Do you mean that Heidegger is positing the overman as agency? — Joshs
This human being of the future is the proper ruler, the one who has become master of the last man,indeed in such a way that the last man disappears. His disappearance indicates that the ruler is no longer defined in opposition to the last man-which is what always happens as long as future humanity, spawned by what has gone before, has to grasp itself as over-man, — ibid. page 127
For 'punishment' is what revenge calls itself; with a hypocritical lie it creates a good conscience for itself.....
Has he unlearned the spirit of revenge and all gnashing of teeth? And who taught him reconciliation with time and something higher than any reconciliation? For that will which is the will to power must will something higher than any reconciliation; but how shall this be brought about? Who could teach him also to will backwards? — Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, On Redemption, translated by Walter Kaufman
Meanwhile we want to heed the fact that at the time when the thought of eternal return of the same arises Nietzsche is striving most decisively in his thought to dehumanize and de-deify being as a whole. His striving is not a mere echo, as one might suppose, of an ostensible "positivistic period" now in abeyance. It has its own, more profound origin. Only in this way is it possible for Nietzsche to be driven directly from such striving to its apparently incongruous opposite, when in his doctrine of will to power he demands the supreme humanization of beings — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol II, page 94
If we follow Nietzsche's lead and substitute "the philosopher" for "the knower," "the artist" for "the creator," and "the saint" for "the lover," then the phrase we introduced a moment ago tells us that the philosopher, artist, and saint are one. However, it is not Nietzsche's purpose here to concoct an amalgam that would consist of all the things these words used to mean. On the contrary, he is seeking the figure of a human being who exists simultaneously in the transformed unity of that threefold metamorphosis-the knower, the creator, the giver. This human being of the future is the proper ruler, the one who has become master of the last man, indeed in such a way that the last man disappears. His disappearance indicates that the ruler is no longer defined in opposition to the last man-which is what always happens as long as future humanity, spawned by what has gone before, has to grasp itself as over-man, that is to say, as a transition. The ruler, that is, the designated unity of knower, creator, and lover, is in his own proper grounds altogether an other. — ibid. page 127
Morality as a means of seduction--- "Nature is good, for a wise and good God is its cause. Who, then, is responsible for the 'corruption of mankind'? It tyrants and seducers, the ruling orders---they must be destroyed"---: Rousseau's logic (compare Pascal's logic, which lays the responsibility on original sin).
Compare the related logic of Luther. In both cases a pretext is sought to introduce an insatiable thirst for revenge as a moral-religious duty. Hatred for the ruling order seeks to sanctify itself---(the "sinfulness of Israel": foundation of the power of the priest),
Compare the related logic of Paul. It is always God's cause in which these reactions come forth, the cause of right, of humanity, etc. In the case of Christ, the rejoicing of the people appears as the cause of his execution; an anti-priestly movement from the first. Even in the case of the anti-Semites it is the same artifice: to visit condemnatory judgments upon one's enemies opponent and to reserve to oneself the role of retributive justice. — Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 347, translated by Walter Kaufman
No, I am calling the event "actually sensing" and explicitly saying it is the action of the sensible object and the passion of the sense. Aristotle is quite clear in De Anima, that the sense organ changes in sensation. Being changed is undergoing passion. — Dfpolis
The activity of the perceptible object, however, and of the perceptual capacity is one and the same (although the being for them is not the same). I mean, for example, the active sound and the active hearing. For it is possible to have hearing and not to hear, and what has a sound is not always making a sound. But when what can hear is active and what can make a sound is making a sound, then |425b30| the active hearing comes about at the same time as the active sound, and we might say that the one is an act of hearing and the other a making of a sound. — De Anima, 425b20, translated by CDC Reeve.
