I was thinking of a number of lines in Rilke but figured I would turn to something more painful to reflect the 'unbearable' aspect.

My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parent very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to seem father
I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father's hand the last time

he says and my father
turned in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said
I don't want you to feel that you
have to
just because I am here

I say nothing

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing somebody I don't want to keep you

I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere to go
and nothing I had to do — W.S. Merwin, Yesterday from Flower and Hand

The rhythm of 'American' English is key to the evocation.

I find a difference between saying 'personal identity exists' and saying 'we experience the life of being a person.' The latter is a much simpler beginning than the former. It is not without assumptions of shared experience but negating it is not like claiming such an identity does not exist. The perspective is far from Descartes proving he exists because he thinks it. I experience myself as a person. I experience other persons as having a similar life and regarding me in the same fashion. If it is all an illusion, it is an excellent show.

We wonder, of course, what are the contours and conditions of this experience. When we do that through imagining different models, we suddenly are confronted with questions of what actually exists or not. When we divide, the job of reuniting falls upon our enterprise. That was as true for Heraclitus as it is for modern psychological models. Much else has changed. The view of the individual in isolation needs more ways of thinking to approach the simplicity we use like a familiar tool. Aristotle said the soul is like a hand, a tool of tools.

Looking over the vast range of what "Christianity" has come to mean for different persons over centuries of life, the common insistence amongst the different groups that only one way is correct has become more 'universal' than any particular set of creeds, liturgy, or view of the world reflected in each iteration.

My man Le Rochefoucauld has that one covered:

Philosophy triumphs easily over past evils and future evils; but present evils triumph over it. — Le Rochefoucauld, maxim 22

Cool thread.
I have long been fascinated by the ideas of the linear city as conceived by Soria and the Arterial arcology of Paulo Soleri. They present a perspective to urban design that tries to imagine a more human space between technical structures. Maybe not immediately practical but a space for thinking.

Not all frames of duality concern a single set of conditions. Neither do all collapses of dualities refer to a single experience or view of the world.

The Parmenides depicted by Plato argues against the separate land of forms but accepts the duality invoked by them as necessary for recognizing the persistence of beings in a world of becoming. In the Sophist, Plato discusses a less absolute way of talking about the eternal being from what comes into being. That change, however, is not a collapse of the separation between the source of order in nature and the willy-nilly of spontaneous events.

The stricter version maintained by Parmenides constrains expectations of what can be explained through Plato's method. The boundary between the mythological and philosophic accounts of experience is maintained, especially as concern 'esoteric' or theological awakening to reality. The divide between the mortal and the divine is wide and deep even if strives for the latter in various ways. That situation is in sharp contrast to the views of Plotinus:

But the souls of men see their images as if in the mirror of Dionysus and come to be on that level with a leap from above: but even these are not cut off from their own principle and from intellect. For they did not come down with Intellect, but went on ahead of it down to earth, but their heads are firmly set above in heaven. But they experienced a deeper descent because their middle part was compelled to care for that to which they had gone on, which needed their care. But Father Zeus, pitying them in their troubles, makes the bonds over which they have trouble dissoluble by death and gives them periods of rest, making them at times free of bodies, so that they too may have the opportunity of being there where the soul of the All always is, since it in no way turns to the things of this world — Plotinus, Ennead, IV. 3.12, translated by Armstrong

Free version

The original duality has been collapsed. The cycle of life and death is explained. Since Plotinus testifies to having made this ascent of soul during his life, it is a personal experience. The role of mythology is to help communicate the experience to those who have yet to make the trip.

Nothing like this story maps onto the dynamic between Daoism and competing views. There is a duality between a 'natural' order and the imposition of 'forms' if you will. What cannot be spoken is placed side by side with what can be. In regard to semantics, Zhuangzi works as a deconstruction of meaning to understand what is worthy and why things happen. What is regarded as 'esoteric' in this regard can be approached but not described as a transition within a comprehensible terrain. The difference between the internal and external, so central to Plotinus, is just a way of talking for Zhuangzi.

How does Kenny describe the difference?
Which book are you reading? Is your exam on this book or upon different materials?
Have you read any of the original writings of Plato and Plotinus?

Hesiod does not speak in the language of intervention. He says humans are on their fifth iteration after previous attempts by Zeus. The anticipation for a better batch does not seem directed at Hesiod's immediate environment. The mythology is a kind of politeness in the face of deep ignorance. Being honest about ignorance is the connection between the old and the new. That connects with the often-raised objection that Socrates is just another player in the dialogues. Perhaps Thrasymachus is the most vivid example because it is so briefly given. Thrasymachus says Socrates uses his form of discourse to avoid saying what is the case. The matter is still being discussed.

