I haven't the will to engage in this pointless exercise. Plato definitely points to this issue in his attacks on the sophists. — Metaphysician Undercover

Got it. You cannot recall any specific instances in the text that supports your claim of Plato's intention.

Seeing as how my challenge is pointless, I will not darken your door again. May the road rise up gently to meet you.

It is expressed in the passage with the distinction between "common good" and "private good", such that the "private good" is always sinful. This means that there is an inherent incompatibility between the common good and the private good. But this is faulty by Aristotelian principles, and those expressed by Aquinas, which were later accepted by Catholic moralists. — Metaphysician Undercover

What Augustine is referring to is not the 'private good' as expressed by Aristotle. Augustine is separating the 'what is good for oneself' as oneself from the matters of self-interest involved with participation in human affairs. In regard to the happiness of an individual, Augustine says:

[God] himself is the source of our bliss and he himself is the goal of all our striving. By our election of him as our goal … we direct our course towards him with love, so that in reaching him we may fnd our rest and attain our happiness because we have achieved our fulfillment in him. For our Good, that Final Good about which the philosophers dispute, is nothing else but to cleave to him whose spiritual embrace, if one may so express, it fills the intellectual soul and makes it fertile with true virtues — City of God, 10.3, translated by Betterson

It is argued in many places by Plato, that we knowingly do what is wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

Point out a few of those places, please. Your observation does not square with the often-repeated perception of ignorance as a condition of the soul. The following was said amongst friends rather than argued against Sophists:

“Anyway, think about it this way,” I said: “aren’t hunger and thirst and [585B] things like that certain kinds of emptiness in the condition that involves the body?” “What else?” “And isn’t ignorance or lack of understanding an emptiness in the condition that involves the soul?” — Plato. Republic, 585b, translated by Joe Sachs

I am trying to understand an essential difference between Kant's version of idealism and versions of idealism which came before him. Berkeley would be the most prominent example for my purposes. — Tom Storm

I am not sure how this observation fits in to the project of understanding Kant, but Berkeley can be read as the ultimate empiricist rather than as an idealist.
If one's ideas about causality have no bearing on what is outside of experience, then they cannot confirm or deny anything beyond it. The skepticism of Hume becomes an implacable barrier. It is like Hume on crack, to borrow a phrase.

One could take the same sequence to say that the result thrust 'Christianity' into incoherence. Pascal spoke of it as scandal to reason. The early Church Fathers told the Gnostics to stop making sense.

The idea of the self as a battleground was the dissolution of a single world that explains our nature in the language of Greek thought. The duality makes sense in the terms of Manicheism where good and evil are essential components of creation. But that world is as far away from the Timaeus used to design Augustine's heaven as Paul of Tarsus is from Aristotle's Ethics.

The problem with the passage you presented is that it defines "sin" in such a way that turning inward towards the maintenance of one's own well-being, is by definition sinful. This is the problem inherent within the distinction between apparent good, and real good, first proposed by Aristotle. — Metaphysician Undercover

Why do you speak of a 'passage presented by me' rather than address it as what St. Augustine says? To my knowledge, it is representative of what he says in other places. If you find this statement of his problematic, should that not be taken up as a challenge to his intent?

I disagree that turning 'toward its private good' is equivalent to "turning inward towards the maintenance of one's own well-being." Augustine says, " It turns to its own private good when it desires to be its own master. The will wanting to be its own master is not a concept in Aristotle's practical art of distinguishing what is good from what only seems to be. Turning 'inward' for Augustine is accepting that one must choose one life or another. The experience of the conflict is given through Paul's terms in the Letter to the Romans:

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I that do it but sin which dwells within me. — Romans 7:13

However, if we maintain Platonic principles, the good is what moves the will toward understanding and accepting intelligible principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

Please give an example of that language in Plato. In so far as doing bad things is the result of ignorance, isn't a 'faculty of choice' an idea that Socrates makes problematic? When will is spoken of as a cause, Socrates says things like:

And is this not a general truth? If a man acts with some purpose, he does not will the act, but the purpose of the act. — Gorgias, 467d

The distance between Plato and Paul on these matters causes me to think that the term "Christian Platonism" is an oxymoron.

Yes.
Thanks for the introduction.

All points well taken.
Regarding the Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt looked deeply at how both torturer and the tortured became products of the destruction of man as Man. I think her later works always kept that danger in view.

This, it seems to me, is by way of articulating the antisocial consequences of what has been revealed as the Christian notion of free will. — Banno

Strictly speaking, Arendt is giving a genealogy of the way political ideas about freedom became equated with free will. It is the equation she is militating against. The objective is not to give the last word on free will, Christian or otherwise. Her intention is to uncover a big mistake and move on with the problems of meaningful politics after correcting it.

