If the object for which a thing exists, its end, is its chief good, it follows that if its end is evil, that is its chief good. — NOS4A2

Who are these people who seek what is good for themselves at the expense of the good itself?

In Phaedrus, Socrates demands to see the scroll Phaedrus is quoting from. The argument about the limits of the written word in that dialogue would be absurd if they were put in Socrates' mouth while Plato knew he was illiterate.

It would also render absurd the jokes made in Cratylus about etymology and the structure of written words if it concerned something Socrates had no actual part in.

Written words weren't required for thinking through and solving problems, and it seems most writing began as ledger keeping and literacy as we understand it had little to do with a successful life. — isomorph

It seems you are applying a general idea to a specific time. The dramas and comedies Socrates (and Plato) were aware of were compositions written to be scripted performances. The talk of many authors of that time was directed toward regarding some as better than others. A performance of Oedipus Rex could be better than others. Just as we witness different attempts at Shakespeare.

I did not mean to contradict your reference to the Cathars. In looking at more ancient sources, the desire for purification finds expression in the personal, the civic, and the religious register that does not resolve simply into the categories I just used to speak about it.

Tyranny coalesces resistance along significant points of divergence. But a coalition of divergence is not a convergence of opinions regarding the good. That is why the value of the secular extends beyond what is held (or not) in common but involves the way purposes can be shared by very different ideas of the "pure."

Otherwise, it is just your theology up against mine.

The word goes further back than that. It invokes different ideas of purification important to the Greeks, in their great variance of opinion.

Agreed, not a new argument.

Coincidence requires the absence of a pattern. There is a pattern.

It will be interesting to hear what the appeal process will bring forward.

I understand and try to practice a version of reducing harm by changing what is in my power while knowing that it is hopefully a kind of subtraction of bad from consequences I will never learn about. That is how I hear Hillel saying: "do not do unto others what you would not have done to you." The criteria are immediately available.

I recognize your interest in saying Christian experience is different than others. I am not going to try and address that here. The view of history of what has been lost is clear to you and a question for me. My participation in theology does not make that sort of thing necessary. In any case, my energy is in other thoughts right now so I will not defend my statement today. I need to get back to Plotinus and Aristotle that the recent discussions have caused me to dive back into again. I have a tiny mind.

As a parting shot, chaos theory is trying to bring into a Logos what Aristotle had written off. There is something about emergence which is more "universal" than our previous models imagined. But that observation is stupid if Aristotle was not actually interested in what happens in the "physical" world.

I am the hysterical side of the partnership. The one who has to be talked down from quitting out of anger, getting into needless conflicts, or arrested. Still a work in progress. No complaints here.

Thank you for the article. The play of tragic and comedic elements is important in Plato's work and life. I will try to address that later as I need to do chores soon. But I will say something quickly about the interesting idea of a denial of self-expression that Fraser brings forward.

The absence of Plato in the dialogues amongst people he lived with has a weird narrative effect. He is present throughout but hiding at the same time. In the Phaedo, the device is performed in front of us like a magic act. It is as if I handed you a photo album of my life events and you discover that I have used scissors to remove my image whenever I am in the shot.

Nostalgia must be involved but it does not give the Proustian vibe of 'remembrance of things past'.

Now to chores. My wife is asking for a greater display of practical reason over the theoretical for the coming week.

Wow. Or maybe whoa. A true believer emerges. I will leave you to your own devices.

Nor are your comparisons. I was employing sarcastic irony.

Justice Thomas wrote a separate bit in the recent immunity decision aimed at Special Counsels and Cannon received the lateral pass and ran with it.

She is very open to new ideas.

A shot in the crowd of a Capitol invasion and you hit a member of a militia group.

More to chew upon.

I am just glad the shooter did not have a bump stock that the Supreme Court just gave the thumbs up for. There is a model that fits the AR-15 used at the rally.

