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.

I am mindful of that post.

In a twist of fate, the argument there is supported by Leo Strauss in his Natural Right and History.

I have problems with that book as an account of other thinkers. But I appreciate the effort made to make politics a part of the dialectic rather than all the other things that could be and has been said of it.

[the above was edited]

Since we are all talking about other people at the moment, I want to talk about ways past discussions intersect with this one for me. I first became aware of Gerson because Apollodorus and Wayfarer appealed to him for support of their theological views of Plato. I then found out that this appeal to Gerson has been going on for years before my start.

My education included reading Plotinus. There were many arguments about where he differed from the Platonic beginnings, but no disagreement emerged concerning whether Plotinus was using the myths of the past as parts of his system of "realities". The language of approximation and stories, so vivid in the Timaeus, is now the way things are. There are limits to the realm of the "discursive." One had best get with the program.

The next book we read was City of God. That certainly tempers my understanding of Plotinus, for better and worse, depending upon different points of view.

Having been introduced to Ur-Platonism on this forum, I started reading Gerson's scholarly papers. That is when I started objecting to his interpretations of texts, for example, here and here as well as the example given upthread. As it concerns this thread, the clear preference for Plotinus shown in those commentaries is not represented as such in the Ur-Platonist stuff. This gives a bit of three card monte flavor to the scene. Is there a bait and switch play between the two enterprises?

I am glad to have had to discuss Schleiermacher's resistance to Systems because I am willing to acknowledge that is the lineage I come from. The most important element is the individual participating in the dialogue being witnessed. That theme is also echoed in the Dialogues in many ways that are not shy and retiring. So, I freely admit to an aversion to Gerson's efforts to assemble a system to fight modern foes on the basis of that point of view.

To sum up, I have two lines of resistance to Gerson that are separate in origin and form. Because of that condition, I want to address:

Burnyeat's criticism of Strauss in many ways parallels your own criticism of Gerson. — Leontiskos

Burnyeat was claiming he was on to Strauss' magic trick. That is a valid way to characterize persuasion and I don't fault Burnyeat for trying it. He took his chance with it. I don't know what Gerson's trick is. But he proposes to close what I think should not be.

I would not have done it if I had not been included in the comment. This is briefest way to express my discomfort with the comparison.

And yet you impose your own assumptions regarding the truth of such things as Forms and Recollection. Contrary to his identification of Forms as hypothetical and Recollection as problematic, you accuse me of sophistic interpretation when I pay attention to and point out what is actually said.
— Fooloso4

Where have I done that? — Leontiskos

It seems to me like you are doing that throughout this comment You insinuate Foolsoso4 resembles a gnostic sophist here:

When I say that Plato (or Socrates) is a pedagogue part of what I mean is that his words echo truths in multiple registers, as do his dialogues. There is food for the novice and the advanced pupil alike. This is different from gnosticism, which involves dissimulation and falsity for the sake of some higher and secret/concealed truth.It is very easy for a deft hand to warp the pedagogy and diffusity of Plato into a form of dissimulation or skepticism, in much the same way that a conspiracy theorist can cast doubt on everyday realities and replace them with some grand secret.
[emphasis mine] — Leontiskos

And there is your approval of:

The technique is as follows. You paraphrase the text in tedious detail – or so it appears to the uninitiated reader. Occasionally you remark that a certain statement is not clear; you note that the text is silent about a certain matter; you wonder whether such and such can really be the case. With a series of scarcely perceptible nudges you gradually insinuate that the text is insinuating something quite different from what the words say. — Myles Burnyeat, Sphinx without a Secret

The point of my post was to counter the charge against Strauss that he was an oracular figure who mystified what was there for all to see. Strauss established his point of view in the context of Schleiermacher and Klein. He taught his classes with the spirit of that lineage clearly on display. Burnyeat either knew of that or he did not. In either case, awareness of that lineage rebuts Burnyeat's argument.

Now, there are writers who oppose that lineage for a variety of reasons. Their opposition does not make them all saying the same thing. To make such an equation was the core of Apollodorus' method of argument.

He was a venomous fountain of ad hominem attacks and contempt. Everybody had to be speaking from a particular camp or school. His opponents were always tools in the hands of their masters. It deeply saddens me that such a spirit has returned to visit condemnation amongst us.

All of my other words left like deer hit on the side of the road.

I withdraw from the field.

I don't know if it's true, but it seems consistent with a lot of what is being said here, what with 'modernity being our cave'. — Wayfarer

You seem to advance a view but take no responsibility for claiming it. How does likening a criticism of Strauss relate to a particular quote by a specific member of the discussion group?