This is why "will" needs to be defined as distinct from those other basic capacities, like desire and reason, so Augustine proposed a tripartite mind, as memory, understanding (reason), and will. — Metaphysician Undercover

The quote I gave earlier does employ the language you object to:

The will, however, commits sin when it turns away from immutable and common goods, toward its private good, either something external to itself or lower than itself. It turns to its own private good when it desires to be its own master; it turns to external goods when it busies itself with the private affairs of others or with whatever is none of its concern; it turns to goods lower than itself when it loves the pleasures of the body. Thus a man becomes proud, meddlesome, and lustful; he is caught up in another life which, when compared to the higher one, is death. — St. Augustine, book 2, 19, translated by Benjamin and Hackstaff

Your inclination to not have the same faculty at odds with itself certainly echoes a sensibility evident in the Greek philosophical tradition. The matter of sin being a choice between two possible lives is the source of the duality involved here. Otherwise, there is no choice.

Arendt is saying that if the principle of individual sovereignty was sufficient for the life of freedom, it would not lead to the absurdities noted in Rousseau's version of it.

I provided an example of the phenomenon you mentioned, not addressing the process that is involved in such a phenomenon failing against forces that would oppose it. Nor is it a topic of what is being discussed here, although interesting. — Garrett Travers

That comment evades the problem of the sufficiency of declaring individual freedom that I referred to.
That topic is integral to Arend's argument:

In reality Rousseau's theory stands refuted for the simple reason that "it is absurd for the will to bind itself for the future"; a community actually founded on this sovereign will would be built not on sand but on quicksand. All political business is, and always has been, transacted within an elaborate framework of ties and bonds for the future such as laws and constitutions, treaties and alliances all of which derive in the last instance from the faculty to promise and to keep promises in the face of the essential uncertainties of the future. A state, moreover, in which there is no communication between the citizens and where each man thinks only his own thoughts is by definition a tyranny. That the faculty of will and will-power in and by itself, unconnected with any other faculties, is an essentially nonpolitical and even anti-political capacity is perhaps nowhere else so manifest as in the absurdities to which Rousseau was driven and in the curious cheerfulness with which he accepted them.

How does that observation relate to the matter of insufficiency that was the central point of my comment?

She asks how a free community is thinkable, in which you are free with others. We think of a free community in terms of isolated individuals free from interference by others. — Tobias

In that sense, she is not opposing the idea of isolated individuals over against an idea of society or community but saying that the former is not sufficient by itself. The quote from Thomas Paine she gives is: ""to be free it is sufficient [for man] that he wills it," That may describe a necessary recognition of equality for the purpose of disavowing the claims of tyranny. It does not, however, address how to develop the means to go forward as a way of life.

The nature of this insufficiency can be approached from many different points of view. Kierkegaard said that freedom was the ability to do things. Living as an individual requires more than setting up a boundary.
The matter of capabilities and resources appears immediately when enough people associate with each other to share or not share them. Declaring all to be equal may be one way to begin but hardly is adequate for the struggles such a life must engage with.

And when the forces of tyranny do gather their capacity to cancel freedom, the strength to resist comes from those capabilities being alive and well. That work doesn't happen by simply establishing a set of rules.

The SEP says Augustine's will is basically self control. He was reacting against Manichean fatalism. — frank

The opposition to the Manichean view was to establish the culpability of the individual for evil in the world:

The will, however, commits sin when it turns away from immutable and common goods, toward its private good, either something external to itself or lower than itself. It turns to its own private good when it desires to be its own master; it turns to external goods when it busies itself with the private affairs of others or with whatever is none of its concern; it turns to goods lower than itself when it loves the pleasures of the body. Thus a man becomes proud, meddlesome, and lustful; he is caught up in another life which, when compared to the higher one, is death. — St. Augustine, book 2, 19, translated by Benjamin and Hackstaff

The idea of self-control as not being ruled by external or internal compulsion is more of a Stoic idea.
That difference is the point of Arendt saying:

Yet the Augustinian solitude of "hot contention" within the soul itself was utterly unknown, for the fight in which he had become engaged was not between reason and passion, between understanding and Thumos, that is, between two different human faculties, but it was a conflict within the will itself. And this duality within the self-same faculty had been known as the characteristic of thought, as the dialogue which I hold with myself. In other words, the two-in-one of solitude which sets the thought process into motion has the exactly opposite effect on the will: it paralyzes and locks it within itself; willing in solitude is always velle and nolle, to will and not to will at the same time.

"The rise of totalitarianism, its claim to having subordinated all spheres of life to the demands of politics and its consistent nonrecognition of civil rights, above all the rights of privacy and the right to freedom from politics, makes us doubt not only the coincidence of politics and freedom but their very compatibility." — ToothyMaw

That points to the need for a 'guaranteed public domain' for all experiences of freedom, both public and private that requires more than legal rights but also is not possible without them.

When looking at the Shoah, the loss of this domain was not simply a loss of political power, it was the subtraction from a domain for one group for the purpose of increasing the sense of freedom for another.
One might get suspicious of the language of the will when one is on the receiving end of enthusiasts who talk about matters that way amongst themselves while loading you on to trains.

I don't have a dog in any of those fights.

But I can call out what is claimed to be allegorical or not, within a certain body of text, without claiming what I believe or not.

Yes, as I said, it depends on how you define 'will'. So, since the idea has no clearly definitive, unambiguous application I agree it is fraught. — Janus

Which was, among other objectives, the point of Arendt's essay.