Kierkegaard because he seems to demote, if not knock out (always hard to tell because of the pseudonyms) theoretical reason from this part of the equation but keeps the other half. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is hard to tell. I read him as demarking a difference in kind that is expressed as the limit of psychology in Concept of Anxiety. Psychology is not thereby condemned.

That is parallel to him saying in Philosophical Fragments that the 'recollection' in Plato is a truth inherent in each person whereas the condition to experience the greater truth comes from beyond oneself.

That sort of messes with the distinction between theoretical and practical reason.

Perhaps the piercing of the ear so close to the brain will cause the man to awaken from his monomaniacal dream and see life the way Andrei did in War and Peace.

I wonder what words he used so that you felt his nostalgia? — Amity

That is an interesting question. It is easy when pointing at large mythological elements. I will have to think about it as related to more subtle themes. I am not trying to argue for that against other readings of the text.

Paine - relates to the question raised in the thread on Gerson/Aristotle. — Wayfarer

I have not participated in this discussion. I recognize that you think that I need further education in these matters. I don't see how saying that advances your primary thesis.

Yes, the externalized cost model pays penalties as the price of doing business rather than changing behavior to avoid them.

Another side of accidents that touches upon consequences well beyond our view is reflected in Aristotle saying there could be no science of them. That is oddly echoed in Chaos theory and the delicate efficacy of the butterfly effect. The big garden is not being tended.

Indeed he is not, which is why it was not relevant to the question I raised, which was about that relationship. — Wayfarer

I get that you connect your view of the 'theological' with a renunciation of the 'material' It is the trick of your pony, as you admitted upthread. You would find Plotinus good company in this regard. I suggest you read him. I am weary of being the only one in this conversation that actually quotes him. I will wait until another thread emerges before doing it again. I have worn out my welcome here and now I am wearing out my goodbye. I will take my last word here in the hope it will clarify future discussion during other OPs:

Your years long effort to see a 'theology' in Plato that others would take away from him is a fight over an undefended territory. Plato writes of his contemporaries and predecessors in a fashion where he argues for and against particular views of the divine in particular contexts and leaves it to the student to find their own way. Quite the contrast with Plotinus coming back from a visit with the One and taking questions on how others can do it.

Therefore, to find a rebuttal of Plotinus' view of political virtues, we need to find a contrast to a vision of a soul re-gaining its virtue as it separates from its body. I am reminded of an observation I made last year

The discussion of cowardice reminds me of the following from Cratylus:

What remains to consider after justice? I think we have not yet discussed courage. [413e] It is plain enough that injustice (ἀδικία) is really a mere hindrance of that which passes through (τοῦ διαϊόντος, but the word ἀδρεία (courage) implies that courage got its name in battle, and if the universe is flowing, a battle in the universe can be nothing else than an opposite current or flow (ῥοή). Now if we remove the delta from the word ἀνδρεία, the word ἀνρεία signifies exactly that activity. Of course it is clear that not the current opposed to every current is courage, but only that opposed to the current which is contrary to justice; — Plato, Cratylus, 413

Socrates is using the vocabulary of Heraclitus and connects "manliness" to the willingness to leap into battle against a 'current' that needs to be opposed. — me

Till next time in another place.

Strauss does make distinctions between Greek thought and 'revealed' religion that I know you would disagree with.

Strauss acknowledges that Heidegger brought the differences between our time and that of Classical Greek thought to our attention. But he opposes Heidegger in essential ways. One thing the guy saying stuff got right is:

Heidegger, in the twentieth-century, depreciates scientific knowledge in the name of historicity. — This guy saying stuff

Strauss strongly opposed that kind of historicity in Natural Right and History through his attack upon Nietzsche as the master of the practice.

I will leave it there. I need to get back to reading Plotinus.

