Algis Uždavinys > Quotes

“The ultimate goal of Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy was assimilation to god through the cultivation of virtue and truth. It meant a return to the first principles reached through philosophical education (paideia) and recollection (anamnesis), scientific investigation, contemplation, and liturgy (or theurgic ascent), based on the ineffable symbols and sacramental rites.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“According to such a universalist and perennialist perspective, the teachings of Neoplatonism were not a sort of regrettable innovation (as modern classicists would have it), but the faithful perpetuation of pre-Platonic metaphysics put into a new dress. Plato himself was merely a link (albeit crucial) in the Golden Chain of the Pythagorean, Orphic and different Oriental traditions.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Having a daemonic and intermediate nature, Eros was one of the links between the sensible cosmos and the eternal world of the gods. Accordingly, Eros was regarded as a paradigm and pattern for the philosopher, or lover of wisdom, because wisdom was beautiful and beauty was loveable.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“18B. (Iamblichus, Theol. Arith. 61). The Decad is also named Faith, because, according to Philolaus, it is by the Decad and its elements, if utilized energetically and without negligence, that we arrive at a solidly grounded faith about beings. It is also the source of memory, and that is why the Monad has been called Mnemosyne.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“In this brevity of diction he deposited an extension of theory most ample and difficult to grasp, as in the maxim, “All things accord in number,” which he frequently repeated to his disciples. Another one was, “Friendship is equality; equality is friendship.” He even used single words, such as kosmos or “adorned world”; or, by Zeus, philosophia, or further, Tetraktys!”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Philolaus, with another stroke of genius, calls the angle of the tetragon that of Rhea, of Demeter, and of Hestia. For considering the earth as a tetragon, and noting that this element possesses the property of continuousness, as we learned from Timaeus, and that the earth receives all that drips from the divinities, and also the generative powers that they contain, he was right in consecrating the angle of the tetragon to these divinities which procreate life. Indeed, some of them call the earth Hestia and Demeter, and claim that it partakes of Rhea, in its entirety, and that Rhea contains all the begotten cause. That is why, in obscure language, he says that the angle of the tetragon contains the single power which produces the unity of these divine creations.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“17. There are eight organs of knowledge: sense, imagination, art, opinion, deliberation, science, wisdom and mind. Art, prudence, science and mind we share with the Gods; sense and imagination, with the irrational animals; while opinion alone is our characteristic. Sense is a fallacious knowledge derived through the body; imagination is a notion in the soul; art is a habit of cooperating with reason. The words “with reason” are here added, for even a spider operates, but it lacks reason. Deliberation is a habit selective of the rightness of planning deeds; science is a habit of those things which remain ever the same, with Sameness; wisdom is a knowledge of the first causes; while Mind is the principle and fountain of all good things.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“For the late Neoplatonists, the true Hellenic “love of wisdom” could be supported and illustrated not only by the inspired poetry of Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod, but also by the Egyptian, Phoenician, and Assyrian myths and “theological dogmas,” including the so-called Chaldean Oracles (ta logia).”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“According to Plato, the visible cosmos is “a shrine brought into being for the everlasting gods” (ton aidion theon gegonos agalma), a living and self-moved creature modeled according to the pattern of the Intelligible Living Being (i.e., the realm of Ideas, kosmos noetos) that is forever existent.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The Pythagorean strain survived in Neoplatonism. For Porphyry and other Neoplatonists, Pythagoras was a member of a great chain of ancient prophets, theologians, and sages, essentially a Platonic philosopher whose many doctrines could be traced to their Eastern prototypes.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“113. The theorems of philosophy are to be enjoyed as much as possible, as if they were ambrosia and nectar. For the resultant pleasure is genuine, incorruptible and divine. They are also capable of producing magnanimity, and though they cannot make us eternal, yet they enable us to obtain a scientific knowledge of eternal natures.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“In the original Orphico-Pythagorean sense, philosophy meant wisdom (sophia) and love (eros) combined in a moral and intellectual purification in order to reach the “likeness to God” (homoiosis theo, [Plato, Theaet. 176b]). This likeness was to be attained by gno-sis, knowledge. The same Greek word nous (“intellect,” understood in a macrocosmic and microcosmic sense) covers all that is meant both by “spirit” (spiritus, ruh) and “intellect” (intellectus, ‘aql) in the Medieval Christian and Islamic lexicon. Thus Platonic philosophy (and especially Neoplatonism) was a spiritual and contemplative way of life leading to enlightenment; a way which was properly and intrinsically intellectual; a way that was ultimately based on intellection or noetic vision (noesis), which transcends the realm of sense perception and discursive reasoning. Through an immediate grasp of first principles, the non-discursive intelligence lead to a union (henosis) with the divine Forms. “Knowledge of the gods,” says Iamblichus, “is virtue and wisdom and perfect happiness, and makes us like to the gods” (Protr.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Timaeus of Locri is the main character of Plato’s dialogue Timaeus which presents the Pythagorean cosmology. We know nothing about Timaeus as a person. The Neoplatonists thought that the writings by Timaeus inspired Plato, but it seems that the treatise surviving under his name was only an epitome of the cosmology espoused by Plato and consists of reduced statements along with some later additions. It thus seems to be a summary made by a student of Hellenistic times (3rd–1st century B.C.E.).”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The Platonic Forms were noetic paradigms, archetypes, and universals arranged in a hierarchy, crowned by the Form of the Good (or Beauty). They constituted the only true objects of divine knowledge. In the myth of Phaedrus they were contemplated by the charioteers of souls before they crashed into the world of Becoming, and were thereafter unable to contemplate the Ideas directly.