Depends upon what conditions they are exposed to.
And they are not all one species.

Doesn't look good on the resume.
Having a green one might.
Along with the part where you prove that you don't just twiddle your thumbs...

Augustine also justified the eternal suffering of those who gave up on their second chance of redemption. He was not speaking allegorically.
Paul was saying 'this world' was coming to an end and another would follow. It wasn't a footnote to a comment on a Greek text. It was front and center to what one was being asked to be a part of as a believer.

I suppose having a green thumb from the experience is unlikely in either event.

This doesn't address anything, it merely takes the concept of freedom and describes it as slavery. — Garrett Travers

The passage addresses freedom of the individual, as it has been expressed by Epictetus, for example, as an experience that is possible despite whatever condition or station of life one might find oneself in the world. Her intent to separate that meaning from the realm of political action is not dissimilar from your purpose in saying:

" As far as "free will," there is no such thing. There is simply limited agency or will. My body tells me I am hungry, I can choose between foods. I have homework to do tonight, I can choose which class to tackle first."

Arendt does not have to agree or disagree with your formulation to make the distinction in how the idea is expressed for different purposes.

It doesn't matter if it is political by definition, what matters is the philosophy guiding the body-politic — Garrett Travers

To speak of a just "body-politic" is to propose a "guaranteed public realm." Doubting that such a realm was given to us as a state of nature in the spirit of Rousseau is not the equivalent to saying that "humans as not having individual boundaries between one another." You are the one conflating the two ideas, Arendt distinguishes them from each other;

Maybe I'll read it to find out. — Garrett Travers

So, you just spent hundreds of words critiquing something you have not read. In the future, please indicate that is your condition before making a comment upon something.

As far as acting against your own will, that's begging the question. Your will is your will, for processes still a mystery to us. — Garrett Travers

On that point, Arendt agrees with you

This freedom which we take for granted in all political theory and which even those who praise tyranny must still take into account is the very opposite of "inner freedom," the inward space into which men may escape from external coercion and feel free.

Every attempt to derive the concept of freedom from experiences in the political realm sounds strange and startling because all our theories in these matters are dominated by the notion that freedom is an attribute of will and thought much rather than of action.

-Hannah Arendt

When properly exercised, the only logical conclusion that can be draw is that freedom between people, the recognition of sovereign boundaries between individuals, is the only manner in which to induce a society whose ruling polity doesn't violate individual, or interpersonal ethics (rights) — Garrett Travers

[/quote]

Arendt describes that quality this way while discussing ancient polities:

As regards the relation of freedom to politics, there is the additional reason that only ancient political communities were founded for the express purpose of serving the free those who were neither slaves, subject to coercion by others, nor laborers, driven and urged on by the necessities of life. If, then, we understand the political in the sense of the polis, its end or reason d'etre would be to establish and keep in existence a space where freedom as virtuosity can appear. This is the realm where freedom is a worldly reality, tangible in words which can be heard, in deeds which can be seen, and in events which are talked about, remembered, and turned into stories before they are finally incorporated
into the great storybook of human history. Whatever occurs in this space of appearances is political by definition, even when it is not a direct product of action. What remains outside it, such as
the great feats of barbarian empires, may be impressive and noteworthy, but it is not political, strictly speaking.

And so, Mr. Travers, the need for a "guaranteed public realm" is because the appearance and maintenance of "boundaries between individuals" requires more than willing it to be so:

Because of the philosophic shift from action to will-power, from freedom as a state of being
manifest in action to the liberum arbitrium, the ideal of freedom ceased to be virtuosity in the sense we mentioned before and became sovereignty, the ideal of a free will, independent from other and eventually prevailing against them. The philosophic ancestry of our current political notion of freedom is still quite manifest in eighteenth-century political writers, when, for instance, Thomas
Paine insisted that "to be free it is sufficient [for man] that he wills
it," a word which Lafayette applied to the nation-state: "Pour qu'une nation salt libre, il suffit qu'elle veuille Vetre"

In regard to libertarians who argue that they are kingdoms onto themselves, the essay points to what is missing from their view:

Without a politically guaranteed public realm, freedom lacks the worldly space to make its appearance. To be sure it may still dwell in men's hearts as desire or will or hope or yearning; but the human heart, as we all know, is a very dark place, and whatever goes on in its obscurity can hardly be called a demonstrable fact. Freedom as a demonstrable fact and politics coincide and are related to each other like two sides of the same matter.

If the 'freedom' of individuals cancels the possibility for a public realm, we are in the war Hobbes described as a state of nature. If such a cancellation is not the intention of the libertarians, what are the alternative means to preserve the public realm if it is not recognized as a necessity?

When he tried to keep me under his thumb, I gave him the finger.

You just made a distinction between people who are greedy or not by your lights.
I am reading what you are writing. You say it is okay for some to want stuff. It is less okay for others.
I am not having a problem with reading what you are saying. My reference to bad behavior was not a claim about what you meant to say. It was an observation upon the limits of what you said.

Recognizing there is a similarity is not the same as condoning bad behavior.
I don't get what identity has do with it.

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:


.

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)

.

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.