Apart from the question of whether causes and first principles exist outside of the individual beings they bring into existence, they can be distinguished from each other during the inquiry into their nature. What, after all, is an inquiry into causes if one cannot make that distinction?

The soul is the cause and first principle of the living body. But these are so spoken in many ways, and similarly the soul is cause in the three ways distinguished; for the soul is cause as being that from which the movement is itself derived, as that for the sake of which it occurs, and as the essence of bodies which are ensouled. — De Anima, 415b8, translated by D.W. Hamlyn

But the intellect, as a potential (from the passage I quoted), is posterior to the material body, dependent on it, just like every other power that the soul has. — Metaphysician Undercover

The potentiality of the intellect in III.4 is not described as a dependency upon the "material body" but as a condition that allows it to think "all things":

It must, then, since it thinks all things, be unmixed, as Anaxagoras says, in order it may rule, that is in order it may know; for the intrusion of anything foreign to it hinders and obstructs it; hence too, it must have no other nature than this, that is potential. That part of the soul, then, called intellect (and I speak of as intellect that by which the soul thinks and supposes) is actually none of the existing things before it thinks. Hence too, it is reasonable that it should not be mixed with the body; for in that case it would come to be of a certain kind, either cold or hot, or it would even have an organ like the faculty of perception; but as things are it has none. Those who say, then, that soul is a place of forms speak well, except it is not the whole soul but that which can think, and it is not actually but potentially the forms. — ibid, 429a 18

This is the last comment I will make in this discussion. Feel free to have the last word. I am still no closer to understanding your interpretation and you report the same consternation about mine. It is time that I exit the revolving door.

They are not separated in the generated individual, but Aristotle distinguishes between the soul as form and the individual repeatedly as the bulk of my quotes demonstrate. De Anima begins with the distinction:

There is also the problem of whether the affections (πάθη) of the soul are all common also to that which has it or whether any are peculiar to the soul itself; — ibid, 403a3-7, Greek terms included by Eugene T. Gendlin

After Aristotle develops his proposed answer to the problem he can say:

Hence old age is not due to the soul's being affected in a certain way, but this happening to that which the soul is in, as in the case of drunkenness and disease. — ibid, 408b 18, emphasis mine

The book is meaningless without the distinction.

Except for the forms and matter which make such beings possible.

The traffic lights turn blue tomorrow.

One of the roles of metaphor is to travel. Poetry as means of changing place and time.

A Contemporary

What if I came down now out of these
solid dark clouds that build up against the mountain
day after day with no rain in them
and lived as a blade of grass
in a garden in the south when the clouds part in winter
from the beginning I would be older than all the animals
and to the last I would be simpler
frost would design me and dew would disappear on me
sun would shine through me
I would be green with white roots
feel worms touch my feet as a bounty
have no name and no fear
turn naturally to the light
know how to spend the day and night
climbing out of myself
all my life. — W.S. Merwin, Flower and Hand

They are a "special" class of beings in regard to distinguishing the generated from what is not generated.

I don't understand your use of "combined beings". It doesn't appear Aristotelian to me. — Metaphysician Undercover

Read Chapter 8 of Book Zeta of the Metaphysics for the briefest account of the "hylomorphism" that Aristotle uses throughout his works on natural beings. The chapter should be read as a whole to understand its parts but here is the decisive sentence regarding this discussion:

So, it is evident from what has been said that what is called "a form" or "a substance" is not generated, but what is generated is the composite which is named according to that form, and that there is matter in everything that is generated, and in the latter one part is this and another that. — Metaphysics, 1033b 15, translated by H.G. Apostle

This idea, I cannot accept. The idea that when a person becomes old, and mentally incapacitated, suffering dementia or something like that, the person is still fully capable of "thought", and it's just something else that decays, I believe is completely refuted by evidence. We'd have to really distort the meaning of "thought" to support such a position. — Metaphysician Undercover

This does not reflect Aristotle's thinking. Only some combined beings are capable of thought. The capacity is directly related to the condition of the body. This is made clear in the passage preceding the one I quoted:

The intellect seems to be born in us as a kind of substance and not to be destroyed. For it would be destroyed if at all by the feebleness of old age, while as things are, what happens is similar to what happens in the case of the sense-organs. For if an old man acquired an eye of a certain kind, he would see as well as even a young man. Hence old age is not due to the soul's being affected in a certain way, but this happening to that which the soul is in, as in the case of drunkenness and disease. — ibid, 408b 18, emphasis mine

I believe that in reality we ought to reject this qualification "impassable", and allow the simple solution, that the material aspect of the human mind is what receives forms. — Metaphysician Undercover

