Neo-Platonism and Christianity

[tonyrey]

You see, Communism is just an extreme sect of Socialism, whose aim is essentially to make it law that wealth be distributed so that the public is uniformly upper-middle class (of course, if everyone is part of the same class, there are no classes, since classes are relative, hence Marx’s idea of a “classless society”).

This is your idiosyncratic definition of Socialism of which there are various versions…

 

[Oreoracle]

This is your idiosyncratic definition of Socialism of which there are various versions…

Then perhaps Reprobus ought to be more particular with his criticisms, instead of attacking every sect of an ideology. Anyhow, I think I summarized the main idea of Socialism: The purpose of government is to attain public well-being, and so rights shouldn’t be used against this purpose. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you have the “right” to the ridiculous load of money you “earned,” it ought to be distributed to maximize public well-being. The same goes for other institutions and conventions. Rights and tradition don’t supercede the happiness of the group.

 

[Reprobus]

Paranoia? LOL. There is a very simple test by which we may determine if this “paranoia” is justified or not. It’s easy. Refuse to participate. Refuse to make any sacrifices to pagan idols. It ain’t called “the culture of death” fer nothin’ dude.

I don’t know where you get the idea that I call these things unrelated. The opponents of lawless European-style kings in England and Scotland came up with the idolatry of Freedom following the unlawful reign of Henry VIII. These ideas were expressed also in the Glorious, American, and French revolutions. Hegel was a freshman when -]the French Revolution/-] The Terror was on, and he was very much influenced by it. From Hegel we have Marx and also Stirner and the idolatry of the Self. They are all very much related.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Catechumen it is. Apparently I have a lot of reading to do before I can be baptised.

I don’t know that my own madness letters are worth reading. They are too long. They contain some profane language and no doubt many errors.

I’m afraid I don’t understand yet what Vedanta has to do with the task at hand. If the Church has itself fallen into idolatry then I will still join it. My task requires that I be a Christian and in communion with the Church. If I fail at that, then I fail in everything. I have not seen idolatry in core doctrine – most of it is from lay people and in pronouncements from the “liberation theology” / women & sodomite priests crowd.

I love my mistress and her children very much. I would be very happy to discover that I am merely insane.

The amount of reading you do before your baptism may be a little or a lot, but you will probably have to consider how chastity and having a mistress are going to mix.

Are you in an RCIA program, Reprobus?

Vedanta was influential to Schopenhauer. Huxley was enamored with it, and he wrote eloquently against the modern world. Vedanta pertains to the task at hand because it is a worldview and philosophy and a religion. After all, why Christianity? Your callous dismissals of Islam hint at a willful mischaracterization of that tradition, and I wonder if your fascination with Augustine is healthy. Luther (like Nietzsche, a German) was fairly obsessed with him too. Perhaps (speaking of Germans) you should try Eckhart or Suso for a change.

 

[Reprobus]

Yggdrasil,

The mistress has to go. I know that. So now does she, as of five weeks ago. I continue to deliver groceries and transport her and her children around by car, and various other chores, but that is all. The temptation remains. Hopefully not for long. The father of her middle child arrived here last night. I am staying away for the duration. I am hoping they will be reconciled. I cannot abandon her entirely. She will not survive here long without support.

I have spent plenty of time in the company of Buddhists, most of them, sadly, were of the drippy ‘new age’ type. The one I respected most – a Tibetan refugee – taught me meditation. I don’t know that I was a good student. I have known a few Hindus over the years as well. I am a cab driver after all. I can’t make heads nor tails of it. Most of it is so completely foreign I wouldn’t even know where to begin, but I do admire their generosity, their open love of religion and close-knit family life.

This may sound strange but I have known since I was 8 years old that I would eventually go to the Church. It is a long and tedious story and makes me sound a complete loon. Perhaps some other time.

I have turned to Christianity because it offers the cure for this madness around me, which I have identified through Augustine and Nietzsche as idolatry. I have spoken to and read a number of Muslims who have also identified this madness as idolatry. I have nothing bad to say about the Koran, but Muslims came after the fall of Rome and Roman-style natural idolatry. The only solution I have seen from them thus far is to blow stuff up. Not terribly useful to me, is it? Neither is most of the philosophy I have encountered.

