However, to speed the calculus along, I'd reiterate that it is ESSENTIAL that people differentiate rational self-interest, greed predicated upon productivity and a respect for individual sovereignty, and that of actual greed, self-interest predicated upon the labor of others and a disregard for individual sovereignty. — Garrett Travers

You are working some kind of prosperity gospel where the material interests of some are legitimate, but the desires of others are not.

I want to come back as Tina Weymouth:


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Yes, If I take your meaning, when I first read the work and learned what each of them generated together as the "Just City," it struck me as being anything but. At best, just another specimen to add to the collection of failed state models. — Garrett Travers

Regardless of the ways your judgement may turn regarding Socrates' proposal of the Just City, that regime differs from the other four by not being an experienced reality.

When Socrates speaks of the three kinds of men, lovers of wisdom, honor, or money, the regime not yet realized can be recognized as the one where the lover of wisdom is above all others in authority. The highest of the failed four can include the lover of wisdom as a righteous citizen but not as a singular agent. Consider the following discussion of the possible experiences of each kind of man:

“So consider: of the men, of whom there are three, who’s the most experienced in all the pleasures we’re speaking of? Does the lover of gain seem to you to be more experienced in the pleasure that comes from knowing, because he learns the truth itself for what it is, or does the lover of wisdom seem more experienced in the pleasure that comes from [582B] gaining something?”
“There’s a big difference,” he said. “It’s necessary for the one to taste the other pleasures starting from childhood, but for the other, the lover of gain, it’s not necessary to taste or to get any experience of learning how things are in their nature, of the pleasure in that and how sweet it is; what’s more, even if he were eager to, it wouldn’t be so easy.”
“So,” I said, “the lover of wisdom greatly surpasses the lover of gain in his experience of both sorts of pleasure.” [582C]'
“Greatly indeed.” “'
And how about in relation to the lover of honor? Is the lover of wisdom more inexperienced in the pleasure that comes from being honored than that person is in the pleasure that comes from using intelligence?”
“On the contrary,” he said; “honor is attached to them all, so long as each achieves what he sets out for. Even the rich person is honored by many people, as are the courageous and the wise. So all are experienced in what the pleasure is like that comes from being honored, but it’s impossible for anyone except the lover of wisdom to get a taste of what’s involved in the sight of what is, or of the sort of pleasure it has in it.” [582D]
“Therefore, as far as experience is concerned,” I said, “he’d do the most beautiful job of judging among the men.”
“By far.” — Republc, 582A, translated by Joe Sachs

Values, on the other hand, emerge out of societies through time and are dissemnitated onto individuals, by which their particular ethical inclinations will be informed. — Garrett Travers

This formulation is strikingly different from Rand's epistemology. She celebrates a selfishness of ranking what is worthwhile for oneself above other kinds of 'moral' evaluation. Her novels are fawning adorations of such qualities. Charity and compassion are depicted as subtractions from virtue, not simply elective values to be affirmed or not.

In keeping with the Polis and the individual being seen as parallel lives, the change from one kind of regime to another is traced by the type of man who lives in them. The role of wealth, as a personal good, plays a part in each change. The first change is described this way:

“Once division had come on the scene,” I said, “the two strains of iron and bronze in their race each pulled them in the direction of moneymaking and of acquiring land and houses and gold and silver, while the other two strains of gold and silver, inasmuch as they weren’t needy but rich in their souls by nature, led them toward virtue and the ancient order of things. — Plato, Republic, 547b, translated by Joe Sachs

But it is important to remember that the 4 regimes being discussed do not include the Fifth that the previous books of the Republic described as the best. As Glaucon says:

“That’s not hard,” he said, “because almost exactly like now, you were acting as though you’d gone completely through the discussion about the city, saying that you’d rate a city of the sort you’d gone over at that point, and a man like it, [543D] as good, though for that matter it seems as though you were able to describe a still more beautiful [544A] city and man. So anyway, you were saying that the other cities were misguided if this one is right, and you claimed, as I recall, that there were four forms among the remaining polities about which it would be worth having an account, and worth seeing the ways they, and the people like them, go astray, so that, when we’d seen them all and come to agreement about the best and worst sort of man, we could consider whether the best is the happiest and the worst the most miserable, or whether it might be otherwise. — Republic, 544a, ibid. (Underlining is mine)

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Self-actualization then is nothing more than buying more expensive food, clothes, houses, etc. You see what I mean? — Agent Smith

In Maslow's theory of motivation, gratification of basic needs is not isolated from the cognitive activity necessary for a healthy organism. While the aesthetic element of eating can be a source of gratification, the restless nature of the organism's intellect is key for experiencing an "actualization." In that vein, Maslow observes:

Studies of psychologically healthy people indicate that they are, as a defining characteristic, attracted to the mysterious, to the unknown, to the chaotic, unorganized and unexplained. This seems to be a per se attractiveness; these areas are in themselves and of their own right interesting. The contrasting reaction to the well known is boredom.