Is that a charge of guilt by association? I don't like Strauss for many reasons. But you are using a set of arguments you refer to but don't defend. You simply leave the field of battle.

I suggest that these squabbles are no replacement for reading Plato and seeing where it goes. There is no scorecard at the end.

Edit to add: You have gone to considerable trouble to read Buddhist text to participate in those discussions. Why the distance you impose upon yourself regarding Plato?

Burnyeat would have benefited from paying more attention to Jacob Klein, an important influence upon Strauss. The oracular status given to Strauss by Burnyeat looks different after reading some Klein. Consider the following from Strauss' lecture course on the Meno. The discussion concerns how Socrates says different things to different people and the Thrasymachus' charge of Socrates not speaking clearly:

Quoting Klein: We shall consider, by way of example, views expressed in Rene Schaerer's book, where the main problem is precisely to find the right approach to an understanding of Platonic dialogues. Whatever the point of view from which one considers the Dialogues, they are ironical, writes Schaerer, and there can hardly be any disagreement about that. For, to begin with, irony seems indeed the prevailing mode in which the Socrates of the dialogues speaks and acts. It is pertinent to quote J.A.K. Thomson on this subject. With a view not only to Thrasymachus' utterances in the Republic, Thomson says: When his contemporaries called Socrates ironical, they did not mean to be complimentary.

Leo Strauss: This meaning implies in any event that for a statement or a behavior to be ironical there must be someone capable of understanding that it is ironical. It is true, a self-possessed person may derive, all by himself, some satisfaction from speaking ironically to someone else who does not see through the irony at all. In this case, the speaker himself is the lonely observer of the situation. But this much can be safely said of Socrates as he appears in the Platonic dialogues: he is not ironical to satisfy people who are capable of catching the irony, of hearing what is not said. A dialogue, then, presupposes people listening to the conversation not as casual and indifferent spectators but as silent participants...... a (Platonic) dialogue has not taken place if we, the listeners or readers, did not actively participate in it; lacking such a participation, all that is before us is indeed nothing but a book.

Leo Strauss: So irony requires that there are people present to catch the irony, who understand what is not said you know, irony being dissimulation, of course something is not said. There must be readers who silently participate in the dialogue; without such participation, the dialogue is not understood. In other words, you cannot look at it as at a film and be excited and amused, amazed, or whatever by it: you have to participate in it. This is the first key point which Klein makes. Now he states then in the sequel that according to the common view, with which he takes issue, the reader is a mere spectator and not a participant, and he rejects this.

Leo Strauss: Now let us read this quotation from Schleiermacher in note 23, which is indeed I
think the finest statement on the Platonic dialogues made in modern times:

Plato's main point must have been to guide each investigation and to design it, from the very beginning, in such a way as to compel the reader either to produce inwardly, on his own, the intended thought or to yield, in a most definite manner, to the feeling of having found nothing and understood nothing. For this purpose, it is required that the result of the investigation be not simply stated and put down in so many words . . .but that the reader's soul is constrained to search for the result and be set on the way on which it can find what it seeks. The first is done by awakening in the soul of the reader the awareness of its own state of ignorance, an awareness so clear that the soul cannot possibly wish to remain in that state. The second is done either by weaving a riddle out of contradictions, a riddle the only possible solution of which lies in the intended thought, and by often injecting, in a seemingly most strange and casual manner, one hint or another, which only he who is really and spontaneously engaged in searching notices and understands; or by covering the primary investigation with another one, but not as if the other one were a veil, but as if it were naturally grown skin: this other investigation hides from the inattentive reader, and only from him, the very thing which is meant to be observed or to be found, while the attentive reader's ability to perceive the intrinsic connection between the two investigations is sharpened and enhanced.
.....
This is not to say that the dialogues are void of all doctrinal assertions. On the contrary, this further consideration ought to guide our understanding of the dialogues: they contain a Platonic doctrine by which is not meant what has come to be called a philosophical system. The dialogues not only embody the famous oracular and paradoxical statements emanating from Socrates (virtue is knowledge, nobody does evil knowingly, it is better to suffer than to commit injustice) and are, to a large extent protreptic plays based on these, but they also discuss and state, more or less explicitly, the ultimate foundations on which those statements rest and the far-reaching consequences which flow from them. But never is this done with complete clarity. It is still up to us to try to clarify those foundations and consequences, using, if necessary, another, longer and more involved road, and then to accept, correct, or reject them---it is up to us, in other words, to engage in philosophy. — Leo Strauss, Lecture transcripts on Meno

I don't share Schleiermacher's confidence that his vision of the future will come about. But I do think he is teaching us a little of how to read Plato.