Plotinus is not talking about the relationship between knower and known but the experience of being a soul descended into a body which is not its natural home:

1. Often I have woken up out of the body to my self and have entered into myself, going out from all other things; I have seen a beauty wonderfully great and felt assurance that then most of all I belonged to the better part; I have actually lived the best life and come to identity with the divine; and set firm in it I have come to that supreme actuality, setting myself above all else in the realm of Intellect. Then after that rest in the divine, when I have come down from Intellect to discursive reasoning, I am puzzled how I ever came down, and how my soul has come to be in the body when it is what it has shown itself to be by itself, even when it is in the body.
............

For this reason Plato says that our soul as well, if it comes to be with that perfect soul, is perfected itself and “walks on high and directs the whole universe”2; when it departs to be no longer within bodies and not to belong to any of them, then it also like the Soul of the All will share with ease in the direction of the All, since it is not evil in every way for soul to give body the ability to flourish and to exist, because not every kind of provident care for the inferior deprives the being exercising it of its ability to remain in the highest. For there are two kinds of care of everything, the general, by the inactive command of one setting it in order with royal authority, and the particular, which involves actually doing something oneself and by contact with what is being done infects the doer with the nature of what is being done. Now, since the divine soul is always said to direct the whole heaven in the first way, transcendent in its higher part but sending its last and lowest power into the interior of the world, God could not still be blamed for making the soul of the All exist in something worse, and the soul would not be deprived of its natural due, which it has from eternity and will have for ever, which cannot be against its nature in that it belongs to it continually and without beginning. — Plotinus, Ennead 4.8.1, translated by Armstrong

This is beyond saying that there is more than civic (political) virtue. It stands at cross purposes to the Philosopher returning to the cave to care for his fellow citizens.

It replaces the uncertainty expressed in the Phaedo with a map and a theodicy.

Not all discussion of religion involves the same things. And if you want to argue for some element of that, I support your effort.

But I object to this sort of tagging the donkey where simply reading what the person says makes the claim meaningless.

As this does not involve the Gerson thesis, I feel it is okay for me to push back upon this reading. The same article says:

Heidegger, in the twentieth-century, depreciates scientific knowledge in the name of historicity. While many philosophers (including Heidegger) have understood Heidegger’s philosophy as breaking with modern rationalism, Strauss views Heidegger’s philosophy as a logical outcome of that same rationalism. — This guy saying stuff

No reader of Natural Right and History would think that is what just got said.

I am missing Socrates.
Unfortunately, I can't read as much as I would like and can't see me ever enjoying again the previous discussions we had - following Socrates. Nostalgic, huh? — Amity

I am also nostalgic for both. I enjoyed our conversation.

I recently re-read the Sophist and was struck at how Plato expressed a kind of nostalgia in his writing of the dialogue. The literary device of the Stranger is a reflective view of previous work in many ways. I said something about that here. Another way it is shown is through comparison of Theaetetus and the Sophist. The same Theaetetus is being sharply tested in the first and gradually persuaded by the Stranger in the second. The dialogues also share very similar wording in some places that suggest a dialogue between the dialogues.

It is the current state of political affairs that most concerns me. Does being a 'Socratic philosopher' help? — Amity

The allegory of the cave requires a region outside of it to work. This gives rise to many problems of how greater knowledge of the real relates to the making of images inside the cave. Parmenides pointed out several of them to the actual young Socrates long before the action of the Republic. (Plato screwing with our heads yet again). In any case, there is tension that comes with using the allegory that is greater than any particular explanation it provides.

The philosopher who returns to the cave does it to help the people living there. That connects to how Socrates said Athens was his city and he refused to leave it unless he could return to it. The Republic happened out of town. The theme of estrangement is woven into countless backgrounds in the Dialogues.

My personal interpretation of the 'city in words' is that it is not a plan or a constitution but a deed to Socrates' city. His claim to try and change it. And he did not leave it when he could have because that would have meant giving up his claim.

I hope I have not left chew marks on your ear lobes.

Plato is tricky on the issue of 'reverence for the past' as a political form of life. In the Statesman, Chronos is shown running the course of the universe backwards in order to restore its virtue and then run forward again under the guidance of gods to maintain order. Nostalgia does not get much better than that.

