Have you now reduced a historical question to an exegetical question? The number of ex-Protestants in this thread is not coincidental. — Leontiskos

I am not sure if you include me in that census. You are not in a position to judge what I believe or not. My uncertainty is for me to wrestle with. I am in still within the conversation. I take seriously the invitation to the party. Otherwise, it is of no concern. If I thought a horse was dead, I would not encourage it to perform better.

As I recall that conversation, the passage I emphasized in Gospel of Thomas was Jesus saying that the Kingdom of Heaven had arrived. That is a strong difference from the Pauline expectation of the end of this kosmos and the beginning of the next. The Gospel of Thomas does not rule out the kosmos being transformed through the new order. The emphasis upon personal transformation is clear.

The instruction to follow James the Just after Jesus leaves suggests a possible alignment with the Jerusalem followers, not an association typically considered a 'gnostic' source. I do not detect the tension between law and faith central to Paul's letters. Getting stuffed into a clay jug has made the topic difficult to study.

Yes, the dominance of one view over competitors is prominent in the history of the first two hundred years after Jesus. Attempts at understanding how the 'kingdom of heaven' was visualized before that time is also murky and involves questions only a time machine could solve. What I find interesting is how committed to a single world that will change when X happens that many of these incompatible views have. The collection from the Nag Hammadi is remarkable to me because they do not point to a common ground so much as suspending talk of such a thing. Singularities placed in close proximity to one another. The work upon the Dead Sea scrolls displays a similar insistence upon singularity.

I grew up in a Protestant tradition and the insistence upon a single path was heard by me in all of its cacophony. I do take the teaching that 'identity', on that level, is between me and my maker. It is not an explanatory principle for many other things.

I came off more dismissive than I intended. I am still looking for a free version of Murdoch's essays on these topics so I shouldn't criticize what I have not read yet.

There are different ways to frame the differences between psychology and the inquiries underway in Plato. It is difficult to draw general boundaries where one ends and the other begins. For example, the context of reported experience is different for Jung and William James, yet both developed psychological models of what is expressed as 'transcendental' conditions in past literature. Their means of translation are different from approaching the intent of a work through its own terms and the place that had in the conversation of contemporaries. But saying that alone won't help differentiate Jung from James in a meaningful way.

To my thinking, Jung's work as a clinical therapist makes him different from other thinkers who built psychological perspectives into their writing. The language of drives, instincts, and reactions to unconscious processes, that was introduced by On the Psyche, are not cancelled by The Red Book. A big topic I will not boldly barge into.

Regarding the role of 'perfectibility' in Plato, the role of the 'unchanging forms' is often set over against our limited understanding of them. Words without number have been poured into the bowl of the dead Plato over this question. Many beakers full have been poured right here at TPF Whatever one might think about that conversation, there are plenty of examples in Plato pronouncing the less bad being acceptable until the better is known better. The question of whether the philosopher's return to the cave is a futile endeavor or not still throws a shadow over the scene.

I have recently read Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days again after four decades. I have since smacked my forehead with the realization of how deeply this material is interwoven into the world of Plato, before and after his time. As with Homer, Plato happily quotes Hesiod in some places and rejects him in others. In some places, Hesiod is present by proxy without citation and explained away rather than embraced or spurned. Hesiod is like a set erected behind the background of many acts in a play.

This causes me to wonder if the immortals of Hesiod and Homer are not better examples of the way Jung presents archetypes than Plato's 'virtues in themselves." The immortals personify psychological dynamics present in the mortals. The narrative of Hesiod shows how immortals were closer to mortals in the past and have grown increasingly further apart. There is a hope expressed in a better future but no guarantee of one.

I want to address the engagement of 'Neoplatonists' with 'Gnostics' but am deep into a listening (reading) mode right now that is causing me to question many of my previous opinions. I will try to say more if I learn more.

If we are going to include Jung into the conversation, the differences between philosophical attempts to talk about 'being' and the terrain of 'psychology' needs to be considered.

