Setanta ⚜️

• Platonist •

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

Cultivating your soul is inseparable from cultivating skills in this life.

To truly align yourself with the Good and the divine, you need to be developing skills and striving to attain the highest level you can.

Each of us has a different aptitude according to the hierarchy of souls, yet few come close to realising their potential because they are misled by perceived goods such as physical pleasures, material wealth and validation from lower-calibre souls.

People limit themselves by thinking of a good person in binary terms. This is a misunderstanding and leads to complacency. Imagine a circle with a centre point. This point represents union with the divine, perfect and eternal Good. In your current state, you are somewhere outside this centre. The farther you are from the centre, the more you experience disharmony, experience confusion and exhibit bad/evil behaviours.

Despite this, we are never beyond redemption because evil does not exist as a duality in opposition to Good but rather as the absence of unity with the Good (which is why forgiveness is available to all).

Living a perfect life after such a revelation is nigh impossible, as it is a continuous struggle against the desires of the flesh and the ideals of the spirit. To be a good person involves this struggle but also encompasses much more like usefulness to your community, folk and the broader society.

[Heliotroph☀️🍇 @Heliotrophy]

Iamblichus, 1500 years ago, explicitly telling us that yes it is possible to reconstruct damaged traditions:

"For all these reasons, then, let us call upon the gods as our leaders, entrust both ourselves and our discourse to them, and follow wherever they may lead. We should not be deterred by the fact that this school has long been neglected; that it has been hidden beneath estranged teachings and certain secret symbols; that it has been overshadowed by many false and spurious writings; and that it has been obstructed by many other difficulties of the same kind. The will of the gods is enough for us, and with it one can endure difficulties even more perplexing than these."

- Book 1 of On the Pythagorean Life; Literally the first thing he says in the book that he gave his students to read first of all.

I highly advise you to save this quote for future use when arguing with those guys who say "but your line of transmission is broken bro, just become a sufi bro"

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@Heliotrophy @frater_dt Need to forward this to every white man who read Guenon and now mistakenly thinks abandoning our defunct ancestral traditions in favour of decaying foreign ones is the answer.

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@metamundanity As the polygyny expert, what's your take on 2 vs 3+ wives? It seems like with 2 they are prone to competition in a more hostile way, whereas with 3+ it is more of an established group/communal environment

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

Bondbönor(Swedish) translates literally to 'peasant beans'

The plot thickens...

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@MetabolismPrism Recently a mutual told me he met his long term gf through xwitter, new meta?

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@wotancore Nether and both

https://t.co/cocgm0NsfD

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

Heroism in the Iliad is more complex than it initially appears, composed of the tension between its two main heroes, Hector & Achilles.

While Hector embodies the traditional hero, he doesn't move beyond temporal concerns. His motivations are under Thumos in his duty & honour, tied to his city and family. His heroism is bound to doxa - the world of opinion. He accepts his role within duty but never questions the underlying ideas of war and fate.

Achilles, is also initially motivated by Thumos seeking personal glory & vengeance with the the choice between a short but glorious life or a long but unremarkable one also impacting his decisions. He is lead by Thumos to excess in his actions but his withdrawal from battle(while motivated by a personal insult) allows for contemplation and is a rejection of the conventions of battle and war, ultimately leading to a transformation through suffering as he comes to understand honour, vengeance, and personal glory are fleeting.

The death of Patroclus is the turning point in Achilles because it forces him to face the fragility of life and puts the ball in motion for him to confront his own mortality as well as shifting his motivation from self-interest to a higher state of love and grief for a lost friend.

While his next act is one of extreme vengeance against Hector, there is a noticeable parallel between the two. Achilles has been stripped of all personal attachment: his closest friend, his honour, and his future (as he knows he too will die soon). Hector on the other hand is fighting for personal attachments: his family, his honour, and his city.

