Unlike the Stoics and Epicureans, most of the Platonists from the first century BCE onwards (the so-called Middle and Neo-Platonists) held that since the cause(s) of the cosmos (the ordered universe) were eternal (the paradigm-forms and the creator God/Intellect as their mediator to receptive matter), then the cosmos must also be eternal (since the eternal activity of the eternal cause is direct).
Doubtless, and I mean this directly, any incarnate perception of time involves motion. So the question arises, are we perceiving time?
There are quite a few ways one could answer that, but it still comes down to motion, or the result of motion, which is the indicator towards the existence of what we flippantly refer to as time.
Can we then, even speak of time, as anything but an effect?
Even then, we are using an abstraction to cast light upon an abstraction. Mathematics itself is similar, in that everything in math stands for something else. Removing abstraction to another level is interesting tho, to me.
So we're getting to the place where time can be intuited, but never truly manifested, because it only appears in concert, not as an identifiable phenomenon.
This takes us then to a place where time is very much on the same kind of order of experience as the soul.
Following this, perhaps we gain insight on Pythagoras, who stated that time is the soul of the cosmos.
Well, time would be of the same order as number; neither belonging solely to subjective consciousness nor to objective phenomena but being forms through which intelligence operated (as in, the conditions of the analytical mind, which are not themselves subjective nor objective but which include the subject/object paradigm as a form). By soul, Pythagoras and ancient authors in the Mediterranean world generally, meant activity or oftentimes, life. Soul was the activity of intellect in matter. The unformed, chaotic matter that Plutarch talks about was said to have a "chaotic soul", as in, it wasn't suffused with intellect.
That soul is life must be not profane belief, but arrived at through careful observation. If its just belief, its meaningless in that it only leads to more beliefs, and belief is incapable of providing insight. And so I am left with the notion of observation, and raw experience as the root of any understanding.
Thus I can, in all honesty state that I have felt a flow through myself, a current of sorts, and while this could be experienced it can only be evoked, never truly described. Thus I can find a resonance with Pythagoras, and yes, this means life has implications of time.
Doubtless, and I mean this directly, any incarnate perception of time involves motion. So the question arises, are we perceiving time?
There are quite a few ways one could answer that, but it still comes down to motion, or the result of motion, which is the indicator towards the existence of what we flippantly refer to as time.
Can we then, even speak of time, as anything but an effect?
Maybe not an effect but a calculation of change/motion for various purposes
Even then, we are using an abstraction to cast light upon an abstraction. Mathematics itself is similar, in that everything in math stands for something else. Removing abstraction to another level is interesting tho, to me.
Exactly, it's abstraction based on perception and constructed by analytical mind. It's derivative of basic experience
So we're getting to the place where time can be intuited, but never truly manifested, because it only appears in concert, not as an identifiable phenomenon.
This takes us then to a place where time is very much on the same kind of order of experience as the soul.
Following this, perhaps we gain insight on Pythagoras, who stated that time is the soul of the cosmos.
Well, time would be of the same order as number; neither belonging solely to subjective consciousness nor to objective phenomena but being forms through which intelligence operated (as in, the conditions of the analytical mind, which are not themselves subjective nor objective but which include the subject/object paradigm as a form). By soul, Pythagoras and ancient authors in the Mediterranean world generally, meant activity or oftentimes, life. Soul was the activity of intellect in matter. The unformed, chaotic matter that Plutarch talks about was said to have a "chaotic soul", as in, it wasn't suffused with intellect.
Or perhaps, rationality.
That soul is life must be not profane belief, but arrived at through careful observation. If its just belief, its meaningless in that it only leads to more beliefs, and belief is incapable of providing insight. And so I am left with the notion of observation, and raw experience as the root of any understanding.
Thus I can, in all honesty state that I have felt a flow through myself, a current of sorts, and while this could be experienced it can only be evoked, never truly described. Thus I can find a resonance with Pythagoras, and yes, this means life has implications of time.