I’m tired of never finding words in Greek save in some 19th century word list with German notes. Really pissing me off. Fucking every book. Greeks just stopped using half their damn spelling from Koine. My phone hardly has all the accent marks, and some of the specialized characters, just ain’t happening on android.
Tablet of Cebes is definitely easier than Arius Didymus, but Fucking A.
What are you trying to read?
Tablet of Ceres, I had a theory the Tablet matched the three walled Mesopotamian city in Ctesias (no one ever knew if the tablet was real or not, that sort of triple layer defence wasn’t known in the west till the theodosian walls. Vegetiys merely recommended two), but I’m trying to match the vocabulary up with philosophies, since it’s always been debated if it was a Platonist, Cynic, or Epicurian text even…
Just think of a story that was the most primitive, ancestral version of Dante’s Infernal… that’s literally what it is. I have two English translations, but some of the definitions are coming off as absurd how they translated it, and the author is giving a clear, basic psychological formula… just the terms he bunches up come off weird. Second time I’m trying to translate it, I’m doing it faster this time… the idiosyncrecies of the text are popping out more, and I have a better grasp on what Aristotle and the Stoics were saying opposite of Plato… just… some of this terminology is kicking my ass… even when I got definitions, the definitions given are archaic, and mean nothing to me when I see them. 19th century made some weird as fuck definitions up at times, and the thesaurus laughs at me when I try to make sense of it… it’s like the same asshole wrote them too, sending me down a bizarre maze of dispair.
Fuck you ancient Greek.
Interesting.
You may want to look into Mohism, it’s the unexpected blind spot in your world outlook. You find all sorts of things like that when looking into old texts.
Curious, can you give me a basic explanation of what it is in this thread?
[b][i]Pedant:
a : one who makes a show of knowledge
b : one who is unimaginative or who unduly emphasizes minutiae in the presentation or use of knowledge
c : a formalist or precisionist in teaching[/i][/b]
Too close to call? 
I so wish someone would rewrite the classics, and to begin with omit the term ‘God’ from everything which came before Christianity. You even find the term used in books on ancient Egypt including the book of the dead, which definitely wasn’t monotheistic. the great works come from pagan civilisations, and do not substantiate monotheism. There was/is a snobbery around the use of language, it makes the ruling classes all gooey inside and feel all superior. Knowing words does not make you more intelligent, knowing knowledge does, and that is why it is important that knowledge is elucidated properly.
Then you should read this book amorphous.
Every concept us a deified God (like later on how Boethius took Fortune (Tyche) as a Goddess, while being fully Christian in his outlook, knowing they were mere abstractions of mental faculties.
The various philosophical traditions used different formulas. For example, in the text they deift Doxa, and this heavily straddles the Parmenidian and Platonic concepts of it, while bucking against the Aristotelian concept on Endoxa. One can write a book about how Pendandic and shortsighted Iambigious’ concept of Dasien is, on this one word alone… as he largely takes a rather weak position within the tradition. And it us a tradition… was carried very long afterwards by the competition between the Stoa and the Aristotelians, touched many highly advanced areas of ancient philosophy, including mathematics and puzzling paradoxes. Iambigious could spend a lifetime cursing himself for his ignorance and lack of foresight (which they also deified in this text).
If you grasp the schools developed their own languages, the words matter a lot, and gave massive import when strung together. Furthermore, the text was strung on a whole allegory of life (including just before birth) through the analysis of a image, step by step.
Its a image heavy approach. Lots have been written on it. Its not till you get down into the sinews you start grasping just how big of a influence it was on some major later works, and how it carried the former schools debates. What is more, is the abstract archeology of analyzing this tablet, long since lost. Its obvious what the interpretation is, was NOT what actually was going on in the imagery. Its going to take some work to figure out the elevation and point perspective used in this text. The poliorcretics will take time to properly break down, I don’t trust the other previous drawings made over the last few centuries.
