Although this inability to realize the Good seems apparent, I'm reluctant to admit it, because it seems defeatist, and I think this might be what you allude to when you say: "concern the expectations of the future, for all who live. — Janus

I think Kafka gave this some thought. In his Reflections, [a collection of aphorisms]. this one is an affirmation through negation of a sort:

There are questions which we could never get over if we were not delivered from them by the operation of nature. — Kafka, Reflections, 54

But perhaps the true antipode to the gnostics is Walt Whitman:

These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands.
they are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or
next to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they
are nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the
water is,
This is the common air that bathes the globe. — Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 17

Gerson's account is a fair description.

I wonder how he distinguishes "These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians" from the other varieties. Many of Plotinus' objections could apply equally well to a certain 'Saul of Tarsus', who called for the end of tis kosmos.

Augustine placed Plotinus above Plato in The City of God. But I don't recall any reference to this part of the oeuvre.

He posits that Aristotle’s objections are directed at specific aspects of Plato’s formulations rather than at the underlying principles. — Dermot Griffin

Gerson's central focus, as a scholar, has been upon Plotinus and his contemporaries (broadly speaking).

Interpretations of both Plato and Aristotle are the medium of discourse where different opinions were expressed in Plotinus' time. In that context, Plotinus should be read as claiming what those "underlying principles" are. He is telling us what Plato means and quoting selectively to support his view.

Both Aristotle and Plotinus are alike in trying to establish an internal consistency to their theoria that differs from the language of Plato. This quality gets described as "systems" or "schools" but I think the difference in kind is too profound to delineate clearly.

This website has all of the Six Enneads translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page. The translation is a little clunky at times, but it beats typing out the passages.

The text concerning the Gnostics comprises all of the Second Ennead, Ninth Tractate.

The title given there speaks to your comments about McCarthy:

AGAINST THOSE THAT AFFIRM THE CREATOR OF THE KOSMOS AND THE KOSMOS ITSELF TO BE EVIL:
[GENERALLY QUOTED AS "AGAINST THE GNOSTICS"].

As I understand it, the basic drift is that he wouldn’t countenance their claim that matter was evil. — Wayfarer

But that is what Plotinus said:

We conclude that Matter's participation in Idea is not by way of modification within itself: the process is very different; it is a bare seeming. Perhaps we have here the solution of the difficulty as to how Matter, essentially evil, can be reaching towards The Good: there would be no such participation as would destroy its essential nature. Given this mode of pseudo-participation- in which Matter would, as we say, retain its nature, unchanged, always being what it has essentially been- there is no longer any reason to wonder as to how while essentially evil, it yet participates in Idea: for, by this mode, it does not abandon its own character: participation is the law, but it participates only just so far as its essence allows. Under a mode of participation which allows it to remain on its own footing, its essential nature stands none the less, whatsoever the Idea, within that limit, may communicate to it: it is by no means the less evil for remaining immutably in its own order. If it had authentic participation in The Good and were veritably changed, it would not be essentially evil. — ibid. III. 6. 11

I will provide tomorrow. I approach the end of today's period of being fully conscious.

The observations about McCarthy does address what I am thinking about. I will sit with them for a while.

Plotinus follows Plato, and, indeed, Aristotle, in identifying being, τὸ ὄν, that which is, as form. — Eric D Perl, Thinking Being, p 119

I am not aware of any text from those three that supports this statement.

Related to this - I have the sense that the One of Plotinus *is not* a concept. I think arriving at an understanding of it requires a kind of cognitive transformation although that too is very difficult to fathom. — Wayfarer

The inner experience is important in the thinking. What a 'concept is' is also considered. The work also makes a claim upon how the universe works just as other such claims do. Every component is located through the pattern drawn.

I tender Plotinus' objections to the Gnostics as evidence for this view. The conflict between views of a natural good and a flawed creation concern the expectations of the future, for all who live.

I was thinking more in the context of personal freedom. The view of private ownership being a product of an historical process is said to provide the context of what is possible as an individual in particular situations.
But I am also told that there is something about the results that will satisfy the need to violently oppose what is happening.
So, where does that differ from the view of community Plato put forward?

