Forms and Gaps

 History of Philosophy without Any Gaps is another podcast station I have been listening to.  It was the only podcast I could find that discussed Plotinus.  Yes, Plotinus is one of the philosophers who falls into that eponymous gap.    There were actually no less than five podcasts on Plotinus, and I listened to them all.

I am circling around Plotinus after reading the First Ennead straight and almost dying of it.  I read a book on Plotinus’s thought called Return to the One (I actually haven’t read all of it yet) and have started another book called The Essential Plotinus.   At first I wasn’t sure why I was throwing so much time at this philosopher, and even spending money on understanding him better (my library contained NOTHING –philosophy with gaps). 

It has paid off a bit, though.  At least I know Plotinus from a potted plant, which I did not, before.   I don’t understand his odd trinity of One, Nous and Soul (I think that is it) or their (its) metaphysical necessity in his thinking, but at least, I know what his thinking is not and a little of what it is.  I think that some of the confusion, of feeling I am coming in on the second half of a particularly difficult podcast, is that Plotinus was writing basically to those who already knew what he was talking about … his students.   And further, his editor Porphyry rearranged his writings.   And Plotinus was speaking of the Ineffable, a rather paradoxical undertaking, which makes it unsurprising that my brain tends to turn a sort of event-horizon model, infinitely slowing down, as I get closer to the heart of the issue.

I think I have heard that a philosopher teaches as much by his approach as by the content of what he says; in fact, I think I discussed this with Liam in regard to Nietzsche a couple of years ago, and it still seems true to me.  The mode is part of the message.  I think I started thinking about this when I read HDF Kitto’s Form and Meaning in Greek Drama a few years ago.   He wrote:

I have come to 
believe more firmly, and I hope to follow more consistently, as 
a principle of criticism, the idea that in a great work of art, 
whether a play, a picture, or a piece of music, the connexion 
between the form and the content is so vital that the two may 
be said to be ultimately identical.

I do not think this is only true in the literary forms.  

And it seems so simplistic now that I have written it out, but I do think it is a good thing to keep in mind.  

It makes me think of a discussion my teenager and I were having about meta-messages.   You have the content of the communication, and then you have the meta-content… coming from the context and the way the thing is delivered.    They are not two things really, but one; but it’s possible to over-focus on the content aspect, in a sort of naive way. 

This is what Vulcans did in the 60′s, which is rather puzzling.  

And what nerds tend to do, according to a book I read a few years ago called American Nerd: The Story of My People. 

The other thing that is sometimes forgotten in understanding is the empty spaces.   You are told to be aware of the spaces when you do visual design.   But there are usually spaces in written works too, and it’s interesting to see what isn’t said.    Back to gaps again!