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“According to the Hellenic tradition, Pythagoras restricted the use of the word wisdom (sophia) so as to make it refer only to the science of immaterial realities treated as true Being, against the fluid material world of becoming whose very flow imitates the archetypes of true Being and derives from them. Before him wise men in Greece called themselves sages (sophoi, tantamount to those “exceeding in wisdom” who bear the attributes of the god Ea in Mesopotamia), but Pythagoras was the first among the Greeks to call himself a lover of wisdom, philosophos. He regarded philosophia as a form of purification, a way of life aimed at assimilation to God and the gaining of immortality.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The stages of philosophical ascent led from the love of particular physical beauty to physical beauty in general; thence to beauty of soul separated from the beauty of the body and so on. Finally, the beauty of divine knowledge was reached and the vision of the Form of Beauty itself was granted.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“While asserting that unity was the principle of all things, he set up Limit (peras) and the Unlimited (apeiron) as the two most basic archetypes of theophany.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The only altar at which he worshiped was that of Apollo the Giver of Life, at Delos, which is at the back of the Altar of Horns, because wheat and barley, and cheese cakes are the only offerings laid upon it, as it is not dressed by fire, and no victim is ever slain there, as Aristotle tells us, in his Constitution of the Delians.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Pythagoras was the first among the Greeks to call himself a lover of wisdom, philosophos. He regarded philosophia as a form of purification, a way of life aimed at assimilation to God and the gaining of immortality.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The Pythagoreans say that the triangle is the absolute principle of generation of begotten things, and of their form; that is why Timaeus says that the reasons of physical being, and of the regular formation of the elements are triangular; indeed, they have the three dimensions, in unity they gather the elements which in themselves are absolutely divided and changing; they are filled with the infinity characteristic of matter, and above the material beings they form bonds that indeed are frail. That is why triangles are bounded by straight lines, and have angles which unite the lines, and are their bonds. Philolaus was therefore right in devoting the angle of the triangle to four divinities, Kronos, Hades, Ares, and Bacchus, under these four names combining the fourfold disposition of the elements, which refers to the superior part of the universe, starting from the sky, or sections of the zodiac. Indeed, Kronos presides over everything humid and cold in essence; Ares, over everything fiery; Hades contains everything terrestrial, and Dionysus directs the generation of wet and warm things, represented by wine, which is liquid and warm. These four divinities divide their secondary operations, but they remain united; that is why Philolaus, by attributing to them one angle only, wished to express this power of unification.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“A great many Pythagorean works were composed around the 3rd century B.C.E., probably as philosophical textbooks for the uninitiated, since the main teaching was transmitted orally.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The ultimate goal of Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy was assimilation to god through the cultivation of virtue and truth.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“In a sense, Pythagoras exemplified Heracles (Melqart of the Phoenicians), i.e., as being an archetype of the spiritual hero who practiced the rites of incubation, oracular dreams, and was immortalized through the theurgic (or alchemical) fire. He joins the company of the gods in Heaven, thus following certain Phoenician and Hittitian cultic patterns.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“These two principles then are opposite to each other, of which Form is analogous to a male power and a father, while matter is analogous to a female power and a mother. The third thing is their offspring. Being three, they are recognizable by three marks: Form, by mind, according to knowledge; Matter by a spurious kind of reasoning, because it cannot be mentally perceived directly, but by analogy; and their production by sensation and opinion.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“1. Timaeus of Locri said the following: Of all the things in the universe there are two causes: Mind, of things existing according to reason; and Necessity, of things [existing] by force, according to the power of bodies.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“To think that Hesiodic genealogies or Homeric accounts were
accepted at face value by the Hellenes, even by the initiates and the
educated minority, would be to indulge oneself in rationalistic naivete
instead of trying to explore the metaphysical exegesis and symbolism of
the sacred.”
― Algis Uždavinys, Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth: From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism

“Certain things he declared mystically, symbolically, most of which were collected by Aristotle, as when he called the sea a tear of Kronos, the Great and Little Bear the hands of Rhea, the Pleiades the lyre of the Muses, and the planets the dogs of Persephone. He called the sound caused by striking on brass the voice of a daemon enclosed in the brass....”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“There is underlying continuity—which cuts across the recognized boundaries—and similarity between early Pythagoreanism and so-called “Neopythagoreanism.” The latter term was invented by modern scholarship both for reasons of classification and for the rather sinister wish to dismiss the clear analogies between early Pythagoreanism (which already regarded the philosopher as a healer of souls) and later Pythagoreanism, ostensibly “transformed into revelation” and blended with Greco-Egyptian alchemy.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“The task of the philosopher was thus to regrow his wings and to pass from the shadows of the sensible world to the divine realm, and to contemplate not the remote images, or shadows, but the Forms, or realities, themselves. This was the spiritual and intellectual way of recollection (anamnesis) which constituted the heart of Platonic philosophy.”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy

“Plotinus says: "Shut your eyes, and change to and wake another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use”
― Algis Uždavinys, The Heart of Plotinus: The Essential Enneads