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 apologize for the dismissive manner I dealt with this upthread. — Paine

No problems at all.

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.

But that is quite different to the point I was trying to make, which is the immaterial nature of reason. This is a thread that I picked up first from reading Edward Feser, but then also other neo-thomists that I then read (even if only in snippets and excerpts, as there is a lot of literature.) This is the principle that only the rational human intellect (nous) is able to grasp universals (kinds, types or species) which are the basis of rational thought. And that the rejection of transcendentals is one of the underlying factors behind the ascendancy of materialism.

Feser lays it out thus:

As Aristotelians and Thomists use the term, intellect is that faculty by which we grasp abstract concepts (like the concepts man and mortal), put them together into judgments (like the judgment that all men are mortal), and reason logically from one judgment to another (as when we reason from all men are mortal and Socrates is a man to the conclusion that Socrates is mortal). It is to be distinguished from imagination, the faculty by which we form mental images (such as a visual mental image etc...); and from sensation, the faculty by which we perceive the goings on in the external material world and the internal world of the body (such as a visual experience of the computer in front of you, the auditory experience of the cars passing by on the street outside your window, the awareness you have of the position of your legs, etc.).

That intellectual activity -- thought in the strictest sense of the term -- is irreducible to sensation and imagination is a thesis that unites Platonists, Aristotelians, and rationalists of either the ancient Parmenidean sort or the modern Cartesian sort. — Edward Feser

You can see the precedent for this general train of thought in e.g. The Argument from Equals in Phaedo. But it is central to the whole Platonist tradition.

Why is it significant? Because it goes to the point of the immaterial nature of mind (thought, reason) and that it can't be reduced to sensation or imagination. I'm not wishing to argue for Cartesian dualism, but then again, neither does Aristotelian philosophy (as described in another of Feser's blog posts). But I think this is the vital point at issue in the 'debate between Platonism and naturalism' that Gerson is describing.

He was from another epoch with a vastly different ‘weltanschauung’. But there are elements of Plotinus’ philosophy that remain vital in my view

To return to Gerson and the passage I quoted above: what do you think he means by the remark ‘you could not think if materialism was true’? Do you see how he appeals to Aristotle’s De Anima in support of that argument? Do you think it’s a valid point?

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.

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.

Recall a few posts back, you said:

What I am trying to underline in the discussion is the particular way Plotinus offers a solution to your thesis — Paine

I have been arguing that the passage you referred to from the Enneads at that point is specifically about the distinction between 'civic virtue' and those seeking to attain 'likeness to the gods'. That passage addresses that distinction quite clearly. Hence my digression into the role of 'the divine' and revelation in the metaphysics of Greek philosophy in answer to Fooloso4's question.

Whereas, the thesis you were responding to, was Gerson's paraphrase of an argument in De Anima, to wit:

In thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible.

And that is a reference to the knowledge of forms, as represented Aristotle's hylomorphic (matter-form) philosophy: that the intellect (nous) is what grasps or perceives the forms of things, which is that by which we know what particulars truly are. I take this principle as basic to the epistemology of hylomorphism.

Furthermore, the principle of the 'union between the knower and the form of the known' becomes a dominant theme in ancient and medieval philosophy. There are many references to this in online digests of Aquinas' philosophy (e.g. here and here.)

Now, so far, what I've said above, I would regard as general knowledge, and not requiring specialist knowledge of the Greek texts.

So far so good?

I can’t see how that can be construed as ‘theology’. — Wayfarer

I hope Paine will not mind me jumping in. When you say:

In Aristotle and Other Platonists, Gerson proposed a positive characterization of the tradition, as comprising seven key themes: 1. The universe has a systematic unity; 2. This unity reflects an explanatory hierarchy and in particular a “top-down” approach to explanation (as opposed to the “bottom-up” approach of naturalism), especially in the two key respects that the simple is prior to the complex and the intelligible is prior to the sensible; 3. The divine constitutes an irreducible explanatory category, and is to be conceived of in personal terms (even if in some Ur-Platonist thinkers the personal aspect is highly attenuated); — Join the Ur-Platonist Alliance!

What is at the top of this top down hierarchy? Is the intelligible dependent on an intelligible being? What is the divine which constitutes an irreducible explanatory category? Earlier in the thread you said:

'The gods' are, of course, those of the Greek pantheon, but from comparative religion, we learn that have much in common with the other Indo-European cultures, so there are parallels with the Indian pantheon. But in this case, they represent 'the divine' — Wayfarer

What does it mean to conceive of the divine in personal terms?

Gerson also insisted that Plato was an Aristotelian ! (It's a book plus a lecture on youtube)
What does that say about Gerson's credibility as an expert on ancient philosophy?

Since Plato incorporated and synthesized almost all philosophy of his time into an extended multifaceted corpus, he can be claimed by followers any one of those philosophies to be of their own limited persuasions.

Metaphysically speaking, Aristotle's position was looked at and rejected by Plato except in the narrowest sense.

The Cratylus rejects the view that words or the world are the source of the Forms, and the notion that material objects have reality was abhorrent to Plato.

Instead, the basis of Plato's participatory realism is in fleeting appearances that come and go, are and are not, in a moving dynamic world of objects+chora.

Gerson is a scholar whose focus has long been on Plotinus and your description of 'Platonism' is very close to his view. Gerson used the expression "disembodied self." There is source for that expression in Plotinus. I am not aware of a source for that language about self in Plato. Perhaps Gerson throws some light upon that topic somewhere. — Paine

Gerson doesn't focus just on Plotinus, though he does refer extensively to him. This is (1) because Plotinus was the first to attempt to systematize Plato and (2) because Plotinus, like other Platonists, sometimes uses Aristotle to interpret Plato - and for very good reasons given that Aristotle was Plato's pupil for twenty years!

As shown in my previous post, Aristotle's framework is largely Platonic, which refutes the modern scholarly perception of Aristotle as an "anti-Platonist". I am quoting Gerson because he does a good job in exposing the flaws in the consensus perception and because I believe that any objective inquiry into the authentic teachings of Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient authors ought to begin by first eliminating the propaganda and disinformation.

Plato may not have a technical term for "disembodied self" but he does use phrases like "soul itself by itself", Aristotle speaks of "separable nous", etc. And since that soul (psyche) or (nous) – the terms are often used interchangeably - is said to be man's "true self", both by Plato and Aristotle, I think it is legitimate to refer to it as "disembodied self".

Gerson attempts to answer questions such as whether the surviving element is personal or impersonal, etc. in Knowing Persons: A Study in Plato.

To begin with, what is certain is that both Plato and Aristotle posit an immaterial, eternal entity that (1) forms part of embodied man’s person, (2) is man’s true self, and (3) survives the death of the physical body.

Among questions that still need to be settled is (1) how impersonal this surviving self is and (2) what is its exact relation to other such selves.

In other words, (1) does the surviving self retain any traces of “personality” such as memory and emotion, and (2) does it continue to exist as a separate unit or does it merge with other such selves or with a higher principle or entity?

In order to throw some light on this, we need to start from the stated assumption that this immaterial and immortal self, the nous, is a form of intelligence that has certain capacities or powers, such as consciousness, happiness, will-power, knowledge and action.

At the very least, as a live entity, the nous has the capacities to know and to act. Certainly, for Plato true knowledge is possible only in a disembodied state. This makes the disembodied nous a knower by definition.

As Gerson says:

Though idiosyncratic subjective content does appear in his [Plato’s] treatment of embodied subjectivity, it does not belong in the disembodied ideal. But then we must naturally ask in what sense there is truly identity between the embodied person and that person’s disembodied ideal state. Once again, Plato’s answer is to be found in his account of knowledge as constitutive of that ideal state … For Plato the ideal person is a knower, the subject of the highest form of cognition. That this form of cognition is apparently attributable only to disembodied persons is of the utmost importance. For from this it follows that the achievement of any embodied person is bound to fall short of the ideal (Knowing Persons, pp. 10-11).

