Yes, Platonism is “thin” and “just math”, “just logic”, etc, because that’s all it’s supposed to be by itself. It has to be filled out with the phenomenological aspects of the “Great Work”, the living out of the theurgical life of theosis with at least one deity as a *person*. This is where the sacramental/initiatory/prayer life comes into things. As long as you are only seeing the Divine as “The One”, a mathematico-logical primitive defining being qua being as the root unit of an ontology, it is “thin”, but when you engage with the Divine as deity, as partner in the Great Work, as parent, lover, and friend, theurgy becomes the “thickest”, most full life one could imagine.
The gods are transcendent and immanent at the same time, in my opinion.
Here’s the thing: the revealed theology of mythology doesn’t talk about deities as grand mathematico-logical concepts or ontological primitives. They are those things *too*, but the myths reveal something else: people. Not just people, but a family. A broken, tragic family full of pain, transformation, and redemption. To forget that, to forget the anguish of Demeter at the loss of Kore, to forget the weeping of Aphrodite after the loss of Adonis, to forget the trauma of Cronus slaying His father and the weight of Zeus doing the same thing to His, is to fundamentally misunderstand what we are seeing in these myths.
I am a pagan polytheist—as in an actual theist, not someone who believes in logical concepts with names and statues that just happen to have been attributed to them as a sort of accident of history. The gods are ontological structures, yes, but they are also people, minds with thoughts, concerns, beliefs, plans, intentions, and desires. People that I pray to, sacrifice to, and who interact with me *as people*.
Perhaps all of us theists who actually talk to the gods and the gods talk back are just delusional, but the gods were revealed as myths *first*, not as math, so I see no reason to reduce them to math. I am a philosopher, yes, with two degrees and financial debt to attest to the fact, but I am a pagan mystic first.
Thanks for this! Still thinking on part III, but for part II on animals and embodiment...
One piece I'd also emphasize here is that there's no particular reason (it seems to me) that we should expect Greek *anthropos* (as, roughly, "a rational animal") to align perfectly, or at all, with the modern notion of *Homo sapiens*. Given the historicizing principles by which it's defined, the modern species-definition seems likely to be accidental, somewhat akin to Aristotle's (rightly rejected) definition of man as "a featherless biped." So at least in principle, some of what the modern biologist considers to be different animal species may in fact share our sort of cognition, and thus be properly classed by the Platonist as "anthropoi."
Yes, precisely—all of our contemporary taxonomy, useful as it may be in certain technical contexts, is in another sense like "featherless biped". There are two senses of "human" in Plato, one which expresses Animal Itself, and has thus a purely metaphysical value, and another expressing all of the contingent history of a certain primate species.
What I have in mind is our peculiar materialization of our internal world, or rather its scale compared to others. It's just something others don't have to the same extent, although it is something they could develop.
I find myself aligned with your brief connection to Origenism in part II; I've been thinking about Origen and Evagrius' models of metensomatosis, and I think this interpretative keys helps think about what that would mean for animals.
Yes, Platonism is “thin” and “just math”, “just logic”, etc, because that’s all it’s supposed to be by itself. It has to be filled out with the phenomenological aspects of the “Great Work”, the living out of the theurgical life of theosis with at least one deity as a *person*. This is where the sacramental/initiatory/prayer life comes into things. As long as you are only seeing the Divine as “The One”, a mathematico-logical primitive defining being qua being as the root unit of an ontology, it is “thin”, but when you engage with the Divine as deity, as partner in the Great Work, as parent, lover, and friend, theurgy becomes the “thickest”, most full life one could imagine.
The gods are transcendent and immanent at the same time, in my opinion.
Here’s the thing: the revealed theology of mythology doesn’t talk about deities as grand mathematico-logical concepts or ontological primitives. They are those things *too*, but the myths reveal something else: people. Not just people, but a family. A broken, tragic family full of pain, transformation, and redemption. To forget that, to forget the anguish of Demeter at the loss of Kore, to forget the weeping of Aphrodite after the loss of Adonis, to forget the trauma of Cronus slaying His father and the weight of Zeus doing the same thing to His, is to fundamentally misunderstand what we are seeing in these myths.
All the gods are tragic.
I am a pagan polytheist—as in an actual theist, not someone who believes in logical concepts with names and statues that just happen to have been attributed to them as a sort of accident of history. The gods are ontological structures, yes, but they are also people, minds with thoughts, concerns, beliefs, plans, intentions, and desires. People that I pray to, sacrifice to, and who interact with me *as people*.
Perhaps all of us theists who actually talk to the gods and the gods talk back are just delusional, but the gods were revealed as myths *first*, not as math, so I see no reason to reduce them to math. I am a philosopher, yes, with two degrees and financial debt to attest to the fact, but I am a pagan mystic first.
No.
Thanks for this! Still thinking on part III, but for part II on animals and embodiment...
One piece I'd also emphasize here is that there's no particular reason (it seems to me) that we should expect Greek *anthropos* (as, roughly, "a rational animal") to align perfectly, or at all, with the modern notion of *Homo sapiens*. Given the historicizing principles by which it's defined, the modern species-definition seems likely to be accidental, somewhat akin to Aristotle's (rightly rejected) definition of man as "a featherless biped." So at least in principle, some of what the modern biologist considers to be different animal species may in fact share our sort of cognition, and thus be properly classed by the Platonist as "anthropoi."
Yes, precisely—all of our contemporary taxonomy, useful as it may be in certain technical contexts, is in another sense like "featherless biped". There are two senses of "human" in Plato, one which expresses Animal Itself, and has thus a purely metaphysical value, and another expressing all of the contingent history of a certain primate species.
Agreed!
What I have in mind is our peculiar materialization of our internal world, or rather its scale compared to others. It's just something others don't have to the same extent, although it is something they could develop.
I find myself aligned with your brief connection to Origenism in part II; I've been thinking about Origen and Evagrius' models of metensomatosis, and I think this interpretative keys helps think about what that would mean for animals.