There are problems with the notion of Pre-existence and respective virtues, firstly that we inherit our form, family, circumstance and what have you. We have to assume that those inherited and circumstantial values, are equally themselves pre-ordaned – which i find problematic at best. If there were virtues to follow, they would be based on ones composition to wit if everything is set, there would be no room for derivation ~ learning. Like the tablet itself everything would be written, and perhaps it possibly didn’t originally exist and is instead an allegory? It points to a written-in-stone assumption that divinity would pointlessly denote all that is, will be and originally was. Yet the stone didn’t really exist, and so we are led to the idea that perhaps the author was instead insinuating that there is no such stone or meaning to our existence.
The latter theologists possibly thought the stone did exist, or otherwise that it pertained to our pre-existent reality as a tablet of god or some such thing [insert divinity/oracle for ‘god’ where the original pagans were concerned]. Its much easier to blame people for their constitution than a beneficient deity, and indeed faced with the world as it is, you either blame people or its all God’s fault.
I don’t really get it, there are so many inconsistencies with the idea. A psychopath may have become that through his fathers beatings [or the given thing], the father like that through a blow in the head in battle etc. Truly, what is the point of a written/preordained world anyway.
As ever the latter Christians tried to simplify what was a complex and sophisticated understanding of divinity [egyptian/greek/hindus etc], and round everything up. Its much easier that way, though ultimately pointless. A virtue unlearned is not known even?
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Your coupling concept withphenomenal behavior, observable phenomena, and validity through inference of phenomena. Mind is actually both less and more complex simultaneously due to your stance.
Yes, virtues and vices do exist, we can in any cases trace them along neurological functions to rewards and punishment centers in the brain. Its neither the imago (which you have a fetish for in your philosophy) or any other particular kind of neurological info that matters, but rather how it arrives, relative to competing stimuli, and what it triggers.
Both Socrates and I reject Doxa as valid for inference, but for different reasons. Im not a elitist, demanding a constant reexaminarion of knowledge every second on a social scale, I can accept a theme along Jungian lines of archetypes, and Aristolian Endoxa. The impulse for chikdrens nightmares of crawling hands and soiders and snakes as nughtfrights is damn near universal in our species, and one diesnt have to be a mystic to figure out why. Is the image universal, or fear if a patterned behavior? To what degree does knowledge abd language modify this impulse, even suppress or encourage it? If we lacked language, would chikdren still wake in the middle of the night oondering mortality if their partents or self? Have dreams of falling? Why do the blind have dreams if falling ir getting lost more?
Now, is a Archetype “jack frost”? Fuck no. Is it “search for the holy grail” as one Jungian I know focuses so heavily on? No.
These are images that survive Endoxa, but can ge intellectually lazy on a epistemic level, merely entertaining. Is the conceot particularly entertaining in and if itself, or was genius storytelling added to it to make it so? Was there a lack of comprtition of ideas to flysh them down the toilet?
You also gotta consider Identity in things as well. I brought up this issue, using my midification to the lineage of The Raven Paradox in a abortion thread, using axiomstic dualities conservatively preserved in antique military texts. You may reject the idea of vices and vurtues, but wouldn’t as quickly reject Offense and Defence… you have a rough idea in your head, if asked “are they on offence or defence” more often than not you could say. The book I analysed had 50 dualities thst built up and defined all the happenings possible on the battlefield. It has a very, very high rate of emperical constructs and decursive deconstruction, demanding a commander compute causality in real time using every aspect of his mind to understand everything that was happening, including what he coukdnt see. They got ti the point that armies numbeting up to 1 million men were ooerating on complex terrain as three factions foyght it out. Very difficult, but can be done. Still is done today.
Through history, patterns emerge, ethics are realized, vices and virtues can be identified. You gotta remember, its a psychological theory like ying and yang, was used as a means of secular government, constantky adapted and debated, not a Christian monopoly.
Seriramis in Babylon above, old depiction.
Looks a lot like the description. Both Mesopotamia and Egypt fits the bill for some of the statues listed in the text. Not very many cities ever had three walls, however.
The imago – if you like, is the part where ‘how info arrives’ is mutated, calibrated and utilised. Knowing how arriving info works gives us it utility.
We are nervous beings electrified by our environments, falling is a sensation as are crawling insects, so the blind will perhaps fear falling in that sense. Without language we are still that big bundle of nerves, which is why i don’t think humans are so different to animals. Language give expression, knowledge, understanding and utility. The same thing is occuring underneath.
