Saussure’s sound-image is, I claim, a particular kind of form. Consider the sound of the word “mother.” It’s not an exact sound, because every vocalization of the word mother is different. But they are all vocalizations of the same word. So somehow an ocean of differing quality is “unified” by the sound-image. The sound-image is not a sound but a “kind” of sound, a “character” of vocalizations that “makes them” vocalizations of “mother.”
Must admit, I haven’t read Saussure. But it sounds interesting idea. I have downloaded Saussure’s main work. Will add to my coffee time reading list.
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Why? In the Second Letter Plato expresses grave concern that if written down it would get into the wrong hands. Yet Aristotle purportedly commits them to writing in the Physics as the foundational principles, the One and the Indeterminate Dyad. (209b13–15)
Did Aristotle reveal what Plato warned should not be written and thus available to all? Does this reveal anything that cannot be found in Plato’s discussion of Forms in the dialogues?
The unity of Forms is subsumed under the Good. But Socrates also says that the Good is not responsible for the bad things. (Republic 379b)
This raises problems. If the One is the ordered Whole then the One and the Good are not the same.
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My copy of Plato, the first line in the book of Timaeus says,
“Timaeus offers the reader a rhetorical display, not a philosophical dialogue.”
- Plato, Complete Works, Edited by John, M. Cooper, Hacket Publishing Company, Indianapolis/Cambridge, pp.1224
Socrates says of Timaeus “…he has also, in my opinion, reached the very pinnacle in matters of philosophy”. (20a)
It is generally agreed that Timaeus was a fictional character, but we can judge Timaeus based on what he says in the dialogue.
Historically, the dialogue has often been regarded as philosophically important and influential.
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Thanks for the invitation j.j. I’ll be brief, and expound if you request.
The One, as a mathematical idea, based in unity, is demonstrated by Aristotle to be of the category of potential, requiring the human mind to actualize it. As such, its capacity to be eternal falls to the cosmological argument which demonstrates that anything eternal must be actual. The good is closer to capturing the essence of “act”, being the motivator of the will, and final cause.
Nevertheless, the Neo-Platonists desired to maintain the priority of the One, despite the refutation of Aristotle’s cosmological argument. The ensuing problem though, becomes very evident in Plotinus’ Enneads. The One is said to be pure potential. However, being pure potential, it has no act and therefore cannot be a cause. This leaves Plotinus as describing an emanation or progression from the One, which is not causal. So the Intellect emanates from the One, but it cannot be said to be caused by the One, being purely potential. That’s an unnecessary unintelligibility which I consider to be the dead end of Neo-Platonism.
So you’ll see that Augustine, who studied Neo-Platonism, and came across this unintelligibility, did extensive philosophising on the nature of time, free will, the tripartite intellect, and the actuality of God as the trinity. The Christian God is then conceived as pure act, and the reason why God creates is because it is good.
I don’t see what you are asking here. In my memory, Aristotle says “some Platonists” hold on to “the One” as first principle.
Notice in your quote, “the One and the Indeterminate Dyad” does not give priority to either the One or the Many. However, “the good” is given special status in The Republic.
I do not believe that this is what Plato actually says. He says in The Republic, that the good illuminates intelligible objects, making them intelligible, just like the sun illuminates visible objects making them visible. This does not imply that the good unifies intelligible objects, or Forms. It just implies that they all can be seen under one light. But that light illuminates them as distinct and different, not as a unified “One”.
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So is God the One ?
I’d be glad to get your general sense of the world.
I find Augustine fascinating. I mostly know of him via Heidegger.
Definitely not in Christianity. The One is defined by Plotinus as pure potential. God is defined by Aquinas as pure act. That’s a significant difference.
Augustine has some very interesting material, though he rambles on at some points, like in City of God. However, he has some very good speculations about free will, time, and the beginning of time. He also provides a very good comparison between the tripartite nature of the human intellect, consisting of memory, understanding (reason), and will, and the Christian Trinity of God.
