Should I conclude from these remarks, that the development of universals, that took up so much of Hegel's efforts, was merely a footnote against the theology you read in his texts?

I think we are all peculiarly situated to have problems. And the tools we have to deal with them are also odd. So, I tend to be amazed we can function at all.

I am not irritated. I was considering my own personal reasons.
I will keep my wondering to myself, as requested.

You presented the matter as varying levels of concern. The differences others dwell upon are not your problem. That leads me to wonder what is your problem.

There is a tension between Fate and Freedom in all of philosophy. I am asking how that plays out particularly in Hegel's writings.

Is unpacking this and reassembling our belief systems even possible or useful? — Tom Storm

Do you think of that as some kind of exemption others do not?

What I don't see in your descriptions is the long centuries of suffering required to approach the universal as something we could talk about. That is the central theme of the Phenomenology of Spirit and the lectures upon the Philosophy of History.

And those ideas prompt me to wonder about the following: Hegel considered the religious as a necessary element of our existence but went to some effort to distinguish that from philosophy.

Do you read these texts with distinctions like that in view?

I would consider putting Foucault upon your list because of his writings, Concern of the Self, emphasizing the notion of health as requiring a personal regime verified by a person. It is implicit in many philosophical frameworks. But Foucault shows the importance of it as means of separating bad evidence from the possible good. Something many other thinkers take for granted.

You will have to cite where you get this interpretation from for me to follow along. I am not sure we are reading the same texts.

In the passage quoted, Hegel questions outlining conditions in which the 'understanding' may or may not be able to function. To that degree, he is challenging speculating upon the conditions you describe.

Russell's opinion misses a quality of Berkeley when Berkeley says nobody can actually question the phenomenal. Object permanence happens. God, in this situation, is not me.

From what I understood of him, there was no way to tell. He was arguing against those who said they had a point of leverage to move the activity one way or another.

I am pretty sure that Hegel was not on board with that "postulation" as a description of what he was trying to do. Consider one of his objections to Kant:

This thought, which is proposed as the instrument of philosophic knowledge, itself calls for further explanation. We must understand in what way it possesses necessity or cogency: and when it claims to be equal to the task of apprehending the absolute objects (God, Spirit, Freedom), that claim must be substantiated. Such an explanation, however, is itself a lesson in philosophy, and properly falls within the scope of the science itself. A preliminary attempt to make matters plain would only be unphilosophical, and consist of a tissue of assumptions, assertions, and inferential pros and cons, i.e. of dogmatism without cogency, as against which there would be an equal right of counter-dogmatism.

A main line of argument in the Critical Philosophy bids us pause before proceeding to inquire into God or into the true being of things and tells us first of all to examine the faculty of cognition and see whether it is equal to such an effort. We ought, says Kant, to become acquainted with the instrument, before we undertake the work for which it is to be employed; for if the instrument be insufficient, all our trouble will be spent in vain. The plausibility of this suggestion has won for it general assent and admiration; the result of which has been to withdraw cognition from an interest in its objects and absorption in the study of them, and to direct it back upon itself; and so turn it to a question of form. Unless we wish to be deceived by words, it is easy to see what this amounts to. In the case of other instruments, we can try and criticize them in other ways than by setting about the special work for which they are destined. But the examination of knowledge can only be carried out by an act of knowledge. To examine this so-called instrument is the same thing as to know it. But to seek to know before we know is as absurd as the wise resolution of Scholasticus, not to venture into the water until he had learned to swim. — Hegel, Logic, paragraph 10

It is fair enough to question whether Hegel achieved the escape velocity to get beyond the presumptions Kant made. But he did give it a shot.

In a bizarre way, that economic miracle has been done by a leadership that thinks of itself as being Marxists. — ssu

That prompts me to think that both Fukuyama and Huntington are not dependable prognosticators on the basis of their theses but perhaps Fukuyama has an edge in their old debate by noting that a special identity is diluted through transactions.

I guess one of the problems with the Huntington view is that once one has agreed to a certain means of exchange, then one has joined that world purportedly put at a distance.

The distinction you make between persons and the situations they find themselves in is interesting. What I would approach as degrees of freedom are imagined by you as a given condition. Your assumptions are not capable of comparison with any set of conditions.

Are you using a rubric where all are the same?
I agree as a matter of identity but situations in the world are very different. You have not expressed much interest in those differences.

Race thinking. So, what is that?

An acknowledgement of a sequence of events or something else?

I get the impression you do not live in one of those places shaped by racial differences.

I recognize the distinction between inner and outer reality that you have drawn out. It seems to me that if one has a practice that keeps one alive and builds strength, it is not a program or a regime but being able to take advantage of an insight.

A capacity to act with a particular understanding rather than knowledge as reserved through devotion.
The most mystical versions are ostensive gestures.

As a matter of theological theses, the distinction between esoteric and exoteric are not easily separated. While the Valentinus group shared a room with the Pauline believers, they could agree that something was wrong with the world, and it needed fixing. The Augustinian acquisition of neo-platonism overlooks Plotinus rejecting that point of view.