This seems to be Aristotle’s position too. Not only because Aristotle’s framework is largely Platonic, but also if we consider the prevalent view at the time.

The general view in Ancient Greek religion was that part of a person’s embodied soul did indeed survive death, but that there was a big difference between different souls’ postmortem existence. Whilst ordinary souls lived a shadowy life in the darker recesses of the underworld (Hades), those who had distinguished themselves through extraordinary actions or knowledge, such as heroes and wise men led a happy and bright existence in the sunlit Isles of the Blessed (or Elysian Fields).

Knowledge and action, the very powers of the embodied self that determine its fate, are the same powers that define it once death has separated it from the physical body. Plato defines death as the separation of soul (nous) from body (Phaedo 67d ff). And at the level of separation from body, i.e., disembodied, intelligible existence, knowledge is a form of action and action is a form of knowledge.

Knowledge is the key to happiness both in this life and the next. Hence the emphasis both Plato and Aristotle place on knowledge and, in particular, self-knowledge, i.e., knowledge of one’s true identity as self-conscious (self-aware or self-reflexive) intelligence endowed with the powers of knowledge, action, and the rest.

As Gerson says, for Plato “self-knowledge consists in the recognition of one’s true identity as a subject of thought” and “even while embodied, our lives are all about being knowers”.

Obviously, those who have attained a state of self-knowledge, self-recognition, or self-realization, will experience a state not only of knowledge, but also of supreme happiness as unhappiness is merely the awareness of not being oneself. This is why Plato describes death for the self-realized philosopher not only as separation from body but also as a state of “release” (lysis). Indeed, he defines the practice of philosophy itself as “release and parting of soul from body”:

Socrates: And doesn’t purification turn out to be the very thing we were recently talking about in our discussion [at 64d-66a], namely parting the soul from the body as much as possible and habituating it to assembling and gathering itself from every part of the body, alone by itself, and to living alone by itself as far as it can, both now and afterwards, released from the body as if from fetters?
Simmias: Certainly.
Socrates: So is it this that is named “death”: release and parting of soul from body?
Simmias: Yes, entirely so.
Socrates: Right, and it is those who really love wisdom who are always particularly eager – or rather, who alone are always eager – to release it, and philosophers’ practice is just that, release and parting of soul from body.
Simmias: It seems so.
Socrates: In that case, Simmias, those who truly love wisdom are in reality practicing dying, and being dead is least fearful to them of all people (Phaedo 67c-e).

As Gerson observes, Plato here uses the ambiguity between metaphorical and literal dying to make a point that is central to his teaching:

How would someone come to be persuaded that literal dying is the separation of the soul and the body in the way that the argument [Socrates’ Cyclical Argument] assumes? Perhaps by the discovery of the identity of the soul and person that is metaphorically dying to the body. Even if it is not Plato’s main intention that the logos presented to the reader serves that discovery by leading him to reflect on his own identity, it does function in that way. For the belief that the death of my body is not the death of me is substantially the same as the belief that my body, though it be mine, is not me either (pp. 64-65).

Being oneself and being free from unhappiness are inextricably connected as is suggested, for example, by the happiness experienced in the state of deep sleep when the subject is completely free from worries and thoughts related to things other than itself.

Another way of testing this is to identify ourselves in thought with that in us that is “immortal, eternal, unaffected, perfect (i.e., not lacking anything), divine, and free”. The mere thought of it tends to result in a state of enhanced peace and happiness. Clearly, if this is the case when our consciousness is still overwhelmingly dominated by the physical surroundings, body, emotions, and thoughts, it will be even more the case when our consciousness is dominated by an actual awareness of ourselves as the immortal, unaffected, perfect, divine, and free intelligence or nous that is our true self.

But what happens in the case of those who fail to attain self-knowledge or correct self-identification?

Gerson says:

One way Plato answers this question is with a doctrine of punitive reincarnation. It is, in a universe ruled by a good Demiurge, too grotesque to suppose that the wicked are ultimately no worse off than the just. But another way suggests itself too. If there is no knowing without self-reflexivity – if one cannot know without knowing that one knows – then the status of one who did not self-reflexively know would be like a non-conscious repository of knowledge. He would be a non-person, roughly analogous to the way that someone in a chronic vegetative state might be characterized as a non-person, though he be alive, none the less (p. 279)

In sum, as in embodied life, everything in disembodied life, including happiness, revolves on the degree of self-identification with one’s true or ideal self. While this leads to higher states of experience, self-identification with things other than one’s true self lead to the opposite result and may involve repeated embodied life.

Aristotle criticizes the Pythagorean claim that a soul can transmigrate into random bodies, but it is far from clear that he rejects reincarnation itself, stating only that “as a craft must employ the right tools, so the soul must employ the right body” (De Anima 407b23). As reincarnation was a fairly widespread belief in philosophical circles at the time (which is why it appears in Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato), it seems likely that he accepted (or at least was not opposed to) some forms of the theory.

A question that might be considered is whether 'survival' and 'transcendence' entail the same kind of state. 'Survival' seems to imply persistence of some elements, whereas 'transcendence' might imply an aspect of the self that is not subject to the vicissitudes of being born and dying. That latter interpretation is something found widely in various forms of the perennial philosophies. — Wayfarer

Correct. And if an element has the capacity to survive, the same element might also have the capacity to transcend. The only difference being that ‘survival’ comes naturally, while ‘transcendence’ is something that needs to be learned or recognized. Plato refers to this when he emphasizes the need to detach oneself not only from the physical body, but also from sense-perceptions, desires, and feelings, and avoid attributing reality to them:

Now the soul of the true philosopher is not opposed to its release and that is why it refrains from pleasures, desires, pains and fears as much as it can: it reckons that when someone experiences intense pleasure, pain, fear or desire, they do not only inflict on him minor injuries, for example, falling ill or wasting money because of his desires, but that they inflict on him the greatest and most extreme of all evils, without it even appearing in his reckoning, namely that the soul, when it experiences intense pleasure or pain at something, is forced to believe at that moment that whatever particularly gives rise to that feeling is most self-evidently real, when it is not so (Phaedo 83b-c).

Though Plato here uses the word ‘soul’ (psyche), it is clear that when the self has detached itself from body, sense-perception, desires, and feelings, what is left is the rational ‘intellect’ or nous.

In any case, should a certain degree of detachment or ‘transcendence’ be not achieved, on the model of a just universe, this might render repeated embodied existence necessary. And if the transcendence process leads the self further and further away from what is not self, it is entirely conceivable that the final stage consists in some form of unity or union with a Higher Intelligence in which the individual self is itself transcended to give way to Ultimate Reality.

The term 'phenomena' is being used here as a general synonym for 'everything' or 'the totality'. Interestingly, the original meaning of phenomena is 'that which appears', and there was at least an implicit distinction between phenomena, 'what appears', and reality, 'what truly is'.

In Platonism, generally, as also in the later idealist philosophies, 'what truly is', is discernable only by reason (augmented at least until the Middle Ages by illumination.) 'The sage' is one who is able to discern 'what truly is'.

Whereas, due to the overwhelming influence of empiricism, science has come to be defined as empirical-sensory knowledge, instrumentally validated. So the idea of an intelligible reality in the earlier sense is no longer considered. Which is why 'phenomena' becomes practically synonymous with 'what truly is' (as Carl Sagan said, 'cosmos is all there is', and by that, he means the cosmos as discerned scientifically.)

Maybe there should be a discussion devoted to Gerson. He seems to be a big man on campus here. — Paine

I think I learned about Lloyd Gerson from mentions on this forum or its predecessor. I also listened to his lecture Platonism vs Naturalism which I've posted several times here. As I've mentioned, I find him very hard to read, as so much of his writing is addressed to other academics. But I'm generally sympathetic to what I take to be the gist of his writings.

