Nice copy-and-paste of secondary sources, but nowhere does Heidegger disparage Kierkegaard.

The only Heidegger quote (I think):

The pertinacity of dialectic, which draws its motivation from a very definite source, is docu- mented most clearly in Kierkegaard. In the properly philosophical aspect of his thought, he did not break free from Hegel. His later turn to Trendelenburg is only added documentation for how little radical he was in philosophy. He did not realize that Trendelenburg saw Ar- istotle through the lens of Hegel. His reading the Paradox into the New Testament and things Christian was simply negative Hegelianism. — Joshs

This isn't a disparagement. Not even close. That Heidegger sees Hegel as the culmination of Western metaphysics (since Plato) is not in question. I never once said Hegel wasn't an influence on Heidegger; I said Kierkegaard was a large influence on Heidegger. And he was. Heidegger had nothing but respect for Kierkegaard, just as he had for Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Descartes, and others -- despite the fact that he considers them still operating within the realm of Greek ontology, and thus within the metaphysics of presence.

Was Nietzsche correct that the ‘death of God’ would usher in a time of meaninglessness and bloodshed? — Tom Storm

Of nihilism. So perhaps "meaninglessness" but not necessarily bloodshed. I personally think he got it right -- the Christian church is losing its grip even more. But it seems like science has largely replaced it, and our reactions against Christianity still keep us Christians, in a strange way.

I wish he touched on the economy more, as Marx did. Because it appears that the real power in the world today is now in the hands of those with wealth, the business class -- or, more specifically, big business: the corporate sector. The owners of these corporations, the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie), are making the decisions that shape the lives of billions of people. They own the future of humanity. What is their worldview? Are these people Christian? What tradition were they raised in? Where have they been educated? Since it's a global phenomenon (multinationalism), I think it has more to do with science and technology than the death or existence of God. Their ideology is one of greed and accumulation of wealth -- which is a kind of "will to power" in its own right, which again Nietzsche doesn't discuss much (from what I've read).

Is this nihilistic? Yeah, I'd say so. So the world, in a sense, is being directed by a small class of human beings, whose brains have been shaped by a Judeo-Christian tradition and culture, but educated in a mainly secular way, and have earned their place within a segment of the world (business and economics) that operates within its own system (capitalism). So whether you believe in God or believe God is dead, it really doesn't matter -- because to play the game (and especially to rise to the top of it) you have to internalize the rules of the game. This game is based on a particular variant of the will to power: accumulate wealth, personal gain, greed, etc.

So perhaps there will be bloodshed, but not from war. It'll be from this group of people, acting on their particular will to power, playing this particular capitalistic game, who will eventually cause the destruction of the species. Look no further than the environmental disaster currently underway, and the reactions to it, for all the evidence you need about where we stand.

I don't think even Nietzsche could have predicted that.

These were published as 2 two volume books of 200 pages each. — Joshs

who he wrote two volumes about , — Joshs

The lectures being published in two volumes is not the same as him writing two volumes. But yes, he did consider Nietzsche important enough to have four courses in. Ditto with Hegel, Parmenides, Aristotle, et al.

Past , present and future are the same moment, what Heidegger calls the three ecstasies of the ‘ now’, — Joshs

Not sure I like this explanation. Sounds very Buddhist. I don't recall Heidegger saying anything like the ecstases being part of the "same moment" or the "now," either. But they do appear to be a unity rather than separate dimensions. Remember that he considers the future to be the more "primary" of the unity, not the present.

I think he was much more influenced by Nietzsche, who he wrote two volumes about , than kierkegaard, who he only mentioned disparagingly. — Joshs

I can't find a single time he "disparages" Kierkegaard. As for Nietzsche, he didn't write two volumes, he taught several courses -- and later than Being and Time.