The question raised here about systems takes precedence over secrets. If this reflects how Plato teaches, the emphasis is upon the progress of the learner as a learner, not a proposition of what is true in a proposition. That is why I said previously that Cornford is more of a champion for a System than Strauss was. It is worth noting that Gerson is more of a System guy than even Cornford:

The systematic unity is an explanatory hierarchy. The Platonic view of the world—the key to the system—is that the universe is to be seen in hierarchical manner. It is to be understood uncompromisingly from the top down. The hierarchy is ordered basically according to two criteria. First, the simple precedes the complex, and second, the intelligible precedes the sensible. — Gerson, Aristotle and Other Platonists

If the Burnyeat perspective is worth considering, argue it on your own behalf if it is not publicly available.

I have argued that Plotinus is claiming authority of a certain kind. I accept that I have to do more than claim such to be the case.

I cannot see beyond the paywall on that article.

I don't get what Strauss has to do with the limit of what is knowable. What I have read of Strauss is mostly in the register of political philosophy. The mentions of the 'esoteric' are connected to that interest as his idea of the pedagogy of the elite. It is one way to interpret the Republic and Meno. There are plenty of other ways.

Why did not the theists in that thread appeal more to the reading of Cornford rather than involve Strauss who argued for the idea of natural rights? I question both of those authors for different reasons.

What is the connection between the skeptical approach of Socrates and some overriding theology? Agnosticism is being equated with atheism here. None of the references to Strauss in that old thread involved quoting what he actually said. It feels like whacking a piñata.

I don't view the differences as schools of thought as you do. The expression the "One" has a different life in different texts as do so many other ideas and perspectives.

I will leave your statements unchallenged as an expression of your theology.

Thank you for the links.

We have differed in the past on what the consequences of De Caelo are on the divinity of the celestial sphere and I remember you do not accept the account of divinity in Metaphysics book Lamda. So, I will leave all that be.

I am glad we could find common ground on the role of forms in the dialectic.

You'll notice in Aristotle's Metaphysics, (much of this being material produced from his school, after his death), how the Aristotelians distance themselves from those other Platonists, whom we call Neoplatonists. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do you have a source that touches on how Aristotle's text was produced? Are you suggesting that when "Platonists" are mentioned in Aristotle that others are speaking in his name?

It is likely that when Aristotle uses "Platonists", he is referring to his old pals at the Academy. It is unlikely that they shared all the views of Plotinus, a Neo-Platonists who wrote hundreds of years later in Rome.

While we can guess the first Academicians would have taken issue with Aristotle challenging the separate land of the forms, it is unlikely they would have disagreed with Parmenides who sharply protects the boundary between the divine and the world of becoming that we muck about in:

“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?”

“I understand,” said Socrates, “very much so.”

“And is it also the case,” he asked, “that knowledge itself, what knowledge is, would be knowledge of that truth itself, what truth is?”

“Entirely so.”

“Then again, each of the instances of knowledge, what each is, would be knowledge of particular things that are. Isn’t this so?”

“Yes.”

“The knowledge with us would be knowledge of the truth with us, and furthermore, particular knowledge with us would turn out to be knowledge of particular things that are 134B with us?”

“Necessarily.”

“But the forms themselves, as you agree, we neither possess nor can they be with us.”

“No, indeed not.”

“And presumably each of the kinds themselves is known by the form of knowledge itself?”

“Yes.”

“Which we do not possess.”

“We do not.”

“So none of the forms is known by us since we do not partake of knowledge itself.”

“Apparently not.”

“So what beauty itself is, and the good, 134C and indeed everything we understand as being characteristics themselves, are unknown to us.”

“Quite likely.”

“Then consider something even more daunting.”

“Which is?”

“You would say, I presume, that if there is indeed a kind, just by itself, of knowledge, it is much more precise than the knowledge with us, and the same holds for beauty and all the others.”

“Yes.”

“Now if anything else partakes of knowledge itself, wouldn’t you say that a god, more so than anyone, possesses the most precise knowledge?”

“Necessarily.”

134D “In that case, will a god possessing knowledge itself be able to know things in our realm?”

“Why not?”

“Because, Socrates,” said Parmenides, “we have agreed that those forms do not have the power that they have, in relation to the things that are with us, nor do the things with us have their power in relation to those forms. The power in each case is in relation to themselves.”

“Yes, we agreed on that.”