Here again, it is important to follow distinctions Aristotle makes between the soul as a principle that animates all life from the experience of combined beings. Aristotle states at the beginning of the book that only combined beings can be affected:

There is also the problem of whether the affections (πάθη) of the soul are all common also to that which has it or whether any are peculiar to the soul itself; for it is necessary to deal with this, though it is not easy. It appears that in most cases the soul is not affected, nor does it act (ποιεῖν) apart from the body, e.g., in being angry, being confident, wanting, and in all perceiving. although noein (νοεῖν, thinking, understanding, nous-activity) looks most like being peculiar to the soul. But if this too is a form of imagination or does not exist apart from (μὴ ἄνευ) imagination, it would not be possible even for this to be (εἶναι, einai) apart from the body. — ibid, 403a3-7, Greek terms included by Eugene T. Gendlin

Book 3, chapter 4 follows the discussion of imagination in chapter 3 and begins the argument of how the intellect can be seen as a potential in relation to what makes it actual. The last paragraph of chapter 4 says:

Now, being affected in virtue of something common has been discussed before---to the effect that the intellect is in a way potentially the objects of thought, although it is actually nothing before it thinks; potentially in the same way as there is writing on a tablet on which nothing actually written exists; that is what happens in the case of the intellect. And it is itself an object of thought, just as its objects are. For, in the case of those things which have no matter, that which thinks and that which is thought are the same; for contemplative knowledge and that which is known in that way are the same. The reason why it does not always think we must consider. In those things which have matter each of the objects of thought is present potentially. Hence, they will not have intellect in them (for intellect is a potentiality for being such things without their matter}, while it can be thought in it. — ibid, 429b29

The following chapters demonstrate how admitting in 431a8 that the 'soul never thinks without an image" is not admitting that the intellect is a "form of imagination" as described at the beginning of the book.

I think it can be traced back to a growing animosity that develops with the followers of Paul. A question of birthright. — Fooloso4

That certainly must be the case. On the other hand, the experience of reading those texts directly after centuries of being told what it says may have had something to do with the strong emotions elicited. The scene had changed from when Paul was explaining why the narrative included Gentiles. Luther reacts as if he just watched the whole event on videotape and is beside himself with rage.

Pascal is an interesting counterpoint to that reaction. In the Pensées, he spends a lot of time on thinking about Judaism as different through the lens of Paul but goes further into texts outside of the Passion and ends up saying the differences did not place Judaism outside of the truth as Pascal understood it to be.

(To be clear, Pascal's role in the Reformation is much different from Protestants who broke from the Church altogether.)

It is a dark stain across most of the Protestant denominations.

If I understand this correctly, I see two points. First, the truth is not accessible by our own efforts. Second, without experiencing truth anything we think or imagine it to be will not only fall short of it but will lead us astray. — Fooloso4

Our efforts are required but more is needed beyond those. The limits of self-sufficiency are not a cancellation of them.

Kierkegaard did not say that it leads one astray, necessarily. It is more of a kind of horizon where the past and present is related to what has been created can be seen as something given to us whereas a relationship to the future cannot be approached that way. One cannot propose that one is in need of a condition that one lacks if one already knows what that condition is.

One of those proponents here also includes the Egyptians in his efforts to bypass and exclude Judaism from our understanding of Jesus. In his case it is him more than anything else that stands in his way. — Fooloso4

There is something weird and dark about the desire to rip out Judaism, root and branch. That program does not offset the need for testifying what one believes. Being 'Christian' is not a result of saying what it is not.

The desire to have as a principle, a separate, independent intellect, led to the notion of a complete separation between active and passive intellect. This allows that the active intellect might be free from the influence of the passive matter (potential), allowing the intellect the capacity to know all things. — Metaphysician Undercover

The active intellect, in so far as it exists separately from the composite beings who are able to think because of it, are not experiencing this aspect of the principle:

Thus thought and contemplation decay because something else within is destroyed, while thought itself is unaffected, But thinking (dianoiesthai), and loving or hating are not affectations of that, but for the individual which has it, in so far as it does. Hence when this too is destroyed we neither remember nor love; for these did not belong to that, but to the composite thing which has perished. — De Anima, 408b 18, translated Ackrill

And:

In separation it is just what it is, and this alone is immortal and eternal. (But we do not remember because this is unaffected, whereas the passive intellect is perishable, and without this thinks nothing. — ibid, 430a 18

The difference between the active principle and the sort of knowing that composite beings do is collapsed again when you say:

