brought to the completion of virtues and, after the mathematical-type lessons, given understandings of dialectic and made wholly a dialectical one.
But what is the dialectic, which it is necessary to give over to the previous ones also? It is the practiced condition being able to say with understanding about each thing what each thing is and why it is different from other things and what is common with the things in which it is and where each of these is and if it is what it is and how many real beings there are and, on the other hand, the not really beings, different from the real beings. It also reckons about good and about not good and how many things are under the category of the good and how many things are under the opposite and what is the eternal, clearly, and the not of such a sort—by knowledge about all things, not by opinion. Stopping the soul from wandering around the sense-perceptible, it settles it in the noetical realm and there has its business getting rid of the false and nourishing the soul in what is called the plain of truth, using the dividing of Plato for distinguishing the Forms and also for knowing what is, using it for the primary genera, and noetically plaiting the things coming from these, until it would go through all the noetical, and back again unloosing them—it would come to which point it has covered the principle—but then it rests, as as far as certainly the soul being There in quiet no longer busying itself about anything looks, becoming gathered into one. It gives the so-called logical business about premises and syllogisms, as it would the knowing how to write, to another skill—some things of which it thinks are necessary before the actual art, but judging these things as also all others and considering some things useful and others superfluous and of the method that wants them.
But from where does this knowledge have its principles? In fact, the Divine Mind-Thought gives clear principles, if a given soul is able to receive them. Then, next, it puts together the things in order and twines together and takes apart, until it has come to complete intelligence, nous. For this, he says, is the purest part of intelligence and wisdom. It is a necessity, therefore, that being the most valued practiced state of those in us, it is about Real Being and the most valued thing—wisdom being about Real Being and intelligence, nous, about that beyond Being. What then, isn't philosophy the most valued thing? Or, are philosophy and dialectic the same thing? In fact, it is the valued part of philosophy. For it is, then, necessary not to think this to be an instrument of the philosopher. For it is not bare theories and rules, but it is about actual things and has the Real Beings as its material, as it were—it comes to them by a journey, however, having actual things with its theorems. But the false and the sophistical it knows as something it happens to have come across as being made by another, as alien, judging the false by the truths in itself, knowing, whenever someone brings it forth, whatever is contrary to the measuring rod of the True. About propositions, therefore, it does not know—for these are (just) letters—but knowing the True, it knows what they call propositions, and it universally knows the movements of the soul, what it posits and what it denies, and if it denies what it posits or something else, and if things are different or the same. Apprehending by intuition whatever is presented, as also sense-perception does, it gives concern for exactness of language to another skill that is fond of that.
That then is the valued part—for philosophy also has other things—for it also observes about nature receiving help from dialectic, as also the other arts use arithmetic besides, though this receives more closely from the dialectic. It also looks concerning moral customs from There in the same way, but adding the practiced states and the practices, from which the practiced conditions come forth. The rational practiced states even already have the things from There as their own—for this is the case even though they are mostly with material stuff—and the other virtues have rationality in their own experiences and actions, but lower wisdom is a certain higher reflection and more to do with the universal and if things are reciprocally implied and if it is necessary to follow or not a certain course now or later or if another is wholly better. But the dialectic and the higher wisdom still more universally and immaterially bring forward all things for use by the lower wisdom. But are the lower virtues and wisdom below able to be without dialectic and higher wisdom? In fact, imperfectly and incompletely. But is it possible to be a wise and dialectical man without those lower virtues and wisdom? In fact, it could not be at all, but they would either be present before or increase together at the same time. And perhaps someone might have natural virtues from which the complete ones come as wisdom comes to be. Wisdom, therefore, comes after natural virtues—then next it would complete the moral characteristics. The natural virtues being in existence both they and wisdom already increase together and are completed—the one going before has completed the other. For altogether the natural virtue has an incomplete eye and moral character, and the principles from which we have them are the greatest thing for both.
Translation © 2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Plotinus Ennead I.7: On the First Good and the Other Goods
Plotinus' Ennead I.7: On the First Good and the Other Goods
translated from ancient Greek by Eric S. Fallick
1. Could anyone say there is another good to each thing than the activity according to nature of its life, and if something would be made of many things, good to this is the proper, cognate activity, according to nature, never falling short with respect to anything, of the better part of it? The activity of the soul, then, is the good for it according to nature. But if also it would be active towards the best thing being itself best, this would not only be the good with respect to it, but also absolutely a good. If then something would not be active towards another thing, being the best of the beings and beyond the beings, but the other things would be active towards it, it is clear that this would be the Good, through which it comes to be also for the other things to participate in good. But the other things would have good in two ways, as many as thus do have good, both by becoming like the Good and by being active towards it. If then aiming at and activity towards the best is good, it is necessary that the Good, neither looking towards another thing nor aiming at another thing, being in quiet a fount and origin of activities according to nature, and making the other things in the form of good not by activity towards them, for they are active towards it, be the Good not by activity or thought, but by itself alone being the Good. For because it is beyond being, it is both beyond activity and beyond thinking mind and thought. For again it is necessary for the Good to be considered that on which all things depend, but which itself depends on nothing: for thus also the thing is true that it is that which all things aim at. It is necessary then for it to abide, but all things to turn around towards it, as a circle towards a center from which come all the radii. The sun is also a paradigm, as being a center with respect to the light that comes from it and depends on it: everywhere indeed then the light is with it and has not been cut off—and even if you would want to cut it off on one side, the light is with respect to the sun.
2. But how do all the other things exist towards it? Well, soulless things exist for soul, whereas soul exists towards the Good through the Divine Mind-Thought. But everything has something of it by its being one somehow and by its being somehow. And also all things participate in form: therefore, as they participate in these things—oneness, being, and form—so also do they participate in the Good. An image or phantom of the Good, that is—for the things they participate in are images, phantoms of being and of one, and in the same way with regard to form. But life in soul, in the first soul after the Divine Mind-Thought, is nearer to truth, and through the Divine Mind-Thought is a thing in the form of good. It would have the Good if it would look to it, but the Divine Mind-Thought is after the Good. So then, life, to what lives, is the good, and Divine Mind-Thought is the good to what participates in the Divine Mind-Thought; thus, for that for which there is life with Divine Mind-Thought, there is also a twofold direction to the Good.
3. But if life is a good, does this good belong to every living thing? In fact, not: for life is lame in the base, like an eye in one not seeing purely, for it does not do its own work. If then life with us, which life has been mixed with evil, is a good, how is death not an evil? Well, evil for whom? For it is necessary for evil to happen to someone. But for something that no longer exists, or, if it exists, has been deprived of life, there is nothing evil, as there is nothing evil for a stone. But if there is life and soul after death, this already would be a good by how much more the soul is active with respect to its own things without a body. But if it becomes of the Whole, what would be an evil to it being there? And wholly, as there is good with the gods, but no evil, so neither is there evil to the soul preserving its purity; but if it would not preserve its purity, it is not death that would be an evil to it, but life. And also if there would be punishments in Hades, again there also life would be an evil to it, because it is not life alone. But if life is a conjunction of soul and body, and death is a separation of these, the soul will be capable of both. But if life is good, how is death not an evil? In fact, life is good for those to whom it is good, not as a good in so far as it is a conjunction, but because by virtue it wards off evil; but death is more a good. In fact, it needs to be said that life in a body is itself an evil in itself, but by virtue the soul comes to be in a good, not living as the complex of soul and body, but now already separating itself.
translation © 2010 by Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (Gee) mail (period) com
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