Plato, a Reality Game in Four Levels (Session 4)

Hello and welcome to the fourth session of Play-Doh, a reality game in four levels. I'm going to pass the Mein Kampf to the course instructor Reza Negra-Sanina. Thanks, Tio. Okay, so we are a little bit behind, but as I mentioned, we are going to probably have a few make-up sessions at the end and to be able to cover some of the main topics in Plato's work. So let's hear if you have any questions, discussions, and then I start to, as I mentioned, I talk about today about the idea of Demiorge in Plato and how it is a very enduring concept

in the entire Plato's body of work and how it connects the idea of intelligence with idea of the good and the Doctrine of Forms. And then if there is time I will start to talk a little bit about theory of forms, particularly underlining one of the most puzzling critiques of the doctrine of forms, which in fact has been given by Plato himself, the so-called third man argument. We'll talk about this, what is exactly the implication

of the third man argument, and is there really a solution for third man paradox or third man puzzle. of the puzzle. Because it's famous that Plato in Parmenides but also in Republic and Fido, He gives different versions of the third man argument as kind of a self-critique of his own doctrine of forms. It has been, you know, subject of numerous papers and essays on Plato, particularly in

analytic tradition, analytic reading of Plato. Some people like Gregory Velastus think that it's genuinely some sort of crisis for Plato, and Plato realized this, it's genuine philosophical perplexity that Plato himself doesn't know how to solve it. But some people like Sellars, Some people like more recent readers of Plato think that it's simply a form of argument that tries to show what doctrine of form is not about rather than what it is and what

its weaknesses are. So it's basically Plato tries to, by posing this argument, he tries to avoid possible confusions. And people who argue for this, they cite evidence, his later works, like Theatetus and Philebus, where he in fact gets rid of some of these components in the Doctrine of Forms, where they have constantly given rise to unnecessary confusions. He completely drops them.

But he, as I mentioned, even though he revises extensively the doctrine of forms, he never really gives it up. The forms are essentially at the centerpiece of Plato's philosophy. So that's today's topic. And so let's hear if you have any questions, discussion from what we were just talking about or anything else. so like the i guess this is what you're about to talk about but so the third man argument is basically the idea that oh wait is this right that like every form there has to be a form for like everything that a form applies to and the form itself

and so then there would be too many forms basically yes so basically the The Third Man argument is based on a few presuppositions. First, just to be very brief, you see, so okay, what is the Third Man argument is not really the idea of Plato, something that Aristotle comes up as a critique of Plato. Plato himself doesn't talk about idea of a third man, but he uses the concept of largeness. So it goes like this. Imagine that a particular man participates in the idea of methexis. What is methexis exactly? Methexis is what you might call to be particularities falling under universalities or generalities.

partake in generalities, partake in universality, partake in forms. So a man partakes in the form, falls under the form of manless. Now, according to the theory of forms, there are a few presuppositions already in place about what forms are and what kind of relationships they represent. One of them is that one over many, namely the idea of one general under which many particulars fall. Then the idea of self-predication. Forms are self-predicating. Another one is the idea that there are unique, forms are unique.

Another is forms are pure, and they don't yield any contradiction in themselves. So according to the third man argument is that if a man partakes in the form of manness, in order for us, in order for this form to be determined, you need to introduce another man, with a, what you might call to be a more perfect form or a more expansive form of man-ness, in order to say what does it mean for this man to partake in form of man-ness, numerically

distinguished with subset one. So you have to introduce another form, man-ness two, that covers both man and man-ness. So this already contradicts the principle of basically uniqueness of form. Then the story goes forward by that once you introduce manness two to manness one in man as the particular man, And then you also have to introduce a third form, madness three, in order to determine madness two, madness one, and man.

