Who are we?

[methexis]

"But we - who are we? Are we that which draws near and comes to be in time? No, even before this coming to be came to be we were there, men who were different, and some of us even gods, pure souls and intellect united with the whole of reality; we were parts of the intelligible, not marked off or cut off but belonging to the whole; and we are not

Comments

[ishmaelfida]

I have no idea what this refers to, and i have several theories. However, by far the most interesting one is courtesy of Roberto Calasso, from 'The Ruin of Kasch' on the nature of the 'modern man'. Will post it shortly.

[methexis]

Plotinus thought that only through some inclination toward matter (which he defines as 'privation', contra Aristotle for whom it is a type of form) does the One becomes (in a somewhat illusory manner) sundered into the All. Thus we (i.e. everything in the universe, and every form in the intelligible world) share one fundamental nature. As a side consequence, we all share one soul (the world-soul) and the passage quoted above attempts to articulate how it is that we (again, in a somewhat illusory manner) depart from that state.

Cordially,
J.

[ishmaelfida]

here be the section(s) from calasso:

from a passage describing a trip to america -
".. but that era of 'progress' had surprises in store. As he came up against the absolute basics, Talleyrand encountered two exemplary characters: the woodman and the fisherman. He drew their portraits, which turned out to be not the profiles of two forms that had been abandoned by history in its earliest days, but the foreshadowing of two faces that history was about to assume: the silhouettes of he first new men, who already awaited Tocqueville. In their native wilderness they were preparing to take stage as the representative of the masses. Indeed, they represented those who, in an age devoid of irony, would be called 'mass men'...Talleyrand attached these two portraits as instructive clinical cases to his 'Memoir on the Commercial Relations between the United States and England' which he was to read at the Institut de France on April 4, 1797..."

"The woodsman: The American woodsman is interested in nothing... destruction is what keeps him alive.

[methexis]

Hah. What a lovely passage.

Thank you very much for sharing this.

Cordially,
J.

[ishmaelfida]

Me, I'm a Mirrormere. Vastly more thankful am I for coming into contact with those richer than me, that I can absorb some of that richness.