But a completely separate, active intellect appears to be impossible by Aristotle's principles. This is because the intellect in each of its capacities, the capacity to know, prior to learning, and the capacity to act, posterior to learning, are all properly described as potentials. — Metaphysician Undercover

Only the composite beings have a capacity to learn, act, or remember. In regard to 'potentials" that is what caused Aristotle to object to his predecessors:

The view we have just been examining, in company with most theories about the soul, involves the following absurdity: they all join the soul to a body, or place it in a body, without adding any specification of the reason of their union, or of the bodily conditions required for it. Yet such explanation can scarcely be omitted; for some community of nature is presupposed by the fact that the one acts and the other is acted upon, the one moves and the other is moved; interaction always implies a special nature in the two inter-agents. — ibid, 407b14-21

These observations move me to ask for you to provide textual references for the following statement:

And, it is later shown how thinking as the act of an intellect is fundamentally a potential, therefore it cannot be used to represent a pure, independent actuality. — Metaphysician Undercover

What did Paul say about the Greek understanding of the universal nature of truth? — Fooloso4

Paul was not the philosopher Augustine was. The understanding of truth Paul worked with was for the purpose of translating between the Gentiles and the Jews. In the Letter to the Romans, the Creator is said to have 'etched the good into every heart'. The experience of conscience as an individual is still true with or without the crisis that the event of Christ has brought forward. But the acceptance of that 'good', which all can receive from the conditions of their birth, does not account for the 'shortness of days' that expects "this cosmos" to be replaced by another. This movement requires more than a universal good of a person to be recognized because that life is happening within a process where there is an interaction with the Creator who can change the cosmos and the creatures within it.

Paul depicts the experience of the Gentiles as providing only an isolated view of a single cosmos

Centuries later, Kierkegaard says that once one has left the cosmos of the world as being what it already is, it is a departure, whether one follows Paul or not. If the condition for experiencing truth is outside of one's innate package, then one cannot use that package as a testimony for it.

How does this relate to the Covenant? Is this part of the problem of Christian self understanding? — Fooloso4

As you have observed elsewhere, there is more than one 'Christian' answer or question regarding these matters. I am trying to see the matter through Paul's eyes even though I do not accept his testimony as my own.

Your question is worth its own discussion. On this topic of 'how Greek was Jesus', I just wanted to point out that as an 'article' of faith, Paul insists on the differences between Greek and Jewish legacies even as he unifies them in his particular vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. No matter how far one can or cannot get by studying the historical context, the proponents of a 'nothing but Greek' thesis has the author of much of what is commonly understood to be Christian standing in the way.

Your points regarding the differences between the views are well taken.

My purpose in bringing up Kierkegaard, however, was that he underscores how the universal nature of the truth, as Paul spoke of it in the Greek understanding, needed the narrative of the messianic to become the expectation of 'this cosmos' giving way to the kingdom of heaven. This observation does not sort out what those expectations were or could be now. It does focus the question of how to understand the messianic in the legacy of the Greek view of the world. The more one insists that the true purpose of Christianity can only be expressed in those terms, the more one is left to explain why Paul's claim of the inheritance of the Covenant was unnecessary. That is not a problem of sorting out what is Greek versus Judaism but a problem of how Christians understand their own beliefs.

The messiah is for him the people rather than one person. In this sense he reverses Paul. It is not the hope that the passive, helpless individual will be saved but that the actions of the people will save the world. — Fooloso4

I wouldn't say that this redemptive action is completely missing in Paul. The community of Christians is said to be the new chosen people. The way they treat each other is central to them becoming instruments of the Spirit. Augustine presents them as agents of change in the world. As a defender of Pauline Christianity, Kierkegaard focused on this element in his Works of Love as a response to the command to love that ties the Sermon on the Mount to the faith of the single individual.

Kierkegaard also addressed the limits of the 'Hellenic' but did not claim ownership of an inheritance, as Paul did, to make his argument. In his Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard compared truth as something we already have the capacity to know to a truth that requires us to be changed in order to be made aware of.

The idea of Plato's recollection describes the first condition. The divine aspect of our being emerges as we separate it from the dross of unimportant pursuits. Learning expressed as recollection says this inborn condition relates to what has already been created.

The second condition requires an encounter with a being who provides what our inborn nature does not. As an expectation, it is directed toward a future redemption. Expressed this way, the relationship of the individual to the community is not established yet. This aspect is reflected in how different denominations of Christianity place importance on the order in this world as it relates to the vision of another one.

I wasn't thinking of it in terms of whether a god can suffer but focusing on the claim that Paul's encounter with the resurrected Jesus was with the one said to be the fulfillment of the prophecies.