He also questioned extensively how it is possible that a human being can knowingly do what is bad. This was a key issue for Socrates and Plato in their attack on the sophists who claimed to be able to teach virtue. If virtue is knowledge, then knowing what is good would ensure the virtuous act, and we wouldn’t be capable of doing what we know is bad. But, we often act in a way which we know is bad. Plato’s resolution was the tripartite soul, where passion as the inspiration for action, is situated between the body and the mind. Passion with its ensuing actions, may align itself with the mind, or with the body. When allied with the body, this is when the person may act in a way which they know is bad.
Further, he questioned how God could be omniscient, yet human beings have free will. This ties in to his speculations about the nature of time, and he also provides insight into what it means to know.
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So what is your view ? Is “pure act” the being of the world, or ?
I tend to understand the point this way. Each intelligible object as such is a unity of difference. The “same” fire hydrant appears in many ways to many perceivers. Perhaps it gets rusty, its paint peels off. But it is “the” fire hydrant, the same for all of us.
We can read “the one” as the “principle” of intelligently or articulation, which is opposed to otherwise indefinite difference.
So I like this, but I tend to see experience as just the world itself but from a particular point of view.
Then the chora might be all of the sensation and feeling and so on that we “make sense of” in terms of enduring recognizable objects.
That sense we make is “out there in the world.” Obviously our brains play a role, but the structure of the world is lived as something that comes at us.
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I am asking why “Plato refused to discuss ‘the One’”.
It is not just that the Good illuminates them, it is the cause of their being.
David Horan’s translation:
"Then, you should declare that the form of the good bestows truth upon whatever is known, and confers the power of knowing on the knower. Being the cause of knowledge and truth, you should think of it as knowable. However, although knowledge and truth are both beautiful, you would be right to regard this as different from them, and even more beautiful than both of them.
… Then not only does the knowability of whatever is known derive from the good, but also what it is, and its being, is conferred on it through that, though the good is not being, but is even beyond being, exceeding it in dignity and power." (508e -509b)
Joe Sachs’ translation:
“Then say that what endows the things known with truth, and gives that which knows them its power, is the look of the good. Since it’s the cause of knowledge and truth, think of it as something known, but though both of these, knowledge and truth, are so beautiful, by regarding it as something else, still more beautiful than they are, you’ll regard it rightly …
Then claim as well that the things that are known not only get their being-known furnished by the good, but they’re also endowed by that source with their very being and their being what they are, even though the good is not being, but something over and above being, beyond it in seniority and surpassing it in power” (508e- 509b).
Alan Bloom’s translation:
"Therefore, say that what provides the truth to the things known e and gives the power to the one who knows, is the idea of the good. And, as the cause of the knowledge and truth, you can understand it to be a thing known; but, as fair as these two are—knowledge and truth—if you believe that it is something different from them and still fairer than they, your belief will be right. As for knowledge and truth, just as in the other region it is right to hold light and sight sunlike, but
to believe them to be sun is not right; so, too, here, to hold these two to be like the good is right, but to believe that either of them is the good is not right. The condition which characterizes the good must receive still greater honor …
I suppose you’ll say the sun not only provides what is seen with the power of being seen, but also with generation, growth, and nourishment although it itself isn’t generation." (508e-509b)
I think that Plato’s claim is that if you act contrary to what is good then you do not know what is good.
The stumbling block of the Neoplatonists can be found in dismissal of opinion (doxa) as a means of approaching the Good in Plato’s account of the divided line:
“We’re happy, then,” I said, “as we were before, to refer to the first part as knowledge and the second as thought, the third belief and the fourth conjecture by means of imagery. Again these last two can be grouped under opinion, the first two under understanding where opinion deals with the impermanent, understanding with the real; and just as reality is to impermanence, understanding is to opinion, and as understanding is to opinion, so knowledge is to belief and thought to conjecture by means of imagery. 40 Let’s leave aside the relative proportions between all these and the division of both what is opinion and what is knowledge, Glaucon, so that we don’t get ourselves embroiled in an argument many times longer than we had in some earlier topics.”
