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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4059 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 17, 2023

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Couldn’t you write a similar analogy for all sorts of schema?

An obvious choice would be thesis/antithesis/synthesis from the Greek dialectic. That’d even be a plausible influence on the early Christian tradition. Though…I’m not sure it was widely framed as tripartite until Hegel. It also leads to some perverse comparisons to dialectical materialism.

Freud’s id, ego, and superego are an even closer match. The set of worldly instincts, the moral authority, and the layer which mediates between them. I guess Freud was kind of copping from Plato’s logistikon, thymoeides, epithymetikon anyway.

Or consider the classic logic puzzle of the wolf, rabbit, and cabbage. As the puzzle-solvers, we are the Father, setting out a design to get all three across the river. Each item attends with whole cognition, such as it is, to its worldly role. Using a boat to get across, one item at a time, is the Father’s will expressed on the Son, and in that relationship is found the Holy Spirit.

In other words, I think it’s imposing your own pattern. That doesn’t mean you can’t gain something from meditating on it.

emanating

Something is telling me that this word, specifically, was central to a heresy or splinter group. But I can’t remember what.

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