1995-10-10 NSPRS 007 - Pseudo-Dionysius' Ten Letters

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{ 19951010NSPRS007 }
1995-10-10 NSPRS 007 - Pseudo-Dionysius' Ten Letters
The ten letters as the Device that saved Neo-Platonic Metaphysics for and in Christian Metaphysics.
Thanks to Bob Keller for filming, Julie Grabel Postel for producing and funding, and Sean Angier and Lisa Bivens for editing and digitizing from VHS to DVD.
noeticsociety.org

[@EG-uv8fd]

2:03 2:52 The Good / One 3:49 The procession / reversion 6:19 7:50 Hierarchy 11:23 Ratio 12:53 Ratio = Logos 14:23 Beauty 14:58 Eros 15:27 19:13 29:12 31:27 Intelligence / vitality / being : angels 31:52 33:32 39:05 44:56 47:27 50:14 Hierarchical order 53:11 The problem 58:22 Letter 9 / Symbolic theology / hermeneutics 1:02:01 1:03:52 1:04:43 1:06:53 1:07:51 Providence / receptivity 1:08:56 Cf. Venner

[@TheCatull]

KZbin should reward people like you!

[@alexandercle]

Thank you Jeff, for all your videos, great many works, time spend, posting in KZbin and Noetic Society's archive website. Altc

[@ernestojayson3652]

@Ignacio Leonardo yup, have been watching on Kaldrostream for months myself :D

[@mills8102]

This is an incredible treasure. He illustrates with ease what so many grasp blindly at. Thank you to all who made it a possibility for me and anyone who is similarly inclined to be seeing this.

[@deborahmelo7993]

Thank you so much for sharing this lecture! It is truly great!

[@Joe-kn3wt]

Thank you for uploading this video.

[@nassbouazzati4803]

This again.. Mindblowing.

[@onlyonecliff4035]

Once again thank you Pierre. Pierre asks what is the significance of the eight letter addressed to Monk Demophilus. According to Hathaway Demophilus is being compared with the slave owner Callicles from the Gorgias. Thrasymachus from the Republic and Callicles are both Platos tyrannical characters. They hold the views of Isocrates the war adviser to Alexander the Greats father. Isocrates holds the views of Democritus the philosopher who opposes Plato, he is opposed to any thought of what does not exist ie The One. To Democritus there is only atoms and space, physical things and they are our masters. His name means "of the people", Demophilus must be a pun as his name means "love of the people", [Hathaway page 95]. Democritus is the figure head of Isocrates the tyrant. Isocrates is also very meek, [Antidosis]. Anyone who is interested, read some of Isocates work then when you read the Republic you will read it a whole lot clearer.

[@FreedomandRights4US]

thanks

[@tarhunta2111]

That blew my mind.

[@Deletedvirus404]

One of his best easily

[@Navili502]

"[T]he Blessed Dionysius uses an obscure style in his books, which he does not do from a lack of skill, but from industriousness, so that he might hide the holy and divine dogmas from the derision of the infidels" - Saint Thomas Aquinas

[@awad7391]

I would almost argue that keeping it obscure forces the reader to enter into philosiphy and not beleif.

[@user-we2qv1cx6x]

Which work of his did you find this quotation? I am interested!

[@TheNativoamericano]

First time I see students clapping at a teacher!!! What an incredible Master 😍!

[@alankuntz4406]

Pauls Dionysius lived 33 ad , Pseudo Dionysius was around until the 5th , 6th century.

[@DarkMoonDroid]

Gripping!

[@tigerhunter8878]

33:00

[@onlyonecliff4035]

The original Dionysius was a convert to St Paul after he gave a rousing speech denying the Hellenic ineffable god. [Acts 17] . Most commentators and translators are Pauline theologians who fail to recognize that this new Dionysius talks about nothing else only the ineffable god. Letter Seven the way he switches the arguments is so cleaver, he starts out "I have never spoken out against Greeks", therefore he is indirectly disputing with St Paul's account. But on the other hand he supports St John, which means that John supports the ineffable god. The crucifixion that Dionysius and Apollophanes witnessed was an eclipse which seams to be a reference to yoga union? In which case the crucifixion would be symbolically akin to "tandava", total annihilation of the senses. The whole of the Dionysius's corpus is a voyage of discovery, but it is hard going, because the translators don't understand what their translating and support St Paul, but the key to understanding true Christianity is through this corpus. Once again thanks Pierre.

[@onlyonecliff4035]

@@thomasmirowski8859 Thomas I've gone a little further with this The letters follow the Divided Line. Firstly, they progress downward from 1 understanding→2 knowing→3 the mean→4 belief→5 opinion, then a reversion of the process. (The mean is the key, it is a mixture of both worlds. From the Timaeus, two things need a third to join them). I added a paper to the Academia web site called the Ten Letters of Dionysius the Areopagite, which if you google you should be able to find. Good luck.

[@martianuslucianus4485]

Love Pierre, though I think he overplays the Pseudo-Dionysian Christian Platonist outlier angle, since Platonism was the dominant philosophy of many of the Fathers starting from Justin Martyr followed by Clement of Alexandria; Origen of Alexandria; Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen; and Augustine of Hippo were all influenced by Platonism. Dionysius is following a tradition of Christian Platonism.

[@flambr]

i never understood platonism, simply because "Higher in what regard? Taller? Physically Above? Containing more money? I have no concept at all of what is meant by 'a cause is superior to it's effect'"

[@threestars2164]

No different than the common shaman believing his imagination shows him some profound truth

[@nerthus4685]

I don't think Dionysius was a Platonist trying to cheat Christians into using using his metaphysics. He probably represents a Platonic Christian tradition native to Syria.

[@jamesduffy5980]

He gets a lot of the history wrong, often being off by decades and jumbling a number of facts. Lorenzo Valla, for example, died a decade before Erasmus was even born. He could not have possibly written a letter about textual variants causing a crisis of faith.

[@alankuntz4406]

I'm 20 minutes into this and the only Dionysius mentioned so far was the Dionysius that Paul converted to Christianity. None of that has anything to do with negative theology and the Pseudo Dionysius as Paul's convert. Where in this video do with begin talking about Pseudo Dionysius? Paul's Dionysius is not the same guy as Pseudo Dionysius. That's false history and already proven inaccurate by the eastern orthodox church.

[@martianuslucianus4485]

Be patient, Pierre is well aware of all of this, he is masterfully leading his students through the Socratic method into the topic at hand.

[@MarcusBarnabassisSystersSonne]

Bad presentation sorry yall