I do have some small pity for the jihadis. I understand why they do what they do, but they waste their blood, and if murder be a sin, their souls also. Socialism is going to collapse with or without their efforts, and many of their efforts seem directed by a sort of Islamic Socialism. Mohammed called Christ ‘Jesus Son of Mary’ in the translation I have here. I expect he did so because he himself abhorred idolatry. If Christ is an idol, then Christ is the idol which cures us of idolatry. Mohammed himself could do so only at sword-point. Nope. It is Christ or nothing. None of the others will do.

When I turned to Christianity I found something else. Something unexpected. Pope John-Paul wrote about the awareness of sin in one of his books, which I found and scanned at a train station. I finally figured out what he meant by it. It is unbearable. Losing the mistress is a start. The rest won’t be any easier.

I’m not sure what RCIA is. The chapel here is small, staffed by a single nun about 90 years old and a few volunteers. All very good people. There seems to be a new priest every few weeks. They don’t seem to know what to do with me. I don’t think they get too many converts out here.

None of this answers my question.

 

[Earnest_Bunbury]

Two questions, then:

1. Has Christianity in the past several centuries been on a course tending towards idolatry?
2. Are you familiar with Vedanta?

From Wikipedia:

Vedanta is based on two simple propositions:

1. Human nature is divine.
2. The aim of human life is to realize that human nature is divine.

I have problems with this as being totally opposed to Catholicism.

I welcome your search for the truth Mr. Reprobus, I can only offer a little in response to your very detailed and personal questions.

There is much masquerading as Catholic in posters on this site, in theology that isn’t supported by the Church, and in interpretation of Church Magisterial teaching. You have experienced this in people with various levels of rejection to Church teaching.

The basis of Catholic theology is in “nature”, the nature of God as Good in His Essence, as seen in the “Euthyphro’s Dilemma”, str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5236 “Natural theology”, from what I have seen, is not the same as “Nature” in this sense. Catholicism is mostly based in the spiritual, thus the use of philosophy to plumb the depths of divine Truth. The historical or anthropological research is subordinate to this spiritual search as God is Spirit. Pantheism is making inroads into the Church due to those who reject the transcendent spiritual basis for our faith. Those who “die to self” and pick up their “cross” and follow Him are few compared to those who refuse to make sacrifices to make room for the Holy Spirit.

God is real, not an ideal at the end of a philosophy. He can be accessed by a prayerful search as well as a search for truth, Divine Truth, as Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. He is helping you.

David MacDonald has a good site and a layman’s explanation of Greek Philosophy in relation to Catholicism.
davidmacd.com/catholic/francis_schaeffer_catholics_greek_philosophy_in_the_bible.htm

 

[tonyrey]

Then perhaps Reprobus ought to be more particular with his criticisms, instead of attacking every sect of an ideology. Anyhow, I think I summarized the main idea of Socialism: The purpose of government is to attain public well-being, and so rights shouldn’t be used against this purpose. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you have the “right” to the ridiculous load of money you “earned,” it ought to be distributed to maximize public well-being. The same goes for other institutions and conventions. Rights and tradition don’t supercede the happiness of the group.

I agree with you - although “the happiness of the group” needs further analysis.
BTW I hope you don’t mind if I, who am also fallible, point out that “supersede” is the most misspelt word in the English language.

 

[tonyrey]

Then perhaps Reprobus ought to be more particular with his criticisms, instead of attacking every sect of an ideology. Anyhow, I think I summarized the main idea of Socialism: The purpose of government is to attain public well-being, and so rights shouldn’t be used against this purpose. In other words, it doesn’t matter if you have the “right” to the ridiculous load of money you “earned,” it ought to be distributed to maximize public well-being. The same goes for other institutions and conventions. Rights and tradition don’t supercede the happiness of the group.

I agree with you - although “the happiness of the group” needs further analysis.
BTW I hope you don’t mind if I, who am also fallible, point out that “supersede” is the most misspelt word in the English language. A far more common error - of which you are not guilty - is to use “it’s” as a possessive, e.g. it’s value, when it should be used only to replace “it is”…

 

[Oreoracle]

I agree with you - although “the happiness of the group” needs further analysis.

Yes, but how we elaborate would largely depend on the situation. At this point, Reprobus seems to be so concerned with people that he’s lost sight of the ideologies they’ve claimed to support. The evils that self-proclaimed communists have committed have nothing to do with communism or socialism in general.

