In thinking about this today, I think I am positing one axiom that I have not yet seen in the classics yet.
Let me define the generation of a being to be the shortest path up the chain of existence to the One. For example, if we work from Hesiod, Chaos, Gaia, etc. are the first generation; Nyx, Ouranos, etc. are the second generation; etc. There's some complexities here: the Titan(esse)s are also the second generation, as they are born from a first generation mother even though their father is of the same generation they are. The Olympians are therefore the third generation (being descended from Titan(esse)s); Aphrodite is also of the third generation, being generated directly from Ouranos. And on and on.
I make the point of the shortest path because of oddball examples like Heracles, who is divine despite having a mortal mother. Being divine, he cannot be of a mortal level! So he must take his heritage from his father.
The assumption I am making is that each generation defines the world in which the generations below them exist. In Hesiod, the primordials are the world in which the Titans and Olympians live. The Titans and Olympians are the world in which the demigods, nymphs, oceanids, etc. live, and so on and so on. I don't think I've seen this assumption anywhere that I've read, and I probably just conjured it out of nowhere.
However, if you allow this assumption, then the original point I was making above is straightforward enough to make here, too: each being of a given generation is causally independent of other beings of the same generation, since they have their being from the generation immediately above. Since the beings at any given generation are causally independent, they cannot be omniscient at that level of causality (though they may be omniscient of causal levels below them, etc).
Your criticisms still seem to apparently stand, of course: I used Hesiod as an example because it is fairly straightforward (but with some nice edge cases to make sure I'm not running off the rails), but things get awfully weird when gets to the higher levels of being in Neoplatonism, so who knows.
Of course, these are all merely models, and any relationship to reality proper is merely incidental!
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Date: 2021-12-27 07:31 pm (UTC)Let me define the generation of a being to be the shortest path up the chain of existence to the One. For example, if we work from Hesiod, Chaos, Gaia, etc. are the first generation; Nyx, Ouranos, etc. are the second generation; etc. There's some complexities here: the Titan(esse)s are also the second generation, as they are born from a first generation mother even though their father is of the same generation they are. The Olympians are therefore the third generation (being descended from Titan(esse)s); Aphrodite is also of the third generation, being generated directly from Ouranos. And on and on.
I make the point of the shortest path because of oddball examples like Heracles, who is divine despite having a mortal mother. Being divine, he cannot be of a mortal level! So he must take his heritage from his father.
The assumption I am making is that each generation defines the world in which the generations below them exist. In Hesiod, the primordials are the world in which the Titans and Olympians live. The Titans and Olympians are the world in which the demigods, nymphs, oceanids, etc. live, and so on and so on. I don't think I've seen this assumption anywhere that I've read, and I probably just conjured it out of nowhere.
However, if you allow this assumption, then the original point I was making above is straightforward enough to make here, too: each being of a given generation is causally independent of other beings of the same generation, since they have their being from the generation immediately above. Since the beings at any given generation are causally independent, they cannot be omniscient at that level of causality (though they may be omniscient of causal levels below them, etc).
Your criticisms still seem to apparently stand, of course: I used Hesiod as an example because it is fairly straightforward (but with some nice edge cases to make sure I'm not running off the rails), but things get awfully weird when gets to the higher levels of being in Neoplatonism, so who knows.
Of course, these are all merely models, and any relationship to reality proper is merely incidental!