“Well, I certainly agree with the rest,” he said, “as far as I can follow what you’re saying.”
“Do you not also call the person who can grasp an account of the reality of each thing dialectical then? And anyone who doesn’t embrace it—in as far as the person wouldn’t be able to give an account of it to himself or any one else—will you claim that to that extent he has no understanding of it?”
“How could I not make such a claim?” he said.
“And does the same apply to the Good, therefore? Whoever is unable by his reasoning to distinguish and separate off the notion of the Good from everything else and, like one in battle, explore every counterargument and strive to examine it not by reference to what is generally believed, but by reference to reality, in all of which he makes his way by faultless logic—will you claim that a man in this position either knows the Good itself or any other good; but if he happens to come across any image anywhere, he does so by using his belief, not his knowledge, and he dreams his way through this present life fast asleep and before he wakes up here he’ll first arrive in Hades and there fall permanently asleep?”
Republic 534a, translated by Jones and Preddy.
With his view of the individual soul ascending and descending from the same source, Plotinus straddles the gap Timaeus establishes as the first order of business in his account:
Now first of all we must, in my judgement, make the following distinction. What is that which is Existent always and has no Becoming? And what is that which is Becoming always and never is Existent? Now the one of these is apprehensible by thought with the aid of reasoning, since it is ever uniformly existent; whereas the other is an object of opinion with the aid of unreasoning sensation, since it becomes and perishes and is never really existent. Again, everything which becomes must of necessity become owing to some Cause; for without a cause it is impossible for anything to attain becoming. But when the artificer of any object, in forming its shape and quality, keeps his gaze fixed on that which is uniform, using a model of this kind, that object, executed in this way, must of necessity be beautiful; but whenever he gazes at that which has come into existence and uses a created model, the object thus executed is not beautiful. Now the whole Heaven, or Cosmos, or if there is any other name which it specially prefers, by that let us call it,—so, be its name what it may, we must first investigate concerning it that primary question which has to be investigated at the outset in every case,—namely, whether it has existed always, having no beginning of generation, or whether it has come into existence, having begun from some beginning. It has come into existence; for it is visible and tangible and possessed of a body; and all such things are sensible, and things sensible, being apprehensible by opinion with the aid of sensation, come into existence, as we saw, and are generated. And that which has come into existence must necessarily, as we say, have come into existence by reason of some Cause.
Timaeus,28a, translated by R.G. Bury
By the criteria of the Divided Line, Timaeus’s account is necessarily a creation of opinion and cannot approach the Good itself. Plotinus does not display the humility of either Socrates or Timaeus.
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Taken by itself, that statement overlooks how closely the Timaeus is yoked to the Republic. Critias plainly states the role of Timaeus’ account in the larger project:
Crit: Consider now, Socrates, the order of the feast as we have arranged it. Seeing that Timaeus is our best astronomer and has made it his special task to learn about the nature of the Universe, it seemed good to us that he should speak first, beginning with the origin of the Cosmos and ending with the generation of mankind. After him I am to follow, taking over from him mankind, already as it were created by his speech, and taking over from you a select number of men superlatively well trained. Then, in accordance with the word and law of Solon, I am to bring these before ourselves, as before a court of judges, and make them citizens of this State of ours.
Timaeus, 27a, translated by R.G Bury
The translation of “State of ours” is an unfortunate rendering of “ποιῆσαι πολίτας.” A closer sense of the phrase would be “made city.”
The Davis article cites Sallis but also introduces matters Sallis would probably take issue with. The infinite regress of Secondary Literature.
I will try to go forward with my ears plugged as I pass by the Sirens.
And then there all the chores on my list…
We have to consider the difference between stativity and activity, and that “the world” if properly conceived, would consist of both. This is why Aristotle proposed the hylomorphism consisting of matter (that which persists through change) and form (that which is active and changing). As commonly conceived “the world” is an object with identity, so it would be classed as stativity, therefore not pure act.
