12-04-2017, 12:05 AM
Pixie Dust wrote:It's not too often an intellectual is guided past the gates of Heaven as a mortal. Given a tour and such. I thought only slaves gave tours and Beatrice, the way Dante made her sound, seems more like an angel than a slave. Weird.
I want to just throw out here that for a neo-Platonist like Plotinus (whose school was in ROME, by the way, nevermind he wrote in Greek) Soul (Psyche), and Intellect (Nous) are different principles. Intellect is higher, one step closer to the Source of everything.
I'm not saying that's TRUE, I'm just saying that's neo-Platonism.
This was before Dante's time of course and the uh... Empire had found Jesus by then. But reading between the lines, it's probably fair to say that this tradition never actually died.
I'd have to reread the Paradisio again, but from memory, the heavenly Beatrice was just kind of radically One with God and spread out through all of Heaven already by the time Dante got there, so what was in it for HER was not at all made clear.
I want to just throw out here that for a neo-Platonist like Plotinus (whose school was in ROME, by the way, nevermind he wrote in Greek) Soul (Psyche), and Intellect (Nous) are different principles. Intellect is higher, one step closer to the Source of everything.
I'm not saying that's TRUE, I'm just saying that's neo-Platonism.
This was before Dante's time of course and the uh... Empire had found Jesus by then. But reading between the lines, it's probably fair to say that this tradition never actually died.
I'd have to reread the Paradisio again, but from memory, the heavenly Beatrice was just kind of radically One with God and spread out through all of Heaven already by the time Dante got there, so what was in it for HER was not at all made clear.