No I agree they are similar [see ending comment below][both change relative to the given factors].
But what of the aforementioned tablet denoting the forumula of our pre-birth-plan if you will? It makes no sense to me that a bit like karma, we are born within a mould, then causality happens and we die with mould version ‘b’, only to then be born with that mould.
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I concur. Throughout history religion has largely be turned on the people by their rulers. The egyptian books of the dead cost a lot, and only the rich could afford it [and tombs etc]. In the first egyptian royal tombs, doors were merely painted on the wall [as a means to go through to the next world], later they had gods you have to pay reverence too even the pillars aside the doors had gods. Taoism equally had a heaven/hell dichotomy, as do they all. Christianity was not a spiritual revolution just a simplified version of the others, in fact we haven’t had a true religion yet imho. Possibly because humans tend to make utility of such things to their own ends. If gods needed feeding they would be dead prior to being discovered, but humans think that a gift requires something in return ~ hence all the sacrifice and bollocks.
Surely the very lacking of the tablets existence, is the philosophy being taught? Its a clever way of stating that there are actually no foundations to spirituality. We get born then live then die ~ as do insects. Meaning can be found, but not given/denoted to others, otherwise there would be no meaning to be found!!!
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No, not in the cases of PTSD, or other instinctive reactions, jumbling learned response.
Likewise, knowing/being have severe limitations on the level of spatial being as far a vision is concerned, in the most hard core forms of non-dualism. Its why you never see me jump on the existentialist bandwagon. The goal is more or less to turn yourself into a surveillance camera, seeing without thinking.
In regards to this text, the Platonic incarnation and passing into ignorance, it can be said it matches my old signature banner:
Not that I made that from a Platonist or Reincarnation perspective, largely coincidental, but matches up rather well.
This tablet was clearly NOT what it was interpreted as being… someone donated it to a temple, and a old man, the equivalent of the museum tourguide/greeter, explained some older foreigner living a philosophical lifestyle (pythagorean and Parmenidian) donated it.
I think the temple just got this as a votive offering from a centurion who raised Persia at some point in the past with a Roman Army, dragged a tablet back as spoils, ended up on market or sat in his house till it was donated either way to the temple. Everyone in the temple say it, asking “what the hell is that?” when everyone looks at past votive offerings on display.
So this old guy spent his life adding philosophical ideas to it. A lot seems Platonist, but a part I was translating last night reminded me of Stoic writings. This text itself… honestly, I’m smelling a hint of Numenius of Apamea… though I can’t say for sure, and most likely won’t say so in the end. Just smells like him… he was into this sort of thing.
That’s because they are bypassing alternatives, and normal brain function. It doesn’t matter what we are consciously thinking if the machine is broken, the brain has to have the function such to allow for utility, otherwise its like having robotic legs that keeps walking. One cannot make arguments about computation, by determining that the phone is sending texts because a button is broke or what have you.
There is no pre-existent information set. If there were it would then have to be translated into the format of the new brain/language etc, and then it would change respectively.
If we were x,y,z, prior to birth, we are kdf [anything other than] after. Imagine getting a new brain, that would 100% change your causality.
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The author of the tablet agrees. People are dumbed down, given a liqour that causes ignorance, exposed to Opinions, Passions, and Pleasures at random.
I’m not saying this text is right… you don’t translate works like this for that reason. I do it because of it’s psychological insights to the history of philosophy.
The word used throughout the text is LIFE… it’s supposed to be life in a microcosm. Its fairly impressive as a philosophy work of the Principate doing this. Now… if you want this to be of equal merit to a modern text on psychology and philosophy, no.
This text will at best get a small cult following over 300-400 years because I translatedb it, never more than 200-400 people any given decade latching on in excitement seeing it. 20 people might quote it, and most because of the link to me. I myself shall make dozens upon dozens of dollars off it in my lifetime, and get cursed out by a reviewer for messing some obvious spit up (won’t be released for a while for that reason, I presume mistakes as I’m learning). For me, it’s just for my own education, and increasing my ability to read, leaving a little something of my research on philosophy and Ctesias behind. It is worth my time for a few months on and off, but I don’t look that deeply into it. I know people have their favorites when it comes to these translations, so may personally handbound a few for sale on cloth paper, rest super cheap electronic documents. It isn’t a text I expect anyone to live by, despite that being clearly it’s intention in original design. It gives some great quotes though.