I will try to read more of Murdoch. So far. she seems to be engaged with very 20nth century problems. As a student of classical Greek literature, this is no advance in understanding the way views of the soul changed over time.

In the Metaphysics, there is a lot of emphasis upon what can be isolated as a specific kind from what can only be only known by means of analogy. The difference between actuality and potentiality is placed firmly in the latter category. And yet that is where Aristotle rolled the dice on his theories.

It may point to questionable areas about ideas as 'forms', beyond the physical. — Jack Cummins

What is meant by the "physical" is something I challenge as a self-evident idea. That is why I quoted Plotinus earlier in your OP. Plotinus speaks as a matter-of-fact what Plato always referred to through myths, legends, and possible stories. In Timaeus and Phaedo, for example, he repeats that he does not know what happens beyond life's end. The metaphor that life is a kind of prison is a feature of Plotinus' cosmos where Plato points to a tragic failure applicable to unknown causes. The gap between life and death is wider for Plato than for Plotinus.

Is there something in the Murdoch text that speaks to that difference?

Playing my role on different nights evoked an interaction that was spooky at times. Eliot is not generally recognized as a genius of theater. I am going to let the mystery be.

I am closer to Auden than Eliot as a life partner. Maybe it is a generational thing. My affection for Auden was strengthened by my relationship with my father-in-law. He often wondered why it appealed to me. For him, Auden was the voice of his generation.

Just posting observations, not concluding anything.

and for no reason i can understand, fragments of Murder in the Cathedral. — Vera Mont

Well, that is a bit of synchronicity. I played the Third Tempter in that play while being a very young man. I haven't thought about that for a long time. I do wish I could do some of that again.

Rilke was an excellent poet. I sadly didn't read that much from him. We don't have enough time in this life to read every important author of every country. — javi2541997

Indeed. I wish I had a better facility at languages and much more time left. I try to view translations against original texts. I love Neruda and Baudelaire, but I need the translations in the end. Rilke's German is not something I studied enough to revive. I re-read more than trying new poems because I want to offset my weaker memory with the immediate. That also uncovers perspectives I never had before.

The matter of memory is a keen interest of mine as I experience the shrinking of the field. Unlike many of my family and friends, I do not have a vivid recall of childhood. There are some fixed stones in the river, but I leap from one to the other with little sense of continuity in between. My wife, for instance, has a clear recall of chronology of events where my events are like a well shuffled deck. I rely upon others to keep a coherent timeline. I have not and never would be able to experience the vivacity of a Proust recalling his past.

So, that condition is why I find Rilke's presentation of the need for a guide to reach the past to be a central action in the sonnet. The first verse you present from Gloria Fuertes is similar. The limit to self-sufficiency must also be imagined, not recalled.

I found a Rilke poem that approaches Goethe's pursuit of memory and goes on from there:

Behold the flowers, those true to the earthly,
to whom we lend fate from the edge of fate,--
Yet who can say? If they regret their fading,
it is for us to be their regret.

Everything wants to float. And yet we move about like weights,
attaching ourselves to everything, in thrall to gravity;
O what wearisome teachers we are for things,
while in them eternal childhood prospers.

If someone were to take them into his inmost sleep
and sleep deeply with them--, O how light he'd emerge,
changed, to a changed day, from the mutual depth.

Or perhaps he'd stay; and they'd bloom and praise him,
the convert, become now like one of their own,
all the quiet brothers and sisters in the meadow's wind. — Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus, 2nd part, 14, translated by Edward Snow

The allegory of the cave concerns how we see images and then imagining a direct experience where those productions are not needed.

There was a period, spanning centuries, where the meaning of matter was discussed and seen in silhouette against this allegory. The role of the 'physical' had boyfriends before the Christian thinkers told their story.

The division between the material and what is not material is made by us. We do not pick it up from the ground as a ready-made axe. The divide between being, as what always exists, and the life of that which comes into being and passes away again, is another result that is not simply an acceptance of what is given. The effort to think about our life is closely bound with the emergence of these sorts of divisions.