So this is called the third man argument, which simply shows that the idea of a particular partaking in a universal or a general form requires an infinite series of forms. hence forms can no longer said to be unique or pure because the purity of forms the unchangeability now succumbs to multiplicity and hence they become all particular

again there is nothing general and universal about them now the thing about this argument, and this is, so who, the person who gives the first account of the Third Man argument in a very sophisticated way, based on Aristotle's critique of Plato, is Gregory Ballastus. And you can check Wikipedia article on the Third Man argument, which is, I think it's actually a very, very lucid account of Vlastus' argument. Now, there are a few confusions in both Aristotle's and Vlastus' argument, is that forms don't

essentially imply self-predication. Justice is justice is not self-predication. It's an identity relation. The idea of is, the predicate is justice, is not self-predication. In Plato it implies identity relationship. Second, according to Plato there is nowhere that forms implied purity. Second, third, Pace classes, the relation between particularities, namely different

mans, is fundamentally different from the relation between a particular thing and a a universal form. Now Velastus, we will talk about this, Velastus in fact aligns the distinction between two different classes of relationships, between particularities and particular and universals. And he tries to interpret the idea of methexis, namely participation of man in the form of this at the level of the relation between particularities, simply reducing it. There

are so many things that are essentially problematic with Gregory Velastus, and in fact other philosophers have shown that the whole paradox of the third man can be completely avoided if we get rid of the idea of self-predication or the idea of purity, that forms are self-predicating or forms are pure. There won't be any contradiction, there won't be any infinite series of forms as a result of the paradox. So like the form of beauty doesn't need to be an example of something that's beautiful,

it's not its own particular, basically. Yes, and when we're saying that beauty is beautiful or beautiful is beautiful, this tautology is not self-predication, it's an identity relation. If we were really going to full blow and make this contemporary, this is essentially what you might call to be the extensional versus intentional idea of law of identity, first put forward by Frege in the extensional sense, you know, A equals A. And then people start to talk about this no longer about extensional identity relation

but as homotopy type theory, as equivalence of equivalences, identity as equivalence of equivalences. If you no longer see idea of, for example, Socrates means Socrates is the Gatphali of Athens. So Gatphali of Athens is a sense of Socrates, so you have sense of reference. And you can have infinite senses. So then that leads to the, according to the extensional take on the law of identity, it

leads to the indetermination of reference, according to the classic Phrigian idea of identity. So you have Socrates as the Gastholaire of Athens, Socrates as the first martyr of philosophy, these are different senses of the same reference. So if you have infinite senses, then what is exactly this reference? leads to the indeterminacy of reference. Of course, you know, Lyotard talks about this in, what is, difference. But the thing is that this is a very classical interpretation. You can in fact, the whole idea is that you are simply reducing the relation between reference

and sense to the relation which is actually you can think about in terms of relation between universal and particular. You are reducing this relation to the relation between simply particularities, particular senses. So you can twist this and saying that the very fact that you have in fact senses is because there is an invariance of reference that connects them together. The very fact that the Gatfly of Athens, the first martyr of philosophy, so on and so forth,

represent or refer to Socrates is because that they are glued together, that they are falling under the same class of equivalence, same class of invariances. And that invariance is actually what you might call to be the form of Socrates. This is what basically Sellars is in fact, that's how he interprets the counter argument against the third, Velasquez's third man argument. That it is not that these senses, you would say that the reference is indeterminate because

there are infinite senses of this reference, but the very fact that you have in fact infinite senses is because they fall under the same class of equivalents, that they are glued continuously to one another by a single invariance. And this is, the formalization of this is perfectly captured by the so-called homotopy type theory in contemporary mathematics. It's like the morning star and the evening star. Yes, morning star. Basically any, you know, the classical Phrygian relation between sense and reference on an extensional plane.