There follows a long paragraph discussing how this characteristic has psychopathological or neurotic outcomes. And then he says:

I have seen a few cases in which it seemed clear to me that the pathology (boredom, loss of zest in life, self-dislike, general depression of the bodily functions, steady deterioration of the intellectual life of tastes, etc.) were produced in intelligent people leading stupid lives in stupid jobs. I have at least one case in which the appropriate cognitive therapy (resuming part time studies, getting a position that was more intellectually demanding, insight) removed the symptoms. — A Maslow, A Theory of Human Motivation, pg 49

This example suggests that satisfying 'higher' needs becomes more personal and various in their expressions but the dynamic of what makes them healthy or sick is the same for all humans.

It is difficult to sort out these various models. How they get used to promote different policies makes them a player in a way that does not answer the problem of experience they are supposed to make more understandable.

For example, Maslow is a 'behaviorist' in wanting to base a model of personal development by observing behavior. That is different from relying upon reports of experience to investigate the phenomena. Vygostky is important because he discussed the limits of 'self-reporting' as a limit to empiricism rather than make the observation an element of his model.

In that sense, the difference between the 'psychoanalyst' method of interviewing people and finding some other way to investigate personal experience has been the difficulty since a certain set of medical doctors looked at their patients and wondered what the hell was going on with them.

I figure some thoughts take more words than others. As Horace said back in the day: "I wish to be brief, but I become obscure."

One can become prolix by exceeding what is needed or remaining obscure despite the trouble. Hard to find an algorithm to fix that.

I would prefer a 'last word' algorithm where the insistence upon only one interpretation after 20 posts automatically makes the discussion its own separate OP. The putative kings of the mountain would be excluded from the original discussion to permit alternative views to be presented without the sweaty Highlander vibe.

Good inclusion to the mater.
In opposition to the theories of motivation, there was the view of Behaviorism, of the Pavlovion sort, that focused upon producing experiences through control of conditions rather than finding the structure of an individual's desire.

They have an app for that: Industrial Psychology.

When I read Maslow, it was in the context of exploring different models of childhood development. In that dynamic, the minimum conditions for an experience was related to theories of Vygotsky, Piaget, and such. The first problem was how the matter could be pursued as a movement from incapacity to assured ability. A hierarchy militates against a model of behavior without any.

So, how to look for something without presuming one has found it already.

Again, you cannot be good to others if you are not good yourself. It's not possible. — Garrett Travers

True enough. But that observation is not the same as saying that the moral values needed to be an ethical person can be derived from oneself first and then extended to others. The reference to Aristotle's comparison of man to a God was to show the problem of such a derivation, not invoke a divinity.

The value of self-sufficiency, as the highest good for the philosopher, is not the grounds for the conditions that require ethics. As Aristotle says in Politics 1253a:

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

The Randian vision is one of a God who fell to Earth.

What everyone here seems to be arguing, is that ethics are exclusively the domain of interpersonal relations. — Garrett Travers

I haven't been arguing that. The references I have made point to how the good for oneself is interwoven with the good of others. The realm of the virtue of being just is directed toward relationships with others. As your citation of the Ethics states:

[quote="Garrett Travers;648171"]the just man needs people towards whom and with whom he shall act justly, and the temperate man, the brave man, and each of the others is in the same case, but the philosopher, even when by himself, can contemplate truth, and the better the wiser he is; he can perhaps do so better if he has fellow-workers, but still he is the most self-sufficient. And this activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from practical activities we gain more or less apart from the action."[/quote]

What you have been arguing is that moral value is measured primarily by the return of personal investment as outlined by Rand's epistemology. Aristotle just disagreed with her in this passage.

I wasn't claiming that someone other than an individual could be a virtuous person. The question is what those qualities are. They are described by Plato and Aristotle as largely exhibited through actions done with and for other people.

