History of Philosophy Audio Archive #182a - The Radiance of Perfection and the Mystic Ascent: Plotinus on the Good and the One, Plato's Symposium, The Myth of Psyche and Eros (Aphrodite), Socrates' Teacher Diotima, feat. Pierre Grimes
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Will (the host) writes a Substack page about various and sundry topics.
Plotinus (204-270 CE) was a mystical philosopher who transformed Plato's metaphysical ideas about the Forms and the divine intellect or nous into a spiritual path. In this lecture, Pierre Grimes (1924-2024 CE) introduces Plotinus and his work as recorded by his student Porphyry in The Enneads - a six-part treatise on the mystical ascent of the soul.
"That which gives pre-eminence to the members of any class...is the word 'Greatness... No one would have an interest in that experience, if it was not also Beautiful"
-this 03/24/1998 lecture, catalogue number NSPRS 092
You can find the original video, with chalkboard explanations here.
https://youtu.be/Cvs52cBjpgU?list=PLp6rnhCy8XkqKXmCtLRqC4hOFnEaVVWZx
The Internet home for the Noetic Society is available here, on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@NoeticSociety
Pierre Grimes had a remarkable life. He was an American boy who volunteered to fight Fascism at the age of 17, and earned a Bronze Star with an Oak Leaf Cluster, a Purple Heart, and a Bronze Arrowhead (for the amphibious landing at Dramont "Red Beach" in the south of France, part of Operation Dragoon). For WW2-heads he served in the 1st Battalion, 142nd Infantry Regiment (part of the 36th Infantry Division). He saw heavy combat in the European theater, and participated in the grotesque and shocking liberation of 'satellite' concentration camps outside of Dachau.
After the war, Grimes used philosophy to work with alcoholics on substance abuse. He thought the Socratic method of maieutics or 'midwifery' was a broadly-applicable dialectical procedure that could show false and disempowering beliefs for what they were, thus eliminating the root cause of a patient's substance-seeking and self-defeating behaviors. He wrote a pair of modern Socratic-style dialogues titled the Vinodorus and the Alcibiades in an attempt to promote philosophy as psychotherapy, and philosophy as a way of life.
In this way, he resembles another philosophical psychotherapist whose work was transformed by his experience of the Nazi Holocaust, Jewish survivor Viktor Frankl. Frankl, like Grimes, was horrified at how casually otherwise decent people could commit acts of total moral worthlessness. He saw their easily parallelized nature, a normalized schizophrenia: at once decent family men who put others first and strove for wisdom and faith, and at the other extreme: disciplined killers and torturers who accomplished their task with vigor, clarity, enthusiasm, and yes, even Joy (As in Joy Division). The shock of Grimes' experience liberating these camps, combined with the heavy fighting he saw near the Monte Artemisio ridge and elsewhere left a deep mark, and triggered a search for wisdom in Greek and Hellenistic philosophy as well as the classics of Indian, Hindu, and Buddhist spirituality.
In 1967 he started the Noetic Society to study Socrates, Plato, and the Neoplatonists along with Indian religion, tantra, and Zen. One of his most intriguing experiments was the software program "To Artemis: The Challenge to Know Thyself" which used "400 structured questions" to model a process users could follow to solve their own problems and explore their beliefs. This is no longer extant anywhere on the Internet - I have posted in various places trying to resurrect it, but to no avail. If you are willing to waste some time, contact whoever is left at this place, and see if we can revive Artemis, or at least read the questions.
https://www.noeticsociety.org/members
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Music by Max John, Schubert Impromptu No.3 in G-flat Major