Without knowing all the parts, Occam would concentrate on the motivation to stop the certification of the election. The different elements set in motion, the fake elector scheme, putting pressure on the VP, Congress critters ready to seize opportunities, mobs upsetting all involved, etcetera. It is not a plan in the style of Napoleon or Lenin.

For Aristotle the specific matter in question must be receptive to the form it holds, and an undue emphasis on form will tend to neglect this thesis. Is it something like that? — Leontiskos

I don't quite understand how the quote from Plotinus fits in. Presumably it highlights a Platonic critique of Aristotle, in which the formal principle(s) is clearly seen to overpower the material principle(s)? That for the pure Platonist Aristotle's matter will not be sufficiently determinate or explanatory? — Leontiskos

I will start by noting that both Aristotle and Plotinus make use of Plato's text in ways that shape what a 'Platonist' is said to be. Plato did not have a chance to challenge their interpretations. A central train station of departures in these matters is the Timaeus, where many of the discussions began. The bit I quoted above is Plotinus comparing Metaphysics Book Lambda with the Timaeus account. Before comparing with Aristotle, let's listen to some of what Plotinus says about matter:

Mirrors and transparent objects, even more, offer a close parallel; they are quite unaffected by what is seen in or through them: material things are reflections, and the Matter on which they appear is further from being affected than is a mirror. Heat and cold are present in Matter, but the Matter itself suffers no change of temperature: growing hot and growing cold have to do only with quality; a quality enters and brings the impassible Substance under a new state- though, by the way, research into nature may show that cold is nothing positive but an absence, a mere negation. The qualities come together into Matter, but in most cases they can have no action upon each other; certainly there can be none between those of unlike scope: what effect, for example, could fragrance have on sweetness or the colour-quality on the quality of form, any quality on another of some unrelated order? The illustration of the mirror may well indicate to us that a given substratum may contain something quite distinct from itself- even something standing to it as a direct contrary- and yet remain entirely unaffected by what is thus present to it or merged into it. — Plotinus, III. 6. 9

Just as the Ideal Principles stand immutably in their essence- which consists precisely in their permanence- so, since the essence of Matter consists in its being Matter [the substratum to all material things] it must be permanent in this character; because it is Matter, it is immutable. In the Intellectual realm we have the immutable Idea; here we have Matter, itself similarly immutable. — ibid. III. 6. 10

We conclude that Matter's participation in Idea is not by way of modification within itself: the process is very different; it is a bare seeming. Perhaps we have here the solution of the difficulty as to how Matter, essentially evil, can be reaching towards The Good: there would be no such participation as would destroy its essential nature. Given this mode of pseudo-participation- in which Matter would, as we say, retain its nature, unchanged, always being what it has essentially been- there is no longer any reason to wonder as to how while essentially evil, it yet participates in Idea: for, by this mode, it does not abandon its own character: participation is the law, but it participates only just so far as its essence allows. Under a mode of participation which allows it to remain on its own footing, its essential nature stands none the less, whatsoever the Idea, within that limit, may communicate to it: it is by no means the less evil for remaining immutably in its own order. If it had authentic participation in The Good and were veritably changed, it would not be essentially evil. — ibid. III. 6. 11

Several conditions pop out immediately from these accounts.
The experience of a body is different from 'matter as itself' and so belongs within the 'intelligible realm'. That could be expressed, as you said, as "formal principle(s) clearly seen to overpower the material principle(s) but the more consequential difference is that the composition of a particular individual, joining υ̋λη and μορΦή, no longer represents a unity standing as the whole being from which to ascertain its parts.

I will stop here before saying more.

It is difficult to approach the matter. As a war between classes, the singularity of Hegel's account is not definitive. But the value of that individual life is lauded in other parts of Marx's text.
Where does one logic begin and the other end?

But maybe in a sentence or two you can clarify.

How will the "pursual by interpretation of evidence" ever be independent of specific methods of interpreting ancient texts?
— Paine — tim wood

Take, for example, the debates over how Plato understood the ontology of Forms. I (and others) have challenged Cornford's interpretation that there is a monolithic Theory of Forms that is higher and prior to texts that do not fit into that view.

Some of those references are to Cornford's opinions and others are to his translations. I propose that they are integrally connected.

I used three sentences.

I think it would be along the lines that the fight-to-the-death or submit scenario, that appears during the pursuit of recognition, changes both sides where the 'powerful', as such, confers power to the slave in spite of itself.

