Founder of Platonic Path Author of Ascesis: The Handbook of Platonic Practice. https://xitter.cf/t.co/8svlPE0shP
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"Now of all goods, among gods and among humans, truth is the leader, and if anyone is to become blessed and happy, let him share in this from the very beginning so that he may spend as much of his lifetime as possible living as a man of truth.
For such a man is faithful, but he who loves intentional falsehood is untrustworthy, and he who loves unintentional falsehood is a fool, and neither of these are enviable. For every untrustworthy or ignorant person is friendless and, as time passes, and he is recognised for what he is, in the challenges of old age, he isolates himself completely as life’s end draws nigh. And so it makes no difference whether his companions or children are still alive or not, for he lives almost as if he has none."
Plato, Laws 730c
"The good are those who are able to rule themselves, and the bad those who are not."
Plato, Laws 644b
Had a great discussion with @MagusintheMedia today on the state of politics today and the source of injustice in society and the soul.
🏛️ LIVE TODAY on @MagusintheMedia 12 PM CENTRAL
Are we living in Plato's Dark Republic?
What happens to a society when wisdom and virtue are replaced by the pursuit of power, wealth, and desire? And could Plato's philosophy help us better understand the world we're living in today?
I'm joined by @EClaussen of Platonic Path to explore the tripartite soul, philosopher kings, Platonism as a spiritual tradition, and why Plato matters more than ever in the modern world.
Why We Need Plato More Than Ever | The Soul, The Republic & the Modern World w/ Eric Claussen
✨Watch LIVE on @YouTube : youtube.com/live/aSEiMAe-ROs
Plato made this part of the Laws.
Unmarried people after 35 are to receive no honors from the young and pay a fine the equivalent of 6-20k per year depending on income.
Ironically, Plato himself never married or had children.
Perhaps he regretted that later in life.
Had to move this space to the same time tomorrow, Sunday.
See you then!
xitter.cf/i/spaces/1XGygwNALRyxM
"Victory over oneself is the first and best of all victories and being defeated by oneself is the most shameful and also the worst fo all defeats."
Plato, Laws 626e
"With recollection, one begins to see that one is in fact cognitively identical with the intelligibles. Self-reversion names the process whereby the embodied soul identifies with the intellect."
-Lloyd Gerson
Eric Claussen retweeted
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were practising Pagans. Believing in the Gods, offering sacrifices, composing hymns, and honouring the sacred Mysteries.
Here is the proof you were never taught:
Socrates:
‘I believe in the gods as no one else does.’ (Plato, Apology 35d)
Ordered a sacrifice to Asclepius with his final breath (Plato, Phaedo 118a)
Plato:
‘First and foremost, the existence of the gods must be proclaimed and defended.’ (Plato, Laws 886a)
Plato revered the Gods, was initiated into the sacred Mysteries, and taught the soul’s ascent to the divine through genuine initiatory rites—not as metaphors, but as sacred realities. (Plato, Phaedrus 250c; Symposium 210a–212c)
Called upon the Gods and performed sacrifices before his voyage to Sicily. (Seventh Letter 332e–333a)
Wrote hymns to Apollo, Artemis, and Persephone. (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers)
Plato founded his Academy near the sacred grove of Hecademus, a site already hallowed by ancient religious tradition. According to ancient sources, Plato consecrated the Academy to the Muses by erecting an altar in their honour, establishing the school as a semi-sacred sanctuary where philosophy and religious rites were united. (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers; Plutarch, Cimon 13.8)
Aristotle:
Aristotle teaches that the ideal city must integrate organised religious practices, including sacrifices and sacred ceremonies. (Politics 7.9–10, 1329a27–36, 1330a8–16)
He writes: ‘The land devoted to the gods should be divided into two parts, one for the worship of the gods by means of sacrifices and the other for the maintenance of the priests.’ (Politics 1329a34–36)
‘He composed a hymn to Arete, and set up statues and altars to the gods.’ (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers)
At Aristotle’s Lyceum, named after Apollo Lyceius, the school upheld the sacred tradition of offering regular sacrifices and holding festivals in the god’s honour. (Suda, entry ‘Lyceum’)
I've had some time to keep thinking about this and I now more than ever think that associating the gods to the henads is inappropriate and not sufficiently argued for in Proclus. Especially if these are supposed to be the Olympians.