It should also be noted that Hesiod is more concerned with means of life in the country and the sea than affairs in the city. Life is precarious. Holding on to it without becoming mere predators is difficult.

The modern world thinks it has got beyond all that, but I think it may have lost something in the process. — Ludwig V

I figure that there are many benefits of the modern world that are applicable to very old problems. But I also count the changes from the old to the new as a deep valley of ignorance. Hesiod, for all his prejudices, would arch his brow as sharply as anyone living today at the suggestion we live in the best of all possible worlds.

This amplifies and justifies one of the prominent themes of the Apology, that he does not fear death, because no harm can touch a good person. It is a radical and new thesis in Greek times, and completely counter-intuitive in that culture (and pretty astonishing in this one). Aristotle takes a different view, in the Nicomachaean Ethics. — Ludwig V

I doubt a guarantee of "no harm" was given but there are certainly many who do read it that way. Apart from that, there are a number of ways that Socrates' theme of a person suffering the evil done to others was developed in traditional poetry and mythology.

Bear this in mind, kings, and straighten your discourses, you gift-eaters, and put crooked judgments quite out of your minds. A man contrives evil for himself when he contrives evil for someone else, and an evil plan is most evil for the planner. Zeus’ eye, which sees all things and knows all things, perceives this too, if he so wishes, and he is well aware just what kind of justice this is which the city has within it. Right now I myself would not want to be a just man among human beings, neither I nor a son of mine, since it is evil for a man to be just if the more unjust one will receive greater justice. But I do not anticipate that the counselor Zeus will let things end up this way. — Hesiod, Works and Days, 260, translated by Glenn W. Most

This can be applied directly to the designs of Antyus but also to the arrogance of Euthyphro, who would speak of knowing the intentions of the gods. Saying as much is not to deny that Plato was challenging traditional customs and means of education. Nonetheless, a lot of what is virtuous and villainous is baked into human life.

BTW, if you have not already taken on board that Plato is not writing history, look up the symptoms of hemlock poisoning and compare them to the picture he gives us of Socrates' death. — Ludwig V

Yes, Plato wrote a hagiography of Socrates along with a context for his philosophy. It is interesting how he brings the responses to hemlock into the dialogue:

“What else, Socrates,” said Crito, “other than that the man who is going to give you the poison has been telling me for some time that you must be advised to talk as little as possible? You see he says that people get heated through talking too much and that you mustn’t do anything like this to affect the action of the poison. eIse not, those who do that kind of thing are sometimes forced to drink it two or three times.”

Socrates said: “Well, take no notice of him. Just let him be prepared to give me a second dose of his stuff, and a third if necessary.”

“Well I more or less knew you’d say something like that,” said Crito, “but he’s been pestering me for some time.” — Phaedo, 63e, Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy

In regard to political expediency, the parting words of Anytus in the Meno show a thug side to the business of the people:

an. Socrates, I consider you are too apt to speak ill of people. I, for one, if you will take my advice, would warn you to be careful: in most cities it is probably easier to do people harm than good, and particularly in this one; I think you know that yourself.

soc. Meno, I think Anytus is angry, and I am not at all surprised: for he conceives, in the first place, that I am speaking ill of these gentlemen; and in the second place, he considers he is one of them himself. Yet, should the day come when he knows what “speaking ill” means, his anger will cease; at present he does not know. — Plato, Meno, 94e, translated by Lamb

Imagining himself slandered leads Anytus to slander. That also speaks to Ludwig V's point about the effects of exposing ignorance. Personal grievance is revenged through the power of the City.

They are means of access and sing when asked politely.

As I understand the literature, the role of the muses is different from 'familiar spirits'. The daimon who encourages Socrates to compose music is not the same powers who make that possible.

When reading Hesiod, it does seem that different muses have access to different expressions of divinity. It is not a denial of personal creativity but a request for more than that. The outward turning that escapes echoes.

The problem with saying the 'bias' is doing the talking is that it dispenses with other peoples' views a priori.
— Paine

This is certainly true - I think all we can do to counteract is point out inconsistencies in approach. LIke trusting the media one way, but not the other. — AmadeusD

I recognize that media is a big player in the description of what is happening. We have to decide for ourselves what is being discussed. And if that collection of selves is just different worlds of facts, it is all for nought. All the King's men could not put the egg back together again.

Yes, pissing into the wind is not an effective strategy.

I recently completed Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. It works through many of the social devices presented by Jane Austen but shows how different versions of ego mania produce different outcomes. Gaskell's account reveals there is no significant difference between genders and class in the experience of self-interest. We pursue what is best for us. The difference of outcomes come about from slight gains or losses of self-awareness in each person. And nobody gets to check the scorecard since it involves life beyond one's view.