The Stanford essay clearly distills the gist of what is the predicate for any following ethical deliberations. — Garrett Travers

Where?

if this is the case, human good turns out to be activity of soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are more than one virtue, in accordance with the best and most complete." — Garrett Travers

So, who notices these virtues? What are they? Courage, Honesty, Loyalty, Fidelity, or What? Where does serving the 'individual' fit in?

The Standford essay points to how difficult it is to separate the inquiries. I was hoping for a pithy reference to actual text to illuminate your point.

I am arguing against the notion that ethics is exclusively predicated on such considerations and that individual ethics are not a thing. — Garrett Travers

Maybe a little Aristotle will demonstrate my dissatisfaction with your categories:

Now, knowing what is good for oneself is, to be sure, one kind of knowledge; but it is very different from the other kinds. A man who knows and concerns himself with his own interests is regarded as a man of practical wisdom, while men whose concern is with politics are looked upon as busybodies. Euripides' words are in this vein:

"How can I be called "wise", who might have filled a common soldier's place, free from all care, sharing an equal lot?
For those who reach too high and are too active..."

For people seek their own good and think this is what they should do. This opinion has given rise to the view that it is such men who have practical wisdom. And yet, surely one's own good cannot exist without household management nor without a political system. Moreover, the problem of how to manage one's affairs properly needs clarification and remains to be examined. — Nicomachean Ethics, Book Six, translated by Marin Oswald

I don't know if "individual ethics" are a thing or not, But the concept does not seem to apply to at least one classical author. A counter example to consider would be most welcome.

You will have to show me where Plato decouples ethics and politics in the manner you propose.

The passage I cited supports the idea that people should live: "being informed both by personal reasons and interpersonal reasons." Noticing that these interests conflict in life is central to what ethical considerations must deal with by actual humans.

ethics is exclusively the domain of interpersonal relations is ahistorical and demostrably false and this passage from The Republic above has nothing to do with Platonic or Socratic ethical theory on its own, but only in relation to the proposition of the Just City. — Garrett Travers

Nothing to do with it?
Ethics has nothing to do with just polity?
I am getting an ice cream headache.

The passage does address the ethical issue of why the guardians should give up some portion of their pursuit of individual happiness for the greater good. Socrates says that they would not see it as a sacrifice if viewed as artists working with what is theirs to work upon. The happiness that comes from that devotion is a personal benefit as well as a communal one.

Two being the "Guardians," the military force within proposed Just City, for whom Glaucon, Socrates, Thrasymachus, and Polemarchus devise unique modes of living apart from normal culture, — Garrett Travers

I understand that Plato is writing of a 'City of Words', but Thrasymachus was not proposing an alternate form of life as something apart from "normal culture." His shtick was that talk of Justice is a way to sugarcoat the reality of power, where the people who win call the shots and the talk about right as a common good is a story to make people feel better about it.

The idea that gave rise to the concept of ethics came from Socrates, which was to understand how to live the "good life," as he called it. The concept that you aren't capable of developing a personal, ethical code by which to live, in the hopes of increasing utility in your own life, promoting personal health, succeeding at individual goals, finding a compatible partner, pursuing truth, and so on, is a concept entirely foreign to philosophy. — Garrett Travers

The principle of responsibilities to others was constantly set on the balance whereby the good of the individual was conditioned by the needs of the community.

“What needs to be considered, then, is whether we’re instituting the guardians with a view to that, in order for the greatest possible happiness to be brought about in them, or else, with a view toward this for the whole city, it needs to be seen whether it’s being brought about there. In the latter case, these auxiliaries and guardians would need to be compelled and persuaded to see to that, so that they’ll be the best craftsmen at their own work and all the others will be the same, and once the city is growing all together in that way and is beautifully established, one needs to leave it up to nature to allow each class of people to partake of happiness. — Plato, The Republic, 421b, translated by Joe Sachs

He may well be, but that overemphasis on individualism is is rampant in neoliberal and conservative circles, it's most amusing version being the sovereign citizen. — Banno

The example given here: "Thus, morality is the self-generated body of behaviors designed for individual achievement of well-being and happiness." is a Randian expression of what people really talk about when they talk about morality. Many Libertarians, like Hayek for example, argue against institutional controls of exchange without making such a claim or writing an epistemology to explain their view of what constitutes tyranny.

What I have read of the "sovereign individual" book on systems is that it seems to be 'amoral' to the extent that self-interest is taken as a presupposition and there is no need to compare that with any telos of how the world of people should be.