Plato cannot be situated on either side of Gerson's schema. — Fooloso4

Gerson has considered this:

Was Plato a Platonist? While ancient disciples of Plato would have answered this question in the affirmative, modern scholars have generally denied that Plato’s own philosophy was in substantial agreement with that of the Platonists of succeeding centuries. In From Plato to Platonism, Lloyd P. Gerson argues that the ancients were correct in their assessment. He arrives at this conclusion in an especially ingenious manner, challenging fundamental assumptions about how Plato’s teachings have come to be understood. Through deft readings of the philosophical principles found in Plato's dialogues and in the Platonic tradition beginning with Aristotle, he shows that Platonism, broadly conceived, is the polar opposite of naturalism and that the history of philosophy from Plato until the seventeenth century was the history of various efforts to find the most consistent and complete version of "anti-naturalism."Gerson contends that the philosophical position of Plato—Plato’s own Platonism, so to speak—was produced out of a matrix he calls "Ur-Platonism." According to Gerson, Ur-Platonism is the conjunction of five "antis" that in total arrive at anti-naturalism: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Plato’s Platonism is an attempt to construct the most consistent and defensible positive system uniting the five "antis." It is also the system that all later Platonists throughout Antiquity attributed to Plato when countering attacks from critics including Peripatetics, Stoics, and Sceptics. In conclusion, Gerson shows that Late Antique philosophers such as Proclus were right in regarding Plotinus as "the great exegete of the Platonic revelation."

Whereas naturalism, nominalism, mechanism, materialism, relativism and scepticism are overall highly characteristic of much modern philosophy.

Before going into the details of what Aristotle said or did not say, I would like to think about Rorty as the poster child for what Gerson militates against. Rorty is baldly "historicist" in his description of the 'end of philosophy'. I agree with Gerson that Rorty is too general and reductive in how the practice is conceived. — Paine

Yes, good point.

But is Rorty the best exemplar of what Gerson opposes? I have been questioning the unity imparted by Gerson upon classical texts in previous discussions. The assumed unity of what is being opposed by Gerson needs some consideration. — Paine

It seems to me that Gerson is not assuming a unity in what he opposes. I have understood your critique to be different, namely the claim that he mistakenly assumes the unity of what he proposes (e.g. Aristotle's inclusion). UR is a (overly?) complex thesis, but given that it consists of five "anti's" I don't think it envisions a unified opposition.

Taken too broadly, this battle of the books will make no distinction between the differences between different models. To pluck out one among many, will the argument about what is innate versus what is developed through events in life hinge only upon the categories by which they are described? Or will the process lead to discoveries yet unknown by studying them?.

That prompts the question of how Aristotle was searching for something new or not. And that is different from asking how a set of propositions, defended (and opposed) centuries later, relates to contemporary activities. — Paine

I may not be fully grasping your point here, but it would seem that for Gerson that difference between Plato and Aristotle (innate versus developed) is an accidental difference, especially when compared to what someone like Rorty is doing. Presumably for Gerson the analogous difference between Descartes and Locke is also not a difference that would place either one of them outside Platonism/philosophy. Aristotle and Locke (and Descartes) were searching for something new, but within certain boundaries.

Gerson has been discussed numerous times here... — Paine

Thanks for the references. I just reread Phaedo last week so I will be curious to have a look at the thread.

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

Fair enough. :smile:

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... — Paine

Okay, that is an interesting difference between Aristotle and Plotinus. I am much more familiar with Aristotle than Plotinus. I found a source which corroborates what you say, and may also relate to what you say about Aristotle and Plotinus' disagreement on the soul in the other thread:

The anti-Aristotelian conclusions [in Ennead II.5] are two. While sensible reality, according to Aristotle, involves continuity of change based on the actualisation of proximate matter, Plotinus breaks this continuity by defining matter only as prime matter which can never be actualised. While Aristotle mentions in De Anima II.5 a certain potentiality in the soul, Plotinus argues that it is rather active power than passive potentiality. — Sui Han, Review

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

The article that has already been referenced in this thread is Gerson's "Platonism Versus Naturalism." There he gives this definition of anti-materialism:

Anti-materialism is the view that it is false that the only things that exist are bodies and their properties. Thus, to admit that the surface of a body is obviously not a body is not thereby to deny materialism. The antimaterialist maintains that there are entities that exist that are not bodies and that exist independently of bodies. Thus, for the antimaterialist, the question "Is the soul a body or a property of a body?" is not a question with an obvious answer since it is possible that the answer is no. The further question of how an immaterial soul might be related to a body belongs to the substance of the positive response to [Ur-Platonism], or to one or another version of Platonism. — Lloyd P. Gerson, Platonism Versus Materialism | cf. From Plato to Platonism, 11

Are you then of the opinion that either Aristotle or Plotinus are not "antimaterialists"? That Gerson has not categorized them correctly?

From the OP (based on the C S Lewis form of the argument):

The argument from reason challenges the proposition that everything that exists, and in particular thought and reason, can be explained solely in terms of natural or physical processes. It is, therefore, an argument against materialist philosophy of mind. — Wayfarer

And quoted above, from Gerson's paper

The antimaterialist maintains that there are entities that exist that are not bodies and that exist independently of bodies — Lloyd P. Gerson, Platonism Versus Materialism | cf. From Plato to Platonism, 11

The convergence of the two quotations ought to be clear - which is hardly surprising, since Lewis, as a Christian intellectual, no doubt defends a broadly Platonist point of view, considering the incorporation of many elements of Platonism into Christianity.

As we've now re-introduced Gerson, I'll provide a bit more detail from the essay quoted above:

(Gerson defends the) thesis that most of the history of philosophy, especially since the 17th century can be characterized as failed attempts by various Platonists to seek some rapprochement with naturalism and, mostly in the latter half of the 20th century and also now, similarly failed attempts by naturalists to incorporate into their worldviews some element or another of Platonism. I would like to show that what I am calling the elements of Platonism...are interconnected such that it is not possible to embrace one or another of these without embracing them all. In other words, Platonism (or philosophy) and naturalism are contradictory positions. — Lloyd Gerson, Platonism vs Naturalism

The elements of ‘Ur-platonism’, according to Gerson’s hypothesis are: anti-materialism, anti-mechanism, anti-nominalism, anti-relativism, and anti-scepticism, summarised below

Anti-materialism rejects the notion that only bodies and their properties exist. It allows for entities beyond bodies, like souls. Anti-mechanism states that materialist explanations are inadequate and proposes non-bodily explanations for material phenomena. Anti-nominalism denies that only individuals exist and allows for sameness in difference (i.e. the role assigned to forms or universals). Anti-relativism opposes the view that truth and goodness are subjective and emphasizes their objective or transcendental determinations. Anti-scepticism asserts that knowledge is possible, countering scepticism's doubt about attainable knowledge. (Refer to reference above for detailed content).

What is at issue is how to understand properties. — Paine

It is in this respect where I proposed the revisionist understanding of the nature of intelligibles (such as forms, numbers, the soul, and so forth.) This is not of my devising, as it is elaborated in an historical source, namely the writings of theological philosopher Scotus Eriugena (as I'll explain). The gist of this argument is that 'the soul' does not exist in the sense that the terms 'entity' and 'exist' are understood within the framework of naturalism. As an illustrative example, numbers and other intelligibles, such as 'the concept of prime', likewise do not exist in the sense that chairs, tables, and the objects of natural science exist. Their existence is purely intelligible, i.e. only perceptible to a rational mind. They are nevertheless real, in that they have the same value for all who can grasp them. As Bertrand Russell says in The World of Universals, 'universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts.' The rational soul (psyche) is what can perceive these ideas but itself is not a cognizable entity. So to make of the soul an entity, as the body is an entity, is an (understandable) error of reification (literally, 'to make a thing out of').

This is from the SEP entry on Scotus Eriugena. (I have taken the liberty of replacing 'to be' with 'to exist' to draw out the point I'm trying to articulate):

Eriugena lists “five ways of interpreting” the manner in which things may be said to exist or not to exist. According to the first mode, things accessible to the senses and the intellect are said to exist, whereas anything which, “through the excellence of its nature”, transcends our faculties are said not to exist. According to this classification, God, because of his transcendence is said not to exist. He is “nothingness through excellence” (nihil per excellentiam). (On this, also see Whalon, God does not Exist).

