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Some tweets from the last couple of days:
10 June
I think that what is most profoundly Platonic in Kant is not his theory of Ideas, but his notion of metaphysical personhood. Where it stumbles is in his attempt to provide criteria for recognizing it (rationality, etc.), when it is really a categorial notion. Moreover, I've been reminded again recently of something that I learned studying psychoanalytic theory, namely that the incapacity to recognize the genuine personhood of the other—their existence as end (telos) rather than means—is indeed the most widespread and intractable psychopathology.
***
Of Plato's successors, one, Aristotle, pursues the inquiry into substance, while those remaining within the structure of the Academy, it seems, orient themselves toward the inquiry into principles (archai). It could be that the inquiry into principles, rather than substance, is the proper "minor science" of philosophy, in Deleuze's sense. The philosophy of archai has far more transformative potential than any different way of thinking substance (e.g., materialism). One must begin by thinking through the relationship between archai and substance; Aristotle, notoriously, conflates them.
12 June
@cole_tucker: Reading Lewy's Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy. He quotes a hymn attributed to Porphyry and interprets it in a monotheist manner. Also stating P. had to defend the Oracles from charges of monotheism. Forgive me if my terminology is off-base, but did the Neoplatonists take the eidetic progression as fixed, so no matter which of the Gods gave expression to Being, the progression always began with the All-Father (to borrow from the hymn)?
My reading has convinced me that there is no fixed identity to the "Father" spoken of in such texts. Rather, "Father" is a synonym for the more primordial activity of any deity—indeed, without respect to gender. A key text here is Proclus, El. Theol. prop. 151: "All that is paternal in the Gods is of primal operation [prôtourgon] and stands in the position of the Good [en tagathou taxei] at the head of all the divine organizations [diakosmêseis]." Hence, we find "Father" being substituted for hyparxis ("existence") as the first moment in the first intelligible triad, so that most commonly we get "Father, Power, Intellect" as the three moments of the first triad. I believe that sometimes this version of the triad is characterized as the "Chaldean" version.
@cole_tucker: Are there discussions of the relationship of the individual human to the variety of divine organizations?
Not sure I know how to answer this. A diakosmêsis is literally a way of making a cosmos out of things. It functions in Proclus as a more "theological" homonym for the more ontologically-flavored taxis (class).
@cole_tucker: Would a henotheist come more and more wholly into the divine organization of their Beloved? Since there is no privileged henad, do those with no intentional relationship fall into a divine progression?
The "henotheistic" relationship is indeed one in which the cosmos is more and more in the form of the Beloved, as you say; of course, in the case of deities proceeding together with others in a pantheon, these deities freely co-posit one another, very much in the fashion that intersubjective recognition functions among human subjects, so that the cosmos of any of the Olympians, for example, includes the rest of their pantheon as well.
By "no intentional relationship", I assume that you mean no devotion to a particular deity?
@cole_tucker: Not only no devotion, but either active or passive atheism.
Those with no devotional relationship nevertheless necessarily participate in common divine potencies. Even the atheist (hopefully) is concerned with virtue, with actualizing their own human potencies, and so forth, and for the Platonist this entails a participation in the common (koinos) products of divine activity. Perhaps a sufficient sensitivity to the uniqueness of things can even grant such a one all that theophany does. One thing is certain: pathologies in the ability to recognize the other will take their toll on theist and atheist alike.
@cole_tucker: So, the Platonic view holds there is a ground independent of any individual henad?
The "ground" in question is itself grounded in the individual henads, so that perhaps "ground" is not the most apt term. It is a product of the activity in common of the Gods; and as such there are all sorts of intermediate common spaces too. On the most radical level, this is what Damascius terms "the Unified", the passive term relative to the Unitary. One might characterize the Unified as a hypostasis expressing the universal passivity of all things relative to one another. Proclus uses the term "unified" in the same way Damascius does, only he doesn't hypostatize it. The most interesting difference between Proclus and Damascius in this regard is Damascius actively seeks theological resources for his "Unified", such as Metis, Erikepaios, as well as impersonal terms such as Chaos, and the whole domain he terms "elemental" multiplicity.
