![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Assorted tweets
Nov. 19th, 2013 06:06 pm11 Nov
The power of uniqueness, in itself, to hold together a world: this is the essence of henology.
17 Nov
@cole_tucker: (Quoting an earlier remark of mine) "There is no contingency in a God's parentage, but rather a pure expression of His/Her will."
I'm always reminded of this particularly regarding Zeus and the children of Leto, a miniature pantheon in their own right.
[Some comparisons between the structures of the Hellenic and Egyptian pantheons]
The extraordinary diversity of relationships within the Hellenic pantheon was a leading indicator of the fertility of Hellenic thought. In the Egyptian pantheon, we see an amazing diversity of Gods, and particularly of modes of cosmogony, but that pantheon is less relational. The consciousness of polycentricity is so close to the surface in Egyptian theology, relations are rapidly taken up into each divinity. It is characteristic of Hellenic theology, however, to dwell on mediation—the principle integrating the Olympians is persuasion, harmony. Thus the project of thought in Greece was seen as the weaving of a coherent fabric of inquiry on the personal and the collective level. Just so does Zeus weave a coherent fabric of the diverse timai (honors, prerogatives) of the Gods in his pantheon. Instances of this sort of operation in Egyptian theology are rather peripheral and less developed (e.g., the Contendings of Horus and Set.) Perhaps the most characteristic difference between Egyptian and Hellenic thought lies in ethics and philosophy of language. Ethics, highly developed in Greece, remains aphoristic in Egypt; while Egyptian philosophy of language is far more advanced than Greek.
Studying the demotic "Book of Thoth", I found a philosophy of language as powerful as any contemporary one.
19-21 Nov
[On Hellenic Theology]
(I'm primarily talking about here is the threefold division of the Kronian sovereignty, reported at Iliad 15.187ff.) The coherent fabric of ideas woven by Zeus; of psychical motions, woven by Poseidon; of images, woven by Hades: three demiurgies, three monisms. The coherent fabric of eidôla, Hades' sovereignty: something those communicating with the dead ought to take into account. Hence the relationship between the transmigrating psyche and the evacuated identity, the latter a discrete image in Hades' fabric, the former a sailor on Poseidon's waters. To Zeus belongs the moment of choosing the paradigm, and the relationship to the paradigmatic generally.
These are the sovereignties of the three sons of Kronos, the "pure" mind, but also the "sated" mind. The reading of Kronos as koros nous at Crat. 396b is very subtle and rich; first there is the fusion of sense between satiety and purity, because what is sated can be pure, needing nothing from without. Then there is the sense of koros as kouros, a youth, because the intelligence is always young with respect to the intelligible object. This is the sense of the "young Gods" in Plato's Timaeus: the Gods whose activity involves a certain fore-understanding. Such are the children of Zeus: positing themselves as having been anticipated. The three monisms are hence also three psychologisms, in a certain respect, and all the "young Gods" Gods of psyche, due to their formal disposition of having-been-anticipated, which is the position of psyche as such.
@proclusberlin: Also Dionysus as young god par excellence?
Dionysos is indeed the "young God" par excellence, inasmuch as he is the always-future sovereign.
***
@Apophatos: [Query related to Iris and Hermes as divine messengers]
It has been noted that Iris is the divine messenger in the Iliad, Hermes in the Odyssey; we could posit, therefore, that the different scope of the two epics determines the differences in the "angelic" function. Later, Iris is thought of as Hera's messenger, Hermes as Zeus'. Hera's association with aerial phenomena makes this appropriate.
@Apophatos: [That Zeus's warning to Hera to stop prying etc. (Iliad I 545ff) might be consistent with separate messengers for Zeus and Hera]
No, because Zeus speaks here (I 549f) of a noêsis private to him, and shared with no other God or human, and clearly for such intellections, no "messenger" would be needed. Where any other God is to know Zeus's mind, by contrast, Hera is to know first (548). "Private" noêseis among the Gods pertains, I would say, to the intellective determination of "in self/in other" (Parm. 138a2-b7), and the general concern in the intellective order for diakrisis (7th intellective monad) and phylaxis (the "guardian" triad).