That being said, the similarities between Kierkegaard and Heidegger are much more striking to me than Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Keep in mind that Heidegger didn’t want to equate Dasein with anthropos , the ‘ human being ‘ as biological entity. — Joshs

True, but nothing I said (and nothing you quoted) implies a biological perspective. Perhaps "needs"? But even there, there's no reason it has to be considered strictly in biological terms.

Yes, It emerges and is constructed out of Dasein, but more specifically , it is the structure the the past only existing as what it occurs into and is changed by. — Joshs

This isn't very clear, I'm afraid. What does the second "it" refer to? Time or temporality? As for the rest, it's not clear enough to guess.

One of the most challenging and influential books on this, of course, is Being and Time.

Heidegger is highly influenced by Kierkegaard. It's worth the effort in reading it.

Heidegger, in my reading, rather than focusing on what time "is," per se, discusses the perspective upon which all interpretations of time (and being) are based. Starting with Aristotle's essay on time (in the Physics), he'll argue that Aristotle's perspective ("being" as ousia, which in Heidegger means "constant presence") is one where time itself gets treated as an object that's "present-at-hand" -- viz., as a series of sequential, changing now-points (which align with the measure of "seconds" of the moving clock pointer), perceived as such because "presence" (phusis as enduring, persistent identity -- the ιδέα Plato) gets privileged in the thinking of thinkers (philosophers).

Time therefore needs to be analyzed anew, as does the human being that interprets and defines "time." Why? Because this all comes out of the human mind, the human being. As Heidegger says, "time temporalizes itself," meaning it emerges and is constructed out of something else. That "something else" is human being, human experience, human needs and interests. Particularly, human projection, goals, possibilities, plans (which becomes the "future"); memory, tradition, and the already-existing ("throwness") which becomes the "past"; and being amidst things in action (the "present").

The same can be said of interpretations of what it means to be human generally, what it means to be an individual, and what it means for anything to "be." The understanding of "being" (including human being) and "time" are very much connected, at least in Heidegger's thought. Human beings instead get re-interpreted as embodied time, or "temporality" in the sense mentioned above. This temporality -- this human constitution -- has been hidden from most thinkers through history for the very fact that everything (humans, time, being, nature) gets interpreted from the perspective of presence, or what is later called the "metaphysics of presence."

From this perspective -- which itself is based on a privative (derivative) mode of a human being (namely the "present-at-hand", which is detached from the everyday, integrated, holist world of automaticity, habit, and skill of the "ready-to-hand") -- one cannot help but interpret human beings as "rational animals," and time as a kind of number line or "container."

That's the best cartoon version I can give, but I find it compelling indeed. It makes all these questions about "time" fairly irrelevant. Ditto the "mind/body" problem, et al.

Where are you going to be in the future? One hundred years from now?

No one exists in the future. — Andrew4Handel

How very profound.

Actually, you do exist in the future. The future is now. Grandchildren will exist a hundred years from now. People will exist -- provided we don't go extinct.

Basically what you're saying is that since there's death, life is meaningless. But to paraphrase Nietzsche: it is only YOU who is meaningless, and your one way of looking at the world.

Since nothing matters, by all means quickly die off.

I cannot see any reason to create a new child and I have not had any children myself. — Andrew4Handel

Why does there have to be a "reason"? Shaping the future generation of human beings seems pretty important to me, although I myself still have no kids.

I really can't abide by the cheap and easy nihilism that pervades your post. Perhaps it's best if you don't have kids. On the other hand, all that will be left are people who don't think at all and end up with 8 kids. If that's where things trend, we'll end up with an Idiocracy type situation.

So the question embedded in your inquiry about children is this: do we care about the future or not?

I, for one, do.

My source of information was not Richard Dawkins but the history of education of which I have several books. You really do not know about Aristotle, the church, and Scholasticism, do you? — Athena

I never once said your source was Richard Dawkins. I never once stated that Aristotle (or Plato) weren't influential in the development of the church.

Shows your level of reading comprehension as well, I suppose. Not a shocker.

Your linear view of the history of philosophy is embarrassing.

