Learn from platonists

Source: TW

Warning long thread that’ll be part of future note:

It is rather important that H who are inclined toward a proper polytheistic philosophy study the yavana tradition closely.

The first reason is simple: having a related phylum at some distance from our own provides a comparative perspective that might clarify uncertain points because they might be augmented in it, or they help sharpen an ancestral signal that might not be otherwise discernable.(4)

The second reason is something H are more resistant to.

  • Sometime in the late brāhmaṇa period the rise of the Prājāpatya tradition meant a concomitant decline in the Aindra tradition that was more aligned with the ancestral form of the religion. This Prājāpatya “wobble” along with unanchored brahmavāda (i.e., philosophy of brahman that gets increasingly decoupled from the ancestral pantheon) and a likewise unanchored sāṃkhyā resulted in philosophical developments (otherwise very parallel to the yavana ones) that increasingly lost touch with the foundational layer of the religion.
  • Similarly, on the mīmāṃsā front, the development of the Śaunakīya tradition was limited and formulaic after the Bṛhaddevatā and Nirukta. Instead, daivimīmāṃsā was overtaken by tendencies that had a more Kautsa structure even if not explicitly so – this again left mīmāṃsā quite deracinated despite its close observance of the actions of the foundational religion. Here is where the yavana-s come in.

The Platonists developed a philosophy much more aligned with our shared ancestral tradition than the more popular later darśanic developments in India. While the Śaiva tradition was able to rather effectively integrate its theology & philosophy (e.g., the theory of the bhuvanādhvan-s parallel to the Platonists), it was sectarian and increasingly inclined towards a new scriptural corpus developed in the form of the tantra-s.

However, the more we understand the great Proclus and others of the school, the more we see how the Platonic developments were more effective in developing a “high philosophy” aligned with the old tradition.