The power of uniqueness, in itself, to hold together a world: this is the essence of henology.
17 Nov
@cole_tucker: (Quoting an earlier remark of mine) "There is no contingency in a God's parentage, but rather a pure expression of His/Her will."
I'm always reminded of this particularly regarding Zeus and the children of Leto, a miniature pantheon in their own right.
[Some comparisons between the structures of the Hellenic and Egyptian pantheons]
The extraordinary diversity of relationships within the Hellenic pantheon was a leading indicator of the fertility of Hellenic thought. In the Egyptian pantheon, we see an amazing diversity of Gods, and particularly of modes of cosmogony, but that pantheon is less relational. The consciousness of polycentricity is so close to the surface in Egyptian theology, relations are rapidly taken up into each divinity. It is characteristic of Hellenic theology, however, to dwell on mediation—the principle integrating the Olympians is persuasion, harmony. Thus the project of thought in Greece was seen as the weaving of a coherent fabric of inquiry on the personal and the collective level. Just so does Zeus weave a coherent fabric of the diverse timai (honors, prerogatives) of the Gods in his pantheon. Instances of this sort of operation in Egyptian theology are rather peripheral and less developed (e.g., the Contendings of Horus and Set.) Perhaps the most characteristic difference between Egyptian and Hellenic thought lies in ethics and philosophy of language. Ethics, highly developed in Greece, remains aphoristic in Egypt; while Egyptian philosophy of language is far more advanced than Greek.
Studying the demotic "Book of Thoth", I found a philosophy of language as powerful as any contemporary one.
19-21 Nov
[On Hellenic Theology]
(I'm primarily talking about here is the threefold division of the Kronian sovereignty, reported at Iliad 15.187ff.) The coherent fabric of ideas woven by Zeus; of psychical motions, woven by Poseidon; of images, woven by Hades: three demiurgies, three monisms. The coherent fabric of eidôla, Hades' sovereignty: something those communicating with the dead ought to take into account. Hence the relationship between the transmigrating psyche and the evacuated identity, the latter a discrete image in Hades' fabric, the former a sailor on Poseidon's waters. To Zeus belongs the moment of choosing the paradigm, and the relationship to the paradigmatic generally.
These are the sovereignties of the three sons of Kronos, the "pure" mind, but also the "sated" mind. The reading of Kronos as koros nous at Crat. 396b is very subtle and rich; first there is the fusion of sense between satiety and purity, because what is sated can be pure, needing nothing from without. Then there is the sense of koros as kouros, a youth, because the intelligence is always young with respect to the intelligible object. This is the sense of the "young Gods" in Plato's Timaeus: the Gods whose activity involves a certain fore-understanding. Such are the children of Zeus: positing themselves as having been anticipated. The three monisms are hence also three psychologisms, in a certain respect, and all the "young Gods" Gods of psyche, due to their formal disposition of having-been-anticipated, which is the position of psyche as such.
@proclusberlin: Also Dionysus as young god par excellence?
Dionysos is indeed the "young God" par excellence, inasmuch as he is the always-future sovereign.
***
@Apophatos: [Query related to Iris and Hermes as divine messengers]
It has been noted that Iris is the divine messenger in the Iliad, Hermes in the Odyssey; we could posit, therefore, that the different scope of the two epics determines the differences in the "angelic" function. Later, Iris is thought of as Hera's messenger, Hermes as Zeus'. Hera's association with aerial phenomena makes this appropriate.
@Apophatos: [That Zeus's warning to Hera to stop prying etc. (Iliad I 545ff) might be consistent with separate messengers for Zeus and Hera]
No, because Zeus speaks here (I 549f) of a noêsis private to him, and shared with no other God or human, and clearly for such intellections, no "messenger" would be needed. Where any other God is to know Zeus's mind, by contrast, Hera is to know first (548). "Private" noêseis among the Gods pertains, I would say, to the intellective determination of "in self/in other" (Parm. 138a2-b7), and the general concern in the intellective order for diakrisis (7th intellective monad) and phylaxis (the "guardian" triad).