This is largely because the henads only unique character is derived from the participants and not the henads themselves. So there can be no Jovian henad so to speak, but merely an ineffeble unity that is the cause of Jovial beings. Because a henad is nothing but the One participated. It has nowhere to get a unique character without becoming a being and it is in Being where we see any real differences at all.
The henads then, if the exist at all, are the ways in which participate in God. And are in fact, nothing but God.
At that point whether we call them energies or participated ineffeble unities is perhaps semantics.
Here it is, actually had to do more with a critique of henadology (which I was interested in a while back). But in brief he states the gods could be seen as “energies” of the One. Interesting nonetheless
platonicpath.substack.com/p/…
It's essential that we provide internal critiques to strengthen our position.
The fact that rejecting objective morals and reality has become associated with paganism at all is astonishing and needs to be corrected immediately.
There is nothing pagan about being a moral relativist or rejecting universal principles. These are modern ideas from people like Nietzsche and postmodern philosophers in the last century. If you hold them, you have more in common with blue-haired neocommunists than any of your pagan ancestors.
These ideas are idiotic, easily refuted, and the driving reason why Paganism is considered a joke by most people. As long as we continue to cling to them, Paganism will remain small, weak and ineffectual.
What's worse is we concede the precise territory where paganism is correct while aligning ourselves with the worst ideas on our age.
It's a profoundly weak argument to be against Universalism.
You can’t even say something like ‘Universalism is false’ because that would be a universal statement. It applies to all people in all places i.e. universally.
What’s worse, is if you support a particular ideology in opposition to another that you find oppressive or evil, by rejecting universalism, you forfeit any possibility of the moral right to oppose it in the first place. If there is no moral right and wrong (moral universalism) then your dislike of anything is nothing but preference.
Things like Communism, Postmodernism and Abrahamic exclusivism should not be rejected out of preference or self interest. They should be rejected because they are objectively wrong morally, philosophically and universally.
Anti-universalism, also called particularism, is nothing more than relativism integrated with postmodernism. It’s the rejection of truth which refutes itself immediately. The problems associated with “universalism” arise when we take something objectively false and treat it as though it were universally true. If Universalism itself is false, then we have no objective grounds to oppose these ideas other than to say we don’t like them. To which our opponents can rightly respond, “I don’t care.”
For a long time, if you had asked me about the difference between Platonism and Neoplatonism, I would have said there was none. At most it denoted early and late Platonism, but the content was essentially the same. I would have pointed out that no Platonist ever thought of himself as a Neoplatonist, only as a Platonist.
I can't say the same today, though I think the mistake has always been branding Plotinus as the "father of Neoplatonism," when the clearer break begins with Iamblichus.
Iamblichus is the first to push Platonism in a new direction; one that by the closing of the Academy at Athens, looked vastly different from early Platonism in both practice and belief.
The ideas that define Neoplatonism against Classical Platonism are as follows:
The Doctrine of the Descended Soul
The Necessity of Theurgy
The Elevation of the Chaldean Oracles to a Status Coordinate with Plato
Triadic Participation Theory
Gods as Super-Essential Henads
I think these differences are more substantial than they are given credit for. To academics they may be mere curiosities, but to the Platonic practitioner they have, if accepted, far-reaching effects on how we view the cosmos, our place within it, and how we should practice and live our faith.
Plato-Scroll.com is an incredible achievement made by one of our Platonic Path members, @Hermes_3xGreat
It takes public domain versions of the classics of Platonism and makes them easy to read, research bookmark and add notes. Can't recommend it enough.