Yes, true. But I was trying to apply the KISS principle, that categorisation is standard in all intro to philosophy University courses, sure it can be critiqued, but for new students, best to just go with it in my view. — Wayfarer

I disagree with you, but fair enough.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, unfortunately. I have no interest in the simplistic formulations of Darwinists.
— Xtrix

Very good argument! Totally irrefutable, and iron-hard! — god must be atheist

Oh, you mean like this:

That may very well be because RD was right. — god must be atheist

Also a great argument.

You gave no reason why we should or would believe you... you gave your private opinion. — god must be atheist

True. Given that you did the exact same thing, I figured it was appropriate.

You are the laughing stock of this forum board — god must be atheist

Oh no! :fear:

Coming from you, this is devastating.

Basically you're casting yourself in the role of philosophy lecturer, trying to set the poor newbie straight, who's being fed useless disinformation by her university. — Wayfarer

Sorry, but it wasn't the "poor newbie" who brought rationalism and empiricism into this discussion. What I'm setting straight is the useless, simplistic, conventional textbook nonsense that gets repeated over and over again by the people on this forum who've evidently not read one sentence of the people they so easily label x, y, z. If we want to discuss these thinkers seriously, then we owe at least a few passages of their works, and not regurgitating, verbatim, what we remember from our undergraduate history of philosophy course.

Where did I imply that I thought that they were imbeciles? — Wayfarer

By making this distinction, which is useless. Anyone who is a pure empiricist -- if such a thing can be imagined -- and truly believed we were "tabula rasa," would have to be a complete imbecile. It takes 10 seconds to see why. And, of course, that's not what we see when we actually read these thoughtful men. These labels -- "rationalism," "idealism," "empiricism," etc., came later. You look into it further, and you find that there are complex interplays between the mind and body when discussing knowledge. That entire division itself is a long refuted one, and yet we continue we these formulations anyway. Why? Who knows. But it's difficult for me to tolerate on a philosophy forum.

Google the term 'empiricist philosophers', and they are the top two names! — Wayfarer

Oh! Well, in that case...

Xtrix, think of it as the natural evolution of philosophy. — god must be atheist

You don’t know what you’re talking about, unfortunately. I have no interest in the simplistic formulations of Darwinists.

It was Locke's phrase is that men are born 'tabula rasa', a blank slate, on which knowledge is inscribed by experience. Locke is a textbook example of empiricism and his work set the model for it. — Wayfarer

Then try learning less from textbooks. Locke was also a dedicated nativist, as was Hume. You have to read them to find out, but it should be obvious even before that. Why? Because these guys weren’t imbeciles.

Those debates were the height of intellectual achievement, until the backlash opposing Aristotle's rationalism. That is when empiricism emerged beginning the science of modernity. — Athena

Sounds like the typical narrative of a Richard Dawkins.

“Back when men were ignorant, they would debate about angels— and then humans discovered EMPIRICISM and we were pulled out of the dark ages into the light led by science.”

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Cute, simple fictions.

I think empiricism and rationalism are quite sufficiently defined, and that Locke and Liebniz, respectively, are exemplars. — Wayfarer

They aren’t. When they are, they do not apply to these men. Unless of course you don’t read them and are forced to use conventional shorthands. In which case, that’s fine. But useless otherwise.

Let's try to avoid simplistic labels.
— Xtrix

That is like agreeing to meet and not being specific about the time or place. The word "word" is a label and we can not know what we are talking about without them. — Athena

I really don’t see the relevance of that remark; I didn’t say avoid using labels — I said avoid using simplistic labels, particularly when borrowed from introductory philosophy textbooks.

The rest of your post regarding creationism and science, I sympathize with but I fail to see how that’s relevant to my post either.

John Locke is an empiricist, Leibniz is a rationalist. — Dharmi

Let's try to avoid simplistic labels. These terms were not used by the aforementioned men themselves, are not very well defined, and do little except help philosophy undergraduates pass multiple-choice exams.