The second mode of existence and non-existence is seen in the “orders and differences of created natures” whereby, if one level of nature is said to exist, those orders above or below it, are said not to exist:

For an affirmation concerning the lower (order) is a negation concerning the higher, and so too a negation concerning the lower (order) is an affirmation concerning the higher. (Periphyseon, I.444a)

...This mode illustrates Eriugena’s original way of dissolving the traditional Neoplatonic hierarchy of being into a dialectic of affirmation and negation: to assert one level is to deny the others. In other words, a particular level may be affirmed to be real by those on a lower or on the same level, but the one above it is thought not to be real in the same way. — John Scotus Eriugena, Dermot Moran, SEP

This is obviously a rather recondite set of distinctions, but to me it is the only way to make sense of the reality of intelligibles, such as universals, number, and the like, because it restores a dimension of reality or being that has been 'flattened out' in the transition to modernity with its exclusive concentration on material and efficient causation. Consequently, there is no conceptual space for the idea that there are different levels or domains of reality - to us, things either exist or do not exist, they do not exist 'in different ways'.

I'll add that I've noticed a book by Lloyd Gerson, Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy.

Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world, and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy. Thus, the possibility of philosophy depends on the truth of Platonism. From Aristotle to Plotinus to Proclus, Gerson clearly links the construction of the Platonic system well beyond simply Plato's dialogues, providing strong evidence of the vast impact of Platonism on philosophy throughout history. Platonism and Naturalism concludes that attempts to seek a rapprochement between Platonism and Naturalism are unstable and likely indefensible.

But then, reading Lloyd Gerson is often wading through the molasses of 2,000 years of Plato scholarship, dense with footnotes and discussions of arguments from centuries ago and liberally sprinkled with ancient Greek sentences and phrases. And Plato himself requires huge erudition to read and interpret. So all in all, it means the philistines are winning, and philosophy, according to Lloyd Gerson, is heading for extinction, outside the antiquities. :groan:

What would be great would be a contemporary scholar who is learned enough to carry Gerson's style of argument forward, without all the scholastic minutiea. I've tried Peter Kingsley, but am about to return my last hardback purchase to Amazon as it's too breezily written. So, still looking, probably for something that doesn't exist.

I've listened to some of his lectures and generally like his survey of the philosophers, though I thought he was a bit too dismissive of Schopenhauer due to his pessimism. But fairly enough, I think he does that to all the philosophers giving his critiques as he goes. — schopenhauer1

I agree. Sugrue is good although overly critical at times, but his criticism is usually evenly distributed.

But anyways, to the broader point, much of philosophy revolves around how it is that the world exists without an observer, or sometimes formulated as a human observer. — schopenhauer1

Yes - much of modern philosophy. :smile:

This video might help as a good jumping off point for a Harman's view of objects. Perhaps we can have a discussion on it? — schopenhauer1

I found this to be good and interesting. I welcome this sort of approach in our day, these realist attempts to overcome the divide that Sugrue talks about. In fact I find myself on the same page as this reviewer, both in his commendations and his criticisms.

There was <a thread> that ended up getting into Lloyd Gerson's work a bit, particularly his paper, "Platonism vs Naturalism." Anti-physicalism reminds me of Gerson's anti-materialism, and anti-smallism reminds me of Gerson's anti-mechanism. The opposition to "anti-fictionalism" and "literalism" don't have parallels in Gerson's article, but I also sympathize with these tenets.

I also think that his idea of "undermining" and "overmining" an object is useful here. Undermining would be reducing to separate constituents. Overmining would be how it is related to every other thing, more-or-less. — schopenhauer1

Right, these were interesting ideas as well, and I think "overmining" relates to Fine's article to some extent. A lot of this resonates with Aristotle.

It is speculative because it obviously can never prove that reality, but it is believed one has the ability to speculate from the perspective of the human. They are not allowing this to hamper their ability to speculate. — schopenhauer1

I wonder if it comes from the idea of speculative knowledge (as contrasted with practical knowledge). His argument against scientism is basically the idea that science is only concerned with practical knowledge, and the obvious alternative here is speculative knowledge. In that sense "speculative realism" could be something like "realism as an attempt to understand reality, with no ulterior motive."

Along these lines, I agree with the author in his wariness of Harman's attempt to see nothing unique in human thought:

Realists are willing to speculate about the world, not caring how representation formulates the empirical evidence, per se. — schopenhauer1

For a classical realist like Aristotle or Aquinas, "realism" means realism with respect to universals (this is Gerson's anti-nominalism and anti-skepticism). The crucial idea here is that the human mind is capable of knowing reality as it is, and this is precisely where modern philosophy in all its forms departs. This inevitably leads to positing certain things about the human intellect, such as that it is immaterial due to its ability to comprehend material realities. (Interestingly, the one point in the video where Aristotle is brought up is with respect to knowledge of singulars, and on my view this is crucially related to this thread. It's a rather complicated topic, though. (link to Aquinas' view).)

Now the Speculative Realist seems to be committed to the view that the human mind can know reality as it is, and therefore I don't see how they can remain neutral on the question of the nature of the human mind (and the uniqueness of the human mind as an object).

---

More generally, a problem I see with so many modern philosophies is that they are largely reactionary, reacting to other philosophers' views on very limited and discrete issues. "A related problem is that such individuals basically started with a critique, and then interpolated their more systematic views on that basis of that critique" (). I hope Harman is careful about this, because there is a danger of reacting to current problems in philosophy rather than setting out an ontology that can stand on its own.

The other broad problem in modern philosophy seems to be a simplistic subordinationism. The approach is often mathematical, where one seeks a perfectly stable starting point and then attempts to derive all of the rest from that point. Once the starting point fails the philosophy is thrown into abeyance, and remains in abeyance. Aristotle really doesn't do philosophy this way, and it is a deep merit of his work. I wouldn't call his approach coherentism, but there are all sorts of different footholds, accessible from different directions and different realms of inquiry, and the system is not reliant on a single point or first principle. Neither is there an overemphasis on epistemology.

Anyway, sorry for the choppy and meandering response. The posts deserved more time than I had. Thanks for sharing the video. :up:

That doesn't seem like Aristotle either. It's confused. — Πετροκότσυφας

That is from Loyd Gerson, and I'm sure he's not confused, as he has published numerous text books on Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy (his web-page).

And thanks for those quotes, but I still can't see how they contradict the point that Gerson is making.

There's an SEP entry on Active Intellect (or active mind, nous poiêtikos) here. It makes the point again that the very brief passage on the active intellect is a minefield for interpreters, saying 'So varied are their approaches, in fact, that it is tempting to regard De Anima iii 5 as a sort of Rorschach Test for Aristotelians: it is hard to avoid the conclusion that readers discover in this chapter the Aristotle they hope to admire.'

However, the whole chapter (which is brief) is then provided, and I note the following excerpt:

And this mind is separate and unaffected and unmixed, being in its essence actuality. For what produces is always superior to what is affected, as too the first principle is to the matter.

[Actual knowledge is the same as the thing known, though in an individual potential knowledge is prior in time, though it is not prior in time generally.][4]

But it is not the case that sometimes it thinks and sometimes it does not. And having been separated, this alone is just as it is, and this alone is deathless and everlasting, though we do not remember, because this is unaffected, whereas passive mind is perishable. And without this, nothing thinks.

Emphasis added. So - my understanding is that 'this alone [which] is deathless and everlasting' is what became incorporated into later Christian theology as 'the rational soul', a web definition of which is 'the soul that in the scholastic tradition has independent existence apart from the body and that is the characteristic animating principle of human life'. And that, indeed, is not physical, as it is by definition, 'immortal'. Granted, Aristotelian and Thomistic dualism doesn't depict 'body and soul' as separate substances in the way that Descartes was later to do, but surely it can't be disputed that Thomas Aquinas accepts the immortality of the soul; he is a Doctor of the Church, after all.

