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

We are back at the same impasse met last year. What you consider small, I find to be fundamental. It is not just about the nature of heavenly bodies. There are too many places where the eternal is interwoven with the temporal for your theory of matter to explain away.

You have divided Aristotle against himself to the point where the author's intent cannot be cobbled back together from the broken parts.

I appreciate your recognition that what you present is at odds with the text, as testimony.

I will think about your thesis under these new parameters.

I am familiar with Gendlin and his suggestions. He does a great job of showing how easy it is to misunderstand what Aristotle is saying.

But I think Reeve is more correct in this case.

In the text, the matter is immediately cast into the language of actuality and potentiality. Something causes change. Something else is changed.

In regard to perception, it is interesting that Aristotle started with the sense of touch as the most basic form of it. It is difficult to place that observation side by side with the others.

I don't think that Spinoza captures exactly what Aristotle said but agree those writings are closer than pretty much anything else before recent attempts to read him.

I read it to say that what gives a surface a color is intrinsic to what the thing is:

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

The transparent is a change caused from an outside activity:

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

An account (logos) can be given for this activity, but it does not have a name (for Aristotle, at least).

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)

While noting that distance, it is interesting to see how some elements in the 'sublunary' sphere are active in the divine sphere:

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

I won't repeat last year's argument concerning your interpretation of De Anima Book 1. I will just leave this discussion by observing that it does not fit with Aristotle's view of Astronomy:

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

You said:

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

I quoted from Metaphysics, Book Epsilon:

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

Your thesis of a mortal Kosmos is so sharply different from Aristotle's' account of different kinds of ousia (substances) that the contradiction itself requires an explanation.

Is it an esotericism designed to avoid persecution of the sort Socrates suffered? A kind of schizophrenia where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing?

I was not arguing that individuals were only what could be marked out as their kind.

Aristotle refers to different kinds of ousia. You said that there was a division between kinds that was a critical departure from the holistic view Aristotle seems to aspire to.

By the way, I will not respond to group replies from now on. If what I say is worth an effort, then it should be treated as such. if it should be blown off, just ignore it.

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

This separation of what is natural from what is divine runs counter to the way ousia is presented as different in kind but all connected to the same ultimate cause and the reason we can speak of 'being as being'. Your statement does explain why you reject Metaphysics Book Lambda and the immortality of the active intellect in De Anima, Book 3.

It does, however, put you in the position of explaining away discussions of ousia where the difference in kind is focused upon. For example, Metaphysics Book Epsilon:

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

Your thesis has Aristotle saying a lot of things that don't mean what they seem to mean.

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

I need to think about this matter of giving accounts of the arche between Aristotle and Plato.
I will reply on your thread.

How does that 'suggestion' square against Aristotle using the word without that limitation??
How does that change what is said in Reeve's translation given above?

If you are interested in the Greek, the passage I quoted is here. The English translation is given by selecting that on the upper right-hand side of that page. I think Reeve's is better but the difference does not matter regarding the use of ousia that you refer to.

Aristotle used ousia in numerous places regarding the 'immaterial',if you are suggesting they were always connected with matter.
I don't like Reeve for some expressions, but he is extremely consistent. He never translates dunamis as 'activity' or subtance (ousia)

I am using Reeve's translation for convenience. Present one you like better.
Or is your beef with Aristotle?

The idea that we have the same chemistry as stars is astonishing. The telescopes keep pushing the border of the 'sublunary' sphere further away. The disagreement between Glaucon and Socrates underscores how the view of what is 'immaterial' is not self-explanatory but is always a part of looking for explanations that reflect better than others. If the idea of the 'immaterial' has a job, the 'eternal' has one too. I read Aristotle to be unhappy with the divide between Glaucon and Socrates. The following supports that view:

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

Saying: "if indeed anything else is eternal" puts the explanations into a hierarchy.

Aristotle's astronomy tried to account for how beings found within the 'sublunary sphere' had anything to do with those observed outside of it. Now that we understand that they are not different kinds of beings, the view of all beings belonging to a single cosmos is strengthened by our increase in knowledge.

Anyway, carry on. — Wayfarer

Message received.

I take Sachs' and Kahn's point regarding how the use of 'substance' is misunderstood as a translation of einai and ousia. It is not germane to the distinction Aristotle is making in the text I quoted. Aristotle does not have Russell's problem about whether universals are real. Aristotle is saying that they are so real that we are tempted to think they explain what they do not.

Aristotle's objection to 'universals' understood as causes is its own objection to 'reification'. We encounter a world of beings and figure we have it all figured out by classifying those items properly. We have to classify and place things into relationships. We also have to find a way to find its limits while wondering what the heck is going on.

