His translation of Sallust's "On the Gods and the World" is a great starting point on neoplatonic thought as the original work was written for the layman/Gaius Q. Publicius.
Made me realize I need to get better at math: the gods interact through the worlds as indefinitely scaling hyperobjects. Means Land and co were right about hyperstition but wrong aboit directionality: they looked down the stream rather than tracing it upwards.
I'm reading De Mysteriis at the moment and it's remarkable how how little of himself Taylor inserts into his translation. Other than the introduction and an occasional footnote scoffing at Thomas Gale's translation, I've only come across one personal opinion so far:
"What is here asserted by Iamblichus is perfectly true, and confirmed by experience, viz. that the passions, when moderately gratified, are vanquished without violence... a moderate gratification of the passions does not resemble the pouring of oil on fire; since this similitude is only applicable to them when they are immoderately indulged." (Chap. XI, footnote 1)
It's only one data point, but seems to clear his name against allegations of world-rejection or life-denial.
Very illuminating. I don't think Plato is world-rejecting/life-denying, but perhaps he's a step in that direction. I think Nietzsche exaggerates his differences from Plato like this in an attempt to best him. I would also probably fall more into the "critical" category of Plato interpretation—but there's too much to say regarding these things. Anyway, great article. There are very loud echoes of the Renaissance here. You might like looking into Gemistos Plethon for this series, here referred to as "Pletho", a very interesting character of whom there's not much material on.
>Klages went as far as to describe the philosophy of the late Platonists as “the highest cornice on the Babylonian Tower of life-denying detachment from the world which the mental confusion of paganism in its final burst could attain” (Sämtliche Werks II, p. 870)
My issue with this idea, and really the Vitalists in general, is that there isn't a lot of evidence that "life-denial" represents a late perversion of a "natural" Pagan religion. Orphico-Pythagoreanism was already ascetic by the presocratic period, and it is quite possible that there was asceticism in the mysteries well before this point even during the time of Homer and Hesiod. Really, a lot of Platonic ideas already existed during the Egyptian Bronze Age, even if the connection Greeks made to the Egyptians far in the future was spurious... I do agree with what some other commenters have said though, that Taylor and everyone who took the path of Iamblichus over Porphyry was more focused on non-attachment through immersion in ritual rather than renunciation of action altogether. But it is still done out of a general sense of tiredness with the mundane world and its constant changing.
Klages puts the entry of this type of philosophy as far back as Akhnaten as I have written elsewhere, so he is aware of all this. For him Plotinus is just the most extreme, final, form of it within paganism available in Western history
" So at his lamplit desk deep in a sleeping England, Taylor worked, learning Greek as he read the ancients; according to one account, reading Proclus "
Don't know what happened here, maybe you forgot something? Great article, nigga.
His translation of Sallust's "On the Gods and the World" is a great starting point on neoplatonic thought as the original work was written for the layman/Gaius Q. Publicius.
This was one of the first book of a pagan character I had ever read and it was very informative, it does exactly what Sallust intended
Made me realize I need to get better at math: the gods interact through the worlds as indefinitely scaling hyperobjects. Means Land and co were right about hyperstition but wrong aboit directionality: they looked down the stream rather than tracing it upwards.
I'm reading De Mysteriis at the moment and it's remarkable how how little of himself Taylor inserts into his translation. Other than the introduction and an occasional footnote scoffing at Thomas Gale's translation, I've only come across one personal opinion so far:
"What is here asserted by Iamblichus is perfectly true, and confirmed by experience, viz. that the passions, when moderately gratified, are vanquished without violence... a moderate gratification of the passions does not resemble the pouring of oil on fire; since this similitude is only applicable to them when they are immoderately indulged." (Chap. XI, footnote 1)
It's only one data point, but seems to clear his name against allegations of world-rejection or life-denial.
Gregory Shaw's books on Iamblichus give me the same indication, his form of asceticism was more of a necessity for ritual purity than anything
Gemmy
Very illuminating. I don't think Plato is world-rejecting/life-denying, but perhaps he's a step in that direction. I think Nietzsche exaggerates his differences from Plato like this in an attempt to best him. I would also probably fall more into the "critical" category of Plato interpretation—but there's too much to say regarding these things. Anyway, great article. There are very loud echoes of the Renaissance here. You might like looking into Gemistos Plethon for this series, here referred to as "Pletho", a very interesting character of whom there's not much material on.
>Klages went as far as to describe the philosophy of the late Platonists as “the highest cornice on the Babylonian Tower of life-denying detachment from the world which the mental confusion of paganism in its final burst could attain” (Sämtliche Werks II, p. 870)
My issue with this idea, and really the Vitalists in general, is that there isn't a lot of evidence that "life-denial" represents a late perversion of a "natural" Pagan religion. Orphico-Pythagoreanism was already ascetic by the presocratic period, and it is quite possible that there was asceticism in the mysteries well before this point even during the time of Homer and Hesiod. Really, a lot of Platonic ideas already existed during the Egyptian Bronze Age, even if the connection Greeks made to the Egyptians far in the future was spurious... I do agree with what some other commenters have said though, that Taylor and everyone who took the path of Iamblichus over Porphyry was more focused on non-attachment through immersion in ritual rather than renunciation of action altogether. But it is still done out of a general sense of tiredness with the mundane world and its constant changing.
Klages puts the entry of this type of philosophy as far back as Akhnaten as I have written elsewhere, so he is aware of all this. For him Plotinus is just the most extreme, final, form of it within paganism available in Western history
" So at his lamplit desk deep in a sleeping England, Taylor worked, learning Greek as he read the ancients; according to one account, reading Proclus "
Don't know what happened here, maybe you forgot something? Great article, nigga.
What da hell I think stack fucked up my drafts, I fix