I suspect many problems can be resolved by thinking of education as a form of exercise and by modeling the teacher-student dynamic off that of coach-athlete. Teaching language has made this clear to me, since knowledge really is just a definite kind of activity.

"A god must not fight in person for the unwarlike. For the law says that those who are brave, not those who pray, are to come out safe from wars. And it is not those who pray but those who take care of the land who harvest." Plotinus on Providence, 3.2.8 No succor for doomers.

Samurai Jack would have been allowed in Plato's Republic. I will die on this hill.

I feel like I don’t understand something until I’m forced to teach it. This seems like a problem.

Shout out to @VenetianGaucho2 for reminding me of this excellent lecture by Lloyd Gerson. https://t.co/Gk9KuFqoxV

While not exactly false, the slogan "philosophy teaches one how to think" seems superficial. For why shouldn't the form of thinking itself not also be a "content?" νόησις νοήσεως entails reflecting on the logical forms (i.e. identity, difference, one) that both belong to

Kalligas on Plotinus's "Best of all Possible Worlds" "The world is the best possible, because its creation is *not* the result of rational calculation--which might prove mistaken or malicious--but of a natural, as well as necessary, procession from higher entities toward lower

Edit: Plotinus on *so-called* (i.e. Fregean) Platonism vs. Constructivism in Mathematics:

@EPButler do you know of anyone working on "Neo"Platonic phil of math? I found this book and few others, but I figured you'd know the lay of the land better than I. https://t.co/sh3grwKGnG

Plotinus on Platonism vs. Constructivism in Mathematics: It seems to me that Plotinus would be puzzled by and likely want to aufheben the sides of the following dispute: Are numbers self-subsisting entities existing "out there" in an immaterial realm beyond space and time or

Ennead V.5 is a masterpiece, and it raises the following question: What if Descartes's cogito is wrong not because it prioritizes self-consciousness, but because it doesn't take self-consciousness seriously enough (i.e. as identical with being)?

A nice anti-Nietzschean point in Ennead 2.9.16: Intelligibles enhance rather than detract from the world of experience, as familiarity with someone in real life enables one to delight in his or her image (i.e. knowledge enables what Husserl calls image or

"The Gnostics criticized the sovereign lord of providence and providence itself in a still more sophomoric manner than did Epicurus." -Ennead, 2.9.15 I can't imagine the contempt Plotinus had in writing these lines. Imagine being worse than a materialist!

Another nice authority in favor of harmonism: "In him, the ideas and mode of expression of Plato are particularly dominant, but those of Aristotle are equally so; one could with equal justification call Plotinus a Neoplatonist or a Neo-Aristotelian." -Hegel, Lectures on the

Does anyone know how to get access to Ficino's Latin commentary on the Enneads? The I Tatti editions are too expensive, and I can't remember if they are bilingual or not.