But the rule of men means the party is over:

Str: 275B And it was for these reasons we included the myth, in order to point out not only that when it comes to herd nurture, everyone nowadays disputes over that title with the person we are looking for, but also to discern more clearly, based upon the example of shepherds and neatherds, the one person whom it is appropriate, in view of his care for the nurture of humanity, to deem worthy of this title alone.

Y Soc: Rightly so.

Str: And yet, Socrates, I really think that this figure of the divine herdsman is even greater than that of a king, 275C while the statesmen of the present day have natures much more like those whom they rule over, and they share in an education and nurture, closer to their subjects. — Plato, Statesman, 275a

That is close to the thinking of Rousseau invoking the Noble Savage.

On the other hand, Socrates is seen pulling the beards of powerful men, challenging the force of tradition until tradition served him a hemlock cocktail.

I wish that there was an equivalent to Horan's translations of Plato's Dialogues available to present what Plotinus wrote. Then it would be easier to link to a source with a beginning quote and let the reader see for themselves what has been said. The source I pointed to before is weird and makes pretty plainly spoken Greek sound strange. Those words are the same that other authors use to say different things.

This OP is an orphan, abandoned by its author. I made my pitch that Plotinus is the man behind the curtain in this particular wizard of oz. I sense I have worn out my welcome.

I will try to answer your question in another place and time.

I think I understand what that passage is saying - again it has parallels in Eastern philosophy, for instance in the contrast between the 'upright man' represented by Confucius and civic virtue, and the 'true man of the Way' represented by the taoist sage who 'returns to the source' and often appears as a vagabond or vagrant. It is a passage about the essential and total 'otherness' of the One, beyond all conditioned distinctions and human notions of virtue. It is a recognisable principle in various forms of the perennial philosophy. — Wayfarer

I understand the passage as demonstrating the vast difference between Plato and Plotinus when they speak of the philosopher's return to the cave. The role of politics, central to the argument of the Republic, has been superseded by the process of becoming a "different kind of being". Would you not accept there is a difference between the philosopher who rules a city and the Daoist sage who laughs at rulers? Plotinus is silent on that score.

As for the "materiality' of the soul, I have been arguing for years that Plotinus' understanding is very different from Aristotle's. I point to some of those in my recent comment on De Anima.

There are also differences between Aristotle and Plato.
Here is a discussion of what "matter" means that introduces Sallis's reading of the Timaeus.

Because of these different views, I don't see the value of the broad generalities offered by Gerson, Perl, Fraser, and the like.

Edit to add: Please take the last word, if you wish. I think we are at an impasse.

Given the importance to how matter plays an important role in the present thinking, can you accept that Plotinus was talking about something else?

What "matter" means in the different texts is not an agreed upon point of departure but what seems to require the most argument.

So what? Well, the "objects" of the intellect are immaterial, and as we're able to perceive them, we too possess an immaterial aspect - what used to be called the soul. We're not simply mechanisms or organisms. Of course, all Socrates' arguments for the reality of the soul in Phaedo can be and are called into question by his interlocutors but they ring true to me. — Wayfarer

I apologize for the dismissive manner I dealt with this upthread. What I am trying to underline in the discussion is the particular way Plotinus offers a solution to your thesis:

For instance, he will not make self-control consist in that former observance of measure and limit, but will altogether separate himself, as far as possible, from his lower nature and will not live the life of the good man which civic virtue requires. He will leave that behind, and choose another, the life of the gods: for it is to them, not to good men, that we are to be made like. Likeness to good men is the likeness of two pictures of the same subject to each other; but likeness to the gods is likeness to the model, a being of a different kind to ourselves. — Ennead 1.2. 30, translated by Armstrong

There are other ways of reading Plato.

I would simply wonder if Gerson is doing two different things simultaneously. — Leontiskos

If Gerson is absorbing all of Platonism into his understanding of Plotinus, he does not need the Ur-Platonism for his own purposes. The 'via negativa' is for persuading others that the only philosophy is his understanding of Plato and that anything that differs from it is not philosophy. That excludes a lot of philosophy.