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

Qualities and parts all men share as attributes do not show us the cause of why we share them. That is how I read the text I quoted. Do you see another way to understand those words?

It is clear that there must be a relationship between the "particular formation" of individuals and the way they can be recognized as members of a species. Otherwise, there would be no species or kinds. How to understand that is a major hot potato in Aristotelian scholarship. But we don't have to get that deep into the pool to see that Aristotle objects to the language of participating in Forms because it starts with a general attribute and circles backs to itself:

" 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."

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

What we can determine is common to a species is not seeing what makes a substance become and maintain its being. As quoted before:

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

To look for causes of substances composed of matter and form cannot be done by simply identifying components. Whatever is bringing them into existence, and maintaining them while they do, is a principle beyond those components:

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

This unity is not what is meant by a universal that can be named. In so far as we can talk about substance that makes each unique. The need for analogy points to a limit of our experience:

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

We have been given some ratios to work with but are far from seeing how it works in individuals.

I think that distinction works in the absolute terms of the De Anima, 408b passage.

I read the focus on the actual compared to the potential in other contexts to point to a continuity of life despite the intermittent nature of some activities. To say "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" is to look for a basis of continuity based upon something like the soul that keeps you alive through both phases.

Thanks, the materials you provide are very informative. I wonder if in the above passage, 'mind' is the translation of 'nous'? — Wayfarer

It is. A lot of Aristotle's language is hard to decipher. Not this stuff.

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

The status of this Easy is a matter of much dispute. We and many others have argued about this on many threads. What is a preservation of an idea versus a distortion of it.? Does the new use of words cancel the old?

(I'm very interested in the medieval conception of the rational soul, which seems very much aligned with these types of ideas.) — Wayfarer

I read Aristotle as a challenge to the idea of the person that many of the medieval conceptions of the rational soul are based upon. Perhaps this deserves its own OP.

The active intellect in a living person is not a separate 'faculty' in the sense of a capacity that can be set side by side with another faculty of the intellect. What we experience as thinking cannot happen without the perishable and "passive" power to remember what is thought. We cannot observe the active principle as it is as itself. If we speak of active and passive powers, we need the structure of a soul (what makes living things live) to approach what the meeting of form and matter might entail for living things.

It is not as simple as shaping a stone into a statue. Living things are not like shaping things once and you are done. They require a continuous process that cannot stop and start when it gets tired. That is why Aristotle distinguishes between changes like making a house out of stuff from the act of seeing, which is an activity that involves a potential you are born with.

How to view this 'continuous process' is not brought up in the question of surviving death (as discussed in the Phaedo) but to explain the cessation of life. The 'continuous process' either stops because the active principle stopped or because of some defect in the perishable component. That is why I brought up this text when we discussed this last year:

The case of the mind is different; it seems to be an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed. If it could be destroyed at all, it would be under the blunting influence of old age. What really happens in respect of mind in old age is, however, exactly parallel to what happens in the case of the sense organs; if the old man could recover the proper kind of eye, he would see just as well as the young man. The incapacity of old age is due to an affection not of the soul but of its vehicle, as occurs in drunkenness or disease. Thus it is that in old age the activity of mind or intellectual apprehension declines only through the decay of some other inward part; mind itself is impassible. Thinking, loving, and hating are affections not of mind but of that which has mind, in so far as it has it. That is why, when the vehicle decays, memory and love cease; they were activities not of mind, but of the composite which has perished; mind is, no doubt, something more divine and impassable. That the soul cannot be moved is therefore clear from what we have said, and if it cannot be moved at all, manifestly it cannot be moved by itself.
— De Anima, 408b, 18, translated by J. A. Smith

That idea is going to have a hard time getting past what I just quoted upthread:

Since, then, they cannot share in the everlasting and divine by continuous existence, because no perishable thing can persist numerically one and the same, they share in them in so far as each can, some more and some less; and what persists is not the thing itself but something like itself, not one in number but one in species.

So, less a matter of 'absorption' and more like swallowing a balloon filled with cocaine to get it through customs.

Thank you. He still is kicking my ass.

I did not bring him up as a rebuttal to any thesis here but only to note that Aristotle is not keeping the peas from touching the meat the way Kant likes his supper.

I never canceled the agent intellect. I recognize the agent intellect as an extremely important concept. I just understand it in a way different from you. And that's not at all surprising because the proper way to understand the agent intellect has always been a matter of debate. — Metaphysician Undercover

What became difficult for me to understand then and since then is:

As we proceed through Bk2 and 3, an explanation is provided. This is the actual/potential division. The way that the soul moves the body is by means of the powers, which are potentials. The potentials are not naturally active, they need to be actualized. So I do not think it is the case that we consider one to be a part of the other, but they exist in this relationship which is the active/potential relationship of hylomorphism, matter/form. — Metaphysician Underground

You seem to be putting the active principle outside of the combining of matter and form. The potentiality is somehow existing independently of what turns them on. This proposed separation runs afoul of how actuality and potentiality is used by Aristotle. As far as I can make out, you have nested one hylomorphism into another. The problem of the Third Man gets doubled and we are now up to Six of them. The antidote is to consider what Aristotle says is not potentiality and actuality:

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

If we could say exactly what this element is in each case, we would.