The need for discrimination is no less important in modern pursuits of biology and psychology. The models for exchange of information in different systems no longer involve whether it will hurt a foot if kicked. The separation of unconscious and conscious processes does not devolve to the opinions of those who introduced the concept. The limits to introspection versus observation is not something that is the hobby horse of any one theory.

Thank you for the readings.
I did not realize he was a National Poet Laureate. I was turned on to him by a fellow New Yorker years ago. The words from city and country spoken as if to us in particular.

How does the reference to the DOJ relate to this discussion?

I did not take the passage as a matter of intention. It was more a reporting of a gap. We do stuff and find out later what it brought about. Maybe.

It is not a football game or a throw of dice against a wall. We do not know what it is.

Yes, there is a lot of ambiguity involved. The presence of the friend who judges him harshly but also lets him have his own way. The details of the event obscure it at the same time bringing it into immediate experience. That makes it different from the examples of lost pleasure and innocence you have referred to. I will think about how Rilke does this sort of thing. His boat is further from the shore than others.

Merwin himself is a contrast to the poem since much of his other work involves memory holding onto particular events and things as a way of treading water in one's 'now'. What is reflecting what?

There is a brutal honesty in this particular poem I am not capable of.

I will think about Sikelianos. Is that different from Yeats thinking about naughty gods?

Thanks for the article. I have long wondered about this connection when thinking back at my experiences with peyote as a young man. The reported experience of relative 'disembodiment' came up a lot amongst fellow travelers.

I hope to avoid entering the sample group of the other side of the study.

I was thinking of a number of lines in Rilke but figured I would turn to something more painful to reflect the 'unbearable' aspect.

My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parent very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to seem father
I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father's hand the last time

he says and my father
turned in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said
I don't want you to feel that you
have to
just because I am here

I say nothing

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing somebody I don't want to keep you

I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere to go
and nothing I had to do — W.S. Merwin, Yesterday from Flower and Hand

The rhythm of 'American' English is key to the evocation.

I find a difference between saying 'personal identity exists' and saying 'we experience the life of being a person.' The latter is a much simpler beginning than the former. It is not without assumptions of shared experience but negating it is not like claiming such an identity does not exist. The perspective is far from Descartes proving he exists because he thinks it. I experience myself as a person. I experience other persons as having a similar life and regarding me in the same fashion. If it is all an illusion, it is an excellent show.

We wonder, of course, what are the contours and conditions of this experience. When we do that through imagining different models, we suddenly are confronted with questions of what actually exists or not. When we divide, the job of reuniting falls upon our enterprise. That was as true for Heraclitus as it is for modern psychological models. Much else has changed. The view of the individual in isolation needs more ways of thinking to approach the simplicity we use like a familiar tool. Aristotle said the soul is like a hand, a tool of tools.

Looking over the vast range of what "Christianity" has come to mean for different persons over centuries of life, the common insistence amongst the different groups that only one way is correct has become more 'universal' than any particular set of creeds, liturgy, or view of the world reflected in each iteration.

My man Le Rochefoucauld has that one covered:

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. — Le Rochefoucauld, maxim 22

Cool thread.
I have long been fascinated by the ideas of the linear city as conceived by Soria and the Arterial arcology of Paulo Soleri. They present a perspective to urban design that tries to imagine a more human space between technical structures. Maybe not immediately practical but a space for thinking.

Not all frames of duality concern a single set of conditions. Neither do all collapses of dualities refer to a single experience or view of the world.

The Parmenides depicted by Plato argues against the separate land of forms but accepts the duality invoked by them as necessary for recognizing the persistence of beings in a world of becoming. In the Sophist, Plato discusses a less absolute way of talking about the eternal being from what comes into being. That change, however, is not a collapse of the separation between the source of order in nature and the willy-nilly of spontaneous events.