BTW I hope you don’t mind if I, who am also fallible, point out that “supersede” is the most misspelt word in the English language. A far more common error - of which you are not guilty - is to use “it’s” as a possessive, e.g. it’s value, when it should be used only to replace “it is”…

Actually, “supercede” is a variant of the version you mentioned. Check it out:

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supercede

Apparently it is widely regarded as an error, but “supercede” has become acceptable in formal writing nonetheless.

While we’re on the topic of common mistakes in language, one annoys me to no end: I hate it when people mean to say, “I couldn’t care less,” but instead say, “I could care less.” The actual meaning is the opposite of their intention.

 

[tonyrey]

 I agree with you - although "the happiness of the group" needs further analysis.

My experience of Socialism in Algeria is that the “group” consists of those in power whose wives fly to Paris to do their shopping! Even so the people are better off than in Morocco and other Capitalist countries…

Actually, “supercede” is a variant of the version you mentioned. Check it out:merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supercede

Apparently it is widely regarded as an error, but “supercede” has become acceptable in formal writing nonetheless.Maybe an Americanism! Etymologically “supersede” is more accurate because it is derived from the Latin sedere whereas “intercede” is from cedere…

While we’re on the topic of common mistakes in language, one annoys me to no end: I hate it when people mean to say, “I couldn’t care less,” but instead say, “I could care less.” The actual meaning is the opposite of their intention.

I haven’t heard that one… but I probably will (shall!?!)

 

[tonyrey]

I agree with you - although “the happiness of the group” needs further analysis.

My experience of Socialism in Algeria is that the “group” consists of those in power whose wives fly to Paris to do their shopping! Even so the people are better off than in Morocco and other Capitalist countries…

Actually, “supercede” is a variant of the version you mentioned. Check it out:merriam-webster.com/dictionary/supercede

Apparently it is widely regarded as an error, but “supercede” has become acceptable in formal writing nonetheless.

Maybe an Americanism! Etymologically “supersede” is more accurate because it is derived from the Latin sedere whereas “intercede” is from cedere…

While we’re on the topic of common mistakes in language, one annoys me to no end: I hate it when people mean to say, “I couldn’t care less,” but instead say, “I could care less.” The actual meaning is the opposite of their intention.

I haven’t heard that one… but I probably will (shall!?!)

 

[Yggdrasil]

I have problems with this as being totally opposed to Catholicism.

Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that the two are wholly compatible. I was merely offering it to Reprobus as a possible avenue of investigation, since he is adamantly opposed to much of what constitutes the modern world. He is clearly well-read and an avid reader; he might begin by reading Guénon and Huxley.

Reprobus could be overlooking the possibility that the Church he seeks to join is entwined overmuch with the world. A thoughtful critique of Vatican II might also benefit him, beginning with Ottaviani and Lefebvre. Far be it for me to question anyone’s intentions in becoming Christian; it will have to suffice to say that Reprobus’ approach to his confirmation remains “interesting.”

 

[Earnest_Bunbury]

Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that the two are wholly compatible. I was merely offering it to Reprobus as a possible avenue of investigation, since he is adamantly opposed to much of what constitutes the modern world. He is clearly well-read and an avid reader; he might begin by reading Guénon and Huxley.

Reprobus could be overlooking the possibility that the Church he seeks to join is entwined overmuch with the world. A thoughtful critique of Vatican II might also benefit him, beginning with Ottaviani and Lefebvre. Far be it for me to question anyone’s intentions in becoming Christian; it will have to suffice to say that Reprobus’ approach to his confirmation remains “interesting.”

Gottcha.

He said in his OP “I have spent most of my time either on the classical sources or the modern ones, but very little in between.” referring to philosophy, so I think that the medieval philosophers are almost compulsory since one needs to know what the moderns were reacting to in their philosophical analysis. St. Thomas Aquinas is still put forward as worthy by the Church. His Aristotelian use of nature and essence combined with Divine Revelation is the basis for views of God and man. Should be a breeze for this learned gentleman.

 

[Reprobus]

Thank you all for your comments. They have been helpful.

I have a few responses, and there are a few ideas I would like to expand upon just a little.

Thanks for the RCIA keyword. I have made some enquiries locally and hope to join an RCIA program soon.

