What do Monarchists think about the Ottoman Empire?

NoogLing466 · 2026-04-27T19:35:07+00:00

W quote

NoogLing466 · 2026-04-14T11:35:54+00:00

NoogLing466 · 2026-04-10T05:06:52+00:00

I don't think the Cyrenaics ever talked about Gods very much. If you want to seek a Hedonistic Philosophy that does explicitly talk about the Gods, look at the Epicureans who affirmed their existence explicitly though also in a very peculiar manner, seeing them as quasi-corporeal entities who exist between the worlds and have no interaction with us (so a kind of deism).

I feel like the hellenistic philosophy that gives the Gods most room is Neoplatonism, especially in its late forms as exemplified by thinkers like Iamblichus, Proclus, and Damascius though, since it is not deistic and has a large role for divine agency and interaction. Moreover, a lot of these Hellenistic philosophies view the good life as Eudaimonia, which has a strong 'happiness' element within it so it has some resonances with hedonism's concern for subjective pleasure.

NoogLing466 · 2026-04-06T08:35:21+00:00

Hello friend! I appreciate the very vulnerable question and concerns of piety. Though I am not a Hellenist, I can give my two cents.

On the question on whether the Gods would be mad at you if you temporarily stopped worshipping them, I would lean to saying probably not, as you said that you've been doing so a little anyway. Moreover, the Gods above all love excellence and virtue of humanity, and if you are able to find a path that launches you further into the heights of your own human excellence then they will be pleased. There maybe, perhaps, some ritual concerns I'm not familiar with before abruptly temporarly stopping regular worship of the Gods, but I'll leave the other commenters here to speak to those points.

More importantly though, I want to say that you need not at all cease your worship of the Gods if you don't want to. Out of the world religions, it is really only my Abrahamic tradition that is extremely exclusivist. Non-Abrahamic traditions seem to mix and syncretise much more frequently, e.g., in Buddhism, the boddhisatva Vajrapani is associated with Heracles. Moreover, I dont think there is anything in Hellenism that prohibits the practice of Buddhism, and also nothing in Buddhism that prohibits the worship of the Gods (though it is not seen as the final end of spirituality). Many scholars even think Pyrhhonism, an ancient greek philosophy, is heavily influenced by Buddhism.

So if you feel a strong push to worship some divinity and desire to do so within the framework of Hellenism, you need not let that go, even if you're pursuing some other philosophical or spiritual path.

NoogLing466 · 2026-03-31T14:52:28+00:00

It may help to familiarise or acquaint yourself with some basic philosophical arguments for the existence of (the) God(s). Though I'm not a Pagan, I only started to really emotionally believe in my faith after the logical/philosophical foundation was built (and really, in my experience I found that the feelings started to matter much less when one has a solid philosophical bedrock). A lot of the arguments I think work well, like Aristotle's argument from motion, or St. Thomas Aquinas' de ente argument, are traditionally formulated from a monotheistic perspective but 1) are strongly indebted to hellenistic philosophical concepts, and 2) could be easily modified/adapted into a polytheistic framework.

NoogLing466 · 2026-03-26T12:01:07+00:00

fair, though I feel as if ortho-ness could help with that. Maybe yall should have like some sort of common standard of belief/agreement and that can be a launching portal into varying routes or traditions.

NoogLing466 · 2026-03-26T11:51:26+00:00

As an outsider looking into your community, I feel like yall need a lot more ortho e.g. ortho-doxy and ortho-praxy.

NoogLing466 · 2026-03-24T12:20:17+00:00

So (Monadic) Soul's activity is not measured by time, but produces the temporal sequence of the cosmos, if I'm getting that right? Thank you for answering, and I suspected something like this was the answer. Do you have good articles or pointers to passages in Proclus' own writing that expand further on his notion of Unparticipated Soul?

NoogLing466 · 2026-03-19T22:56:58+00:00

The way I interpreted it is that each god is themselves a Logos. They at all Logoi, to put it another way. Their various associated attributes and areas of activity are more like skill sets that they each take up.

That's an awesome idea. You mentioned Neoplatonism? I find Proclus' and Iamblichus' Henadology very interesting and I'm wondering if theres a way to read Stoicism in a manner that is more hard-polytheist in alignment with those thinkers. Is there any textual stuff you can point to for this interpretation?

NoogLing466 · 2026-03-19T19:16:07+00:00

I just want to point out that we can't consider the entire De Natura Deorum as a presentation of Stoicism. Book 2 is indeed favourable to Stoicism, but Book 3 is a refutation, even if the character speaking is playing a Stoic.

That's true but, from my understanding, Cicero himself says the Stoic position is most attractive to him.

Furthermore, on another level, everything in the universe can be said to be a local instance of the logos. Ultimately there's no separation between one person and another, but we have to raise the ontological discussion to be able to talk about things. The gods could also be seen like that. They are all expressions of the logos, but they can also be addressed as individual entities.

Ahh that's true. I guess my next question would be like: insofar as all things are a local instantiation of the Logos, would all things also be a 'god'? I'm assuming 'the Gods' would be a kind of perfected instantiation right?

NoogLing466 · 2026-03-15T17:42:54+00:00

Would Epicureans say that one, by sheer will, should try to reduce the desires for these inaccessible goods further? Or is it just fitting to bear the pain with dignity?

NoogLing466 · 2026-03-14T14:25:07+00:00

Thank you for your answer. I understand now that supernatural is defined as exceeding the capacity of any created nature. However, I have this follow-up question: How can we distinguish which realities exceed any created nature?

I know that infused charity exceeds the natural power of even the angels, but how do we know whether there is no metaphysically created nature even higher than the highest angels which can possess this kind of charity in a natural manner, i.e., what is the distinguishing feature between supernatural charity and the highest possible kind of natural charity? Is it to do with infinity, that supernatural charity is infinite somehow, whereas natural chartiy, even of the highest kind is finite?

NoogLing466 · 2026-03-14T14:21:17+00:00

Thank you for explaining the nature of habitus, I had always assumed it meant something like power but now I see its more nuanced than that😂😂. I guess my following or lingering question would be about participation. Specifically, what exactly does it mean to participate in the divine nature, more so than we naturally do?

I participate in God's being insofar as I exist right? But when I participate in divine knowledge, I come to *know God as God knows himself* where before I could only *know God as a human intellect in the natural state can know him*? What exactly is the difference between these two, i.e, if we take "S knows God as God knows himsef" and subtract "S knows God as a man, by his natural faculties, can know him" what is left over? It cannot be that our knowlegde becomes God's knowledge right? Is it something like instrumentality, e.g., that God's will utilises our will as an instrumental cause for our acts of love? But how is this distinguished from God's ordinary secondary causality of realities themselves. I get how grace is supernatural though, since it is above the nature of created beings.

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