The stricter version maintained by Parmenides constrains expectations of what can be explained through Plato's method. The boundary between the mythological and philosophic accounts of experience is maintained, especially as concern 'esoteric' or theological awakening to reality. The divide between the mortal and the divine is wide and deep even if strives for the latter in various ways. That situation is in sharp contrast to the views of Plotinus:

But the souls of men see their images as if in the mirror of Dionysus and come to be on that level with a leap from above: but even these are not cut off from their own principle and from intellect. For they did not come down with Intellect, but went on ahead of it down to earth, but their heads are firmly set above in heaven. But they experienced a deeper descent because their middle part was compelled to care for that to which they had gone on, which needed their care. But Father Zeus, pitying them in their troubles, makes the bonds over which they have trouble dissoluble by death and gives them periods of rest, making them at times free of bodies, so that they too may have the opportunity of being there where the soul of the All always is, since it in no way turns to the things of this world — Plotinus, Ennead, IV. 3.12, translated by Armstrong

Free version

The original duality has been collapsed. The cycle of life and death is explained. Since Plotinus testifies to having made this ascent of soul during his life, it is a personal experience. The role of mythology is to help communicate the experience to those who have yet to make the trip.

Nothing like this story maps onto the dynamic between Daoism and competing views. There is a duality between a 'natural' order and the imposition of 'forms' if you will. What cannot be spoken is placed side by side with what can be. In regard to semantics, Zhuangzi works as a deconstruction of meaning to understand what is worthy and why things happen. What is regarded as 'esoteric' in this regard can be approached but not described as a transition within a comprehensible terrain. The difference between the internal and external, so central to Plotinus, is just a way of talking for Zhuangzi.

How does Kenny describe the difference?
Which book are you reading? Is your exam on this book or upon different materials?
Have you read any of the original writings of Plato and Plotinus?

Hesiod does not speak in the language of intervention. He says humans are on their fifth iteration after previous attempts by Zeus. The anticipation for a better batch does not seem directed at Hesiod's immediate environment. The mythology is a kind of politeness in the face of deep ignorance. Being honest about ignorance is the connection between the old and the new. That connects with the often-raised objection that Socrates is just another player in the dialogues. Perhaps Thrasymachus is the most vivid example because it is so briefly given. Thrasymachus says Socrates uses his form of discourse to avoid saying what is the case. The matter is still being discussed.

It should also be noted that Hesiod is more concerned with means of life in the country and the sea than affairs in the city. Life is precarious. Holding on to it without becoming mere predators is difficult.

The modern world thinks it has got beyond all that, but I think it may have lost something in the process. — Ludwig V

I figure that there are many benefits of the modern world that are applicable to very old problems. But I also count the changes from the old to the new as a deep valley of ignorance. Hesiod, for all his prejudices, would arch his brow as sharply as anyone living today at the suggestion we live in the best of all possible worlds.

This amplifies and justifies one of the prominent themes of the Apology, that he does not fear death, because no harm can touch a good person. It is a radical and new thesis in Greek times, and completely counter-intuitive in that culture (and pretty astonishing in this one). Aristotle takes a different view, in the Nicomachaean Ethics. — Ludwig V

I doubt a guarantee of "no harm" was given but there are certainly many who do read it that way. Apart from that, there are a number of ways that Socrates' theme of a person suffering the evil done to others was developed in traditional poetry and mythology.

Bear this in mind, kings, and straighten your discourses, you gift-eaters, and put crooked judgments quite out of your minds. A man contrives evil for himself when he contrives evil for someone else, and an evil plan is most evil for the planner. Zeus’ eye, which sees all things and knows all things, perceives this too, if he so wishes, and he is well aware just what kind of justice this is which the city has within it. Right now I myself would not want to be a just man among human beings, neither I nor a son of mine, since it is evil for a man to be just if the more unjust one will receive greater justice. But I do not anticipate that the counselor Zeus will let things end up this way. — Hesiod, Works and Days, 260, translated by Glenn W. Most

This can be applied directly to the designs of Antyus but also to the arrogance of Euthyphro, who would speak of knowing the intentions of the gods. Saying as much is not to deny that Plato was challenging traditional customs and means of education. Nonetheless, a lot of what is virtuous and villainous is baked into human life.