10 June
I think that what is most profoundly Platonic in Kant is not his theory of Ideas, but his notion of metaphysical personhood. Where it stumbles is in his attempt to provide criteria for recognizing it (rationality, etc.), when it is really a categorial notion. Moreover, I've been reminded again recently of something that I learned studying psychoanalytic theory, namely that the incapacity to recognize the genuine personhood of the other—their existence as end (telos) rather than means—is indeed the most widespread and intractable psychopathology.
***
Of Plato's successors, one, Aristotle, pursues the inquiry into substance, while those remaining within the structure of the Academy, it seems, orient themselves toward the inquiry into principles (archai). It could be that the inquiry into principles, rather than substance, is the proper "minor science" of philosophy, in Deleuze's sense. The philosophy of archai has far more transformative potential than any different way of thinking substance (e.g., materialism). One must begin by thinking through the relationship between archai and substance; Aristotle, notoriously, conflates them.
12 June
@cole_tucker: Reading Lewy's Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy. He quotes a hymn attributed to Porphyry and interprets it in a monotheist manner. Also stating P. had to defend the Oracles from charges of monotheism. Forgive me if my terminology is off-base, but did the Neoplatonists take the eidetic progression as fixed, so no matter which of the Gods gave expression to Being, the progression always began with the All-Father (to borrow from the hymn)?
My reading has convinced me that there is no fixed identity to the "Father" spoken of in such texts. Rather, "Father" is a synonym for the more primordial activity of any deity—indeed, without respect to gender. A key text here is Proclus, El. Theol. prop. 151: "All that is paternal in the Gods is of primal operation [prôtourgon] and stands in the position of the Good [en tagathou taxei] at the head of all the divine organizations [diakosmêseis]." Hence, we find "Father" being substituted for hyparxis ("existence") as the first moment in the first intelligible triad, so that most commonly we get "Father, Power, Intellect" as the three moments of the first triad. I believe that sometimes this version of the triad is characterized as the "Chaldean" version.
@cole_tucker: Are there discussions of the relationship of the individual human to the variety of divine organizations?
Not sure I know how to answer this. A diakosmêsis is literally a way of making a cosmos out of things. It functions in Proclus as a more "theological" homonym for the more ontologically-flavored taxis (class).
@cole_tucker: Would a henotheist come more and more wholly into the divine organization of their Beloved? Since there is no privileged henad, do those with no intentional relationship fall into a divine progression?
The "henotheistic" relationship is indeed one in which the cosmos is more and more in the form of the Beloved, as you say; of course, in the case of deities proceeding together with others in a pantheon, these deities freely co-posit one another, very much in the fashion that intersubjective recognition functions among human subjects, so that the cosmos of any of the Olympians, for example, includes the rest of their pantheon as well.
By "no intentional relationship", I assume that you mean no devotion to a particular deity?
@cole_tucker: Not only no devotion, but either active or passive atheism.
Those with no devotional relationship nevertheless necessarily participate in common divine potencies. Even the atheist (hopefully) is concerned with virtue, with actualizing their own human potencies, and so forth, and for the Platonist this entails a participation in the common (koinos) products of divine activity. Perhaps a sufficient sensitivity to the uniqueness of things can even grant such a one all that theophany does. One thing is certain: pathologies in the ability to recognize the other will take their toll on theist and atheist alike.
@cole_tucker: So, the Platonic view holds there is a ground independent of any individual henad?
The "ground" in question is itself grounded in the individual henads, so that perhaps "ground" is not the most apt term. It is a product of the activity in common of the Gods; and as such there are all sorts of intermediate common spaces too. On the most radical level, this is what Damascius terms "the Unified", the passive term relative to the Unitary. One might characterize the Unified as a hypostasis expressing the universal passivity of all things relative to one another. Proclus uses the term "unified" in the same way Damascius does, only he doesn't hypostatize it. The most interesting difference between Proclus and Damascius in this regard is Damascius actively seeks theological resources for his "Unified", such as Metis, Erikepaios, as well as impersonal terms such as Chaos, and the whole domain he terms "elemental" multiplicity.