Since, though, the activity of the perceptible object and of the perceptual part are one, although the being is not the same, it is necessary for hearing and sound that are said to be such in this [active] way to be destroyed and to be preserved together, and so also with flavor and tasting, and similarly with the others. But when these are said to be such potentially this is not necessary. The earlier physicists, however, did not speak well about this, since they thought that there was neither white nor black without seeing, nor flavor without tasting. For though in one way they spoke correctly, in another way incorrectly. For since perception and the perceptible object are spoken of in a twofold way, on the one hand as potential and on the other as active, what they said holds of the latter but not of the former. They, though, spoke in a simple way about things that are not spoken of in a simple way. But if voice is a sort of consonance, and voice and hearing are in a way one (while in another way not one and the same), and if consonance is a ratio, then hearing must also be a sort of ratio. And that is why each sort of excess, whether high or low pitch, destroys hearing, and similarly excesses in flavor destroy taste, and in colors the intensely bright and dark destroy sight, and in smell the strong odors, whether sweet or bitter, since the perceptual capacity is a sort of ratio. That is also why things—for example, the sharp, sweet, or salty—are pleasant when, being pure and unmixed, they are brought into the ratio, since they are pleasant then. And in general a mixture, |a consonance, is more pleasant than either high or low pitch, and for touch what can be [further] heated or cooled. The perceptual capacity is a ratio, and excessive things dissolve or destroy it. — ibid. 426a10
Since intelligibility is a precondition of knowledge, intelligible properties are prior to, and independent of, the act of knowing — Dfpolis
For something is said to be a substance, as we mentioned, in three ways, as form, as matter, and as what is composed of both. And of these, the matter is potentiality, the form is actuality. And since what is composed of the two is an animate thing, the body is not the actualization of the soul, but rather the soul is the actualization of a certain sort of body. And that is why those people take things correctly who believe that the soul neither exists without a body nor is a body of some sort. For it is not a body, but it belongs to a body, and for this reason is present in a body, and in a body of such-and-such a sort, rather than as our predecessors supposed, when they inserted it into a body without first determining in which and in what sort, even though it appears that not just any random thing is receptive of any random thing. In our way of looking at it, by contrast, it comes about quite reasonably. For the actualization of each thing naturally comes about in what it already belongs to potentially, that is, the appropriate matter. That the soul, then, is a certain sort of actualization and account of what has the potentiality to be of this sort, is evident from these things. — De Anima, 414a15, translated by C.D.C. Reeve
In this thread, you haven't really indicated what it is I am saying which doesn't make sense to you. — Metaphysician Undercover
There is nothing to indicate that the world might be eternal. and everything indicates that there is potentiality and actuality. So that possibility, that the world is eternal and there no potentiality or actuality is easily excluded as unreal. — Metaphysician Undercover
You like to make objections against my interpretation without any real support, like pointing to what exactly is wrong with my interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover
The small parts which are not consistent are best disregarded rather than trying to work them into the overall consistency because this would be an impossible task. — Metaphysician Undercover
For what is visible is color, and it is what is on [the surface of] what is intrinsically visible—intrinsically visible not in account, but because it has within |418a30| itself the cause of its being visible. — ibid. 418a30
And light is the activity of this, of the transparent insofar as it is transparent. But whatever this is present in, so potentially is darkness. For light is a sort of color of the transparent, when it is made actually transparent by fire or something of that sort, such as the body above. For one and the same [affection] also belongs to it. — ibid. 418b10
On all these grounds, therefore, we may infer with confidence that there is something beyond the bodies that are about us on this earth, different and separate from them ; and that the superior glory of its nature is proportionate to its distance from this world of ours. (269b 14)
For it is not insofar as something is water or insofar as it is air that it is visible, but because there is a certain nature in it that is the same in both of them and in the [eternal] body above. — Aristotle, De Anima, DA II 7 418b7–9, translated by C.D.C. Reeve
The primary science, by contrast, is concerned with things that are both separable and immovable. Now all causes are necessarily eternal, and these most of all. For they are the causes of the divine beings that are perceptible. — Metaphysics, 1026a10
There are some who say that chance is a cause both of this heaven and of everything that is in the ordered universe; for they say the vortex came to be by chance, and so did the motion which separated the parts and caused the present order of the universe. And this is very surprising; for they say, on the one hand, that animals and plants neither exist nor are generated by luck but that the cause is nature or intellect or some other such thing (for it is not any chance thing that is generated from a given seed, but an olive tree from this kind and a man from that kind, and on the other hand, that the heavens and the most divine of the visible objects were generated by chance, which cause is not such as any of those in the case of animals or plants. — Aristotle, Physics, 196a25, translated by HG Apostle
There is no single science that deals with what is good for all living things any more that there is single art of medicine dealing with everything that is, but a different science deals with each particular good. The argument that man is the best of all living things makes no difference. There are other things whose nature is much more divine than man's: to take the most visible example only, the constituent parts of the universe. — Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 114a25, translated by Martin Ostwald
There are no unnatural, or divine bodies, nothing in the universe is moving in an eternal circular motion, because all has been generated and will be destroyed, consisting of natural bodies. — Metaphysician Undercover
The primary science, by contrast, is concerned with things that are both separable and immovable. Now all causes are necessarily eternal, and these most of all. For they are the causes of the divine beings that are perceptible.