That's good. This leads me to a question I had about just one thing from the reading, the sellers. So how does this relate to what Sellers is saying about the animal itself, which seemed to kind of be the main thrust of that essay, though I felt like I didn't totally understand it. like that um that there was an important kind of polyvalence of the idea of the animal itself that on the one hand it's a like it's a whole sort of containing all the animals or the whole world and on the other hand it's a genus um right sort of an abstract genus that all other forms are

it's like the type of which all the other forms are species and that um that is essential that it played both of those roles um that seems kind of interesting to me but i also didn't really understand i'd be curious if you could talk more about that okay like like a concrete universal and a napstack universal at the same time or something. Yes, I think you see, it's really hard, I think, to talk about forms in terms of abstract versus concrete universal, because that kind of distinction is essentially an Aristotelian distinction. I don't think that Plato would have

conceded to this idea of the distinction between concrete and abstract as given, something being concrete universal as given, and something being abstract universal as given. According to Plato, this whole idea of concrete and abstractness of universal, or particularities for that matter, is something that is not given in advance, that there are such things as concrete and universal. The very fact that there are such things as abstract and concrete is because of the kind of relations that they extend to one another. So there is no such a thing as an a priori concrete or abstract in Plato's worldview. It's the fact that things and forms stand in thus and so relationships into one another.

So I think this is a really fantastic argument because usually when people talk about abstract concrete they have a fixed metaphysical idea about what is abstract and what is concrete. to Plato's Doctrine of Form, there is no such a thing as being fundamentally concrete and being fundamentally abstract. It's simply they take, they basically are imbued with such connotations as being abstract and concrete by virtue of how they stand in part-hold relationships to one another.

idea of the craft. So this is one and the idea of the animal you might say, so what is exactly craftsmanship? Craftsmanship is a process that you want to, is a process of construction according to which you create products that represent forms, that represent certain ideas.

So for example, the soul of an animal, the soul of a tiger, at its most basic level represents certain dispositions of the tiger, certain appearances of the tiger. Dust and so limbs, dust and so dispositions need to compose or mix together in such and such fashion for you to in fact have a form of Tigerness. But you might say that the Tigerness falls under, participates in more transcendental

forms. And in fact, tigerness wouldn't be impossible as a form if there was not ever more transcendental forms. So, you see, this is different from third man argument. This simply talks about the craftsmanship, the perfection of what a tiger can ever be. This is the principle of intelligence, the form of the good. That simply there is no such a thing as a totality of any material particular system, namely a particular tiger. For a particular tiger to be capable of moving to correspond to what actually is, to its

form, it needs to go simply beyond its tiger-ness to ever more general forms, the form of animal. And then from the form of animal, probably another form. The best way to formulate, to make the idea clear is the very idea of soul itself. soul itself, which in Platonic canon you can talk about it as a conceptualizing mind. So in order for the conceptualizing mind, the edifice of thinking, to be able to become

spontaneous, to simply conform to its own form, it needs to unbind what forms it corresponds to, not just the form of the mind but the form of the intellect, the form of an unbound intelligence. Because as I mentioned, that's what I was talking about last session, this very idea of a form that is given in advance for some particular thing to correspond to and hence become perfected is not really what Plato says. This is what Christianity's interpretation of Plato is. Plato does not believe in totalizations or achieved complete totalities.

According to Plato, forms are not achieved totalities, things that you can simply correspond to and once you correspond to them fully you can be said to be a full tiger, the perfect tiger. No, Plato by creating this nested hierarchy of forms he wants to create a system in which all achieved totalities can be said to be illusory. There is always further window of perfection for the advent of the intelligence, for the mind or the soul to grow like a tiger. And I don't think Plato from his cosmological perspective, he wants to say that even a tiger

can become something else by participating not just in its own immediate form which is perceived as its achievable totality but also in a more general form, a more transcendental one, the form of the animal that also includes the lion, the lizard, the ant, so on and so forth. And this is, so you see that this very idea is almost, as Sellars talks, is a cosmological recipe. Because... Kind of like Kant's cosmology. Yes, yes. I mean, Kant and Hegel, despite all of their, you know, critiques of Plato,