Locke was as much a "rationalist" as any reasonable person is, because he's not an imbecile. Ditto with Leibniz. It's just not so simple. It's like saying Augustine was a Catholic and Pascal was a Protestant. Does that tell us much of anything? Not really.

Of course both Locke and Leibniz believe in a natural endowment, what today we'd call "genetics," and of course both believed in the importance of the environment on human development. A lot is made out of phrases like "tabula rasa," etc., but again -- usually taken from philosophy 101 survey classes where they assign a few pages, plunk down a few labels, and move along to the next "famous philosopher."

These dichotomies are almost always useless for all but the most superficial understanding: nature/nurture, mind/body, subject/object, internal/external, rationalist/empiricist, etc. etc. Avoid them like the plague, I say.



I find Locke's political ideas to be highly interesting and still relevant today. Have you managed to read Two Treatises on Government?

Why do you bother with this imbecile? Let the thread die and just let him talk into the online ether.

A once booming thread. NOS4 has managed to put everyone to sleep. Well done.

I understand where you're coming from. My reply before was kind of pompous sounding. You sound sympathetic to mysterianism. — RogueAI

Not sure. I think if we can one day formulate a technical notion of "consciousness," then perhaps we can explain it. Right now it's obviously too hard -- but who knows what comes of it. I'm open to it. Clearly the brain has something to do with consciousness, for example -- I'd be crazy to deny that. And I think that's where a lot of mistakes are made -- with thought and language, too: it's as if because we currently don't understand something the only alternative is that we have to become mystics, and resort to magic. But that's not the alternative to our lack of scientific understanding in the realms of economics or politics or sociology or even the weather. We can make some progress here and there, but overall they're just too complex to currently grasp. It's not classical mechanics -- and even there it's only simple principles and processes that allow us to generalize.

My basic position is that before this project gets off the ground, before the question gets asked, we're already in troublesome waters. That shouldn't necessarily stop us from trying to answer, of course. But from my perspective it seems like a dead end.

The reason I don't think this is a language problem is that "mind" while hard to define for someone else is easy to define for one's self- we all know what our own mind is, even if we can't put into words just what it is. So, for any person who can think, they're going to realize it's impossible they can be mindless. — RogueAI

Of course. But like you said, "mind" doesn't necessarily refer to consciousness or awareness, which (in my opinion only) are slightly better terms for what you're talking about, also called "subjective experience," etc. If "mind" is taken as reason, or a kind of "soul," or the brain, or Descartes' res cogitans, then a different set of issues may arise. But let's just take your definition: here we are. It's impossible to really "deny" that, however we want to speak about it. All of this is as true as day, and I'm not so naive as to make the presumptuous claim that Descartes or later thinkers are "wrong."

My only gripes would be (a) whether or not "mind" in this sense describes the entirety of human being and (b) if not, whether "mind" (and consciousness generally) is primary. At first these gripes sound ridiculous, I admit. But again, this isn't to say they're wrong and it isn't to doubt conscious experience or existence.

They're also going to ask themselves how a bunch of non-conscious stuff can combine a certain way with some electricity and produce conscious awareness. I don't see a language problem anywhere there. — RogueAI

Maybe it isn't -- maybe it's more conceptual. Because in this case, although it seems obvious that there are non-conscious entities in the world (rocks and planets and trees and molecules, etc), I don't see a way around the fact that whatever these non-conscious objects are (or any objects whatsoever), they are objects for me, the conscious subject, and so conditioned in part by how I perceive them. (Obviously this is Kant, Descartes, Berkley, etc. etc.) And since that's the case, to fully grasp how this "outside" world of (material?) stuff evolved into my consciousness is perhaps impossible to understand fully. As hard as understanding the big bang, in any case. Whatever story we tell, with mathematics, precise terminology, and evidence, is still just thinking. I'm not convinced that materialism or "naturalism" or physicalism are ever going to get us to any satisfactory answer; I think they're off-track in this sense.