So, there has long been the problem of how to reconcile the world as a perfect creation with the view of it as a place of struggle where the good guys could lose. This is still a critical question of existence, no matter what one might believe.

I find Kierkegaard's approach interesting in that his view of Love is not a necessary form of life but a weird addendum.

To think about how property helps create identity, think about browsing a bookshelf in someone's home and what it says about them, or what a teenager's bedroom posters are doing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

One of the elements I find interesting when comparing Veblen with Marx is how the 'predatory' quality gets associated with a desire to dominate in contrast to a desire to fit in. Veblen recognizes the desire to dominate but notes that 'conspicuous consumption' is often a token of belonging to a class. And the membership always requires new fees paid toward that condition. The 'fetishism of commodities' is parallel to an actual advantage rather than being a simple result of an illusion of the self.

The scanning of bookshelves reminds me of Le Rochefoucauld saying that education is a second self-love.

Someone figures out how to build something that would change the market for those capable of investing in that particular possibility.

The investors are dependent upon a body of knowledge they cannot confirm for themselves.

The question of how values were maintained and developed was a focus of Hegel and his critics afterwards. But it is often overlooked how Hegel focused upon slavery as the worst human condition. He framed the whole of human history as the struggle to obliterate it.

A desire that makes it necessary becomes something else through stages of new experiences.

In regard to the desire for recognition, there are many ways to compare the 'freedom' of some people in communities with the levelling that comes about from global conditions. A possibility of being recognized without dominating others is considered.

One half of the Hegelian view is that the servant learns about power through becoming accomplished in arts the master disdains. When comparing Marx with Veblen, for instance, there is a common point of departure concerning the difference between making and capturing resources.

So, Fukuyama's view tries to thread the needle between Kojeve seeing the Desire being addressed through different kinds of ritual and those who frame the matter as a balance of power.

Much to consider in your comments. I will try to get up to speed.

My pleasure.

Is there a philosopher (or more than one) from the Orthodox side you see as a counterpoint to the western Scholastics?

Perhaps another way to ask that is, was there a parallel equivalent of the Renaissance on the other side of the Schism?

The special page exists, but nothing else does.

The point I wish to make is that the tension between the natural order and the truth of religion that occupied the Scholastic philosophers did not exist for Plotinus.

This disconnect is a separate one from the issue Gerson opines upon. The difference between Plotinus and Aristotle regarding matter undercuts Gerson's attempt to group their views as sharing a common view of the order of nature. Much of the Ennead's arguments are oppositions to Aristotle, sometimes expressed specifically as such but more often by citing as incorrect descriptions that resemble Aristotle's positions.

While Plotinus has positions that do not agree with Plato, he does not discuss those as differences. To the best of my knowledge, Plotinus always knows what Plato really meant.

Of course not, but there are echoes of his doctrines in Christianity, due to the considerable influence of platonism on later Christian theology (for better or worse). — Wayfarer

Yes, and Augustine said Plotinus was a better Platonist than Plato was in the City of God. But that sense of what is a natural good was still separated from the grace that only God could bestow upon a believer.

But Plotinus is not introducing a personal God to witness the activities. We get with the program because we understand our situation, or we do not.

I meant my remark about properties to apply specifically to Plotinus assigning a different role to 'matter', as potential, from what Aristotle did. For Plotinus, the hylomorphism that makes each creature different from another, is said to be an illusion, a trick of the light. Once a body takes a determinate shape, it is no longer 'material' as an expression of potential. With 'matter' no longer having a portion of being, the shared life of being a soul like all the other forms of life, where our need for nutrition or use of perception and movement is the same as plants and other animals, is overruled by an idea of individual souls.

We shall have to introduce among the number of beings another principle, the soul. The soul is a principle of no little importance. She is the force that binds all things together. Unlike the other things she is not born of some seed but is a primary cause. When she is outside the body, she remains absolute mistress of herself, free and independent even of the cause which administers the world. As soon as she has descended into a body, she is no longer fully independent, for she then forms part of an order with other things. She yields in part to the influence of the accidental circumstances into which she fell, but also dominates and directs them according to her wishes. This power of domination depends on the degree of her excellence. When she yields to temperaments of the body, she is necessarily subjected to desire or anger, is discouraged in poverty, is proud in prosperity, and is tyrannical in the exercise of power. But when she resists all these evil tendencies and her nature is a good one, she changes her surroundings more than she is changed by them. Then she alters some things, while she tolerates others without herself falling into vice. — ibid. III, 1, 8

While I admire this passage for bringing forth the importance of being an individual human, it does not reflect the serious consideration by Plato and Aristotle to recognize the indeterminate events and accidents that studying a natural world require of us.

I appreciate your efforts to compare the texts.

I think Sui Han's points are Important and will look into his writings.

