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Soteriology (from Twitter)
Aug. 3rd, 2014 12:22 pmEarlier, @cole_tucker raised the issue of salvation through the Gods and salvation through the ideas. I've been thinking about it since.
I think that the key is to recognize that "salvation" (sôtêria) does not mean exactly the same thing in the two cases.
It's important to recognize that the prime instance of an "Idea" is a biological species. This is systematically established by the paradigm of the cosmos being autozôon, "animal itself" or animality. Other ideas are Ideal in the primary sense to the extent that they fall within the analogy of natural production.
(Hence, in the Symposium, the production of beauty in the world is understood as an analogy of reproduction.)
The Ideas, therefore, are essentially orientations of production—natural, social, ethical, aesthetic.
Now the question of "salvation" for the individual comes down to the dual status of the individual unit: as sortal individual, on the one hand, and existential individual (hyparxis) on the other.
I would say that salvation must be understood differently in the two cases, though I'm not necessarily committing myself thereby to the salvations being numerically distinct for the same individual.
Typically a Platonist will look for some theology to hang their hat on where philosophical inquiry gets foggy.
In Egyptian theology, the individual subject of resurrection, if the operation is successful, has become an akh, a "glorious" spirit.
This "shining", "glorious" quality of the akh is literal, in a way: it is a continued phenomenality of the persona. The akh can continue to be the object of address by the people who knew them, or only know of them. The akh shares in the phenomenality of Re, hence the phrase "an excellent spirit of Re" (akh iqr n Rê); cp. Orphic Phanês as autozôon.
So this is a mode of salvation that, although theological in its own right, also exhibits eidetic qualities. Re is the force behind natural generation, as well as regeneration in the Night of the invisible, the shadowless (askion) netherworld. Phanês is the phenomenal qua phenomenal, "shining", and also autozôon, the animal itself.
Phanês also shines in the sense so beautifully expressed in the ambivalence of German Schein: appearance and also mere appearance, sham.
(Orphics are still Bacchic, after all!)
There is a crack of light, a "shine", between the Schein and the Schein, between the person and the persona.
Hence in addition to the akh, which continues to shine forth the person that was, transfigured into a shining Idea, a virtual species, there is also the individual who surrenders all qualities, and who is only the Choice.
This individual is in one sense the same one who is transfigured into a paradigm, but will never be recognized as the same, cannot be.
This must be the other salvation, corresponding to the ontological status of the Gods as such, not to a particular divine function.
So both "salvations" come from the Gods, but are not identical, even in the case of the very Gods who administer eidetic salvation, because They are responsible for the one simply qua Gods, and for the other qua the particular kind of Gods They are.
UPDATE (8/4/2014)
@cole_tucker: I was thinking about this during your talk at the PLC. It seems to me that for Plato, the individual also conserves a trajectory… So the choice of paradigm acts as a discrete event, yet also participates in a continuum. So at the poles, we see individuals who have so disrupted their integrity that they're eternally remanded to a sort of Tartaros. While others transition through a sort of apotheosis[?]
@EPButler: Yes, I agree. Thus, the soul too incoherent for any degree of integrity can form no part of a cosmic whole other than as material, while the soul whose activity can be generalized, made cyclical, is, just by virtue of that, a formal part of the cosmos.
In either case, there is something separable in principle, either from the soul's becoming-matter, or its becoming-form.
Hence it does not seem that the individual is entirely trapped in immanence, so to speak. Whether one has become a star or been devoured by Ammut, it does not seem one can say absolutely that the universe is done with one.
I think that the key is to recognize that "salvation" (sôtêria) does not mean exactly the same thing in the two cases.
It's important to recognize that the prime instance of an "Idea" is a biological species. This is systematically established by the paradigm of the cosmos being autozôon, "animal itself" or animality. Other ideas are Ideal in the primary sense to the extent that they fall within the analogy of natural production.
(Hence, in the Symposium, the production of beauty in the world is understood as an analogy of reproduction.)
The Ideas, therefore, are essentially orientations of production—natural, social, ethical, aesthetic.
Now the question of "salvation" for the individual comes down to the dual status of the individual unit: as sortal individual, on the one hand, and existential individual (hyparxis) on the other.
I would say that salvation must be understood differently in the two cases, though I'm not necessarily committing myself thereby to the salvations being numerically distinct for the same individual.
Typically a Platonist will look for some theology to hang their hat on where philosophical inquiry gets foggy.
In Egyptian theology, the individual subject of resurrection, if the operation is successful, has become an akh, a "glorious" spirit.
This "shining", "glorious" quality of the akh is literal, in a way: it is a continued phenomenality of the persona. The akh can continue to be the object of address by the people who knew them, or only know of them. The akh shares in the phenomenality of Re, hence the phrase "an excellent spirit of Re" (akh iqr n Rê); cp. Orphic Phanês as autozôon.
So this is a mode of salvation that, although theological in its own right, also exhibits eidetic qualities. Re is the force behind natural generation, as well as regeneration in the Night of the invisible, the shadowless (askion) netherworld. Phanês is the phenomenal qua phenomenal, "shining", and also autozôon, the animal itself.
Phanês also shines in the sense so beautifully expressed in the ambivalence of German Schein: appearance and also mere appearance, sham.
(Orphics are still Bacchic, after all!)
There is a crack of light, a "shine", between the Schein and the Schein, between the person and the persona.
Hence in addition to the akh, which continues to shine forth the person that was, transfigured into a shining Idea, a virtual species, there is also the individual who surrenders all qualities, and who is only the Choice.
This individual is in one sense the same one who is transfigured into a paradigm, but will never be recognized as the same, cannot be.
This must be the other salvation, corresponding to the ontological status of the Gods as such, not to a particular divine function.
So both "salvations" come from the Gods, but are not identical, even in the case of the very Gods who administer eidetic salvation, because They are responsible for the one simply qua Gods, and for the other qua the particular kind of Gods They are.
UPDATE (8/4/2014)
@cole_tucker: I was thinking about this during your talk at the PLC. It seems to me that for Plato, the individual also conserves a trajectory… So the choice of paradigm acts as a discrete event, yet also participates in a continuum. So at the poles, we see individuals who have so disrupted their integrity that they're eternally remanded to a sort of Tartaros. While others transition through a sort of apotheosis[?]
@EPButler: Yes, I agree. Thus, the soul too incoherent for any degree of integrity can form no part of a cosmic whole other than as material, while the soul whose activity can be generalized, made cyclical, is, just by virtue of that, a formal part of the cosmos.
In either case, there is something separable in principle, either from the soul's becoming-matter, or its becoming-form.
Hence it does not seem that the individual is entirely trapped in immanence, so to speak. Whether one has become a star or been devoured by Ammut, it does not seem one can say absolutely that the universe is done with one.