For two reasons. First, these issues are so complex and so poorly understood that it's next to impossible to currently study. But secondly, science too is based on a perspective and thus an interpretation of the world -- an ontology. I do think it's the most successful and most powerful ontology we have to date, -- but like anything else, it has its scope and limits.

So again, maybe your question can be answered -- or maybe there are unjustified, tacit assumptions in there that makes it a dead end. Since we really don't know what consciousness is (in the sense of an explanatory theory), and any scientific notion of "material" (or "body") was abandoned in the 17th century, it's hard to even imagine a right answer to the question of how material, non-conscious stuff assembled into what you and I are (if we say that's a mind or a consciousness).

Seems nit-picky and like entering a rabbit hole, yes. But again, I mean this strictly in a sense of theory, not in an everyday, common sense respect. In the latter, yes of course we have minds, of course we're conscious, of course there are material objects "out there" that I interact with, and so forth.

But first, what do you mean by "means"? I don't care to go down this rabbit hole. — RogueAI

But if you want to get anywhere, you really should. Same as in the sciences. When we talk about mind, or body, or tree, or anything else in everyday life, of course I know what you mean. I have a good sense of what most people mean by God, too, But this is a philosophy forum, in which you ask a question about materialism and oppose it to the mental. The answer is simple enough: your question is meaningless. Not simply because mind hasn’t been explained, but because there hasn’t been a scientific notion of material for centuries, since the destruction of the mechanical philosophy and notions of contact action.

True, you can go on debating if you’d like. But we can debate the weight of ectoplasm as well. What’s more of a rabbit hole?

Regardless— only my opinion. You’re welcome to continue.

They are just words as well, yes. But I’m not claiming they’re beyond question. As I went on to explain.

Before we decide if we’re mindless, tell us what mind means. Otherwise it’s like discussing God. Are you Godless?

I know -- funny because it's true. I wonder what Spinoza would say? :lol: Perhaps you should go study him.

Yet still incoherent. :lol: Can't expect miracles!

Right -- stick with Spinoza. Doing so has clearly benefited you. :yawn:

Good -- so next time spare me your incoherent blathering. I have no interest in it. Go read more Spinoza.

"Mind"? "Body"? "Subject/Object"? "Physical"? ... Will you please study Spinoza — 180 Proof

"Will"? "You"? "Please"? "Study"? (Excellent argument, yes?)

Your obsession with Spinoza is your own. Putting quotation marks over those words explains exactly nothing -- especially considering that you've not demonstrated that you've understood anything I said. If you want to explain, do so. Otherwise I'm really not interested in your recommendations -- you've not earned being taken seriously.

PS -- for others who haven't settled upon their philosopher-guru: Spinoza is still operating on the basis of Greek ontology, and was influenced by Descartes. This appears in his references to "substance," of which he discusses at length. Even ideas of "nature" date back to Greek ontology. So while Spinoza may be worthwhile in many other ways, referencing him has nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Might as well recommend Sinclair Lewis.

the existence of mind and ideas can't be doubted. — RogueAI

Sure it can. "Mind" and "ideas" are just words. Why not simply start where Descartes does, with conscious awareness?

But here again we're back to dualism, a subject/object distinction (or "mind/body"), which may be fine when reflecting on the world abstractly, but which doesn't tell the entire story.

Also, we cannot say whether or not materialism has a problem until someone explains what "material" means. Or "physical," for that matter. No explanation has been given for hundreds of years. There was one, and it was destroyed by Newton. There hasn't been one since. So the so-called problems of mind vs. body is essentially meaningless, because dividing the world up dualistically is derivative and because no one can tell us what "body" means.