There are only potential powers when there are actual ones nearby.

All the instances where the analogy does a job involve situations where the potential is sometimes not activated. This condition does not apply to as quoted above: "Things that have no matter, though, are all unconditionally just what is a one."

This permits Aristotle to speak of an active principle that is immortal to directly activate what is not one:

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 nothing thinks. — Aristotle, De Anima, 430a18, translated by DW Hamlyn

It is the formal cause and not a concept that does the work. The formal cause, what it is to be a man, is what each and every man is. This is by nature not by concept. — Fooloso4

Before Aristotle discusses actuality and potentiality in Book Theta, the problem of universals as causes is discussed in Book Zeta. Starting with:

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

The discussion continues with:

If we get our theoretical grasp on the issue on the basis of these considerations, then, it is evident that nothing that belongs universally to things is substance, and that none of the things that are predicated in common signifies a this something but a such-and-such sort. If not, many other difficulties result, and especially the Third Man. — ibid. 1038b30

This argument touches on the distinction Joe Sachs makes between abstraction and separation in the language of the Physics:

If we are abstracting from tangible bodies, then they must in the first place be
made, in part, out of objects of thought. This is what I meant by saying that our usual idea
of abstraction is not tenable. It makes the thinkable things unmysterious only by doing just
the opposite to the visible things. It ends up claiming that our eyes see the invisible and our
hands hold the intangible, because it tells us that when we think one of those invisible and
intangible things, we have extracted it out of a body like a tooth. The idea of abstraction
answers no question, but only goes around in a circle and gets dizzy. Anything it gives us,
we already have; anything we don't already have, it can't give us. — Joe Sachs, The Battle of the Gods and the Giants, page 8

Aristotle has got your back:

It is also worth inquiring how time is related to the soul and why time is thought to exist in everything, on the earth and on the sea and in the heaven. Is it not in view of the fact that it is an attribute or a possession of a motion, by being a number (of a motion), and the fact that all these things are movable? For all of them are in a place, and time is simultaneous with a motion whether with respect to potentiality or with respect to actuality.
One might also raise the problem of whether time would exist not if no soul existed; for, if no one can exist to do the numbering, no thing can be numbered. So if nothing can do the numbering except a soul or the intellect of a soul, no time can exist without the existence of soul, unless it be that which when existing, time exists, that is if a motion can exist without a soul. As for the prior and the posterior, they exist in motion; and they are time qua being numerable.
— Physics, 223a15, translated by HG Apostle

We look for the Nous against the background of where we cannot find it. We stick out like a sore thumb.

But it is not clear whether you think you are explaining Aristotle or abandoning him. — Fooloso4

I have not heard this interpretation from any other commentator, ancient or modern. In the discussion last year, I realized that I was never going to be able to visit his planet when he said this:

Now, It is clear from the passage I quoted from De Anima, that Aristotle rejects this idea of the mind moving itself through eternal circular motion. He attributes this idea of the mind moving itself to Plato's Timaeus, and he rejects it, for the reasons given in the quoted passage. The description is spatial, and that which is immaterial cannot be described in spatial terms — Metaphysician Undercover

.

This comment was said to cancel the description of the agent intellect:

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 nothing thinks. — Aristotle, De Anima, 430a18, translated by DW Hamlyn

To understand Aristotle you will have to ignore Aristotle.

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

Potentiality only refers to substances composed with matter:

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

The matter is potential only in relation to what a substance actually is:

It is evident that even of the things that seem to be substances, most are capacities (dunami), whether the parts of animals (for none of them exists when it has been separated, and whenever they are separated they all exist only as matter) or earth, fire, and air (for none of them is one, but instead they are like a heap, until they are concocted and some one thing comes to be from them). — ibid. 1040b5

Living things are not eternal:

Hence, we must first speak about nourishment and reproduction; for the nutritive soul belongs also to the other living things and is the first and most commonly possessed potentiality of the soul, in virtue of which they all have life. Its function in living things, such as are perfect and not mutilated or do not have spontaneous generation, to produce another thing like themselves--an animal to produce an animal, a plant a plant---in order that they may partake of the everlasting and divine in so far as they can; for all desire that, for the sake of that, they do whatever they do in accordance with nature. (But that for the sake of which is twofold--the purpose for which and the beneficiary for whom.) Since, then, they cannot share in the everlasting and divine by continuous existence, because no perishable thing can persist numerically one and the same, they share in them in so far as each can, some more and some less; and what persists is not the thing itself but something like itself, not one in number but one in species. — De Anima, 415a26, translated by DW Hamlyn

