pathos-transcending Silence

Tags

Damascius, Depeche Mode, Eric Whitacre, Plotinus, Proclus, Rezonans, Sara Rappe, Self-union

For Plotinus, far from being an emotion, a pathos is an event that renders the mind subject to conditions imposed from without. Such a condition erodes or infringes on the autonomy of the mind, its self-determination, self-awareness, and self-attention. Hence apatheia refers to the original condition of the mind, before it comes to be occupied with the transitory objects of awareness that concern it in its embodied state. Again, apatheia is not only a moral condition of the mind, since a pathos is any event or experience to which the mind is subject. Apatheia seems to imply a mind not subject to experience, one that undergoes no conditioning.

Κατά τον Πλωτίνο, πόρρω απέχον από το επίπεδο του συναισθήματος, ως πάθος ορίζεται μια εσωτερική συνθήκη που καθιστά τον νου υπόδουλο σε έξωθεν επιβαλλόμενες συνθήκες. Μια τέτοια συνθήκη διαβρώνει και καταπατά την αυτονομία του νου, τον αυτοκαθορισμό του, την αυτεπίγνωσή του και την αυτοπροσήλωσή του. Ως εκ τούτου, ο όρος απάθεια αναφέρεται στην αρχέγονη κατάσταση του νοός, πριν από την ενασχόλησή του με τα εφήμερα αντικείμενα της συνείδησης, τα οποία τον απορροφούν κατά την ενσάρκωσή του. Τονίζω ότι αυτή η απάθεια δεν είναι απλώς μια ηθικής υφής συνθήκη του νου, καθώς πάθος είναι οποιαδήποτε συνθήκη ή εμπειρία στην οποία υπόκειται ο νους. Ο όρος απάθεια αναφέρεται εμφανώς στην κατάσταση ενός νοός που δεν υπόκειται στη λήθη της εμπειρίας, ενός νοός μη νοθεύσιμου από εξωτερικές συνθήκες.

From READING NEOPLATONISM,
Non-discursive thinking in the text of Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius,
βιβλίο της Sara Rappe μεταφρασμένο από εμένα προ ετών,
απόσπασμα επιμελημένο σήμερα εδώ.

💜🙏

Non-discursive Thought

Tags

Damascius, Plotinus, Proclus, Sara Rappe, St. Petersburg Chamber Choir, William Brighty Rands

Like when I was translating that awfully magnificent book on the texts of Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius many years ago, my heart pounded like crazy with this poem I found today:

The Thought

Into the skies, one summer’s day,
I sent a little Thought away;
Up to where, in the blue round,
The sun sat shining without sound.

Then my Thought came back to me.
Little Thought, what did you see
In the regions whence you come?
And when I spoke, my Thought was dumb.

But she breathed of what was there,
In the pure bright upper air;
And, because my Thought so shone,
I knew she had been shone upon.

Next, by night a Thought I sent
Up into the firmament;
When the eager stars were out,
And the still moon shone about.

And my Thought went past the moon
In between the stars, but soon
Held her breath and durst not stir,
For the fear that covered her;
Then she thought, in this demur:

‘Dare I look beneath the shade,
Into where the worlds are made;
Where the suns and stars are wrought?
Shall I meet another Thought?

‘Will that other Thought have wings?
Shall I meet strange, heavenly things?
Thought of Thoughts, and Light of Lights,
Breath of Breaths, and Night of Nights?’

Then my Thought began to hark
In the illuminated dark,
Till the silence, over, under,
Made her heart beat more than thunder.

And my Thought, came trembling back,
But with something on her track,
And with something at her side;
Nor till she has lived and died,
Lived and died, and lived again,
Will that awful thing seem plain.

🙏

William Brighty Rands (1823–1880)

From Arthur Quiller-Couch’s anthology The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
bartleby.com/101/756.html

Divine love through us always 💜

The sphere of sense, the Soul in its slumber;

Tags

Plotinus

for all of the Soul that is in body, is asleep, and the true getting-up is not bodily but from the body: in any movement that takes the body with it, there is no more than passage from sleep to sleep, from bed to bed.

Plotinus

Withdraw into yourself and look

Tags

Plotinus, Self-union

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