BTW, if you have not already taken on board that Plato is not writing history, look up the symptoms of hemlock poisoning and compare them to the picture he gives us of Socrates' death. — Ludwig V

Yes, Plato wrote a hagiography of Socrates along with a context for his philosophy. It is interesting how he brings the responses to hemlock into the dialogue:

“What else, Socrates,” said Crito, “other than that the man who is going to give you the poison has been telling me for some time that you must be advised to talk as little as possible? You see he says that people get heated through talking too much and that you mustn’t do anything like this to affect the action of the poison. eIse not, those who do that kind of thing are sometimes forced to drink it two or three times.”

Socrates said: “Well, take no notice of him. Just let him be prepared to give me a second dose of his stuff, and a third if necessary.”

“Well I more or less knew you’d say something like that,” said Crito, “but he’s been pestering me for some time.” — Phaedo, 63e, Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy

In regard to political expediency, the parting words of Anytus in the Meno show a thug side to the business of the people:

an. Socrates, I consider you are too apt to speak ill of people. I, for one, if you will take my advice, would warn you to be careful: in most cities it is probably easier to do people harm than good, and particularly in this one; I think you know that yourself.

soc. Meno, I think Anytus is angry, and I am not at all surprised: for he conceives, in the first place, that I am speaking ill of these gentlemen; and in the second place, he considers he is one of them himself. Yet, should the day come when he knows what “speaking ill” means, his anger will cease; at present he does not know. — Plato, Meno, 94e, translated by Lamb

Imagining himself slandered leads Anytus to slander. That also speaks to Ludwig V's point about the effects of exposing ignorance. Personal grievance is revenged through the power of the City.

They are means of access and sing when asked politely.

As I understand the literature, the role of the muses is different from 'familiar spirits'. The daimon who encourages Socrates to compose music is not the same powers who make that possible.

When reading Hesiod, it does seem that different muses have access to different expressions of divinity. It is not a denial of personal creativity but a request for more than that. The outward turning that escapes echoes.

The problem with saying the 'bias' is doing the talking is that it dispenses with other peoples' views a priori.
— Paine

This is certainly true - I think all we can do to counteract is point out inconsistencies in approach. LIke trusting the media one way, but not the other. — AmadeusD

I recognize that media is a big player in the description of what is happening. We have to decide for ourselves what is being discussed. And if that collection of selves is just different worlds of facts, it is all for nought. All the King's men could not put the egg back together again.

Yes, pissing into the wind is not an effective strategy.

I recently completed Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. It works through many of the social devices presented by Jane Austen but shows how different versions of ego mania produce different outcomes. Gaskell's account reveals there is no significant difference between genders and class in the experience of self-interest. We pursue what is best for us. The difference of outcomes come about from slight gains or losses of self-awareness in each person. And nobody gets to check the scorecard since it involves life beyond one's view.

What is bizarre from one point of view may be 'normative' in another. The problem with saying the 'bias' is doing the talking is that it dispenses with other peoples' views a priori.

Therefore, it is a useless argument in political discourse. Noting that condition is far from denying that bias does exist in many forms of feeling and expression.

Also a different kind of arrogance and a different kind of divine retribution. — Vera Mont

Yes. I think those two elements are intertwined.

The witches in Macbeth do play an important part of why he thought he was invincible. In the midst of complaining about how boring he found his success; he suddenly learns he misunderstood the original message.

Lear's arrogance is believing he knows what true love looks like when he does not. In one sense, his realization of the truth is more brutal than the one Macbeth experienced.

King Lear is not a voice for moral nihilism because it is recognized that through her death, Cordelia was the faithful one through her refusal to approve Lear's proposal. That is certainly the groundwork of many a tale. All of Jane Austen can be viewed through this telescope.

