Deleuze vs. Hegel on Spinoza

In Hegel’s reproach to Spinoza - that he ignored the negative and its power - lies the glory and innocence of Spinoza, his own discovery. In a world consumed by the negative, he has enough confidence in life, in the power of life, to challenge death, the murderous appetites of men, the rules of good and evil, of the just and unjust. Enough confidence in life to denounce all the phantoms of the negative….In Spinoza’s thought, life is not an idea, a matter of theory. It is a way of being. It is only from this perspective that his geometrical method is fully comprehensible. In the Ethics, it is opposition to everything that takes pleasure in the powerlessness and distress of men, everything that feeds on accusations, on malice, on belittlement, on low interpretations, everything that breaks men’s spirits. The geometrical method ceases to be a method of intellectual exposition but it is rather a mode of invention…Spinoza did not believe in hope or even in courage; he believed only in joy, and in vision. He let others live provided they let him live. He wanted only to inspire, to waken, to reveal.

Quotes from Church Fathers on Divinization

St. Irenaeus of Lyons stated that God "became what we are in order to make us what he is himself."
St. Clement of Alexandria says that "he who obeys the Lord and follows the prophecy given through him . . . becomes a god while still moving about in the flesh."
St. Athanasius wrote that "God became man so that men might become gods."
St. Cyril of Alexandria says that we "are called 'temples of God' and indeed 'gods', and so we are."
St. Basil the Great stated that "becoming a god" is the highest goal of all.
St. Gregory of Nazianzus implores us to "become gods for (God's) sake, since (God) became man for our sake."

thanks wikipedia!

Call for Papers - Reason and Myth in Platonism

The seventh annual Prometheus Trust Conference has been arranged for
June 29-July 1, 2012 - Warminster, Wiltshire, UK

Logos, Mythos, Sophos: Reason and Myth in the Search for Wisdom

The Platonic tradition has always embraced both reason and myth in its
cultivation of wisdom -- but what is their relationship? Are they in
opposition or complementary? How should we understand Socrates' views on
Homer and his fellow poets as stated in the second and third books of
the Republic, and Proclus' response in his Scholia on that dialogue? As
philosophers within our own time and culture, are we still able to
balance the two approaches and take from each the insights available to
those of ancient times? What kinds of reasoning and what kinds of myths
contribute to our own cultivation of wisdom? This conference invites
papers on these and other related questions. The Prometheus Trust'seeks
to build on previous conferences, in which contributors from diverse
backgrounds -- professional and amateur -- pooled their insights in
pursuit of wisdom.

The Trust is delighted that John F Finamore (who needs no introduction
here, I'm sure) has agreed to give the keynote address.

Further details, including deadlines for submission of abstracts, fees,
etc, can be found on the Prometheus Trust website at

http://www.prometheustrust.co.uk/html/conference.html

Proclus Conference in Amsterdam this February

ACADEMY COLLOQUIUM

PROCLUS – EXPANDING THE CANON OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY
Date 1-4 February 2012
Location Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
The Trippenhuis, Kloveniersburgwal 29, Amsterdam (routing)

This colloquium will bring together leading scholars and young researchers
from all over the globe in celebration of the 1600th anniversary of the Neoplatonist Proclus (412-485 A.D.). They will gather in
Amsterdam to establish an inventory of the status quo of Proclean
studies today and to discuss possible lines of future research on the
various aspects of Proclus’ thought. The colloquium will result in the publication of a comprehensive volume on Proclus’
philosophy, to be published with Oxford University Press.

The colloquium is sponsored and hosted by the Royal Netherlands Academy of
Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and is co-funded by the C.J. de Vogel Foundation, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific
Research (NWO), the De Wulf - Mansion Centre for Ancient, Medieval and
Renaissance Philosophy and the K.U.Leuven Research Fund.

Registration
Since places are limited, we recommend you to register at your earliest
convenience and in any case not later than 15 January, by filling in theregistration form.

Conference fee
For registration without conference dinner the fee is € 100, which gets
you all conference materials, lunches, coffee and tea, a reception on
Wednesday, and a visit with guided tour of the Allard Pierson Museum on
Friday. For registration including the conference
dinner on Friday the fee is € 150. If you wish to attend part of the
colloquium, please contact the organisers.

More information
* Program (pdf)
* List of participants (pdf)
* Colloquium's webpage
Or contact the organisers, Pieter d’Hoine (pieter.dhoine@hiw.kuleuven.be) or Marije Martijn (m.martijn@vu.nl) for information on the conference program.

C.J. de Vogel Foundation

Proclus on the soul

Proclus: The soul is constituded from intellective logoi [reason-principles] and from divine symbols [sumbolon], of which the former come from intellective forms, the latter from the divine henads; and we are images [eikones] of intellective essences but statues [agalmata] of nonconceptual tokens [agnoston sunthematon]. And just as every soul is the totality [pleroma] of all the forms, but subsists universally according to a single causality, likewise it participates of all the tokens through which it is connected to things divine, but the existence [huparxis] is defined in unity/in the One [en heni].
Philosophia Chaldaica
quoted in Edward Butler http://henadology.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/offering.pdf

Ficino on the Sight of the Beloved

Hence it always happens that lovers fear and worship in some way the sight of the beloved. Let me even say, although I fear that some of you will blush when you hear these things, that even brave and wise men, I say, have been accustomed to suffer in the presence of the beloved, however inferior. Certainly it is not anything human that frightens them, which breaks them, which seizes them. For a human power is always stronger in braver and wiser men. But that splendor of divinity, shining in the beautiful like a statue of God, compels lovers to marvel, to be afraid, and to worship.

-Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love
(found on Arturo Vasquez's excellent blog

Hymn-Singing from Plethon to Ficino (subjective to theurgic?)

“Gemisto Pletho recurs as an important but shadowy figure in the handing down of this tradition. He does not in his surviving works mention either Orpheus or the Orphic writings. But we know that hymn-singing played a large part in his reconstructed paganism, and that he devoted a chapter of his Nomoi to ‘Hymns to the Gods’ and another to ‘The Arrangement of the Hymns.’ We have evidence also that he copied out fourteen of the Orphic Hymns. It may be that it was Pletho's appearance at the Council of Florence in 1438 that awakened in the West an interest in this ritual practice. There are, however, significant differences in the motives underlying the hymn-singing of Pletho and that of Ficino. As Walker tells us Pletho saw the effect of the hymn-singing as subjective rather than objective. It did not actually reach the gods, but prepared or ‘moulded’ our imaginations. Ficino's motives are more direct and straightforward, and closer to the theurgic tradition of Iamblichus and Proclus. The singing of hymns can prepare man's spiritus to receive the influx of spiritus from a particular astral body. Music recovers its powers of magic, its ability to exploit and turn to advantage the forces of the phenomenal world. ‘Nothing is more effective in natural magic,’ says Pico, ‘than the hymns of Orpheus, if the proper music, mental concentration and other circumstances which the wise are aware of be applied.’ “
John Warden: from Orpheus, the Metamorphosis of a Myth, University of Toronto Press, 1985.

thanks to Lily Beard for dropping this excerpt on the Phoenix Rising Facebook forum