Nevertheless, they are extremely coming and influenced by Pelotonic cosmology. It's an open-ended vista of recipes of craftsmanship, and that's basically the task of the soul, to be capable of further and further pushing this. And what you might call to be Plato ultimately calls, this is exactly what intelligence is. creating the intelligibility of more general forms and acting on them, crafting yourself according to ever more general forms. And acting on this intelligibility is the very principle through which intelligence

bootstraps itself from the realm of shadows to the realm of forms. And that's ultimately, as I mentioned, that Plato is in fact extremely subversive. Plato never relinquished the Socratic impiety, the rebellion against God, that humanity, the soul, can in fact become divine. Are the forms... Okay, so there's two ways, as I understand it, we're talking about forms. as as objects that are non experiential right and the forms are you see the

forms is not that they are not not experiential as I mentioned all forms have intermediary forms you see and that was between the fourth segment the third segment, the logos the third segment and fourth segment was the idealities. So even though idealities, what you might call to be non-sensible, they are purely intelligible and hence not something that you experience, but by virtue the forms have intermediary forms, you can participate in them, you can experience them in fact. You can't exhaust their intelligibility by your experience, and that's the point.

You experience them as value, basically, right? As value, yes. As value. As value that can be expanded. As an imperative. Yes, and that's the idea that for Plato, only the intelligible can be expanded, not the sensible. The sensible has its limitations, whereas the intelligible is fully limitless. And by virtue of understanding this principle, then you can expand the field of your sensible, the field of your experience. So that's how he's different from Deleuze? Yes. Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely, that's what makes Plato rationalist. He's the archetype of rationalism and idealism in the non-duplomatic sense.

He believes in this kind of cosmological becoming, but he's also a rationalist. And I fully take side with Plato on this matter. Yeah, I think I get that. Is the highest form... So there's this unity-multiplicity-duality at the highest, or sort of like that leads to like distinction and difference. Like, is it, I'm kind of, I don't know. I don't actually have a clear question. But like on the, like, so in like Deleuze or Nietzsche, like sort of like becoming in itself, right, is sort of the highest principle. Principle, yes. And for Plato, it's, is it unity?

It's being. Yeah. It's being. being in a non-Parmenidian sense as I mentioned, it's the being of thought, being of the form. But so does Apeiron have priority over Peros? No, you see, okay, it's a really, I think, thorny problem. So Plato says that the good is the one. The one is not a number, as we mentioned. The one is a principle, to apyron, to apyron, as Greek would say it, to unvind, to move toward infinity. So Plato says that this is the highest principle, to apyron, or the one, which is now I think

and this is something that Plato brings forth again in his later works in Parmenides and Philobos and Timos, that again his interpretation of the One is not exactly the Parmenidean One. He believes that even though the one to apiron is the first principle of intelligence, namely the good, it requires some source of a secondary principle.

And the secondary principle, according to Plato, doesn't come as opposite to the One. It is the One itself that becomes the indeterminate diodes. So it is not really a duality, in the sense that you have the indeterminate diodes responsible for multiplication of things and to Apiron, or the One responsible for creating intelligible unities. Plato believes, contra Heraclitus and contra Parmenides, that the one itself is that which gives rise to the infinite, to the indeterminate dyad, to the process of multiplication.

Now this is the open hole in Plato's philosophy, that no one knows exactly how Plato says or formulates this idea that the one can give rise to the infinite dire, to the two. Apparently, this was the subject of his lecture, of infamous lecture on the good. And I have read many interpretations of reconstruction of this lecture, one of the best one as I mentioned is Giovanni Reel, but also John Findlay's book on Plato and Platonism. But there is nowhere to be found in the actual dialogues that how these two things are connected,

because Plato does not want to say that there are two dualities in the world, that they come together and then they create this kind of opportunities of cognition and craftsmanship. He only wants to say that there is good, and the good is the one. The one is that which gives rise to the two, namely the indeterminate dialogue, the multiplicity. I looked a little bit at Fenley, and it seemed like he was suggesting that like, it's something like that, something completely perfect in order to be perfect would need to alienate itself from itself, and then approach itself like that that that that that's that that's the idea of