You need to distinguish between thinking in general and the kind of "thinking" that the active intellect does. For Aristotle these two are just not the same. — Πετροκότσυφας

Indeed, that is precisely what I am attempting to articulate. That is why I referred to the passage from Father Brennan on Thomistic philosophy, to whit:

if the proper knowledge of the senses is of accidents, through forms that are individualized, the proper knowledge of intellect is of essences, through forms that are universalized. Intellectual knowledge is analogous to sense knowledge inasmuch as it demands the reception of the form of the thing which is known. But it differs from sense knowledge so far forth as it consists in the apprehension of things, not in their individuality, but in their universality.

That is as succinct a statement of the notion of hylomorphic dualism, which was derived from the 'active intellect' of Aristotle, as I have found.

So the general idea is that - as Gerson says - the ability to perceive the essence of the thing is the 'proper knowledge of the intellect' while the 'proper knowledge' of the senses is 'accidents, through forms that are individualised'. And those 'essences' or 'forms' are indeed 'universals' - this is what the expression 'universal' refers to. And the point about knowledge of these essences (forms, ideas) is that (as Gerson says):

This is because in thinking, the intelligible object or form is present in the intellect, and thinking itself is the identification of the intellect with this intelligible.

Which clearly is not the case, and could not be the case, with 'sensible objects' which are by definition separate from the perceiver.

Also notice this first sentence:

For what produces is always superior to what is affected, as too the first principle is to the matter.

Again, here, there is an implied or explicit hierarchy - that 'what produces' is 'superior' to 'what is affected' as 'the first principle' is 'superior' to 'matter' - all of which is stock-in-trade for scholastic realism.

(There's a useful primer by Ed Feser on just this point on his blog, Think, McFly, Think.)

Also, as a long-time student of comparative religion, I can't help but see the similarity between the top passage, from Aristotle, and the second, from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣhad:

But it is not the case that sometimes it thinks and sometimes it does not. And having been separated, this alone is just as it is, and this alone is deathless and everlasting, though we do not remember, because this is unaffected, whereas passive mind is perishable. And without this, nothing thinks.

Everything other than the ātman is stupid; it is useless; it is good for nothing; it has no value; it is lifeless. Everything assumes a meaning because of the operation of this ātman in everything. Minus that, nothing has any sense ^1.

-------

4. The bracketed text recurs in its entirety at DA iii 7, 431a1–4. It seems likely that they were inserted by a scribe seeking to provide an explanation of the way in which the active is prior to the passive.

Actually, if you look really closely, you'll see that the issues haven't been resolved yet. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, looking at this thread, it certainly looks that way :grin:

But I wouldn't worry too much about it. When I was in my early teens, no one at school spoke of “Platonism”. It was always individual authors like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus. So, when I first read Plato’s dialogues like Timaeus, Symposium, Republic, I was unaware of the existence of a system called “Platonism”.

However, the main points I took away from reading the texts were: the creation of the world by the Demiurge, the necessity of cultivating the four virtues in the attainment of societal and personal happiness, the importance of justice or righteousness as a guiding principle, the illusory nature of the sensible world, the tripartite soul and its ascent to higher planes of existence or experience, the nous, the Forms, the Good, the One, becoming virtuous and godlike as far as possible as the ultimate goal of life, and the role of philosophy and contemplation in facilitating the achievement of that goal.

It was several years later that I learned of Platonism as an actual system and what to me felt quite natural was that “Platonism” was based on exactly what I had read in the dialogues.

Incidentally, as Gerson points out, if you were to ask any moderately well-educated person in antiquity what the goal of life is according to the teachings of Plato, they would answer “to become godlike as far as possible”. So, it seems to me that the main difference is not so much between Plato and Plotinus as it is between how Plato was understood in antiquity and how he is interpreted today by some academic authors.

If we insist that there were major changes, for example, from Plato to Plotinus, we should be able to show what those changes are and to what extent (if at all) they are inconsistent with (a) the text of the dialogues and (b) with how Plato was understood in the interim.

As Gerson says, and I agree with him, is that:

“… what we find in the dialogues is an expression of one positive, continuously refined, construct out of UP [Ur-Platonism]. Actually, as I have argued, the positive construct is properly located within the ongoing work of the Academy under Plato’s leadership and the dialogues represent in effect occasional dramatized summaries of provisional results in the course of that work … Aristotle’s own work, both within the Academy and then in his own Lyceum, represents an alternative positive construct out of UP … Plotinus did not think that a systematization of Plato’s Platonism was a novelty … As far as we know, he thought that the system was articulated by Plato, not for the first time, but most profoundly and persuasively. And by ‘system’, of course, I mean fundamental metaphysical principles, certainly not all the possible consequences that can be drawn from there … Was Plato a Platonist? My answer to this question is yes, with what I hope to have shown is a reasonable qualification. ‘Platonism’ refers to any version of a positive construct on the basis of UP. For all soi-disant followers of Plato from the Old Academy onward, Plato’s version takes the crown … As I have argued, the unification of the elements of UP into a single positive construct was of paramount importance. That is why Platonism is a metaphysical doctrine … I have argued in this book that Proclus’ praise of Plotinus as leading the way in the exegesis of the Platonic revelation is essentially correct. This is a view shared by scholars of Platonism and by Platonists, too, well into the nineteenth century …”

Gerson correctly points out that any contrary views are a recent development arising from the over-critical reading of individual dialogues independently of other dialogues which in some cases has led to the absurd inference among a few scholars that the dialogues represent no philosophical writings at all!

Gerson concludes that:

“Platonism is not primarily what we might term a ‘dialogic artifact’. It was primarily a way of life. And the focus of that way of life, at least within the Academy, was the positive construction of a theoretical framework on the foundation of UP. This does not make the dialogues irrelevant; it makes them what all Platonists took them to be, namely, λόγοι [logoi] of that way of life” - L. P. Gerson, From Plato to Plotinus, p. 309

Gerson may be right about Platonism being about building a theoretical construct out of "Ur-Platonism", but if he is, this shows how far the Socratic way of life is from Platonism. — Fooloso4

This is your logic:

1. Gerson may be right about Platonism being about building a theoretical construct out of "Ur-Platonism".

2. But if he is, this shows how far the Socratic way of life is from Platonism.

Something is missing there, viz., the logical connection between premise (1) and premise (2).

And you are not paying attention. What Gerson is saying is that, into the 19th century, scholarship saw Platonism exactly as the Platonists did.

It was in the 1800’s, after Schleiermacher, that scholars began to look at the individual dialogues in isolation from the corpus of Platonic works and the system of thought associated with it, and this has led some of them down a rabbit hole resulting in absurd claims to the effect that the dialogues have no philosophical content at all.

Gerson doesn’t need to name those scholars (though he does refer to Shorey and others earlier in the book) because we know exactly who they are. They are mainly liberals, Christian Socialists and Fabian Socialists starting with G L Dickinson (The Greek Way of Life) and R H S Crossman (Plato Today) who taught Classics at Cambridge and Oxford.

Crossman who had been a Classics don at Oxford wrote:

“Since the war it has become quite fashionable to pull Plato off his pedestal. But when Plato To-day was published, the idea was novel and made quite a stir”.

So, the practice of arbitrarily atomizing the dialogues started in the 1800’s and culminated in the 1930’s with a complete reinterpretation of Plato from which all metaphysical and even philosophical content was deliberately excised.

As Gerson points out, this procedure is obviously flawed and can lead to absurd results - as may be seen from unsubstantiated claims that Plato was an “atheist”.

Gerson is the go to guy on this subject as I understand it. — Tom Storm

He may be the go to guy for Platonism, but for that reason not the go to guy for Plato or Aristotle. Of course he and other Platonists would not agree.

Aristotle, in De Anima, argued that thinking in general (which includes knowledge as one kind of thinking) cannot be a property of a body; it cannot, as he put it, 'be blended with a body'. — Lloyd Gerson

This is misleading. Thinking is a property of intelligent beings. The distinction between form and body is an abstraction.