How will the "pursual by interpretation of evidence" ever be independent of specific methods of interpreting ancient texts? This is a particularly pertinent question when the matter is the 'lost wisdom' topic Wayfinder puts forward. The idea of replication seems out of the question.

Yes.
Or at least we do not have a method that does not rely heavily upon self-identified methods of interpretation. I favor some over others, but I cannot argue for an authority beyond that.

It looks like we will have to agree to disagree. For the time being, anyway.

Thank you for considering the argument.

It will take me several days to respond to your questions. They present challenges I do not want to minimize or treat off the cuff.

Do you accept that a claim of ancient wisdom is largely dependent upon a description of what those old people were saying?

Good posts. I agree with what you say about Aristotle in them. I would have to go back to see what you've said about Plotinus. — Leontiskos

Since it relates to the topic of the OP (regarding the Unmoved Mover), I will take make my argument from the horse's mouth:

Aristotle says that the first existence is separated from sense objects and is an intelligible existence. But when he says that "it thinks itself," he takes the first rank away 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 that of Plato, and as he has no good reason for this change, he brings in necessity.
Even if he had good reason, 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 the one end, the supreme existence. The question also might be raised whether for Aristotle the intelligible entities from one originating principle or whether there are several originating principles for the intelligible entities. If the intelligible entities proceed form on principle, their condition will be analogous to that of the sense spheres where each contains and dominates all the others. In this case, the first existence will contain all the intelligible entities and be the intelligible world. Just as the spheres in the world of senses are not empty, - for the first is full of stars and each of the others has its stars,- so their movers in the intelligible world will contain many entities, being that are more real than sense things. On the other hand, if each of the movers is an independent principle, their interrelation will be subject to chance. How then will they unite their actions and agree in producing that single effect which is the harmony of the heaven? What also is the reason for the assertion that the sense objects that are in heaven equal in number their intelligible movers? Further, why is there a plurality of movers since they are incorporeal, and no matter separates them from on another?
Thus those among the ancient philosophers who faithfully followed the doctrines of Pythagoras, of disciples, and of Pherecydes, have maintained the existence of the intelligible world. — Plotinus, Ennead V, i, 9, translated by Katz

The mention of Pythagoras is important because that is a pivot for Aristotle regarding how souls are embodied:

[9] There is another absurdity, however, that follows both from this account and from most of the ones concerning the soul, since in fact they attach the soul to a body, and place it in a body, without |407b15| further determining the cause due to which this attachment comes about or the condition of the body required for it. Yet this would seem to be necessary. For it is because of their association that the one acts, whereas the other is acted upon, and the one is moved, whereas the other moves it. None of these relations, though, holds between things taken at random. These people, however, merely undertake to say what sort of thing the soul is, but about the |407b20| sort of body that is receptive of it they determine nothing further, as if it were possible, as in the Pythagorean stories, for any random soul to be inserted into any random body, whereas it seems that in fact each body has its own special form and shape.96 But what they say is somewhat like saying that the craft of {13} carpentry could be inserted into flutes, whereas in fact the |407b25| craft must use its instruments, and the soul its body. — De Anima, 407b10, translated by C.D.C Reeve

The issue of the receptivity of matter raises the question of how there can be "natural" beings in a world where necessary events occur in conjunction with accidental ones. The view leads to an argument about the nature of actuality and potentiality (as I refer to upthread). What I have seen in Gerson overlooks the importance of the 'material' in Aristotle's pursuit of the natural.

Coincidentally, it is interesting that Plotinus chides Aristotle as a poor Platonist when the role of Necessity is an important part of the Timaeus.

Edited to remove unnecessary meta-afterword.

I take your point that generation is the counter example of the productive arts.

But you were making a claim about when beings actually existed 'materially'.

I do not understand this "tangential" relationship you describe. For my part, people say stuff and other people say other stuff. Your stuff is one of the things described.

I guess my challenges are meaningless in that context.

To wit: There are these ideas and they are what they are because that is what said of them.

That is not the anti-Protagoras view argued continuously throughout the book.

For me, no object which does not yet have material existence is ever acted on. — Metaphysician Undercover

Can you point to some place in the text where this is claimed? Where do beings move from the not-material to the material?