He is channeling Ayn Rand, where "morality" is a personal to do list:

"Since a value is that which on acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is the duration of one's lifespan, it is a part of one's life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from." — Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Concepts of Consciousness

The "teleological" measuring stick is me, myself, and I.

Are you going Puritan about this angle or something more Baudrillard?

Maybe you guys should establish your own thread where you disagree with each other for time out of mind. You both want to monopolize what is being discussed. You deserve each other.

Your failure to understand this prevents you from correctly understanding Aristotle (and Plato) and you get bogged down in unfounded and futile "interpretations" that can only lead to materialism in the best case and to psychological issues in the worst — Apollodorus

While I disagree with many parts of Metaphysician Undercover's reading of Aristotle, I also disagree with your penchant to decide what the different interpretations lead to. I have no idea whether Metaphysician Undercover's interpretation leads to the results you portend. The categories you employ are not matters of fact but involve many unresolved questions of scholarship and reflection.

For instance, I disagree with a large number of Gerson's arguments that I have been encouraged to engage with here. I have no interest in pronouncing any judgement upon his views outside of agreeing or disagreeing with his statements about the arguments and intent of the text he puts forth.

What possible value could be derived from treating those disagreements as proof of an agenda not stated in the text?

That is an obvious observation of how it functions; Noticing that does not mean there is nothing else to be said. Its role in the building of our technical society requires more than agreeing with your proposition.

Money does play a big part in the exchange of commodities now. Agreeing it is not a replacement for fungible goods, as what the OP refers to as "real", does not explain that development. Presumably it is the question of how imaginary our interactions may be rather than the status of money that is being raised.

I wasn't claiming one system replaced the other by necessity. I thought my comment was more in line with:

instead money seems to have arisen to keep track of pre-existing credit relationships — SEP

The exchange of valued objects was still based on agreement about the deal regarding actual objects.

The set up did take on a life of its own. I was suggesting that the "game" like qualities of those developments did not change the fundamental basis of barter.

Money relates to a real exchange of commodities. As a system, it extends bartering where one is not required to have the items standing next to each other for the swap. The imaginary element enters as a possibility for an exchange and thus frames the future in the present. Throw in the dynamics of debt and time is even more thoroughly reimagined.

But does that sort of game set up alter the 'reality' of the exchange of desired things? Is the distinction between "necessary: and "fetish" goods something that hinges upon the imaginary?

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

This inconsistency you refer to goes toward illuminating my inability to decipher what you think Aristotle is saying. You seem to be invested in claiming Aristotle is saying X. But you also are arguing against claims made by Aristotle when they do not support your interpretation of X.

How is a conversation about an author's intent to go forward under these conditions?

I think the reason for Spinoza's expulsion by the Jewish community was because his philosophy bypassed the need for the traditional religious authorities by teaching a 'direct path' type of approach. — Wayfarer

There is an "indirectness" that also led to that expulsion. Arguing that the Unnamable One is not an agent we could gain or lose favor for our purposes through pleasing that agent through our petitions was the real kicker. The notion that our circumstances would improve if we weren't so stupid was recognized as something we could not explain by direct causal explanations must certainly have been annoying. But not as annoying as that first part.

After all, the lessons of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes was that one should not get too big in the britches explaining events.

So the spatial representation of a circular motion, which is a material representation, is insufficient to describe an eternal being which is immaterial. — Metaphysician Undercover

This ignores the distinction between heavenly bodies and the "combined beings" of the sublunary sphere. The life of the latter is "ensouled" in a material basis that does not apply to eternal substances. The references to serial order of thinking relates to the distinction being made. What the actuality is for living animals does not completely include how nous is an actuality for those creatures. Aristotle says that the soul, as what makes creatures alive, is not self-moving. Something else causes it. Nous is said to be different in a way that requires more than the celestial model of Timaeus to explain. As Aristotle says: "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."