Human beings are an embodied beings. For Plato, as Aristotle well knows, forms are hypothetical. See Phaedo on Socrates' Second Sailing where he explicitly calls the forms hypothesis and acknowledges their inadequacy, calling them "safe and ignorant"(105b). See also Plato's Timaeus where the static and ineffectual nature of Forms is criticized.
,
Gerson says:

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Lloyd Gerson

The "form 'thought'" is a product of philosophical poiesis. I don't think it is a term that either Plato or Aristotle ever used.

The limits of reason drawn by both Plato and Aristotle allows for both greater play and greater work of imagination, that is, of poiesis, of making. Reason often imagines that it is the whole of the story.

It might be objected that Aristotle argues for the existence of Intellect or Mind Itself, a disembodied thinking.But he does not present an unambiguous argument. Some scholars argue that this is intentional and marks the limit of what we know. A theological account intended to stand against the theologians, giving the appearance of an answer while pointing to the aporia of theological claims.

Near the beginning of Metaphysics Aristotle says:

... it is through experience that men acquire science and art ... (981a)

For more

Wisdom for Aristotle is, as it is for Plato and Socrates, knowledge of ignorance. The Platonist belief in an immaterial realm of intelligible Forms accessible to thought is a creation of the human mind, philosophical poiesis. Contrary to this, both Plato and Aristotle are rooted in physis, nature.

Physis or nature is not an explanation for why things are as they are. It is as things emerge and come to be as they are, how they grow and develop according to the kind of being each is. Each kind of being has its own nature. It develops accordingly.

Aristotle regards living beings as self-sustaining functioning wholes. The four causes are inherent in a being being the kind of being it is, not something imposed on or interfering with it from the outside. Human beings are by their nature thinking beings. This is not an explanation, but a given. It has nothing to do with Gerson's "form 'thought'". Nothing to do with a transcendent realm accessible to the wise.

Rather than an argument from reason, @Wayfarer, Plato and Aristotle use reason to demonstrate the limits of reason.

Before going into the details of what Aristotle said or did not say, I would like to think about Rorty as the poster child for what Gerson militates against. Rorty is baldly "historicist" in his description of the 'end of philosophy'. I agree with Gerson that Rorty is too general and reductive in how the practice is conceived. But is Rorty the best exemplar of what Gerson opposes? I have been questioning the unity imparted by Gerson upon classical texts in previous discussions. The assumed unity of what is being opposed by Gerson needs some consideration.

Taken too broadly, this battle of the books will make no distinction between the differences between different models. To pluck out one among many, will the argument about what is innate versus what is developed through events in life hinge only upon the categories by which they are described? Or will the process lead to discoveries yet unknown by studying them?.

That prompts the question of how Aristotle was searching for something new or not. And that is different from asking how a set of propositions, defended (and opposed) centuries later, relates to contemporary activities.

It seems to me that Gerson is not assuming a unity in what he opposes. I have understood your critique to be different, namely the claim that he mistakenly assumes the unity of what he proposes (e.g. Aristotle's inclusion). UR is a (overly?) complex thesis, but given that it consists of five "anti's" I don't think it envisions a unified opposition. — Leontiskos

Leaving aside my (or other people's) objections to Gerson's idea of Ur-Platonism, Gerson certainly seems to group the 'naturalists' as unified in their opposition to what he supports:

In other words, Platonism (or philosophy) and naturalism are contradictory positions. Someone who recoils from naturalism burdens herself with all the elements of Platonism; conversely, someone who rejects one or another of these elements will find herself sooner rather than later in the naturalist’s camp, assuming, of course, that consistency is a desideratum. If I am right, the history of modern philosophy has been mostly the history of misguided attempts at compromise among Platonists and naturalists. They have been doomed efforts to ‘have one’s cake and eat it, too’. — Gerson, Platonism and Naturalism

But I take your point that a collection of five "anti's" has problems asserting a clear thesis. That highlights a difference with other critiques of the modern era.

If one disbelieves in rebirth, or lacks belief in rebirth, one acts as if though it doesn't exist. But one acts differently if one believes in rebirth, or considers it a possibility. — baker

'The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom' Proverbs 9:10

By the way, if you are an admirer of Krishnamurti, who is against following any particular path, how would you reconcile this with your defense of Theravada Buddhism and personal preference for Mahāyāna Buddhism? — Apollodorus

I don't have an exclusive relationship with any of the above. I was an admirerer of Krishnamurti in my twenties, but to be ruthlessly honest, this might have been a product of my own wish for a kind of 'instant enlightenment'. Actually I found that in digging out that passage I quoted earlier in this thread that I understood some things in it that I would have missed when I read him earlier in life. I'm still of the view that he was a true jñāni.

The three philosophical traditions I most admire are Christian Platonism, Advaita, and Mahāyāna. I'm an eclectic reader, I can't see how you can help that in this day and age. There's so much information available from so many sources. So I'm still studying, although I do ask myself why.

It's not style, it's the content, the meaning.
— Wayfarer

To me, that sounds rather vague. — Apollodorus

We're referring here to the Pali texts. The style is often repetitive due to their original form as an oral tradition but I'm saying, they possess degree of coherency and philosophical depth that I don't think is found in any other single source, but I'm not going to try and argue that at length.

I never said the Fabians and Theosophists were "the sole cause". I just disagree with the assessment that they "must rank a pretty long way down the list".

You didn't show why they "must" and didn't say who, in your opinion, would be at the top of the list. — Apollodorus

Top of the list is the abandonment of Platonism in the late middle ages and the subsequent ascendancy of philosophical and scientific materialism. That is the underlying dynamic of which most of the things we discuss here are footnotes. (See this conference keynote speech given by Bhikkhu Bodhi.)

By the way, on that note, I've just encountered Lloyd Gerson's most recent book, Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy. 'Gerson contends that Platonism identifies philosophy with a distinct subject matter, namely, the intelligible world, and seeks to show that the Naturalist rejection of Platonism entails the elimination of a distinct subject matter for philosophy. Thus, the possibility of philosophy depends on the truth of Platonism. From Aristotle to Plotinus to Proclus, Gerson clearly links the construction of the Platonic system well beyond simply Plato's dialogues, providing strong evidence of the vast impact of Platonism on philosophy throughout history. Platonism and Naturalism concludes that attempts to seek a rapprochement between Platonism and Naturalism are unstable and likely indefensible.'

So he says that naturalism and Platonism (which he says is philosophy) are fundamentally incommensurable, which is a point I constantly make. I'm attempting to educate myself but Gerson is really hard to read, as his work is so deeply embedded in the Classical literature, it's full of allusions and subtle counter-arguments to some obscure academic or other or some point made by some commentator on some obscure passage. And to become conversant with the whole corpus would take years of going back over the original dusty tomes which are voluminous and subject to millenia of commentary. Sigh. Anyway beneath all this verbiage, there is a genuine spark of enlightenment, or so I hope.

I'm still of the view that he was a true jñāni. — Wayfarer

I’m not saying he wasn’t. He may well have been “a true jñāni”. My point was that we have no hard proof that he was.

But it is probably safe to say that he was more a jñāni than Blavatsky and Besant ....

The style is often repetitive due to their original form as an oral tradition but I'm saying, they possess degree of coherency and philosophical depth that I don't think is found in any other single source, but I'm not going to try and argue that at length. — Wayfarer

And I’m not going to ask why you won’t give us some examples.

However, to be fair, all Buddhist schools sought to systematize, polish, and refine the earliest suttas. And they had centuries at their disposal to do so.

So I'm still studying, although I do ask myself why. — Wayfarer

Good point. As Heraclitus said, “Learning many things does not teach understanding”. :smile:

Sometimes we are better off leaving lots of things ununderstood and aim to understand the one thing that matters, first.