why it needs to create multiplicity yes but I think the idea is that I think Giovanni Riles gives a better interpretation, that the idea of the one to apiron, to apiron is a first principle. Now what from, he gives a very modern interpretation of this. Now for a principle to be X, to be such and such, for any principle, you can interpret

the uniqueness of this principle under two modalities. So what basically Giovanni Río talks about, and I think this is far more in tune with what Plato says in the dialogues is that the good is really the first principle, no question about it, it's the atua pyru, the one. But the one can be interpreted under two modalities, the modality of binding and the modality of unbinding. So exactly that you might call to be two different senses of this One and how they operate, rather than simply these things to be different principles as such,

like the principle of the diode and the principle of the monad. That's not how it goes. The The one as a process, as a principle, can be interpreted under two different constructive modalities, the modality of determination and the modality of indetermination. So you can think of the one as something that expands to a pyro and also as something that integrates things. So it creates the world and then gives beings the opportunity to become perfect. Yes, and this I think is very much in tandem with the doctrine of form, but also the Kantian

interpretation, what you might call it a very modern Kantian interpretation of Plato, that is exactly like a concept. So concepts are one, you have a concept. Now the concept does two things. It can be applied to multiplicities, the one creates multiplicities, basically multiplicities of for example the concept of the tree. The very fact that you can identify particular trees is because you have the concept of one, one tree, the general concept. So this is one. of one application of a general concept to its particular instances. But it also creates a different function and that's what Kant calls a

recognitive judgment. A recognitive judgment is that the very fact that I can identify this as a tree and not as a shovel is because it falls under the concept of a tree, which is one. So it has a back and forth by a modalization process. Falling up particularities, falling under one general concept, but also one general concept being applied to multiplicities of items. How does that answer the question rather than just shuffling it somewhere else? In what way? Well, to say, so that this reading of the one, sort of saying that it has two senses,

how are, like why does it have two senses? No, not two senses. Maybe it's not good to bring it back to sense of reference. You might say it have two functions. Forms have two functions. one delimitation and one limitation. The idea of intelligibility, basically the best way to think about it is the idea of the two functions of what is intelligible. So the intelligible affords you the sensible. There is no such thing as the sensible without the intelligible. That's Plato's idea. But also intelligible is not only allow you to have the multiplicity of the sensible encounters

like shadows and fleeting and transients and so on and so forth, but also it allows you to have intelligible, sensible encounters. The very fact that I have an experience is because I have concepts, because I have intelligible generalities. There is no such thing as an experience without a concept. So those two aspects kind of unfold as the difference between sensibility and intelligibility in a way? Yes, yes. One that allow you to have different sensible experiential encounters with the world, seeing the world as if it is driven by the flux of multiplicities, but also a different one.

That the very fact that I have such and such experiential encounters with the world, namely particular lived experiences, is because these lived experiences, these particular encounters with items in the world fall under the same generalities, the same concepts. Are forms also the rules or laws through which the world is made intelligible for us? You see, Plato wouldn't go so far as making that kind of Christian maxim that has been

made for us. Plato would say that the world has a soul in which we participate, a becoming, second or the part of relationships. And that soul itself participates in transcendental forms which are coming from the good, from the principle of intelligence. So Plato doesn't say that anything has been constructed for us. Plato would say that this is a process of craftsmanship. This is the process afforded by the construction of a demiurgic process to which we all participate.

From this perspective, I have never seen this and I think it would be a bit of a hyperbolic, but nevertheless it's good to make an athlete think about this. this perspective, the vision of cosmos that Plato gives is very much, in this sense, Espinozistic, that the nature is God. But this nature, contra Espinoza, is not something that is driven by bodies, by extensional distribution of bodies in space and time, but it's simply by the distribution of the intelligibilities

that are being constantly excavated and constructed by the function of intelligence, by the function of the good. So Espinosa, I don't think that he, I think Espinosa is not, let's put it that way, that Espinosa is not by any means the kind of materialist, you know, horizontalist philosopher that Deleuze thinks he is. Any person who doubts this, read the proofs, the questions and proofs

in the range of 80s, like I think it's 84, where he talks about the mind and he gives it a very special status in the sense that it's irreducible to this idea of distribution of bodies. So Plato by no means is a materialist philosopher. He is in fact a rationalist philosopher. Okay, should we have a cigarette break and come back and start the demiurge? Excellent. Okay, see you. All right.