The entire tradiitonal emphasis on truth (as correctness, as certainty) and knowledge in which you pose this question is itself questionable, and worth studying historically. You go back to Descartes, and the beginning of modern science, and the picture becomes clearer. Most of the questions just fade away. If you go back to the origins of Western thought even prior to Descartes, in the ancient Greeks, even more insights get revealed. For example, that this entire Western tradition has inherited the ontology of Plato and Aristotle.

I find this way of asking as being the product of the educational system, particularly in colleges and universities. Philosophy majors and their teachers aren't themselves philosophers at all. What they're studying is the history of what someone has deemed "philosophy," and so it gets relegated to an academic department.

The "linguistic turn" is basically meaningless. It's a historical construct. Ditto "existentialism," "continental philosophy," "analytic philosophy," and so on. No one really agrees on what these terms mean, and we shouldn't get hung up on them any more than "postmodern" or "post-World War II."

Thinking is what's called for these days -- and that doesn't end. What we need is a different kind of thinking, which is defined by the questions being asked. The questions being asked these days should be in response to our current place in time, our historical situation. To ask "what next?" is a good question, but it could have been asked in any period in history, even during what's now labeled the "linguistic turn."

Only we can determine how history talks about our lifetimes.

The chess.com ratings aren’t very accurate, but I hover around 2000. I have no idea if I’d be considered a candidate master in actual scoring and was never formally taught. I’ve never felt I was exceptional at it.

I don’t tutor in chess, no.

Real philosophy like contemplation of the forms is also like this. — Nikolas

:rofl:

Yeah, and an excellent job you’re doing with that. Keep up the very important “work”.

Good thing you're here to enlighten everyone with your insufferable pseudo-intellectual nonsense. Keep talking in circles, by all means. Just do it without me (or anyone else, apparently). This thread isn't worth giving any more attention to -- and neither are you.

:yawn:

:yawn:

I believe that one identical thought is to be found—expressed very precisely and with only slight differences of modality—in. . .Pythagoras, Plato, and the Greek Stoics. . .in the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita; in the Chinese Taoist writings and. . .Buddhism. . .in the dogmas of the Christian faith and in the writings of the greatest Christian mystics. . .I believe that this thought is the truth, and that it today requires a modern and Western form of expression. That is to say, it should be expressed through the only approximately good thing we can call our own, namely science. This is all the less difficult because it is itself the origin of science. Simone Weil….Simone Pétrement, Simone Weil: A Life, Random House, 1976, p. 488

"To restore to science as a whole, for mathematics as well as psychology and sociology, the sense of its origin and veritable destiny as a bridge leading toward God---not by diminishing, but by increasing precision in demonstration, verification and supposition---that would indeed be a task worth accomplishing." Simone Weil

Is this just wishful thinking? — Nikolas

No way to tell, until someone explains what this "identical thought" is. Personally, I find Heidegger to be more compelling in this vein. What's thought is "being," which gets interpreted in various ways throughout history, with varying consequences for culture through history.

If this is what is meant, fine. But I don't see what the big deal is. Seems to me like a truism. Heidegger gets into exactly why its important, but he goes through a mountain of historical and linguistic evidence. It's not just assertion and re-arranging or re-defining of words.

I'll skip the rest.

Honestly, though, you sound like someone very similar who was posting gibberish on here not long ago. I see you have only 61 posts, so I wouldn't be surprised if you were the same person. That same level of unresponsive numbness is evident. If you want to rattle on with definitions while capitalizing various words, you're welcome to.

But don't expect to be taken too seriously.

Happy to play anyone, on chess.com or anywhere else. I prefer shorter games -- 3-10 minutes. I play slightly below master level.

Human psychology interests you. You want to understand the human condition as it exists in the world and why you are as you are and can believe any old thing. This is basic inductive reason and supports the Socratic axiom "Know Thyself." — Nikolas

It's not basic inductive reasoning, it's basic curiosity and thinking. If you want to impose order on this type of phenomenon, and call it inductive or deductive logic, that's fine -- but that's already one step removed from what happens, and is itself more thinking, with words and concepts and categories. For the record, I have nothing against logic. But if you study the origin and history of logic, you'll find that it's not equivalent to "thinking," which is far more basic a concept.