So he says that naturalism and Platonism (which he says is philosophy) are fundamentally incommensurable, which is a point I constantly make. I'm attempting to educate myself but Gerson is really hard to read, as his work is so deeply embedded in the Classical literature — Wayfarer

I agree that Gerson tends to beat about the bush a bit and sometimes almost gets lost in the details. I much prefer writers who get to the point.

I think Gerson’s main merit is that he shows that despite some original reinterpretation of Plato, Platonism (including what some choose to call “Neo-Platonism”) is nevertheless very much based on Plato. His From Plato to Platonism does an excellent job in this regard.

Aristotle and Other Platonists is another good book. But, as you say, when reading Gerson, you need to have all of Plato’s works at hand as well as those of Plotinus, Proclus, and many others. And make ample use of a pen and notebook. So this is perhaps something for the more academically-minded.

This is why I think when reading any author on Plato it is imperative to always keep Plato’s essential points in mind and add to them whatever seems necessary for your particular purposes as you go.

We also need to remember that later Platonists like Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, were teachers in their own right and this necessarily involves a degree of interpretation of the original texts. But the original texts remained the main teaching material at all times and students could make up their own mind on how to read them. The main thing was for them to attain the goal.

If Philosophy (i.e., philosophy in the original Greek sense) is about finding Truth, then we must start from the premise that Truth exists but it is obscured by un-Truth.

Philosophy then becomes a process of unearthing Truth by removing un-Truth which in the first place is nothing but human erroneous perception of Truth.

This means that Philosophy (a) entails the critical examination of the information received from others and of our own beliefs and assumptions, and (b) it must ultimately lead to Truth.

This is why Plato introduces the concept of Ideas (or Forms) as realities that transcend ordinary experience and identifies the Source of all Knowledge and all Truth as the greatest subject of human inquiry.

Moreover, if the constant transcendence of increasingly higher levels of experience leads to Ultimate Reality, which it logically must, then no process can be higher than the process that leads to that Reality, i.e., Philosophy.

It follows that Buddhism, for example, cannot be higher than Platonism, unless it can be demonstrated that Buddhism leads to something that is higher than Ultimate Reality. So far, no one has been able to demonstrate this.

But the bottom line is we cannot accept things uncritically and simply repeat what we are told by others. We need to use our own intelligence and do our own independent research as part of our inquiry into truth.

This is why I brought up the Fabians, the Theosophists, and their New Age followers. The fact is that we must acknowledge that to a large extent they idolized Neo-Buddhism and Neo-Hinduism but demonized Western traditions. Besant preached that the Christian Gospels were “not authentic” whilst claiming that her “son” Krishnamurti was the Messiah and the Buddha, and knowingly promoting fabricated tales about non-existent “Himalayan Masters”.

This is not only hypocritical but also logically inconsistent. If Eastern systems like Hinduism and Buddhism can be reformed, then so can Western systems, should there be a need to do so. The fact that the Theosophists and their New Age followers insisted on replacing Western systems with reformed or invented Eastern ones, shows that there was an anti-Western agenda behind the whole project.

Of course there was much more to it than Fabianism and Theosophy but it all tended to move in the same anti-Western direction and this often happened for political purposes and other reasons that had little or nothing to do with spirituality.

Part of the same trend was the 60’s myth of the “Mother Goddess”. It was claimed that the earliest human society had been matriarchal after which it became patriarchal. This was started by fiction writers like Robert Graves (The White Goddess, 1948) who was also involved in the reinvention of “Celtic Spirituality”. A number of fraudulent characters like James Melaart attempted to find archaeological “evidence” for the Goddess myth. It was later discovered that Melaart had forged many of his “finds” and that his apartment was a “forger’s workshop”.

Famed Archaeologist 'Discovered' His Own Fakes at 9,000-Year-Old Settlement - Live Science

Another anti-Western cult that emerged at the same time as Dharmapala’s Neo-Buddhism was America’s Nation of Islam that combined with the civil rights movement to morph into Black Power, the Republic of New Afrika, and Western Africanism. The “We are Aryans” myth of the early 1900’s was replaced with the New Age “We are all Africans” myth. White women, and apparently some men, started perming their hair to make it look curly and “African”. The latest manifestation of this is “blackfishing”.

What 'Blackfishing' means and why people do it – CNN

This shows that New Age “spirituality” is largely rooted in ignorance and psychological and cultural identity issues. It also shows how ridiculous and easy to manipulate people can be.

In any case, it is clear that a lot of fraudulent activity was involved in the whole New Age project. And the problem is that once people buy into a false narrative it becomes increasingly difficult for them to face the facts. This results in a great deal of denial and attempts to sweep things under the carpet and cover up inconvenient truths by means of more propaganda, disinformation, and lies.

When indoctrination kicks in, the indoctrinated mind’s defense mechanism springs into action and the indoctrinated person may bring up topics like the Crusades which, incidentally, is a typical or “standard” argument. The very same people object and loudly protest if anyone else brings up other aspects of history that are less convenient to the indoctrinated person’s agenda. For them, Western history is “the Crusades” and nothing else exists or matters.

So self-identity, including cultural and historical identity, does seem to be the key not only to mental and emotional well-being but also to truth and spiritual realization.

As an illustration, suppose someone decides to self-identify with their shoes. As shoes probably do not have a great deal of knowledge, that person’s knowledge will be severely reduced. And so will their power of action, causing them to become immobile and just sit there waiting for someone to put them on and walk them. Presumably, feelings, thoughts, and emotions will likewise be close to zero. The same holds if they identify with their clothes.

But if the same person self-identifies with the physical body, the situation will change dramatically. There will be signs of life in the form of heart beat, breathing, motion, feelings of cold and heat, hunger and thirst, etc.

If they go a bit higher and self-identify with the mind, their experience will change further still. There will be knowledge, reason, memory, emotions, imagination, and other activities of consciousness that define a human being.

And if they go even higher and self-identify with consciousness itself, with the witnessing awareness of all those mental and physical states and experiences, then they will no longer be bound to all the things that condition and restrict consciousness but will be free, unconditioned and unaffected consciousness.

This is why Plato says that the true philosopher is one whose soul or intellect turns its attention away from the material world and the body-mind compound and toward itself and realities like itself. It is a process of detachment from what is not true self and self-identification with what is true.

In the final stages of this process, the philosopher will no longer be a person but pure Intelligence, or Truth, itself.

Plotinus describes different levels of consciousness and defines Philosophy as a process of self-identification with increasingly higher levels until the highest possible is achieved. See also D. M. Hutchinson, Plotinus on Consciousness.

But, as I said from the start, this is not what people want. People want to be enlightened whilst remaining unenlightened. They don’t want to be Truth or Ultimate Reality. What they want is to be humans with superhuman knowledge and power. And this is impossible because that which is unreal or less real cannot have power over that which is Real and of which it is a manifestation or imitation.

So we can see that though Philosophy in the Ancient Greek tradition shows the way to Truth, some insist that truth can be found only by reciting Pali suttas (or some other such activities).

This is not to say that religion is useless. It is useful to the extent that it focuses our mind on a higher reality. But religion must ultimately be transcended in order to attain higher levels of consciousness or truth. If religion, or at least the lower forms of it, is not transcended then it can become an impediment instead of being of assistance.

So long as the human ego is in charge, and there is a craving for religion, for cults, and for myths, there can be no enlightenment but only more self-deception along with the strategy and tactics intended to defend it at all costs. The ego can be extremely resourceful and cunning, and self-preservation is its sole concern. That’s why the ego is the real “Māra” or dragon that the philosopher needs to tame or slay.

And this can be done only if the philosopher identifies with something higher and takes position on a higher ground ....

I guess my main point with that example of unicorns as existent thoughts was the absurdity of stipulating that there can be "existent physical things that are not physically real". — javra

My take on the reality of universals (and numbers, laws, principles and the like) is that they are only perceptible to reason, but they're the same for all who think. I suppose you can say mythological animals, like unicorns, and fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes, are real in the sense that they're part of a shared culture, but they're fictional nonetheless. The Pythagoeran theorem is real in a way that they aren't, although spelling out why is obviously going to be tricky.