Thank you also for the names of various authors whom I might look up or read. I suppose I could pray that they are as easy to read as a Louis L’Amour novel, but what’s the point? Some of these tomes seem more suitable for hand-to-hand combat than reading. I will be grateful if they are less thick, literally and metaphorically, than Hegel or Marx.

With respect to the dangers of Augustinian thought, I have heard it said here and elsewhere that Luther was very much influenced by Augustine. I have never heard it said elsewhere that Nietzsche was, so if anyone knows a source for that I will be horribly disappointed to hear about it. I thought I’d come up with that on my own.

I am well aware that Augustine can be dangerous. If you’re looking for a stick to beat someone with, then Augustine’s work is a well equipped golf bag. Putter to nine-iron, it’s all there. Throw in some Stirner and a bit of Mr. “I am dynamite” and you’ve got a one-man wrecking crew. Too bad I’m not in the wrecking business.

I have not read Luther and I don’t know what he might have taken from Augustine. Luther lived at a time when the Church was powerful, and everyone was a Christian. If he did so, then he used Augustine’s arguments against the Church, with all too predictable results. We live at a time when the western world is divided between Christian and Pagan and seems on the verge of monetary if not social collapse. Many pagans I meet are decidedly Christian and many Christians seem like pagans. Confusion reigns. I love Augustine not only because he showed me the cause and cure of the madness I saw in modernity, but because his task is also my own: first to convince my friends and family that becoming a Christian isn’t itself an act of madness; second to argue for Christianity (against paganism) both politically and theologically. Augustine’s work is dangerous and therefore useless to myself and others except in communion with the Church on all matters of doctrine. If there is any disagreement I will assume it is myself that needs correction.

Luther strikes me as the sort an old sailor I know would call a ‘sea lawyer’. I am not in the service, but I have nonetheless sworn an oath of loyalty to my Queen. Don’t get your CO’s back up on something and then complain when you find yourself between the devil and the deep blue sea. Has anyone else ever sat through an argument between a Socialist and an Objectivist? Nasty, innit? Accusations will accomplish nothing, but confession – that might work.

The entanglement of the Church with the world does not bother me. IIRC the mission of the Church is divine, but the Church itself is mundane. Neither do I criticise the Church for the extent to which the Church has become dependent upon and subservient to socialist nation-states. I have shared in this myself, and told many lies for my own preservation. I cannot imagine that we could have had a better Monarch and Pope to carry us intact through the Socialist era than HM Elizabeth II and HH John Paul II. Any leaders more hot-headed or spineless would have got themselves and many others killed. What does bother me is that western Socialism is now in the early stages of collapse, and what once seemed a necessity is fast becoming a danger. It is from this that I know it is finally time for me to come to the Church, and to speak to my family and friends of what I have found.

When modern idolatry comes to its inevitable conclusion, all welfare, benefits, pensions and much else will be paid in Zimbabwean buttwipe if they are paid at all. When Socialism has collapsed, the Church will remain and many will need help. That old sailor has another saying: “When you’ve got 'em by the short and curlies, their hearts and minds will surely follow.”

 

[Reprobus]

I found something.

"Things began to change as the Middle Ages waned into the Renaissance. The cult of Hermes Trismegistus and the Corpus hermeticum - a late Roman compendium of Neoplatonic, Gnostic, alchemical, magical, astrological, and devotional texts - was resdiscovered. (The Middle Ages went in for Aristotle and Euclid; the Renaissance went in for Neoplatonic woo-woo.) "

This from an article on witchcraft, and one whose arguments I would very much like to see verified. The article describes the effects of the emergence of the cult and idolatry of Science, which is one of if not the oldest of the modern idols I have found.

On a related note, I might have previously mentioned a man named William of Moerbeke. His entry in the Catholic Encyclopaedia is far more detailed than the one on Wikipedia. He translated Proclus and Porphyry’s books to latin in 1268.

It looks like this Moerbeke fellow may have started a fad. This is from Wikipedia: “Hermeticism [The cult of Hermes Trismegistus] was reintroduced to the West when, in 1460 AD, a man named Leonardo[10] brought the Corpus Hermeticum to Pistoia. He was one of many agents sent out by Pistoia’s ruler, Cosimo de’Medici, to scour European monasteries for lost ancient writings[11].”