Primary causes are eternal:

But if there is something that is eternal and immovable and separable, it is evident that knowledge of it belongs to a theoretical science—not, however, to natural science (for natural science is concerned with certain movable things) nor to mathematics, but to something prior to both. For natural science is concerned with things that are inseparable but not immovable, while certain parts of mathematics are concerned with things that are immovable and not separable but as in matter. 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. concavity is without perceptible matter. If, then, all natural things are said the way the snub is (for example, nose, eye, face, flesh, bone, and, in general, animal, and leaf, root, bark, and, in general, plant—for the account of none of these is without [reference to] movement, but always includes matter), the way we must inquire into and define the what-it-is in the case of natural things is clear, as is why it belongs to the natural scientist to get a theoretical grasp even on some of the soul, that is, on as much of it as is not without matter. That natural science is a theoretical science, then, is evident from these considerations. Mathematics too is a theoretical one, but whether its objects are immovable and separable is not now clear; however, it is clear that some parts of mathematics get a theoretical grasp on their objects insofar as they are immovable and insofar as they are separable. But if there is something that is eternal and immovable and separable, it is evident that knowledge of it belongs to a theoretical science—not, however, to natural science (for natural science is concerned with certain movable things) nor to mathematics, but to something prior to both. For natural science is concerned with things that are inseparable but not immovable, while certain parts of mathematics are concerned with things that are immovable and not separable but as in matter. 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

Is that how Kant would have looked at it? That was my question.

Your observation made by Jung is interesting.

Unless you believed that those beginnings implied influences that were deemed demonic afterwards.

Myths are an essential element of Jung's concept. Thinking about them near Kant reminds me of how staunchly Kant opposed superstition.(exept, of course, the mystery of his personal belief) The interest Jung took in Alchemy would be close to dark magic from that perspective.

One of things I find interesting in Jung is that some portion of the 'scientific method' has a parent people are uncomfortable talking about.

The point being, we should not, as is commonly assumed, read Aristotle as a rejection of Plato. — Fooloso4

Your point is well taken.

I do think it is fair to say that Aristotle has no patience for the 'likely stories' and the devices of myth and poetry employed by Plato. If you are going to be an account, it has to do some work. The endoxa (previous opinions) Aristotle starts so many of his works sometimes are oppositions to ideas but other times a decision that "this does not help me."

When one reads the academic debate over the last two hundred years over what Aristotle meant, there are many disagreements that are alive today. One element is never disputed in my recollection: This guy was looking for the right map, not a collection of possible maps.

That is an interesting idea. I feel it is incumbent upon you to compare them side by side. Otherwise, my response would be a rebuttal in search of a thesis.

At the very least, would you accept the idea is completely foreign to Kant?

I have read some articles suggesting that Kant and Schopenhauer anticipate Freud's discovery of the unconscious - which seems fairly obvious when you think about it. For Kant, much of what we think we know is determined by categorial structures that lie beneath the threshold of conscious awareness. For Schopenhauer, transcendence can be sought through art as a symbolic form of the Sublime. Whereas Hegel attempts to explain everything, to make it all explicit, but in so doing, 'projected great truths out of the subjective sphere into a cosmos he himself had created.' It seems a sound analysis to me. — Wayfarer

Yes, Kant and Schopenhauer presented an underlying scaffold that undergirds conscious experience. On the other hand, they would have shot beer through their nostrils if told there was a collective unconscious.

I think there is a truth in Jung's criticism of Hegel. With some aspects of Jung's psychology, I wonder if he is not guilty of the same charge. I also wonder if there is a way to see that Hegel established a framework that permits the logos of Jung. The master's appentice.....

As long as you think that by potentiality and actuality Aristotle means a representation you will remain hopelessly confused. — Fooloso4

It confuses me at any rate. If a map is being made, it should help navigate the territory. And that is what Aristotle was demanding in his challenge to Plato: "What do the Form contribute to the eternal beings among the sensibles or to those which are generated and destroyed? For they are not the cause of motion or change in them."

Is there a map of a territory which is the map of a territory beyond that? I fear the approach of an infinite circular motion.

I meant to say he is departing from the domain of rationalist explanation but not negating them. He rejects Nietzsche's rejection of 'laws of nature', for instance. So, Jung does talk like Descartes in many registers but is exploring what is underneath him at the same time.

Jung cannot speak of 'psychologists in disguise' without philosophers who aren't doing that. Perhaps he is trying to have his cake and eat it too.