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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rationality is of little use on the irrational. — Banno

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It doesn't get more secular than that.

I think the following accounts are true:

Methodists divide before the war.

Presbyterians divide before the war.

Calvinists divide before the war.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don't know what has not been revealed.

There are interesting points of comparison and contrast between Plato's 'idea of the good' and Aristotle's use of 'final causes'. Declaring they are identical, and that that fact is obvious to anyone who has done enough reading is an odd abandonment of a thesis. It is a kind of solipsism.

Apart from specific claims, it seems to me that the role of the dialectic is important to keep in mind as both Plato and Aristotle have their own ways of recognizing and using it.

The distinction between good as a benefit and evil as harmful to a being leads Socrates to demand the following from Glaucon:

“I granted you the just person’s seeming to be unjust and the unjust person’s seeming to be just, because you two asked for it. Even if it wouldn’t be possible for these things to go undetected by gods and human beings, it still had to be granted [612D] for the sake of argument, so justice itself could be judged in comparison with injustice itself. Or don’t you remember?”
“I’d surely be doing an injustice if I didn’t,” he said.
“Now since they have been judged,” I said, “I’m asking on justice’s behalf for its reputation back again, and for you folks to agree that the reputation it has is exactly the one it does have with gods and human beings, so that it may carry off the prizes it gains and confers on those who have it for the way it seems, since it has also made it obvious that it confers the good things that come from what it is and doesn’t deceive those who take into their very being.” [612E]
“The things you’re asking for are just,” he said. “So will you give this back first,” I said, “that it doesn’t escape the notice of the gods, at least, that each of them is the sort of person he is?” “We’ll give it back,” he said.
“And if it’s not something that escapes their notice, the one would be loved by the gods and the other hated, just as we agreed at the start.”
“There is that.”
“And won’t we agree that everything that comes to someone loved by the gods [613A] is the best possible, at least with everything that comes from the gods, unless there was already some necessary evil for him stemming from an earlier mistaken choice?”
“Very much so.”
“Therefore, in accord with that, the assumption that has to be made about a just man, if he falls into poverty or diseases or any other apparent evils, is that these things will finally turn into something good for him while he lives or even when he dies. Because someone is certainly never going to be neglected by the gods when he’s willing to put his heart into becoming just and pursuing virtue [613B] to the extent of becoming like a god as much as is possible for a human being.”
“It’s not likely anyway,” he said, “that someone like that would be neglected by his own kind.” “And shouldn’t we think the opposite of that about an unjust person?”
“Emphatically so.” — Plato, Republic, 612c, translated by Joe Sachs

Thank you for directing my attention toward Blumenberg. After having searched for his writings, I am going to read some his work on fables, myths, and metaphors. If I get where he is coming from, the importance of the St. Francis story is not historical as an event but emblematic of what people considered possible and real. The barriers between life and death, the natural and the miraculous were less solid than for us as a culture of shared understanding.

I am curious which particular school of Gnosticism Blumenberg is referring to. There are many variations, as can be seen here. In the various ways that evil came into being, the role of the Demiurge is primarily that of the 'Craftsman'. This is the same agent in Plato's Timaeus who assembled creation. How 'tricky' he was considered to be varied greatly amongst Gnostic theogonies. Plotinus militated against the Gnostics because they said the world was a place that required salvation. As he said in many places: "No has the right to find fault with the constitution of the world for it reveals the greatness of intelligible nature."

Gnosticism did not simply evaporate but was vigorously erased by the Church as much as it was in their power to do so. The discovery of the Nag Hammadi in 1945 brought the Gospel of Thomas into view. The writing does have some connections to Gnostic thinking and some of that language is found in the Gospel of John as well. What really pushed it out of the canon must be the absence of the Passion/Resurrection narrative along with Jesus's instruction to look to James to lead them after he is gone. That is not exactly the vibe the Church Fathers were hankering for.

Yes, one might suppose the level of destruction might disrupt the vision of a negotiated space.
I suppose we will have the luxury of determining the limits afterwards. Forensics work best on dead people.

Yes, I just agreed with that.

I acknowledge the difference but there is the legitimacy that is conveyed by having the Patriarch shake pom-poms for Putin's agenda.

Yet when you look at the Imports map, you notice that even together they are a fraction of the imports from South Korea. In fact Russia isn't important as a trading partner for China. — ssu

In regards to what is at stake for China to invade Taiwan, look at that map to see how much China imports from Taiwan.
China already has the problem of cutting their nose to spite the face because of the importance of Taiwanese investment along with its place in the supply chain for their products. Invading Tiawan won't transfer their market share to China, especially if the invasion destroys infrastructure on the scale of the ongoing leveling of Ukraine.

Augustine synthesized a Neo-Platonist view of the cosmos with the Pauline vision of a world torn asunder by the struggle between good and evil where miracles appear. The experience of natural events was not separated from why miraculous things happen. This lead to many different accounts of experience. The importance of personal visions and hearings stood side by side with the image of an ordered creation. We live in the vestibule between the inner and the outer. This can be seen in the life of St. Francis of Assisi, described by St. Bonaventure:

As it stood above him, he saw that it was a man and yet a Seraph with six wings; his arms were extended and his feet conjoined, and his body was fixed to a cross. Two wings were raised above his head, two were extended as in flight, and two covered the whole body. The face was beautiful beyond all earthly beauty, and it smiled gently upon Francis. Conflicting emotions filled his heart, for though the vision brought great joy, the sight of the suffering and crucified figure stirred him to deepest sorrow. Pondering what this vision might mean, he finally understood that by God’s providence he would be made like to the crucified Christ not by a bodily martyrdom but by conformity in mind and heart. Then as the vision disappeared, it left not only a greater ardour of love in the inner man but no less marvelously marked him outwardly with the stigmata of the Crucified.

I don't know how the loss of geocentricity relates to the end of peoples' time in the vestibule One could argue that it brought the human more clearly into view. Places where the natural and the 'supernatural' were separated allowed a person to decide for themselves whether they were awake or living in a dream.

I had never heard of Arnobius before. He sort of built the first Skinner Box. Is Blumenberg saying this experience is the result of failing to 'repel Gnosticism'?

Put on your red shoes and dance the blues

I get the part about no guarantees. I don't think promises are what is on offer in the Theaetetus text. We don't know much about what is going on. We do have lots of data about bullshiting ourselves and others.

Just before the part I quoted, Theodorus was wondering how much better the world would be if we weren't so stupid. I took Socrates' response to be an agreement with the statement if one accepted the difficulty involved for everyone who tries to act on the observation. And the first step is to say it is not stupid to try.

I was looking at the connection as way for the autocracy of the regime to be seen as serving the culture of the believers. Whatever sincerity may or not be involved, the appearance of service can be a strong element of social control. Putin seems to have been successful at getting others to think he wants what they want. The extremity of this action pulls the drop cloth off that action. The grinding destruction of what was supposed to be saved is not going back in the box before Pandora returns.

Which planet? — Agent Smith

The dialogue continues to say the one we are living on, seeking the good as much as possible or suffering the cost of not trying.

Sophistry, is it pre-philosophy or post-philosophy? — Agent Smith

The dialogue of that name says this at the end:

The art of contradiction making, descended from an insincere kind of conceited mimicry, fo the semblance-making breed, derived from image making, distinguished as a portion, not divine but human, of production, that presents a shadow play of words---such are the blood and lineage which can, with perfect truth, be assigned to the authentic Sophist.

Is that how you are asking if it is pre or post philosophy?