I think the matter belongs to a discussion of what Aristotle intended. Folding his efforts into an omlette of other ideas is what I am challenging.

On that point, the 'forgotten wisdom' idea was central to Plato's Statesman, where the idea of time moving backwards or forwards moved us closer or further from the true stuff.

I have been thinking a lot about how the components making up a 'philosophy of history' relate to statements about existing conditions. For instance, Plotinus' view of what is happening in his moment is pretty darn ahistorical. As it was, is now, and forever shall be.

Hegel's view, by contrast, argues we cannot know what is happening outside of the process of human changes we have undergone.

The advantage of the ahistorical approach is that we are who we are, including our past experiences. The disadvantage of it is that we pop up out of nowhere.

The advantage of the historical approach is that a view of genealogy is possible. The disadvantage is that the past becomes the servant of the narrative of what is changing.

I accept that many series of events led to me thinking what I think now and it was different in the past. But there is a 'paradise lost' aspect to your versions of the history of ideas that I do not subscribe to. The view is entangled with how to read specific texts in the past.

I agree with your reading that passion is a compliment of action. I also agree that Aristotle uses grammar to illustrate the condition.

But I also think Aristotle is trying to introduce some views of causality that are counter intuitive. What makes the 'crushable' crushable belongs to the being as something that could happen anytime when it is in close proximity with the active being. The being-acted-upon is made actual as a result of its given potential together with the other being's potential to act. This leads to Aristotle arguing for a view he expresses as reached as a matter of no recourse, perhaps even reluctantly.

But the cause of this is that the potentiality of which it is the activation is incomplete.1234 And because of this it is difficult to grasp what movement is, since it must be posited either as a lack or as a potentiality or as an activity that is unconditionally such. But evidently none of these is possible. And so the remaining option is that it must be what we said, both an activity and not an activity |1066a25| in the way stated, which, though difficult to visualize, can exist. — ibid. 1066a20

I read this passage as completing the journey began in Theta 3:

There are some people—for example, the Megarians—who say that a thing is capable of something only when actively doing it, and that when not actively doing it, it is not capable. For example, someone |1046b30| who is not building is not capable of building, but someone who is building is capable if and when he is building, and similarly in the other cases. But it is not difficult to see that the consequences of this are absurd. — ibid. 1046b28

Getting from dispensing with one view out of hand to replacing it with a better one turned out to be a lot of work.

I am not familiar with Vervaeke. Can you hook me up with a bit of text where he presents this view of Platonism?

We have both quoted 1066 in this discussion. Perhaps 1046 provides the most succinct expression of active and passive potentiality:

For one kind is a potentiality for being acted on, i.e. the principle in the very thing acted on, which makes it capable of being changed and acted on by another thing or by itself
regarded as other. — translated by Barnes

In such cases, the potentialities of both the 'agent' and the 'patient' need to be actualized together for change to happen. The unity of the moment described at 1066 does not cancel the different kinds of potential that come into being:

In a sense the potentiality of acting and of being acted on is one (for a thing may be capable either because it can be acted on or because something else can be acted on by it), but in a sense the potentialities are different. For the one is in the thing acted on; it is because it contains a certain motive principle, and because even the matter is a motive principle, that the thing acted on is acted on ... for that which is oily is inflammable, and that which yields in a particular way can be crushed; and similarly in all other cases. But the other potency is in the agent, e.g. heat and the art of building
are present, one in that which can produce heat and the other in the man who can build. — ibid. 1046a19

While the house as it being built, each change is necessary as relates to what can be changed:

Since that which is capable is capable of something and at some time in some way –with all the other qualifications which must be present in the definition–, ... as regards potentialities of … [those things that are non-rational; e.g. the fire] ... when the agent and the patient meet in the way appropriate to the potentiality in question, the one must act and the other be acted on ... For the non-rational potentialities are all productive of one effect each. — ibid. 1047b35

What is possible to be made is bounded by the potentiality of all the components involved. The art involved brings about necessary changes through a series of different processes (plus accidental changes such as bonehead decisions and weather). When the house is completed, the result is just as necessary and accidental as it was the day it started. Those components do not share the telos of the builder. They are only what they are for. The house as a whole has come into being. The changes can stop.

Werner's observation is interesting.

I directed my comment more at the objections I have made over the years addressing Gerson's argument about "naturalism" as an antipode to the eidetic.

