(urth) started my second read of New Sun

John Watkins john.watkins04 at gmail.com
Fri May 14 19:41:16 PDT 2010


Plato to modernity:  "Thanks for the footnotes."

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I think they interfere as little as possible both because they are at
> base
> > moral creatures who know they constantly risk catastrophic changes in
> > their "client" civilizations and because of limited resources, as each
> > group of islands on Yesod is responsible for an entire galaxy in Briah.
> > Tzadkiel needs Severian's coming to confirm when his personal attention
> > will be needed and where along the timeline to aim the Fountain, so he is
> > available to supervise the other worlds in his teritory.
>
> Interesting theory.
>
>
> > I think this could be an artifact of the borrowing from Plato; wasn't the
> > Hellenic cultural view of time as if they stood by a river looking
> > downstream as it carried figures of the past into the distance while
> those
> > of the unknowable future are behind them, only the largest foreshadowed
> by
> > ripples if at all?
>
> Yes; the idea of successive "worlds" with higher levels of existence
> is common in many belief systems, but the unique confluence of
> Hellenistic philosophy with the emerging Judaic religions (including
> some the syncretic ones) was a major development on early
> Christianity.  Since learned men in the first few centuries AD
> would've studied what we know consider classical Greek philosophy, all
> of the Church fathers were well-versed in it, and consequently it has
> become something of a part of the Christian folk ideas about heaven
> and hell.  But even in other mythic sources (like Norse mythology) we
> get the idea of successive levels of reality up and down the world
> tree... and Wolfe drew this exact parallel in TWK.
>
> It's a case of nothing new under the sun; really... every "great idea"
> we have goes back to these very early ideas.  All we can say is that
> out new learnings seem more like clarifications of what we've found
> out before. Which of course Plato would agree with and say, "Duh,
> modernity.  See what I wrote in the _Meno_?  I got this covered."
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