The meeting with Priam is where we see his transformation. The realisation that all men must die, and no amount of vengeance or glory can change that brings him closer to the heroic ideal. Despite being consumed by Thumos shortly before in his rage against Hector, Achilles' act of returning the body to Priam is not driven by passion or Thumos but by a deeper understanding that transcends war and vengeance - an act of justice and the recognition of the shared suffering of humanity as in that moment, he no longer views Priam as an enemy but a fellow man who shares in the fate of all mortals.

Achilles begins as a man ruled by passion & pride but through the events in the Iliad he contemplates and suffers a loss which deepens his understanding, culminating in him engaging more in the rational part of the soul (Logos) through his compassion towards Priam. Hector while noble, is limited by his mortal attachments and does not go further than civic virtue, justice, and duty.

Both embody different aspects of the heroic ideal but neither fully encompasses it. However, if they were combined, they would come close.

So who is the real hero? Neither, and both.

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@theralkia My favourite one is

>projects an image of distorted but high masculinity by showing off resources & status
>attracts the natural pair: distorted shadow femininity with increased hypergamous & toxic tendencies

"why are all women promiscuous, clout-chasing gold diggers"

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@homolumen It's a cool term that evokes the Atlantean myth but it's true that people mostly reduce it to the most differentiated features like the hair and eyes even though phenotype in the true sense goes beyond that

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@Audmund North Atlantid mentioned

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@apollinisch @realKalos The translator self identified as a member of the Neoplatonic tradition, translated all of Plato & Aristotle as well as other Neoplatonists and the Orphic fragments so he had a really good understanding of both the language, the source material and the context

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@HagazagaH @GraniRau Perceiving bodily beauty of any kind is glimpsing a limited expression of Beauty. This can cause madness which needs to be ordered
With a beautiful youth, it's not only physical beauty but beauty of character. That's why they discuss aligning him with the nature of a suitable God

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@HagazagaH @GraniRau You're equivocationing ideas of love but I sympathise because the language used is purposefully provocative to reflect the nature of eros

After this passage it discusses the relationship of eros in relation to the tripartite soul and how sexual desire in this way is disordered

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@HagazagaH @GraniRau Citation needed.

Whatever you're referencing is a misunderstanding of what is being said. A central idea in the symposium is that bodily desire is the lowest apprehension of beauty.

Apprehension of a beautiful body can inspire the soul to recollect the larger form of beauty

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@ScythianDragon Satanic Groyper

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@philoantonio @Tweetophon @frater_dt @EPButler Platonism is teleological & eros has a teleological end, lower level: generation, higher levels: beyond bodies. Desire is not self-justifying, it's justified by whether it reaches its proper ends, homosexuality does not

Your view needs psyche as subjective inclination, it's not

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@philoantonio @Tweetophon @frater_dt @EPButler Psyche =/= subjective desire, it is a rational ordering principle

Yes nature is posterior but it's not arbitrary, it's the expression of rational order. Acting against nature is acting against the order grounded in psyche itself. It's not something that's independent

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@Tweetophon @philoantonio @frater_dt @EPButler I already explained why DL is a bad source and the conversation is about whether homosexuality is compatible with platonic philosophy, these points are ultimately extraneous

The only source material that is relevant are the dialogues and the commentaries for additional context

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@witagon I wasn't aware of that but it just further cements his position as a negative figure

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

Wild

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@philoantonio @frater_dt @EPButler Genuine question:
How do you reconcile being a homosexual and a Platonist?

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@Tweetophon @philoantonio @frater_dt @EPButler Regardless, Platonism as a philosophical system is distinct

the system itself is against homosexuality in the Symposium & more explicitly in the Laws

an elementary understanding of Platonism would lead anyone to recognise homosexuality is not compatible even without these texts

[Setanta ⚜️ @SetantaXI]

@Tweetophon @philoantonio @frater_dt @EPButler From Diogenes Laertius who lived centuries after Plato and writes epigrams which are stylised & exaggerated poetic expressions of events which don't have much historic validity

Plato was not a homosexual and further, ancient Greeks were largely not in favour of homosexuality