You have made much of the difference between ancient and modern ideas of the physical. How comparisons of that sort are made rely heavily upon what is understood by specific text that talks about that sort of thing.

Challenging Gerson's reading of the text is not equivalent to challenging what Gerson makes of it. Without that distinction, we could all be talking about anything we like.

** ‘Pure actuality’ can be traced back to Parmenides vision of ‘what is’ as being above or beyond the change and decay of concrete particulars. As modified first by Plato and then Aristotle, ideas are eternal and changeless, in which particulars ‘participate’. Unlike Plato, Aristotle did not posit a separate realm of Forms but argued that the form and matter coexist in the same substance. However, he maintained that the highest forms of being, such as the unmoved mover, are pure actuality, embodying eternal and changeless existence. — Wayfarer

It is not only that "form and matter coexist in the same substance." The nature of change in the realm of coming to be and passing away is different than movement in eternal things because the latter are not subject to coincidental causes. The relationship between the 'acting' and the 'acted upon' requires a
specific understanding of the actual and the potential as emerge in beings:

The cause of movement’s seeming to be indefinite, though, is that it cannot be posited either as a potentiality of beings or as an activation of them. For neither what is potentially of a certain quantity nor what is actively of a certain quantity is of necessity moved, and while movement does seem to be a sort of activity, |1066a20| it is incomplete activity. But the cause of this is that the potentiality of which it is the activation is incomplete. And because of this it is difficult to grasp what movement is, since it must be posited either as a lack or as a potentiality or as an activity that is unconditionally such. But evidently none of these is possible. And so the remaining option is that it must be what we said, both an activity and not an activity |1066a25| in the way stated, which, though difficult to visualize, can exist. And that movement is in the movable is clear, since movement is the actualization of the movable by what can move something. And the activation of what can move something is no other. For there must be the actualization of both, since it can move something by having the potentiality to do so, and it is moving it by being active. But |1066a30| it is on the movable that the mover is capable of acting, so that the activation of both alike is one, just as the intervals from one to two and from two to one are the same, or as are the hill up and the hill down, although the being for them is not one. And similarly in the case of the mover and the moved. — Metaphysics, Kappa 9, translated by CDC Reeve

So, this "difficult to visualize" aspect of matter as potential being returns us to the beginning of the book:

These people, then, |985a10| as we say, evidently latched on to two of the causes we distinguished in our works on nature, namely, the matter and the starting-point of movement.91 But they did so vaguely and in a not at all perspicuous way, like untrained people in fights.92 For these too, as they circle their opponents, often strike good blows, but |985a15| they do not do so in virtue of scientific knowledge, just as the others do not seem to know what they are saying, since they apparently make pretty much no use of these causes, except to a small extent. — ibid. Alpha 4

Yes, the differences between the activities of nature and artifice are clearly drawn. But how everything is capable of change or not is whatever it is regardless.

In regard to the various ways building a house has come up, it has been presented by Aristotle as a contrast to natural causes. It is a poster child of the artificial.
Everything that can be affected demonstrates the capacity of being able to change. The components of the house are forced into a situation that "natural" products do not experience.

But what makes change possible is treated as applicable to both activities. .

That is an interesting question contrasting the ancient against the modern. I don't know how to think about Gerson's thesis in that context. My retort was to say that the "transjective"t sounded like a case of "having one's cake and eating it too" that Gerson objected to. A compromise between "materialists" and "idealist"; A position upon the history of philosophy as practiced now combined with an interpretation of ancient text.

The difference between Plotinus and Aristotle that I have argued for is not put forward with that design. The ideas seem different to me.

Your premise that it was a weak and petty case needs to overcome the decision by twelve people who do not agree.

Your expectation that the case will be overturned on appeal is another opportunity to possibly encounter disappointment.

But if we assume it occurs, I'm not sure it makes much difference. It won't change anyone's mind, domestically or in other countries. — Relativist

Perhaps it will change the mind of the convict.

He could turn to writing poetry and title the collection: My Imprisonment.

Interesting response. I will think about it.

What if the Aquinian view misrepresented the role of universals in previous philosophy?

I have been a juror 4 times in the New York State court system. It is very difficult. The knife edge of 'reasonable doubt' is very sharp.

On all counts