It is in the sense of being a chosen people that doesn't fit the Hellenistic imagination of how the divine interacts with man and community. The 'choice' involved leads man and community to becoming an instrument of purpose and intent for the Lord. Paul recognized that the one element he could not provide Gentiles through his manifestation of Spirit rising above the Law is the promise of the Covenant.

Apollodorus' desire to marginalize the influence of Judaism is similar to Marcion, the church father, who declared Christians and Jews worshiped different gods. Marcion was denounced by the others because that would separate Christians from the narrative of a God who is changing the world of men through his instruments. That participation in the change is why Augustine condemned Athens but praised the 'city' of the Israelites. The City of God is the vanguard of the change.

An interesting quality in Zhuangzi is how the big questions of what should be predicated of the world keep being interrupted by perceptions of why some things persist while others don't. And the dynamic does not permit either approach to supplant the other. Otherwise, the contrast would stop being a difference.

Your first and last paragraphs make sense of the differences between views.

I am not sure if the middle paragraph does. The focus on suffering is clear in Paul's testimony. He did not claim it made sense.

What makes no sense is your claim. It is not as if Christians went in search of someone whose teachings they could falsify and paganize. The Jewish followers of Jesus believed he was the Messiah. It was largely gentiles, under the influence of Paul, who brought their pagan beliefs to bear on their understanding of the messiah and God. It was these pagan beliefs that informed and so deformed the Jewish notion of a 'son of God'. — Fooloso4

It should be noted that Paul himself readily admits the differences between a resurrected savior and the expectations of the Messiah as was hoped for by the first witnesses. The transfer of the promise of protection from one chosen people to another (as noted upthread regarding the Letter to Corinthians) is the ultimate form of differentiation. The efforts of the Church Fathers was devoted to claiming an ancestry while cancelling it.

If they were all at the same summer camp, why did Paul bother to back-date the story to claim the inheritance?

Well, at least we can agree that your interpretation is not tenable if Book Lambda is a legitimate expression of Aristotle's thought. There is a hefty amount of scholarship regarding the sources of text and editors of the book and its relation to other writings, but you are the first I have heard say it is an out and out counterfeit. You have not provided any support for this claim. Perhaps you could pull the source of it out from under its cover.

Your demonstration on the other thread brought you to this point:

I can't see the point you are making here, Paine. Aristotle clearly says that thoughts are dependent on images. It's at the end of your quote. And images are derived from the senses. So we have no basis for a "nous" which is independent of the senses, sense organs, and material body. It's true that Aristotle, at some points alludes to the appearance of a separate, independent mind, but such a thing is inconsistent with the principles he clearly states. — Metaphysician Undercover

In a separate comment, I will list all the places I know of where Aristotle alludes to a separate, independent intellect. I don't have time to run them all down until can get back to my books next week.

But I will restate the problem I had with your comment the first time around. You are using a certain set of texts to establish your interpretation of what Aristotle means to say. On the basis of that, you declare Aristotle is not consistent with his own principles when he refers to an active, separate intellect. Whatever explanation might be put forward for the conflict of principles, it is always logically possible that the inconsistency belongs to your interpretation.

Outside of its description in Book Lamba, it should be noted that many of the other books of the Metaphysics try to see how and if the introduction of composite beings relate to the method in the Categories. There is much scholarly debate on these topics and disagreement about which statements are consistent with other statements. The statement in Book Lambda: "the soul is the first substance" is a part of that conversation even if you dismiss the rest of the book as Neo-Platonists propaganda.

This is not an argument against your thesis but something that may be worth considering.

The call to embrace a view of the natural is said to be in conflict with the ways we take that idea to mean something beyond our personal experience. As a philologist, FN knows this problem full well. He appeals to the evidence of personal experience while also marking what is possible for us to a limited set of options.
Are these set of options strictly what can be observed as a person or require something else?

This is a pointless paragraph. You know from the other thread that I reject Book Lambda as inconsistent with the rest of Aristotle's writing, and it is debatable whether it was actually written by him. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have yet to provide the support for this statement. I have seen some commentary regarding this topic in various writings but you have not attempted to do more than claim it to be true. In any case, the argument in De Anima replicates the same view given in Book Lambda.

Then "all things" is accidental. But you want to make "all things" essential, and conclude therefore that the good is a relation between the individual and the whole cosmos. — Metaphysician Undercover

On the contrary, there is vast difference between the 'good' as it relates to the whole of the cosmos and the problems of individual beings. But I am not the one claiming there is no 'overarching' good. It seems absurd to assert that Aristotle intended to separate the two goods as a category mistake in the way you seem to be arguing for.