“Well then, if this most precise mastery is with a god, and this most precise knowledge too, the gods’ mastery would never exercise mastery over us, nor would their knowledge 134E know us nor anything else that is with us. Rather, just as we neither rule over them with our rule nor do we know anything of the divine with our knowledge, they in turn by the same argument, are not the masters of us nor do they have knowledge of human affairs, although they are gods.”

“But surely,” he said, “if someone were to deprive a god of knowledge, the argument would be most surprising.”

“Indeed, Socrates,” said Parmenides, “the forms inevitably possess these difficulties and many others 135A besides these, if there are these characteristics of things that are, and someone marks off each form as something by itself. And the person who hears about them gets perplexed and contends that these forms do not exist, and even if they do it is highly necessary that they be unknowable to human nature. And in saying all this he seems to be making sense, and as we said before, it is extraordinarily difficult to persuade him otherwise. Indeed, this will require a highly gifted man who will have the ability to understand that there is, for each, some kind, a being just by itself, 135B and someone even more extraordinary who will make this discovery and be capable of teaching someone else who has scrutinized all these issues thoroughly enough for himself.”

“I agree with you, Parmenides,” said Socrates. “What you are saying is very much to my mind.”

“Yet on the other hand Socrates,” said Parmenides, “if someone, in the light of our present considerations and others like them, will not allow that there are forms of things that are, and won’t mark off a form for each one, he will not even have anywhere to turn his thought, since he does not allow that a characteristic 135C of each of the things that are is always the same. And in this way he will utterly destroy the power of dialectic. However, I think you are well aware of such an issue.” — Plato, Parmenides, 133e, translated by Horan

This is a far cry from the mono-logos of Plotinus where the divine is a continuity from the highest reality to the lowest. The dialectic descends into the silence of contemplation.

I was thinking of the difference as something Plato, the author, has two of his characters say at a particular moment. It would have been a different work if the argument went elsewhere than it did.

That is a constant question when reading Plato that does not come up in theories presented directly by others.

Yes. So why was this difference not seized upon in the moment?

As it regards the current discussion of the Sophist, the statements made in Parmenides are closely linked to the other work:

“Do you think that the whole form, being one, is in each of the many? Or what do you think?”

“What’s to prevent this, Parmenides?” said Socrates.

131B “So being one and the same it will be present simultaneously as a whole in things that are many and separate and would thus be separate from itself.”

“No, Parmenides,” said he, “not if it is like a day, which being one and the same, is in many places simultaneously and is, nevertheless, not separate from itself. If this were the case, each of the forms could simultaneously be one and the same in all things.”

“Socrates,” he said, “how nicely you make the one and the same be in many places simultaneously, as if you were to throw a sail over many people and maintain that one, as a whole, is over many. Don’t you think something like this is what you are saying? “

131C “Perhaps,” said he.

“Would the sail as a whole be on each person or just a part of this, and another part on another person?”

“A part.”

“So forms themselves are divisible Socrates,” said he, “and things that partake of them would partake of a part, and would no longer be in each as a whole, but a part of each form would be in each.”

“Apparently so.”

“Well then, Socrates,” said he, “do you wish to maintain that our one form is in truth divided and will still be one?”

“Not at all,” he replied. — Ibid. 131b

it is interesting that Parmenides does not introduce the sail metaphor as a rebuttal of Socrates' statement but as a description of it. The dramatic element of the dialogue presents the possibility of this being a younger Socrates accepting what the older Socrates might not have let ride. One of those things we will never know.

But another element from the older Eleatic connected to the new one is this:

“So nothing can be like the form, nor can the form be like anything else. Otherwise alongside the form another form will always make an appearance. And 133A if that form is like something, yet another form will appear, and the continual generation of a new form will never cease if the form turns out to be like whatever partakes of it.”

“Very true.”

“Since it is not by likeness that the others get a share of the forms, we must rather look for something else by which they get a share.”

“So it seems.”

“Do you see then, Socrates,” said he, “the extent of the difficulty once someone distinguishes forms as being just by themselves?” — ibid. 132e

That is the cue for the Stanger in the Sophist to speak of the comingling of forms.

For the Nos4ora2, all forms of exchange beyond what one body can do to another are not shown by what they seem through the evidence for them existing or having existed but are products of "statism".

The "social contract" as conceived by Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, etcetera, is the adoption of a belief, not an attempt to understand the formation of society as something that has happened. So, there is no way to challenge N's idea on its own terms since it denies a means of comparing it to others.

I feel Baden staring down at me, questioning the relevance of that observation to the matter of the Donald as a particular being. I propose the decoupling is essential to the Trump phenomena. The petri dish, as it were.