In this section of Book 1, no mention is made of actuality and potentiality. That emerges when Aristotle begins his own inquiry after finishing discussing previous views. As the beginning of Book 2 says: "Let us start again, as it were from the beginning, and try to determine what the soul is and what would be its most comprehensive definition." Through his analysis on this basis, Aristotle recognizes the materiality of combined beings while also claiming that nous is not simply a property of such. In Book 3, Chapter 8 of DA, he lays out the boundaries. The following addresses the materiality you refer to:

Since there is no actual thing which has separate existence, apart as it seems from magnitudes which are objects of perception, the objects of thought are included among the forms which are objects of perception, both those spoken of as in abstraction and those which are dispositions and affectations of objects of perception. And for this reason unless one perceived things one would not learn or understand anything, and when one contemplates one must simultaneously contemplate an image; for images are like sense-perception, except that they are without matter. But imagination is different from assertion and denial; for truth and falsity involve a combination of thoughts. But what distinguishes the first thoughts from images? Surely neither these nor any other thoughts will be images, but they will not exist without images. — DA 432a3, translated by D.W. Hamlyn

This view does not conform to the either/or you see in Book 1. The insufficiency noted by Aristotle in Book 1 is now accounted for as a distinction of causes: These distinctions are used to clarify the different ways that desire and practical reason can said to move the living animal.

Plotinus did not quite seem to grasp the necessity of Aristotle's cosmological argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

That likely is the case. The observation does seem to support my doubt that Metaphysics Book Lamba is somehow a sneaky backstory for Neo-Platonists. Your description of Plotinus' argument puzzles me on a number of levels, I will refrain from going there because it gets closer to your vision of Aristotle that I don't understand.

I am mulling the article you linked to. It is interesting in comparing ideas of motion and the first causes.
But the universe Aristotle thought he lived in is vastly different than what is being revealed now. It makes me less inclined to make certain connections than more.

When I took a course on Aristotle's Metaphysics in university, the professor told us that it was debatable as to whether Aristotle actually wrote this part. He attributed the writing to some other (unknown) Neo-Platonist, and so we did not study it with the rest of the text. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you have any other evidence to support this observation?
One Neo-Platonist, Plotinus, specifically objected to Aristotle's view of the Unmoved Mover on this point:

Aristotle says that the first existence is separated form sense objects and is an intelligible existence. But when he says that "it thinks itself," he takes the first rank from it. He also asserts the existence of a plurality of other intelligible entities in a number equal to the celestial spheres, so that each of them might have its principle of motion. About the intelligible entities, therefore, Aristotle advances a doctrine different from Plato, and as he has no good reason for this change, he brings in necessity. Even if he had good reasons, one might well object that it seems more reasonable to suppose that the spheres as they are coordinated in a single system are directed towards one end, the supreme existence. — Ennead Vi,i, translated by Joseph Katz

In this passage, Plotinus seems to be ignoring the clear reference to the importance of necessity in Plato's Timaeus. Nonetheless, it does undercut the idea that the Metaphysics was advancing a view of the cosmos that the Neo-Platonists were eager to support.

This dispositional difference is in part reflected in Aristotle’s penchant for introducing terminological innovations to express old (i.e., Platonic) thoughts. In working through the Aristotelian corpus with a mind open to the Neoplatonic assumption of harmony, I have found time and again that Aristotle was, it turns out, actually analyzing the Platonic position or making it more precise, not refuting it. — Lloyd Gerson

Gerson's emphasis upon "who is a Platonist" here is misplaced. Aristotle's objections to Plato were not a "penchant for introducing terminological innovations to express old (i.e., Platonic) thoughts." The "innovations" were serious attempts to advance the discussion beyond the terms expressed by Plato. The numerous places where Aristotle says something like "Plato was not wrong when he said X" are the places where he is saying Plato was wrong in how the idea was expressed. And that difference was the important matter to pay attention to.

If the differences were not really a difference, the whole trajectory of Aristotle's inquiry can be written off as some kind of poetry slam.

Who are you quoting?

Did he really talk about a never ending circular motion? — Raymond

He does so in De Caelo or "On the Heavens."
He also makes reference to the cosmology in the Metaphysics.

And that's love. Giving away everything your inner rational egotist has acquired. — ucarr

But this view is controverted by experience. The love amongst family and friends is not a zero-sum game. My child will not benefit from demonstrations of sacrifice. The freely given benefits me as well as him.

Edited: removed needless taunt.

The matters are clear to you, so my objections are merely proof of my incapacity. I have no objection to that sort of rhetoric as such. I would have continued on that basis if I understood what you are convinced of.

When I piece together what you ascribe to Aristotle, I don't understand it as a thought by itself.

By way of contrast, I disagree with many things Gerson asserts. He is not around to answer my challenges, but I understand what he is saying. I don't understand what you are saying. You have a vivid image of something and I cannot make it out.