In this case, the game is trying to understand what certain texts are trying to say. All the players are interpreters. If one does not understand what the move is, one cannot claim it is breaking a rule. I don't understand MU's argument. The fault could be mine. His withdrawal from the game has no bearing upon that possibility.

Rationality is of little use on the irrational. — Banno

Well, I do not mean to claim as much. I cannot judge as irrational what I cannot conceive of in my own terms. There is always the possibility that I am too limited to understand. I just wanted to observe that withdrawing from the discourse between two, as you observe, is not one of the possible moves within it.

To argue that one's interlocutor has not studied enough is an abandonment of a thesis made upon its own merits. Admitting that one's arguments are useless is not exactly a clinic on how to do Platonic dialectic.

Primary substance for Aristotle, as defined in his Categories, is the individual. So if the good is a quality of substance, it is attributed to the individual. — Metaphysician Undercover

The Categories does point out that what can be predicated as a quality requires a primary substance, an individual being, without whom referring to qualities would be meaningless. On the basis of this reasoning, you seem to be denying that a relation between beings could ever go beyond the 'good' as the predicate of an individual being. It is difficult for me to visualize, it seems to be a Protagorean result gained through an inversion of the eternal, or something.

But I don't have to understand the thesis to notice it does not fit with other things Aristotle said. Aristotle discussed the good as a quality of the cosmic whole in Book Lambda, For the purpose of inquiring into first principles, the whole of creation is a substance that the Mover causes to exist, along with the order that comes into being through his rule.

The holistic view that connects the individual (and what is good for them) with the cosmos (the being that includes all beings) can be seen in the introduction of soul into the arguments made by Aristotle. The Categories make no mention of the idea of composite beings:

It is also clear that the soul is the first substance, the body is the matter, and a man or an animal, universally taken, is a composite of the two; and 'Socrates' or 'Coriscus', if each term signifies also the soul of the individual, has two senses (for some say it is the soul that is the individual, others that it is the composite), but if it signifies simply this soul and this body, then such an individual term is like the corresponding universal term. — Metaphysics,1037a

The concept of soul is said to be central to the process of becoming an individual. With this starting principle it becomes related to the whole of creation:

Now, summing up what has been said about the soul, let us say again that the soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either objects of perception or object of thought, and knowledge is in a way the objects of knowledge and perception the objects of perception. — De Anima, 431b 20, translated by J.L Ackrill

Aristotle bases this claim on linking the inquiry of all nature (fusis) to the existence of the soul:

Since [just as] in the whole of nature, there is something which is matter to each kind of thing (and this is what is potentially all of them), while on the other hand there is something else which is their cause and is productive of all of them---these being related as an art to its material---so there must also be these differences in the soul. And there is an intellect which is of this kind by becoming all things, and there is another which is so by producing all things, as a kind of disposition, like light does; for in a way light too makes colours which are potential in actual colours. And this intellect is distinct, unaffected, and unmixed, being in essence activity. — ibid, 430a 10

This use of light as an analogy bears a strong resemblance to its use by Plato in Book 6 of the Republic, but reformulated in order to avoid the deficits Aristotle finds there. For the purpose of this present argument, the important point to realize is that the 'function of man' discussed in Nicomachean Ethics is not just a general predicate that can be applied to a set of individuals but relates to how those individuals come into being in a cosmos filled with these other beings.

Self-evident means prior to man or men like a priori. — Shwah

I took the expression to mean what everybody notices when they go out on walks.

Enough for what? If what Jefferson is saying here is correct, we are not in a condition where any particular solution will suffice for all time.

God and Christianity clearly showed what the best of self-evident truths means. — Shwah

There has been much ink and blood spilled on this topic. Across many versions of Christianity, however, the notion of what is revealed through faith versus what one might notice even if they were a pagan has been discussed. The language of salvation is not self-evident. One has to confess a belief in order to participate. So, to say that the equality of persons is self-evident is to place the observation outside of faith. Green is green, blue is blue, people are people.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. — Thomas Jefferson

Self-evident truths do not require faith to be recognized.

The enlightenment ideals freed literally nobody by the adoption of the constitution. — Shwah

They did not free the slaves at first. The contradictions did lead to a reckoning of the sort Martin Luther King Jr. emphasized.

The constitution did free a whole bunch of people to make their own messes rather than inherent them. A polity of change versus divine authority. As Churchill noted, both suck but one more than the other.