— Metaphysics, 1026a10 — Paine
From this we can say that Aristotle has demonstrated that the entire universe is composed of natural bodies, and is itself a natural body. There are no unnatural, or divine bodies, nothing in the universe is moving in an eternal circular motion, because all has been generated and will be destroyed, consisting of natural bodies. — Metaphysician Undercover
The primary science, by contrast, is concerned with things that are both separable and immovable. Now all causes are necessarily eternal, and these most of all. For they are the causes of the divine beings that are perceptible. — Metaphysics, 1026a10
What 'bodily substance' he talking about? Endocrines? — Wayfarer
For the nature of the stars is eternal, because it is a certain sort of substance, and the mover is eternal and prior to the moved, and what is prior to a substance must be a substance. It is evident, accordingly, that there must be this number of substances that are in their nature eternal and intrinsically immovable, and without magnitude (due to the cause mentioned earlier). It is evident, then, that the movers are substances, and that one of these is first and another second, in accord with the same order as the spatial movements of the stars. But when we come to the number of these spatial movements, we must investigate it on the basis of the mathematical science that is most akin to philosophy, namely, astronomy. For it is about substance that is perceptible but eternal that this produces its theoretical knowledge, whereas the others are not concerned with any substance at all—for example, the one concerned with numbers and geometry. — Metaphysics 1073a30, translated by C.D.C Reeve
If there is something that is capable of moving things or acting on them, but that is not actively doing so, there will not [necessarily] be movement, since it is possible for what has a capacity not to activate it. There is no benefit, therefore, in positing eternal substances, as those who accept the Forms do, unless there is to be present in them some starting-point that is capable of causing change. Moreover, even this is not enough, and neither is another substance beyond the Forms. For if it will not be active, there will not be movement. Further, even if it will be active, it is not enough, if the substance of it is a capacity. For then there will not be eternal movement, since what is potentially may possibly not be. There must, therefore, be such a starting-point, the very substance of which is activity. Further, accordingly, these substances must be without matter. For they must be eternal, if indeed anything else is eternal. Therefore they must be activity. — Metaphysics, 1071b12–22, translated by C.D.C Reeve
Anyway, carry on. — Wayfarer
But the salient point of the dispute is, is each individual an instance of a unique form? I say not, that the form 'man' is common to all men, that is why it is a universal. — Wayfarer
I don't think that's what 'form' means. Socrates truly is the form 'man' but the form 'man' is common to all men. Likewise for forms generally. — Wayfarer
But the universal too seems to some people to be most of all a cause, and the universal most of all a starting-point. So let us turn to that too. For it seems impossible for any of the things said [of something] universally to be substance. For first the substance of each thing is special to it, in that it does not belong to anything else. A universal, by contrast, is something common, since that thing is said to be a universal which naturally belongs to many things. Of which, then, will it be the substance? For it is either the substance of none or of all. And it cannot be the substance of all. — Metaphysics, 1038b9, translated by CDC Reeve
But in fact, as has been said, the ultimate matter and the shape are one and the same, the one potentially, the other actively, so that it is the same to look for what is the cause of oneness or what is the cause of being one.946 For each thing is a one, and what potentially is and what actively is are in a way one. And so there is no other cause here, unless there is something that brought about the movement from potentiality to activity. Things that have no matter, though, are all unconditionally just what is a one. — Metaphysics,1045b20, translated by CDC Reeve
What we wish to say is clear from the particular cases by induction, and we must not look for a definition of everything, but be able to comprehend the analogy, namely, that as what is building is in relation to what is capable of building, and what is awake is in relation to what is asleep, and what is seeing is in relation to what has its eyes closed but has sight, and what has been shaped out of the matter is in relation to the matter, and what has been finished off is to the unfinished. Of the difference exemplified in this analogy let the activity be marked off by the first part, the potentiality by the second. — ibid. Θ 6 1048a35–b6
Thanks, the materials you provide are very informative. I wonder if in the above passage, 'mind' is the translation of 'nous'? — Wayfarer
And again, even if Aristotle is not discussing the immortality of the soul, it is easy to see how this would appear to be so for the medieval commentators, Islamic and Christian — Wayfarer
(I'm very interested in the medieval conception of the rational soul, which seems very much aligned with these types of ideas.) — Wayfarer