I have listened to the Gerson lecture a couple of times. Do you know of a link to a printed copy? — Paine

You'll find it here.

Is that a compromise, as Gerson would describe it? It seems to me that Aristotle's efforts to separate inquiries reflect an interest in avoiding putting matters in those terms of opposition. — Paine

Big question. My understanding is that Aristotle is seen as practical, empirical and scientific, and Plato the mystical dreamer. In the famous Raphael frieze Plato is pointing towards the heavens, Aristotle has his hand out in front, palm-down.

I think the fundamental disagreement is around the reality of ideas. The traditional story is that Plato believes that ideas are real and dwell in an actual Platonic realm, while Aristotle believes they are real only in the form in which they are embodied. To drill down to the intricacies of that debate, which has occupied generations of scholars, takes a lot of reading, but I think Lloyd Gerson is well regarded as a guide to that subject - one of his books is called Aristotle and Other Platonists which goes into it in depth. He points out that there are periods when the division is seen as fundamental, but also long periods in which the Platonist tradition believed that they were in basic agreement. But it's a deep and difficult argument.

In this discussion of 'materialism', I have been looking for a way to acknowledge Nagel's narrative of how the scientific method came about without accepting that it restricts all of its possible outcomes to descriptions of physical stuff isolated from all other physical stuff. Models have to agree with phenomena. The phenomena never signed an agreement listing what could be revealed by the process.

In that context, Gerson's schema is a response to Rorty's rejection of Plato. That conflict has its own terms that are far away from how to understand original texts. As far as I understand it, I disagree with both of them. I make no special claim at understanding either of them.

As for what Gerson thinks himself outside of that debate, there are many points where I disagree. Apart from his 'schema', I have read a number of his arguments devoted to Aristotle's text that I doubt the old guy would agree with.

Maybe there should be a discussion devoted to Gerson. He seems to be a big man on campus here.

Edit to add: I just ran a search on Gerson on the web site. This has been going on for years.

Sure, you might be right. But in context, Gerson's point was this: 'when you think you see—
mentally see—a form which could not in principle be identical with a particular, including a
particular neurological element, a circuit or a state of a circuit or a synapse, and so on. This is so
because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally. For example,
when you think ‘equals taken from equals are equal’ this is a perfectly universal truth which you
see when you think it. But this truth, since it is universal could not be identical with any
particular, any material particular located in space and time.' Which makes perfect sense to me. — Wayfarer

If I am correct, then Gerson has misunderstood Aristotle. I recognize that you want to use Gerson to leverage an argument against reduction in the context of the scientific method. I don't have a clear understanding of those matters and am loath to put forward an exact definition in the style of the SEP.

But I have read enough text to question Gerson's assertions and look forward to challenging anyone who would champion his position as a scholar.

If I am correct, then Gerson has misunderstood Aristotle. — Paine

I'm sure that Lloyd Gerson doesn't misunderstand Aristotle, it's more likely that I misunderstand Lloyd Gerson, or rather, have taken one of his arguments out of context.

I'm not that knowledgeable about the Platonic forms, but I do think that they're frequently misunderstood as a kind of immaterial template or blueprint purportedly 'located' in some 'ethereal realm'. It is under that kind of reading that they're usually dismissed. But I think there might be a plausible case that what is meant by the 'forms' is much nearer in modern terms to 'principle', 'concept' or 'universal' in the sense understood by Scholastic realism.

Consider that when you think about triangularity, as you might when proving a geometrical theorem, it is necessarily perfect triangularity that you are contemplating, not some mere approximation of it. Triangularity as your intellect grasps it is entirely determinate or exact; for example, what you grasp is the notion of a closed plane figure with three perfectly straight sides, rather than that of something which may or may not have straight sides or which may or may not be closed. Of course, your mental image of a triangle might not be exact, but rather indeterminate and fuzzy. But to grasp something with the intellect is not the same as to form a mental image of it. For any mental image of a triangle is necessarily going to be of an isosceles triangle specifically, or of a scalene one, or an equilateral one; but the concept of triangularity that your intellect grasps applies to all triangles alike. Any mental image of a triangle is going to have certain features, such as a particular color, that are no part of the concept of triangularity in general. A mental image is something private and subjective, while the concept of triangularity is objective and grasped by many minds at once. — Edward Feser

It is largely the very peculiar kind of being that belongs to universals which has led many people to suppose that they are really mental. We can think of a universal, and our thinking then exists in a perfectly ordinary sense, like any other mental act. Suppose, for example, that we are thinking of whiteness. Then in one sense it may be said that whiteness is 'in our mind'. ... In the strict sense, it is not whiteness that is in our mind, but the act of thinking of whiteness. The connected ambiguity in the word 'idea', which we noted at the same time, also causes confusion here. In one sense of this word, namely the sense in which it denotes the object of an act of thought, whiteness is an 'idea'. Hence, if the ambiguity is not guarded against, we may come to think that whiteness is an 'idea' in the other sense, i.e. an act of thought; and thus we come to think that whiteness is mental. But in so thinking, we rob it of its essential quality of universality. One man's act of thought is necessarily a different thing from another man's; one man's act of thought at one time is necessarily a different thing from the same man's act of thought at another time. Hence, if whiteness were the thought as opposed to its object, no two different men could think of it, and no one man could think of it twice. That which many different thoughts of whiteness have in common is their object, and this object is different from all of them. Thus universals are not thoughts, though when known they are the objects of thoughts. — Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

I look forward to challenging anyone who would champion his position as a scholar. — Paine

Here's his google scholar page. The paper I quoted that passage from is Platonism vs Naturalism.

So you think this process undermines or disproves naturalism? — Tom Storm

It doesn't disprove it, so much as being incommensurable with it. The activities of reason are grounded in intuitive insight into the relations between abstractions (which we designate 'facts' or 'propositions'). Whereas the naturalistic account seeks reasons in terms of antecedent physical causes. I don't get why this is such a hard distinction to grasp. (I've already noted that this objection may not apply to the more recent forms of naturalism such as biosemiotics, but then, they've also in the main moved away from the mechanistic materialism which the argument is against. But it remains a powerful influence.)

My problems with his argument have nothing to do with this sort of speculation. — Paine

May I ask for your precise critique of his argument as it relates to this thread?

In a well-known argument Gerson claims that the immateriality of the intellect disproves materialism. In some places Gerson associates this argument with Aristotle, and it is this association that you seem to want to reject. But what exactly is it that you are rejecting? Which of Gerson's key claims, as presented in this thread, are non-Aristotelian?

I read all of your posts in this thread and this one seems to be most pertinent:

The "identity" with the object is not a simple correspondence of "forms". — Paine

For example, I would want to say, "What matters is whether the identity implies the requisite immateriality, not whether it is a simple correspondence of 'forms'."

If Gerson truly got this wrong then I should be interested to know how he got it wrong.

We have been arguing about Gerson's thesis since I got here. Much of that dispute involves how to read that difference in Plato's language. In view of these years of wrangling over texts and their meaning, do you see the opposition to Gerson's thesis as only a part of this one?:

"In all humility, I think this accounts for a lot of the resistance that advocacy of philosophical idealism provokes. Moderns don't want the world to be like that." — Paine

In Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy, Lloyd Gerson argues that Platonism and naturalism are basically incommensurable. On this forum, naturalism is ascendant. (This is a rather good online lecture and summary of Gerson's book. I'm also finding Eric Perl's book, mentioned above, very informative, although I doubt anyone here will like it.)

Incidentally, I've announced elsewhere I'm signing out for February to concentrate on other projects, so bye for now.

We have disagreed over Gerson in the past. As a devoted student of Plotinus, I cannot fault his view of Plato since Gerson follows Plotinus' reading.

But I object to Gerson's picture of Aristotle as an anti-naturalist. It elides Plotinus' criticism of Aristotle.

Gerson's version of materialism ignores the limits of the universal that Aristotle discusses in the Metaphysics, which my quote above is taken from.