Also, "know thyself" is not an axiom and not from Socrates. It was an inscription at the Temple of Apollo, in Delphi. (Which, by the way, I highly recommend visiting.)

But what of those others who are driven to know the purpose of our universe and humanity within it? It requires beginning with our source. Can understanding leading to meaning be built on it? If they are all nuts then the pursuit of philosophy defined as a being in search of meaning is really just futile since life is meaningless — Nikolas

"Requires beginning with our source." What is "our source"? Why does there even have to be a source? Sounds like the cosmological argument, and rather stale.

I consider Plotinus' conception of the ONE as our source beyond time and space and Nous as its first expression within creation or within the isness of ONE — Nikolas

The "source" or what? Anything "beyond" space and time is simply nothing. We can't know it, see it, or really even talk about it, because doing so is referring to "something" (cf. Parmenides).

It's fun to try to sort it all out -- but always remember: this is just thinking. It's just words, concepts, classifications. You may want to try to organize it all into some system, because it gives you a sense of satisfaction or certainty or understanding -- and that may be important and useful. But there's a thousand ways to do that. You've fallen into what most armchair "philosophers" also fall into: organizing the world by way of definitions. So you, some guy on an internet forum, now feels he's discovered some truth that's been debated for millennia, and that's fine. But it gets us nowhere.

We're not interested in simply defining things. If you want to make something a technical notion, then explain what it means and how it fits into a larger theoretical structure, gives evidence and examples, show why it's an improvement on other theories, etc. But here we simply have baseless assertions.

Citing Plotinus doesn't help much. Sounds to me like simply another way of interpreting the world, this time using the word "one." Later on, that very man was a major influence of early Christian thinkers as well. Not a far leap from the "one" to "God."

Interpretation normal for the visible realm we experience through our senses are not the forms. The forms are universal ideals. A perfect circle would still be a universal idea even if Man on earth were destroyed by a meteor. — Nikolas

The Forms are indeed universal prototypes. Whether they go on without human beings is a separate issue. The concept and word "circle" and "perfect" are both very much human constructs. Given that only humans have language, if humans were destroyed then there would be no language, and therefore no way to express anything like "perfect circle." Does that mean it doesn't exist? Maybe numbers and words go on without human beings too, who knows? Who cares?

Protagoras said that "Man is the measure of all things." From this point of view Man creates the ideas which manifest as the Source and are studied by inductive bottom up reason. But if Man becomes extinct, does this mean our universe falls apart into meaningless chaos? Deductive reason begins with the ONE or Plato's good and involves vertically to create our universe. — Nikolas

Logic itself, inductive or deductive, has a long history and is itself a human construction. You seem to be hung up on it, take it as an absolute, and want to privilege it. This is very common in Western philosophy, but in my view is a huge waste of time. If you want to reduce things to some "oneness" or "source" or "God" or anything else, fine -- that's been done many times before. What's more interesting for me is the psychology which leads people to interpret things this way, or even has a desire to.

You're not going to settle upon some ultimate truth just by re-arranging and re-organizing words. Nor are you going to get anywhere with mere assertions, free of any citations of the texts of which you refer (in this case, Plato's).

Also, to say deductive reason "creates" our universe is so ridiculous it's barely worth discussing. You might as well write a New Age book. Perhaps re-think your entire notion of "creation" or causality.

Where do forms come from if not perennial apriori ideas? — Nikolas

What do you mean by "come from"? Where does that idea come from?

The Forms (or Ideas) arise in the human being, and are described by the human being. It's like asking "where does language come from" or "where does abstraction come from"? Where do numbers and words "come from"? They arise in the human being, often called the "mind" or "reason," and there's little else to say about it. If you want to make up a story about their arising from some supernatural or mystical realm, or "nothingness," or anything else -- fine. But it's not interesting.