Since matter is the principle of stativity, “pure act” refers to what is prior in time to material existence, and within Christian theology this is God, as cause of material existence. This is the realm of separate Forms, and in a sort of Neo-Platonic way, there is a hierarchy of separate Forms, from God through angels
The material fire hydrant is not an “intelligible object”, as this refers to ideas. The idea of “fire hydrant” is an intelligible object. But what establishes a unity between the intelligible object “fire hydrant” and the intelligible object “water”. If different intelligible objects are supposed to be unified, we need to understand the principles of that unity.
We have a similar issue with material objects like the fire hydrant itself. We see it as a unified object, and we assume it to be a unity, but what really makes it one individual. Is it gravity, the strong force, or what?
Here’s an example of the difficulty with “unity” in the physical world. We understand electromagnetic energy as wavelength and frequency, a spatial parameter, and temporal, parameter. This representation requires a plurality of waves. However, the energy is measured as a unified entity, a photon. But we have no understanding of what unifies a number of waves into a single entity, a unified photon.
Are you asking me that? How would I know? I just took that from j.j’s quoted reference. I suppose it was somewhat controversial.
I think that’s a misinterpretation. As per your quotes, the good is the cause of the intelligible objects being known. Plato considered intelligible objects as having independent existence, and they are apprehended by the intellect. The good is responsible for the apprehension of them (being known), illuminating them just like the sun illuminates visible objects. It is not the cause of their being.
That would be the sophist’s point of view. The sophists held that virtue was a type of knowledge, therefore they claimed to be able to teach virtue. Plato argued against this, that there was more to virtue than simply knowing what is good. The person had to actually have the inspiration to do what is good, instead of going ahead and doing what they knew was not good. It is extremely evident that people often know what they ought to do, or ought not do, yet they go ahead and act in a way which is contrary to this. It is this evidence which he brought against the sophists who claimed that they could teach virtue, to argue that virtue must be more than just knowledge.
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No, not you. Interrogating the text is an interpretive practice.
That is part of it, but, as quoted:
Socrates makes this claim in several of the dialogues. See for example Protagoras 345e. This seems to be contrary to our experiences, but in the Meno Socrates distinguished between knowledge and true opinion. (85c)
I think it goes deeper than that. In line with the leading question of the dialogue, can excellence (virtue) be taught? There is no single answer to this that will cover all cases. More specifically, although perhaps not his own concern, can Meno be taught? Given what Xenophon says about him, it seems highly unlikely. For one, he regards himself as already being virtuous. In addition, his ruthless ambition outweighs any concern for excellence unless excellence is construed as dominance. He is ignorant of what his own good is.
In the Republic Socrates argues that the best natures without proper education become the worst. (491e)
Fooloso4, “whatever is known”, is the subject. That is knowledge itself, so knowledge is the subject. Therefore the “being” referred to is the being of knowledge, not the being of the intelligible objects, or forms. In this context, the intelligible objects already have existence, and are not affected by this process of being known, which the good is a cause of, through illuminating them like the sun illuminates visible objects.
It is only later, by Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, that the process of becoming known is described as an actualization of the intelligible objects by the mind. Under Aristotle’s principles, the intelligible objects potentially exist, prior to being actualized by the human mind. So we might say here, that their being is actually cause by the process of becoming known. But this is the way that Aristotle refutes the Platonism of eternal existing intelligible objects, which is taken as a premise in Plato’s Republic.
But I have no interest in trying to correct you on a faulty interpretation. I’ve been there before and you just keep producing contextless quotes which are really pointless without the proper context. So I realize that this is hopeless.
No, the subject is the Forms. Sachs’ translation is clear on this. He is explicit:
the things that are known not only get their being-known furnished by the good, but they’re also endowed by that source with their very being "
Their being known is not their being. Only the unchanging Forms are said to be.
He is not talking about knowledge of just anything, but knowledge of the unchanging beings, of what is, the Forms. (518d)
But that is exactly what you are doing!