May 18, 1268 AD in a town called Viterbo: I believe this is when and where the madness began this time 'round.

 

[Yggdrasil]

This from an article on witchcraft, and one whose arguments I would very much like to see verified. The article describes the effects of the emergence of the cult and idolatry of Science, which is one of if not the oldest of the modern idols I have found.

It won’t count as verification, but an author I mentioned earlier in the thread certainly collaborates that hypothesis. René Guénon theorized that the Renaissance “was not a re-birth, but the death of many things,” saying that it had appropriated the ancient Greco-Roman civilization in only the most artificial way, and that it was of no benefit for the West to resurrect a tradition which had lost its vitality and relevance centuries before. The vessel was emptied of its spiritual contents and prized mainly for its empiricism. For Guénon, the Renaissance and Reformation were the results of an influx of a narrow intellectual pigheadedness, and he averred that the medieval period marked the real “golden age” of Christianity:

The Middle Ages extend from the reign of Charlemagne to the opening of the fourteenth century, at which time a new decadence set in that has continued—through various phases and with gathering impetus—up to the present time. This date is the real starting point of the modern crisis: it is the beginning of the disruption of Christendom, with which the Western civilization of the Middle Ages was essentially identified.

Afterwards there was only “profane” philosophy and “profane” science—in other words: the negation of true intellectuality, the limitation of knowledge to its lowest order, namely, the empirical and analytic study of facts divorced from principles.

A word that rose to honor at the time of the Renaissance, and that summarized in advance the whole program of modern civilization is “humanism.” Men were indeed concerned to reduce everything to purely human proportions, and to symbolically turn away from the heavens under the pretext of conquering the earth; the Greeks, whose example they claimed to follow, had never gone as far in this direction, even at the time of their greatest intellectual decadence, and with them utilitarian considerations had never claimed the first place, as they were very soon to do with the moderns. Humanism was the first form of what has subsequently become contemporary secularism; and, owing to its desire to reduce everything to the measure of man as an end in himself, modern civilization has sunk stage by stage until it has reached the level of the lowest elements in man and aims at little more than satisfying the needs inherent in the material side of his nature, an aim that is quite illusory since it constantly creates more artificial needs than it can satisfy.

Unlike your man Augustine, however, Guénon was not a Christian. He was a Vedantist and a Sufi Muslim. I still think that you may find the East of profit (at least in part). Schopenhauer and Wittgenstein did.

 

[Reprobus]

Thanks. I am ordering The Crisis of the Modern World from Amazon.

 

[Reprobus]

I have found more on Proclus.

This is from an essay by a classics professor at Dalhousie University in Canada.

classics.dal.ca/Files/One_Hundred_Peeters.pdf

One notable exception to the neglect by scholars of the rôle played by Neoplatonism in contemporary philosophy is the “Liminaire” by Alain Ph. Segonds to a volume celebrating the completion at the end of the last century of one of the greatest products of French Neoplatonic scholarship in our time: the new edition, translation, and annotation of The Platonic Theology of Proclus, jointly the work of a French scholar, Henri-Dominique Saffrey, and a Dutch scholar teaching in the United States, Leendert Gerritt Westerink. Segonds’ introduction gives a remarkable thumbnail sketch both of how the Neoplatonic works have come down to us and of the philosophical interest which prevented “the Neoplatonic authors—and particularly Proclus—from becoming simple curiosities, before being shelved in the museum of the horrors of human reason.”

Does anyone know more about this? I must find this book.

 

[antunesaa]

Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that the two are wholly compatible. I was merely offering it to Reprobus as a possible avenue of investigation, since he is adamantly opposed to much of what constitutes the modern world. He is clearly well-read and an avid reader; he might begin by reading Guénon and Huxley.

Reprobus could be overlooking the possibility that the Church he seeks to join is entwined overmuch with the world. A thoughtful critique of Vatican II might also benefit him, beginning with Ottaviani and Lefebvre. Far be it for me to question anyone’s intentions in becoming Christian; it will have to suffice to say that Reprobus’ approach to his confirmation remains “interesting.”

Hey, Guénon was a Muslim convert, a well-known poisoned well who wanted to destroy Christianity from the inside and submit it discreetly to Islam. But an intelligent chap, though.