What language you're using in terms of "private interests of one group" etc is actually rousseauian general will which the lockean north denied in favor of natural rights. — Shwah

While I am interested in those ideas as my forum name might suggest, I was referring to the specific people In Kansas and Missouri who killed each other over the issue. The Lincoln versus Douglas debates were specifically concerned with whether slavery could be introduced into new states. Lincoln's first iteration of 'Unionism' did not address the status of slaves in the places where the system was already established. The South did not accept that limitation and rejected Lincoln's legitimacy as their President when he was elected because of that nonacceptance.

The agile adoption of pro-slavery Christians to the policy that most benefited them causes me to question the utility of setting the 'Christians' against the 'Secular' as you are suggesting.

Even if nominally the enlightenment thinkers were against it (I would say founded in Christian ethics), it took Christianity to take the charge against secular society on this and it was secular society, through liberal capitalism, that created the issue. — Shwah

There is no doubt that slavery was a successful capital development plan for many investors in it. There were benefactors of the system in both the North and the South. But it is important to remember that the issue of letting the system be established in new states is where the first blood was drawn in the Civil War. There was a competing system of economic expansion that was incompatible with slavery. The private interests of one group came to an existential struggle with other private interests.

It doesn't get more secular than that.

I think the following accounts are true:

Methodists divide before the war.

Presbyterians divide before the war.

Calvinists divide before the war.

It is true that the 'Transcendentalists; were influenced by a number of religious groups. That is why I put it as "outside of the churches" rather than describe it as strictly 'secular'. Nonetheless, they were also influenced by thinkers we loosely refer to as writers pursuing the goals of Enlightenment through reason.

For the last part it seems no major christian denomination promoted slavery — Shwah

That is not the case. The major denominations divided during the years before the war

The divided churches also reshaped American Christianity. Important new denominations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, formed. And Christianity in the South and its counterpart in the North headed in different directions. Southern believers, who had drawn on the literal words of the Bible to defend slavery, increasingly promoted the close, literal reading of scripture. Northerners, who had emphasized underlying principles of the Scriptures, such as God’s love for humanity, increasingly promoted social causes

Outside of the churches, the intellectual environment of Abolitionists was influenced by the "Transcendentalists" As a development of "enlightenment" thinking, what Jefferson wrote comes from the same sources but revealing clear lines of departure regarding what ought to be done.

Sorry Paine, I can't read the material for you. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ad hominem or astute observation of my limitations?
Only Pot and Kettle can know for sure.

For Aristotle, perfection, or good, is a feature of the individual, in its fulfilment of its own particular form, which is unique to it, and only it, by the law of identity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Aristotle relates the telos of individuals to the fulfillment of their kind of being, as noted in the quote given above. I will add the passage that prefaces it for clarity:

For just as the goodness and performance of a flute player, a sculptor, or any kind of expert, and generally of anyone who fulfills some function or performs some action are thought to reside in his proper function, so the goodness and performance of man would seem to reside in whatever is his proper function.........we must make it clear that we mean a life determined by the activity (energeia) as opposed to the mere possession of the rational element. For the activity, it seems, has a greater claim on the function of man. — 1097b(Emphasis mine)

I don't understand this at all. You seem to be making "the good" into "the One" — Metaphysician Undercover

On the contrary. Chapter 10 of Book Lamba of Metaphysics presents the good of the whole world as the relations between beings through the order imposed by the Mover. This view conforms with the first criticism of the 'Form of the Good' Aristotle brings forward in the Nicomachean Ethics:

However, the term "good" is used in the categories of substance, of quality, and of relatedness alike; but a thing-as-such, i.e., a substance is by nature prior to a relation into which it can enter; relatedness is, as it were, an offshoot or logical accident of substance. Consequentially, there cannot be a Form common to the good-as-such and the good as a relation. — 1096a, 16

I would say that thinking in this sense is in the pursuit of a goal. — Metaphysician Undercover

That makes sense. Plato, however, is keen to make a distinction between dialectic and art in the matter. As quoted above from Book 6:

And you seem to me to be calling the activity of geometers and such people thinking but not insight, on the grounds that thinking is something in between opinion and insight.”