I know that you don't find any of my objections to be persuasive. I don't find your counter arguments for Gerson's position to be compelling or benefit me in the comparison of different views. It is no help in distinguishing the difference between Klein and Burnyeat. That is more important to me than rooting out miscreants from my City. I gave Gerson a college try over several years. I am done.

Let us agree to disagree. Have the last word if you wish.

Seconded.

One quality about the "Joyous science" that differs from the other works is the sense of freedom to do something different. The works before and after picture change as a struggle with other views. This work is a claim for his land, unoccupied by others.

This is not only an opener on mysticism and a criticism of Strict Observance Thomism. I truly believe that genuine mysticism is a middle ground between rationalism and religion. — Dermot Griffin

How do you perceive Plotinus in that context? He presents the experience of the ascent of the soul as involving:

Often, after waking up to myself from the body, that is, externalizing myself in relation to all other things, while entering into myself, I behold a beauty of wondrous quality, and believe then that I am most to be identified with my better part, that I enjoy the best quality of life, and have become united with the divine and situated within it, actualizing myself at that level, and situating myself above all else in the intelligible world. — Plotinus, Ennead 4.8.1

Good point. What might the reformed cave look like? Would the philosophers do the very thing that Socrates was found guilty of? — Fooloso4

Your first question is very tough to answer. In the context of the Sophist, The Stranger seems to suggest that the 'reformation" will keep changing the terrain of the struggle as time goes by. But I don't see him proposing it will end. He displays confidence that the grounds will change. It is clear who he is rooting for.

On the other hand, the Stranger seems to insist upon the same separation that his Eleatic teachers did. The dangers of using forms requires a kind of hygiene:

“For instance,” said Parmenides, “if one of us is the master or slave of someone, he is not, of course, the slave 133E of master itself, what master is; nor is a master, master of slave itself, what slave is. Rather, as human beings, we are master or slave of a fellow human. Mastery itself, on the other hand, is what it is of slavery itself, while slavery itself, in like manner, is slavery of mastery itself. But the things among us do not have their power towards those, nor do those have their power towards us. Rather, as I say, these are what they are, of themselves, and in relation to themselves, while things with 134A us are, in like manner, relative to themselves. Or do you not understand what I am saying?” — ibid. 133e

The "images of truth", as they relate to the cave allegory, receive a challenge outside of the allegory but not for the sake of cancelling it. In the spirit of refutation, most would have wiped the blood off their blade and re-sheathed it. Plato is saying Parmenides is doing something else.

That does not make your second question any easier but there are at least more clues in the text available to bring out contrasting themes. In my recent drive-by reading of the Sophist, I noticed two elements that previously shot over my head. One of them is the separation of class in society:

Socrates: In that case, Theodorus, are you unwittingly bringing in some god rather than a stranger, as Homer’s phrase would have it, when he says that the gods 216B in general, and the god of strangers in particular, become the companions of people who partake of true righteousness, to behold the excesses and the good order of humanity? So perhaps this companion of yours may indeed be one of those higher powers who is going to watch over and refute our sorry predicament in these arguments, as he is a god of refutation.

Theod: That is not the manner of this stranger, Socrates, no; he is more moderate than those who take controversies seriously. Indeed, the man does not seem to me to be a god at all, though he is certainly divine. For 216C I refer to all philosophers as divine.