I enter your discussion as a curmudgeon who resists the generality of Aristotle's accounts. The differences between King Lear and Macbeth involve different kinds of ignorance. They follow a similar pattern of revelation but do not concern just one problem.

Rivas makes good points. Hubris is an important part of the action. There is the relief of not experiencing the bad luck as pointed out by Moliere quoting Lucretius upthread.

But there are elements that are meant to leave the audience with some discomfort. The theme of blindness and fear of the future started when baby Oedipus is left to die on a hillside. Prophecy is supposed to pierce the invisibility of fate but becomes an instrument of fate in some points of crisis.

Macbeth demonstrates that quality in a direct way. Oedipus, however, is entangled in decisions of his parents. The terrain becomes murkier. I leave the play less certain of where I live. Maybe I am the one who is blind.

I wasn’t talking about ‘injecting’ souls into other bodies: I was talking about the essence of a thing. — Bob Ross

How does an essence come into being in the language of Aristotle?

Sophocles' Oedipus the King is worthy of notice in this regard. Oedipus unwittingly accelerates his demise by uncovering the attempts of his parents to avoid their prophesied fates.

He goes from the arrogance of the king to the blindness of the seer who brought him down.

I can see the pleasure in being able to view a process that one cannot perform upon oneself. But I cannot imagine witnesses of that play going home afterwards thinking they had purified something.

Your hypothetical does not take into account the way Aristotle views human life in relation to the life of other animals. An excellent overview of this is given by Edward Clayton:

First, Aristotle claims that it is not correct from a biological point of view to divide animals into the categories of "tame" and " wild " as some before him have done:

"For in a manner of speaking everything that is tame is also wild, e.g. human beings, horses, cattle . . . ." [PA 643b4]

For each of these kinds of animal, some members are tame while others are wild and even those that are tame do not start out that way. Unless they are tamed by human beings, all animals remain in their wild condition—and even human beings are born wild. In a surprisingly little noticed passage in the History of Animals, Aristotle says that:

" in children, though one can see as it were traces and seeds of the dispositions that they will have later, yet their soul at this period has practically no difference from that of wild animals. " [HA 588a-588]

Of course it is education that will shape those beginning dispositions and provide the char-
acter and characteristics that children will have later in life, and Aristotle believes that it is the job of politics and the city through laws and training to provide that education. — Aesop, Aristotle, and Animals: The Role of Fables in Human Life, Edward Clayton

The need for nurture to become what is our 'special' nature is integral to our place between the beast and the divine. We need each other to become who we are. The hypothetical you propose suggests "natures" can be arbitrarily injected into life forms. Aristotle rejected that possibility in De Anima:

These people, however, merely undertake to say what sort of thing the soul is, but about the sort of body that is receptive of it they determine nothing further, as if it were possible, as in the Pythagorean stories, for any random soul to be inserted into any random body, whereas it seems that in fact each body has its own special form and shape.96 But what they say is somewhat like saying that the craft of carpentry could be inserted into flutes, whereas in fact the craft must use its instruments, and the soul its body. — Aristotle, De Anima, 407b20, translated by C.D.C. Reeve

How we came into being is inseparable from what you call, "fitting into the ecosystem of nature."

And there's nothing wrong with that, although it does deviate from the previous topic of the butterfly effect, chaos theory, and the "tending of the big garden." You said that the big garden is not being tended. Should it be? — Leontiskos

According to one particular story, we were kicked out of a tended garden and forced to struggle hard for our survival. There is still an order to the world that favors the good in many ways but they are faced with the harshness of nature and the effects of wicked people.

It comes from different stories about the beginning, but Aristotle underlined the uncertainty of outcomes because the order prevalent to make life possible and more tolerable did not determine what ate what or who killed who on any given day. Plato's Timaeus also approached a boundary of the undetermined.

You mentioned Plotinus' god. In a number of ways, he defended the "creator" for the hardships we experience by putting forth a particular vision of immortality. Maybe I should make an OP about that.

In any case, what is seen as the horizon of what is possible for human beings is the world or absence of one that is imagined for it.