So Plato sees "the good" as what gives causality to ideas, and this is final cause in Aristotle. — Metaphysician Undercover

In the passage from Book Lambda I cite above, the element of causality of what Aristotle finds to missing from Plato's good: " And those who posit the Forms also need a more authoritative principle; for why did things participate in the Forms or do so now? "

However one looks at the questions of the first principles of the creation, Book 6 ends with observations upon the uses of images (such as analogies to the sun and the divided line} to approach what is beyond images:

“I understand,” he said; “you’re talking about the things dealt with by geometrical studies [511B] and the arts akin to that.”
“Then understand me to mean the following by the other segment of the intelligible part: what rational speech itself gets hold of by its power of dialectical motion, making its presuppositions not sources but genuinely standing places, like steppingstones and springboards, in order that, by going up to what is presuppositionless at the source of everything and coming into contact with this, by following back again the things that follow from it, rational speech may descend in that way to a conclusion, [511C] making no more use in any way whatever of anything perceptible, but dealing with forms themselves, arriving at them by going through them, it ends at forms as well.”
“I understand,” he said, “though not sufficiently, because you seem to me to be talking about a tremendous amount of work; however, I understand that you want to mark off that part of what is and is intelligible that’s contemplated by the knowledge that comes from dialectical thinking as being clearer than what’s contemplated by what are called arts, which have presuppositions as their starting points. Those who contemplate things by means of the arts are forced to contemplate them by thinking and not by sense perception, but since they [511D] examine things not by going up to the source but on the basis of presuppositions, they seem to you to have no insight into them, even though, by means of their starting point, they’re dealing with things that are intelligible. And you seem to me to be calling the activity of geometers and such people thinking but not insight, on the grounds that thinking is something in between opinion and insight.” — Republic, Book 6, 511b translated by Joe Sachs

Pursuit of the good in this context is not an object or a goal in the way one says that the telos of making a chair is made actual when the plan for it has come into being. Learning what is real versus what is opinion is the activity being sought after. Aristotle speaks of telos as becoming what one was made to be, as quoted above:

"we reach the conclusion that the good of man is an activity of the soul in conformity with excellence or virtue, and if there are several virtues, in conformity with the best and most complete."

In speaking of the good as a quality of creation as a whole, this language of telos for individual beings is exchanged for the outcome of the activity of the unmoved mover:

"For it does not possess goodness in this part or that part but possesses the highest good in the whole, though it is distinct from it. It is this manner that Thinking is the thinking of Himself through all eternity."

With these differences in mind, what does it mean for the 'final cause' to replace Plato's good? Perhaps you could cite particular passages that illuminate the idea.

So, how does your acknowledgement that the pursuit of the good is difficult relate to your previous claims that there is no 'overarching' good?

Continuing from my first comment on the theme, I will try to approach Plato's views of the good.

Reading Book 6 of the Republic after reviewing Aristotle's objections strongly suggests that Aristotle had at least some of these passages in mind when making his arguments. Aristotle questioning the value of the claims as propositions in the inquiry of 'first principles' naturally raises the question if Plato's goal in making his claims were meant to satisfy such an inquiry. How rigidly to understand the 'theory of the Forms' as a theory has been debated for centuries and we are still at it. My tiny mind is not going to resolve that for all time, but it may not be remiss to focus on the context in which Plato is arguing for the possibility and the need for a philosopher king in these passages. Since they are not very far apart, I figure that reading between where starts and ends his citations might be instructive.

“So, my comrade,” I said, “it’s necessary for such a person to go around by the longer [504D] road, and he needs to work as a learner no less hard than at gymnastic training, or else, as we were just saying, he’ll never get to the end of the greatest and most relevant study.”
“So these aren’t the greatest ones,” he said, “but there’s something still greater than justice and the things we’ve gone over?”
“Not only is there something greater,” I said, “but even for those things themselves, it’s necessary not just to look at a sketch, the way we’ve been doing now, but not to stop short of working them out to their utmost completion. Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to make a concentrated effort in every way over other things of little worth, to have them be as precise and pure [504E] as possible, while not considering the greatest things to be worthy of the greatest precision?”
“Very much so,” he said, “and a creditable thought it is, but what you mean by the greatest study, and what it’s about—do you imagine,” he said, “that anyone’s going to let you off without asking you what it is?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Just you ask. For all that, you’ve heard it no few times, but now you’re either not thinking of it or else, by latching onto me, [505A] you think you’ll cause me trouble. But I imagine it’s more the latter, since you’ve often heard that the greatest learnable thing is the look109 of the good, which just things and everything else need in addition in order to become useful and beneficial. So now you know pretty well that I’m going to say that, and in addition to it that we don’t know it well enough. But if we don’t know it, and we do know everything else as much as possible without it, you can be sure that nothing is any benefit to us, just as there would be none if [505B] we possessed something without the good. Or do you imagine it’s any use to acquire any possession that’s not good? Or to be intelligent about everything else without the good, and have no intelligence where anything beautiful and good is concerned?”
“By Zeus, I don’t!” he said.
“And surely you know this too, that to most people, the good seems to be pleasure, and to the more sophisticated ones, intelligence.”
“How could I not?”
“And, my friend, that the ones who believe the latter can’t specify what sort of intelligence, but are forced to end up claiming it’s about the good.”
“It’s very ridiculous,” he said. [505C]
“How could it be otherwise,” I said, “if after reproaching us because we don’t know what’s good they turn around and speak to us as though we do know? Because they claim that it’s intelligence about the good as though we for our part understand what they mean when they pronounce the name of the good.” “That’s very true,” he said.
“And what about the people who define the good as pleasure? Are they any less full of inconsistency than the others? Aren’t they also forced to admit that there are bad pleasures?”
“Emphatically so.”
“So I guess they turn out to be conceding that the same things that are good are also bad. Isn’t that so?” [505D]
“Certainly.”
“Then isn’t it clear that the disagreements about it are vast and many?”
“How could it not be clear?”
“And what about this? Isn’t it clear that many people would choose the things that seem to be just and beautiful, and even when they aren’t, would still do them, possess them, and have the seeming, though no one is content to possess what seems good, but people seek the things that are good, and in that case everyone has contempt for the seeming?” “
Very much so,” he said. [505E]
“So this is exactly what every soul pursues, for the sake of which it does everything, having a sense that it’s something but at a loss and unable to get an adequate grasp of what it is, or even have the reliable sort of trust it has about other things; because of this it misses out even on any benefit there may have been in the other things. On such a matter, of such great importance, [506A] are we claiming that even the best people in the city, the ones in whose hands we’re going to put everything, have to be in the dark in this way?” — Republic, 504c to 506a, translated by Joe Sachs (emphais mine)