Thus, for the antimaterialist, the question "Is the soul a body or a property of a body?" — Lloyd P. Gerson, From Plato to Platonism, 11

In the portion I quoted, Plotinus separates 'embodiment' from matter. What is at issue is how to understand properties.

There are many different interpretations. As one who has gotten dusty from the tomes, I am not sure how to read you balancing your interest in the works as works against a more general response to the ideas.

That is not an argument against what I think you might think but a sense of dislocation. I cannot address what you have collected and you have put yourself outside of what I can gather.

Are you asking what arguments there could be for an ideal of justice that is not grounded on power? — Janus

The dialogue did not gloss over the central role of power. Whether the City is healthy or not as an individual soul is the ratio the gang of the powerful cannot answer for itself.

But to disagree would require re-visiting and re-reading many a dusty tome, so I think I'll regard his as one among other interpretation. — Wayfarer

Agreeing or disagreeing with interpretations aside, are you saying that pursuing authorial intent in the writings is a foolish enterprise because supporting or deconstructing a particular set of opinions is just another opinion?

Which of Gerson's key claims, as presented in this thread, are non-Aristotelian? — Leontiskos

Okay, I will give it a try.

The problem with Gerson is that he does not distinguish between the different roles Matter (ἡ ὕλη) plays amongst the 'Ur-Platonists' he assembles to oppose the team of 'Materialists' he objects to.

Plotinus says:

What conception then shall we for of matter? In what sense does matter exist? Its existence consists in potentiality. It is in the sense that it is potential. It exists in as much as it is a substrate of existence. "Existence" with regard to it signifies possibility of existence. The being of matter is only what it is to be. Matter is potential not just some particular thing, but all things. Being nothing by itself and being what it is, matter is nothing actually. If it were something actually, it would no longer be matter, that is , it would not be matter in the absolute sense of the term, but only in the sense in which bronze is matter. — Ennead, II, 5, 5, translated by Katz

In developing his ideas of actual being in relation to potential being, Aristotle says this:

Other thinkers, too, have perceived this nature (the belief in generation, destruction, and change in general) but not adequately. For, in the first place, they agree that there is unqualified generation from nonbeing, thus granting the statement of Parmenides as being right, secondly, it appears to them that if this nature is numerically one, then it must be also one potentially, and this makes the greatest difference.

Now we maintain that matter is distinct from privation and that one of these, matter, is nonbeing with respect to an attribute but privation is nonbeing in itself, and also that matter is in some way near to substance but privation is in no way such.

These thinkers, on the other hand, maintain that the Great and the Small are alike nonbeing, whether these two are taken together as one or each is taken separately. And so they posit their triad in a manner which is entirely distinct from ours. Thus, they have gone so far as to perceive the need of some underlying nature, but they posit this as being one, for even if someone [Plato] posits the Dyad, calling it the Great and Small, he nevertheless does the same since he overlooks the other [nature].

Now in things which are being generated, one of these [two natures] is an underlying joint cause with a form, being like a mother, so to speak, but the other part of the contrariety might often be imagined, by one who would belittle it, as not existing at all. For, as there exists an object which is divine and good and something to strive after, we maintain that one of the principles is contrary to it, but that the other [principle], in virtue of its nature, by nature strives after and desires that object. According to the doctrine of these thinkers, on the other hand, what results is that the contrary desires its own destruction. Yet neither would the form strive after itself, because it does not lack it, nor does it strive after the contrary, for contraries are destructive of each other. Now this [principle] is matter, and it is like the female which desires the male and the ugly which desires the beautiful, but it is not by itself that the ugly or the female does this, since these are only attributes. — Physics, 192a, translated by H.G. Apostle

For myself, the many points Plotinus and Aristotle may agree upon are not as interesting as where they clearly do not.

The Republic begins with Thrasymachus saying that justice is merely the order of those who presently have power. There is a lot of evidence to support this view. The argument against this is an appeal to see life in a different way.

So, what is that set of evidence against what it would bring into question?

Is it self-evident that sensible discussion would be impossible if people routinely contradicted themselves? It seems obvious that would be the case, but I'm not sure if that is exactly the same thing as it being self-evident. — Janus

I am not sure either. Both Plato and Aristotle argued against the 'relativity' of Protagoras. From that point of view, the matter is something that needs to be hammered out rather than treated as an uncontestable condition.

But as an appeal to a condition, the argument is about evidence.

I suggest reading enough Plotinus to see his objections to Aristotle. Gerson does not simply take those remarks as the only way to read Aristotle. But it does change the perspective of what Platonism is about.

I don't claim to understand all the moving parts.

Edit to add: Gerson has been discussed numerous times here. I made an argument against one of his positions here.

For a more exhaustive discussion of the differences between Plato and the 'Neo-Platonists' there is Fooloso4's OP on Phaedo to consider. From that, you can see that people here have been disagreeing for years about it.

I realize that I am not up for rekindling those debates right now. It is summertime and the living is easy.