Fair enough. I have been wondering about similar issues, karma etc, and if there was something to begin with [even generally]. I can see how the idea has permeated theology and general thinking, ~ most people assume there to be something we are born as and who we are.
Its a good one to kill religion with imho, no ‘tablet’ and there is nothing to judge or be judged upon.
This text does have a Karma/Dharma presumption.
Its because of the link of Platonic “Pythagoreanism” to the Black Veda. It needs to be remembered India in Plato’s era was much closer to Greece than today, there was still Indo-Iranian communities in the middle east with quite a Vedic feel about them, though admittedly not Vedic in regards to who Indians trance their descent from, but a system branch that largely has died off, mutating into local religions farther to the west.
Plato’s Allegory of the Charioteer is probably the most famous example. A lot of his ideas can be found in the discussions in The Black Veda, and in regards to Nietzsche, too many of his best lines are jacked from it. Rather shameful.
Good Upanisad to read on the origins of Karma/Dharma would be the Chandogya Upanisad.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandogya_Upanishad
Wasn’t originally a vedic religion, was a religion the warrior caste had, Brahmins completely unawares of it, came as a bit of a shock to them. Basically… warriors could up and kill themselves, and not have PTSD guilt trips over it, cause someone can point at a baby fish in a egg and say “Don’t worry, Jimmy is still with us, he is going to be a fish, and had it coming”.
This carried on till the Mahabharata, when everyone was killing everyone in mass formation over senseless, retarded reason… and if anyone came to their senses and said it was all fucking nuts, they are related to half the people on the other side, fuck war… Krishna came and said either you lot out and become a non-violent ascetic, or you fight to the death for my enjoyment. Quit being a pussy, thinking about humanity and compassion, go and disembowel everyone for me.
And they did… and everyone afterwards said screw this shit and became Buddhist and Jain for a thousand years, because it was all some silly bullshit.
Thats reincarnation in a nutshell.
Of course, in the west, you can’t make it out that well. There is a transmigration if souls, you can make out a hint of the Karma/dharma debate in this text, but very easy to overlook it, but it was never a intergral part of western thought.
In regards to getting rid of religion… impossible. Religion isn’t God, in the same sense Philosophy isn’t Amorphous. You exist with or without it.
You need to ask what is religion, and what isn’t… but the asking doesn’t discriminate… as the asking is a part of the concept. You try to remove religion from man, you remove man’s intelligence. You have a earthworm in terms of intelligence. Skepticism and Empericism gives a sense of differation from it, but it’s a false belief… emphasis on belief. Until the end of the days of our species, both man and especially AI are stuck being religious in thought. There is trueky no escape. Everything striving against it is a fools errand if honest, a mockery if intelligently contrived. Its not a trait exclusive of our species either, it can’t be bred out in a overman. Its a figurative mark of life on our planet. Its a consequence of senses and competitive, interdependent ecology. If you bred flies into intelligent beings, they would be religious too. May not build churches, recognize our theologies, but certainly theological.
I don’t know, near where i live is wylands smithy, which is basically a stone vagina leading into the womb of the earth mother. In neolithic tombs there was the save thing as caves world over, you die, the earth gets pregent and you are reborn. What goes around comes around is a celtic saying i think. I don’t know if there was karma involved, people perhaps thought we are born how nature makes us. Certainly the celts called the people generally 'the children of ‘dis’ [not to be confused with caesars dispater [sky-father] he attributed as the principal druid god], meaning brought forth from the earth. They saw all wealth wether it is people, materials or food, as emanating from the earth.
It is the connection of darma [way to act] with karma [value of actions] which was more unique perhaps? This would give us an at birth and at death value as seen in terms of the tablet, ~ so greeks had some idea of karma?
What we can do with religion is explore any stated meanings, and then take them apart at the seams. Under the magnifying glass I usually find religious philosophies are baseless. Esp notions like ubermensch, or son of god who’s also their father in heaven and hence the being which impregnated their mother etc. Stick anything on a pedestall and it will have a prepondency to fall.