I was hoping this comment could be done in two parts. But it now seems to me that the analogy of the Sun as the good requires more work on my part.

In order to compare Aristotle's' and Plato's views of the good, it may be best to start with Aristotle's rejection of the 'form of the good' in which particular beings participate. In Book One of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle raises the objections that he has in numerous places against the 'theory of ideas'. The discussion then moves to looking for the good in the proper function of man. Since this is found to be reflected in man's rational element, Aristotle says:

we must make it clear that we mean a life determined by the activity (energeia) as opposed to the mere possession of the rational element. For the activity, it seems, has a greater claim on the function of man. — Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a5, translated by Martin Ostwald

After linking the more excellent activity with the highest good, Aristotle says:

we reach the conclusion that the good of man is an activity of the soul in conformity with excellence or virtue, and if there are several virtues, in conformity with the best and most complete. — ibid. 1098a 15

As demonstrated in De Anima, we can only know the world through our lives as combined beings. Our inquiry into first principles, however, allows us to reason what the fundamental conditions of this experience might be. Aristotle discusses the good in this context in his Metaphysics::

For it does not possess goodness in this part or that part but possesses the highest good in the whole, though it is distinct from it. It is this manner that Thinking is the thinking of Himself through all eternity.
Chapter 10
We must also inquire in which of two ways the nature of the whole has the good and the highest good, whether as something separate and by itself or as the order of its parts. Or does it have it in both ways, as in the case of an army? For in an army goodness exists both in the order and in the general, and rather in the general; for it is not because of the order he exists, but the order exists because of him. Now all things are ordered in some way, water-animals and birds and plants, but not similarly, and they do not exist without being related to at all to one another, but they are in some way related. For all things are ordered in relation to one thing. It is as in a household, in which the freemen are least at liberty to act at random but all or most things are ordered, while slaves and wild animals contribute little to the common good but for the most part act at random, for such is the principle of each of these, which is their nature. I mean, for example, that all these must come together if they are to be distinguished; and this is what happens in other cases in which all the members participate in the whole. — Metaphysics, Book Lambda 1075a 10, translated by H.G. Apostle

It is worthwhile to read all of Chapter 10 to see how his view of an 'overarching good' compares with other thinkers. As a matter for the inquiry of first principles he says:

Again, no one states why there will always be generation and what is the cause of generation. And those who posit two principles need another principle which is more authoritative. And those who posit the Forms also need a more authoritative principle; for why did things participate in the Forms or do so now? And for all other thinkers there be something which is the contrary of wisdom or of the most honorable science, but for us this is not necessary, for there is nothing contrary to that which is first. For, in all cases, contraries have matter which is potentially these contraries, and ignorance which is the contrary of knowledge, should be the contrary object; but there is nothing contrary to what is first. — ibid. 1075b,15

I will continue tomorrow to compare the observations made above with the Sun as an analogy for the good in the Republic. The good order of my household now requires that I eat too much corned beef and cabbage.