Str: They certainly are, Theaetetus. However, it is of no particular concern to the method based on arguments whether purification by washing or medication benefits us much or little. For it endeavours to discern the inter-relation and non-relation of all the skills, with the aim of acquiring intelligence, 227B and to that end it respects them all equally. Indeed, because of their similarity, this method does not believe that one is more ridiculous than another, and it does not regard a person as more important if he exemplifies his skill in hunting, through general-ship, rather than louse-catching, though it will probably regard him as more pretentious. — ibid. 216a

This difference gets re-affirmed at other places in the dialogue. Sometimes as an unexplained reference, sometimes as a joke, sometimes as a direct confrontation:

Str: That they have shown no regard for common folk, and they despise us. For each of them pursues his own line of argument, without considering at all whether we are following what they say or are being left behind. 243B — ibid. 243a

The second element that stood out for me is the way the gentle relates to the violent, both in discourse and the possibility of 'reformation' as a process of change in the world of becoming. Note how Theodorus presents the Stranger as a minor player by saying: "Socrates, no; he is more moderate than those who take controversies seriously." The Socrates who confronts anyone who challenges him is set in contrast to this player who does not accept such terms. But the contrast between the gentle and the violent is a part of so many of the Dialogues that Theodorus must be heard as expressing a particular prejudice.

I am inclined to lean toward Klein's view of change over Strauss'. But I think Strauss is correct putting the beginning of political philosophy at the Meno rather than the Republic. Can virtue be taught? If one can ask that, the quality is manifest in some fashion. We have to start with the insistence upon it being evident.

Socrates gets Meno to accept that condition to some degree without necessarily getting him to understand much else and thus makes Socrates more 'gentle' than often represented. But Socrates also seems hell-bent upon antagonizing Antyus, representing a portion of those who did kill him.

With a bit of Swift's Battle of the Books, pitching the Ancients against the Moderns, thrown in for extra flavor.

Grumpy old men fight on both sides of that battle.

[Not saying that to diss this thread]

Yes. It is odd how an appeal to a lost age cancels the argument of what is essential to being human by insisting upon the force that brings about its demise. I am stunned by the logic before weighing it against facts.

I have been thinking about Burnyeat's view of utopia and wanted to make some comments outside of his project of undermining Strauss.

I agree with Burnyeat that the Republic is aiming to change our life for the better. Seeing that goal as executing a realized plan that comes into being runs afoul with other ways of reading how the 'city in words' works in the Dialogues. Plato delights in having a metaphor or a bit of discourse appear in a parallel role within a particular dialogue or connecting them with others. The allegory of the cave has the philosopher return to it. Whatever good is done there does not stop it from being a cave.

The later discussions of regimes in the Republic do not include the "city in words" as one of the options. They deal with the return to the cave.

That is where the battle between giants is happening as discussed in the Sophist:

Str: It will be easier in the case of those who propose that being consists of forms, for they are gentler people. However, it is more difficult, perhaps almost impossible, from those who drag everything by force 246D to the physical. But I think they should be dealt with as follows.

Theae: How?

Str: The best thing would be to make better people of them, if that were possible, but if this is not to be, let’s make up a story, assuming that they would be willing to answer questions more fully than now. For agreement with reformed individuals will be preferable to agreement with worse. However, we are not interested in the people: we are seeking the truth.

Theae: Quite so. 246E — ibid. 246c

The last sentence stands in sharp contrast with the concern to make good people in the Republic. But the job of the "friends" is directly involved with the effort. It seems Plato does not want politics to be too easy to think about.

I relate this to the Gerson thesis by noting that this tension between ways of life does not appear in Plotinus. At least to the best of my knowledge. I welcome correction.

Where does Burnyeat's (or anybody else's) desire for a change in society have a place in Plotinus?

Add that to my other objections to putting Plotinus on team Plato.

I appreciate the story about the pony. I am more of a donkey.

I support taking breaks.

I understand your interests. You have repeated your thesis many times.

During our years of discourse, I have been trying to narrow definitions rather than explain differences in the most general terms. I accept your objection to the term "theological", as I used it, as a description of what the debates are about.

I ask you to consider that some of those who you have seen as fellow travelers need to be seen in a different light. The enemy of my enemy is not my friend in the world of thinking. Is that not also the quality so elegantly expressed in Daoist literature?

X wants to say it is all about Y. The separations needed for that become another problem. Is that an observation or a claim to a truth? In that set of arguments, the problem of logic is also a problem of boundaries.