Paine

From what I have read so far, Plotinus uses myth to express aspects of his system, not as a "likeness" to help with what cannot be directly experience...

That fairly points to the limits of my thought experiment.

Okay. I see how the language of being shaken has to be heard with the other descriptions. This just keeps getting more difficult. I used to read it as...

I see how the question works both ways in your first paragraph. But is the "unmade and the un-generated being offered as an alternative in this contex...

Aristotle would thank you if he were not otherwise occupied.

Sallis does require work. But in one way, he is economical. He deals with text in a direct fashion, pitting words against other words, something the r...

Your expansion upon "bastard reasoning" helps put the 'lack of something to compare to' I referred to into context. Whether one agrees or not with Sal...

That is an interesting question to ask. How about Heidegger versus Ur-Platonism? They are both critical of the dominance of modern science. They both ...

Thank you for considering the matter. Edit to add: removed gratuitous remark that might diminish the gratitude.

I am responding to your comment in the Griffin thread in this one because it concerns the current discussion of how "matter" is to be understood in th...

They provided different experiences from those on the unaltered menu. The Timothey Leary and Casteneda versions were treating them as gates to realms ...

I get the argument that the concept serves a purpose in how we talk. The claims about what exists in nature seems to contradict the limits presented r...

Two eggs over easy with potatoes cooked in a medley of onions, peppers, and a bit of parsley. A slice of Portuguese bread to sop up the yolk.

Thanks for that.

There are several matters in that review I would like to address that concern Plotinus but not Gerson. So I will put the comments in your Metaphysics ...

This is Gerson's thesis in a nutshell: The list of negatives is drawn up by his reading of Plato. What comprises what is "firmly rejected in the dialo...

When I look under the hood of Gerson's writing, he adopts the perspective of Plotinus in an uncritical fashion. In that regard, he is too inclusive an...

One thing that bothers me about the Ur-Platonism idea, apart from the specific issues being discussed, is that there have been centuries of thinkers w...

One thing that is verifiable is that Gerson's criticism of Aristotle is a repetition of Plotinus, almost verbatim: In view of that chronology, Plato s...

Did you have facial hair? Did you carefully mold the metal nose strip to your face shape? Did you rip the thing off to talk to others?

That shape is also best for industrial purposes. One is forced to arrange it into the correct fit.

Who are you quoting?

Your arguments about this issue are best illustrated by the dialogue of Theaetetus. Beyond the role of the mid-wife taking precedence over that of rec...

Perhaps I should not have made my remark. I did not mean to hold Gerson to account as a matter of the 'minutiae' of citing specific schools of thought...

I think Kafka gave this some thought. In his Reflections, . this one is an affirmation through negation of a sort: But perhaps the true antipode to th...

Gerson's account is a fair description. I wonder how he distinguishes "These Gnostics, mostly heretic Christians" from the other varieties. Many of Pl...

Gerson's central focus, as a scholar, has been upon Plotinus and his contemporaries (broadly speaking). Interpretations of both Plato and Aristotle ar...

This website has all of the Six Enneads translated by Stephen MacKenna and B. S. Page. The translation is a little clunky at times, but it beats typin...

But that is what Plotinus said: We conclude that Matter's participation in Idea is not by way of modification within itself: the process is very diffe...

I will provide tomorrow. I approach the end of today's period of being fully conscious. The observations about McCarthy does address what I am thinkin...

I am not aware of any text from those three that supports this statement.

The inner experience is important in the thinking. What a 'concept is' is also considered. The work also makes a claim upon how the universe works jus...

I was thinking more in the context of personal freedom. The view of private ownership being a product of an historical process is said to provide the ...

Without knowing all the parts, Occam would concentrate on the motivation to stop the certification of the election. The different elements set in moti...

I will start by noting that both Aristotle and Plotinus make use of Plato's text in ways that shape what a 'Platonist' is said to be. Plato did not ha...

It is difficult to approach the matter. As a war between classes, the singularity of Hegel's account is not definitive. But the value of that individu...

Take, for example, the debates over how Plato understood the ontology of Forms. I (and others) have challenged Cornford's interpretation that there is...

I think it would be along the lines that the fight-to-the-death or submit scenario, that appears during the pursuit of recognition, changes both sides...

How will the "pursual by interpretation of evidence" ever be independent of specific methods of interpreting ancient texts? This is a particularly per...

Yes. Or at least we do not have a method that does not rely heavily upon self-identified methods of interpretation. I favor some over others, but I ca...

It looks like we will have to agree to disagree. For the time being, anyway.

Thank you for considering the argument. It will take me several days to respond to your questions. They present challenges I do not want to minimize o...

Do you accept that a claim of ancient wisdom is largely dependent upon a description of what those old people were saying?

Since it relates to the topic of the OP (regarding the Unmoved Mover), I will take make my argument from the horse's mouth: The mention of Pythagoras ...

I take your point that generation is the counter example of the productive arts. But you were making a claim about when beings actually existed 'mater...

I do not understand this "tangential" relationship you describe. For my part, people say stuff and other people say other stuff. Your stuff is one of ...

I guess my challenges are meaningless in that context. To wit: There are these ideas and they are what they are because that is what said of them. Tha...

Can you point to some place in the text where this is claimed? Where do beings move from the not-material to the material?

I think the matter belongs to a discussion of what Aristotle intended. Folding his efforts into an omlette of other ideas is what I am challenging. On...

I have been thinking a lot about how the components making up a 'philosophy of history' relate to statements about existing conditions. For instance, ...