What is bizarre from one point of view may be 'normative' in another. The problem with saying the 'bias' is doing the talking is that it dispenses with other peoples' views a priori.

Therefore, it is a useless argument in political discourse. Noting that condition is far from denying that bias does exist in many forms of feeling and expression.

Also a different kind of arrogance and a different kind of divine retribution. — Vera Mont

Yes. I think those two elements are intertwined.

The witches in Macbeth do play an important part of why he thought he was invincible. In the midst of complaining about how boring he found his success; he suddenly learns he misunderstood the original message.

Lear's arrogance is believing he knows what true love looks like when he does not. In one sense, his realization of the truth is more brutal than the one Macbeth experienced.

King Lear is not a voice for moral nihilism because it is recognized that through her death, Cordelia was the faithful one through her refusal to approve Lear's proposal. That is certainly the groundwork of many a tale. All of Jane Austen can be viewed through this telescope.

I enter your discussion as a curmudgeon who resists the generality of Aristotle's accounts. The differences between King Lear and Macbeth involve different kinds of ignorance. They follow a similar pattern of revelation but do not concern just one problem.

Rivas makes good points. Hubris is an important part of the action. There is the relief of not experiencing the bad luck as pointed out by Moliere quoting Lucretius upthread.

But there are elements that are meant to leave the audience with some discomfort. The theme of blindness and fear of the future started when baby Oedipus is left to die on a hillside. Prophecy is supposed to pierce the invisibility of fate but becomes an instrument of fate in some points of crisis.

Macbeth demonstrates that quality in a direct way. Oedipus, however, is entangled in decisions of his parents. The terrain becomes murkier. I leave the play less certain of where I live. Maybe I am the one who is blind.

I wasn’t talking about ‘injecting’ souls into other bodies: I was talking about the essence of a thing. — Bob Ross

How does an essence come into being in the language of Aristotle?

Sophocles' Oedipus the King is worthy of notice in this regard. Oedipus unwittingly accelerates his demise by uncovering the attempts of his parents to avoid their prophesied fates.

He goes from the arrogance of the king to the blindness of the seer who brought him down.

I can see the pleasure in being able to view a process that one cannot perform upon oneself. But I cannot imagine witnesses of that play going home afterwards thinking they had purified something.

Your hypothetical does not take into account the way Aristotle views human life in relation to the life of other animals. An excellent overview of this is given by Edward Clayton:

First, Aristotle claims that it is not correct from a biological point of view to divide animals into the categories of "tame" and " wild " as some before him have done:

"For in a manner of speaking everything that is tame is also wild, e.g. human beings, horses, cattle . . . ." [PA 643b4]

For each of these kinds of animal, some members are tame while others are wild and even those that are tame do not start out that way. Unless they are tamed by human beings, all animals remain in their wild condition—and even human beings are born wild. In a surprisingly little noticed passage in the History of Animals, Aristotle says that:

" in children, though one can see as it were traces and seeds of the dispositions that they will have later, yet their soul at this period has practically no difference from that of wild animals. " [HA 588a-588]

Of course it is education that will shape those beginning dispositions and provide the char-
acter and characteristics that children will have later in life, and Aristotle believes that it is the job of politics and the city through laws and training to provide that education. — Aesop, Aristotle, and Animals: The Role of Fables in Human Life, Edward Clayton

The need for nurture to become what is our 'special' nature is integral to our place between the beast and the divine. We need each other to become who we are. The hypothetical you propose suggests "natures" can be arbitrarily injected into life forms. Aristotle rejected that possibility in De Anima:

These people, however, merely undertake to say what sort of thing the soul is, but about the 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 carpentry could be inserted into flutes, whereas in fact the craft must use its instruments, and the soul its body. — Aristotle, De Anima, 407b20, translated by C.D.C. Reeve

How we came into being is inseparable from what you call, "fitting into the ecosystem of nature."

And there's nothing wrong with that, although it does deviate from the previous topic of the butterfly effect, chaos theory, and the "tending of the big garden." You said that the big garden is not being tended. Should it be? — Leontiskos

According to one particular story, we were kicked out of a tended garden and forced to struggle hard for our survival. There is still an order to the world that favors the good in many ways but they are faced with the harshness of nature and the effects of wicked people.

It comes from different stories about the beginning, but Aristotle underlined the uncertainty of outcomes because the order prevalent to make life possible and more tolerable did not determine what ate what or who killed who on any given day. Plato's Timaeus also approached a boundary of the undetermined.

You mentioned Plotinus' god. In a number of ways, he defended the "creator" for the hardships we experience by putting forth a particular vision of immortality. Maybe I should make an OP about that.

In any case, what is seen as the horizon of what is possible for human beings is the world or absence of one that is imagined for it.

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.