yuling 🥒

the horror isn't that she fell from grace. it's that she was never in a state of grace to begin with. her being "Sophie" rather than "Sophia" isn't degradation from a higher state. rather, it's revealing that she was always the degraded version, from the moment the Demiurge created her soul.

hatsune is a soul that was never meant to reach Capricorn, who should never have left her island, whose very aspiration toward sk/the Good is metaphysically inappropriate given her soul's created nature.

If the demiurge is good, why was it that in the created world there were defects? the answer for individual souls is terrifying: the defects are intentional.

the Gnostic material world is a prison, but you're wrongfully imprisoned(?) the Platonic social order is also a prison, but you're RIGHTFULLY imprisoned. this is where you're supposed to be.

perhaps the Gnostic framework is kinder. Gnostic Sophia was divine, fell, but retains the capacity to return (i think). her fall was not her nature.

the Platonic appetitive soul was never divine in the first place. incapacity is built into the soul's structure by God.

when she tries anyway, she creates harm (bc she lacks wisdom to know the right means) and remains in the material world (bc that's where appetitive souls belong).

soul attempting rational soul functions. she was never supposed to reach Sakiko/the Good in the first place.

her soul's very nature (determined by the demiurge at creation) makes her incapable of union with the divine/Sakiko.

even before the fall into embodiment, souls were already hierarchically arranged. at least Gnostic Sophia was originally divine and fell. in Plato's system, some souls were never meant to ascend that high in the first place.

If we read Hatsune through this Platonic framework, she's an appetitive

Plato was a kind of Pythagorean: do philosophy for salvation. what is salvation? its going back to our original state. what is our original state? disembodied spiritual existence.

if souls have naturally different capacities, then even in the disembodied state, there never was a state of equality.

MORE THOUGHTS (really ramblings tbh)
arguably, theres a theistic metaphysics underlying Plato's system. Timaeus presents a demiurge, a divine craftsman who creates the cosmos by imposing Form on chaotic matter. the demiurge selflessly willed and chose the greater good. but what is this greater good?

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symt yaoi

let's read philosophical texts together... (ibuprofen pose)

did you all know that i'm a philosophyhead? besides yaori, it's what i only think about.

i'm so happy i can finally use my philosophy autism to analyze avemygo.

hatsune wants sakiko, but her identity is built on the harm she (believes she) caused sakiko. she cannot reach sakiko without confronting that she's "Sophie" (the degraded, harmful one) not "Sophia" (pure wisdom/virtue).

you're right that the Gnostic conception delivers the horror more effectively. i think the song's horror isn't the calm recognition that "I lack knowledge" (Plato), it's the violation, the sense that something is doing this to you, that there's an agent actively preventing your return.

"If I have to live with this, I'd rather just..."
The soul recognizes it is in an impossible situation:
1. It cannot die (souls are immortal, as argued in Phaedo)
2. It cannot ascend (the path is blocked)
3. It cannot cease to desire (Eros is natural to the soul)

Sophie describes a state where Eros still operates (the soul still desires, still yearns) but finds no path upward. the screams don't reach not because God doesn't exist, but because something is blocking the ascent.

"anguish overtakes my heart, as I know my agonized screams will never reach God"
Eros is our yearning for restoring knowledge to explicit consciousness... The psychic force that relentlessly pushes the human soul from the lowest layer of consciousness, eikasia, to the highest, noesis, is Eros.

"My purity is ravaged"
in Platonic terms, the soul's purity is its simplicity and intelligibility--it belongs to the intelligible realm. Being "ravaged" perhaps means the soul is being forcibly kept in the sensible realm, suffering maximum privation of being.

This is philosophically impossible in Plato's normal system. But what would it feel like to exist in this impossible state? The answer: "bizarre"--literally outside the normal structure of reality.

Sophie describes when the material world doesn't exemplify Forms. it's just matter, matter, matter. Pure Receptacle (chaos) without the ordering principle of Forms.

In the Timaeus, the Demiurge is good. He creates the cosmos because it realizes more good than the other situation.

But in the song, the hierophant is depraved. in Platonic terms, this represents a fundamental corruption of the efficient cause of the cosmos.

a Platonic interpretation of Sophie.

thank you, i'm glad you're enjoying it!

it's not too explicit. i just wanted to put a warning.