I just saw one of the things is that sorry, usually when I talk I can't see the questions on the side i will answer some of these especially maria's questions um

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Sorry guys. No problem. I had to go get a beer. There's nothing better than having a beer and talking about it like it's really morning. Yeah, I'm having a soda and cigarettes for breakfast. I sort of had this question, and I don't want this to be like a detour or a tangent, but I'm wondering if the transcendent-transcendental distinction can be found in the form. Yes, I think it is.

and I think, well, I mean, you know, Plato obviously has some, let's put it this way, if Christianity hijacked Plato and Platonism, it was because there are in fact components of the transcendent in Plato's work. But, as I mentioned, that the idea of transcendence in Plato is fully abstract precisely because it's something that allows constructability.

It is what you might call to be...the good is the transcendence. But the good is not something that like the Christian gods represent a form, something to which humans... So basically in Christianity the transcendent allows for the participation of the particulars, the Holy Trinity, men, humans participate in Christ, and Christ is the intermediary form between men and God. But nevertheless, humans can never attain to the status of divinity.

Whereas in Plato, the idea of transcendent, The idea of the good is in fact an idea that demands humans to reach the status of divinity. And it's precisely because of that it fully corresponds with the Socratic subversion, the charge that they brought against Socrates that is corrupting the youth with impiety, that you can rise about, rise to the status of gods. This is fully in tandem with, you know, philosophical project. And I think the more I have been reading, you know, this difference,

first of all, I mean, people usually interpret that, oh, well, this is stuff that Plato says, there are so, you know, ordinary ideas in Christianity. No, fuck that. It's Christianity that piggybacks on philosophy, not the other way around. In fact, theology has always piggybacked on philosophy. Theology is a bankrupt edifice. It has never managed to come up with its own ideas. And if it comes with its own ideas, they are just impoverished. Philosophy comes... I mean, also... So, I mean, also, I don't even, maybe I probably may have a more favorable view of theology than you do, Reza, but I don't even think that's necessarily even a slight of theology.

I think theology tends to take it as a slight, but as far as I'm concerned, theology, you know, piggybacking of philosophy is not really as much a criticism or value judgment. It is simply just factual. Yes, yes. But when I'm saying that theology, I do not mean it in the sense that, for example, St. Augustine or Aquinas or, you know, any other kind. I'm talking specifically about organized theology. simply organized religion, in the sense that they become codified laws, codified maxims, that they don't see their origins. Yes, if we, for example, we go to kind of the philosophically inclined theology, particularly

through the scholastic era, that this is no longer an issue and cannot be criticized because they admit this in fact. They are proud of this. But when it becomes, and that's unfortunately the tricky part of theology, that theology is in fact an extension, a prosthesis of philosophy, but precisely because it has limitations over the philosophical critique and philosophical objectivity, the so-called courage of truth that Socrates was basically famous for,

it is susceptible to become organized religion or at least serve organized religion. And when I was saying theology, I do not mean by any means theologians or particularly scholastic theologians who were extremely brilliant people. I mean it in the sense that that kind of theological thinking that is susceptible to ossification, becoming part of the monotheistic regime. Religion is despotism. Yes, yes. Otherwise I genuinely do think, and the more you read a scholastic philosophy, you read

Ages, you see that the Enlightenment wasn't something that came out of blue, out of nowhere. The whole idea of scientific revolution and enlightenment, the seeds of it, were planted by these theologians in Middle Ages. which is why I think it's it's been to the the great impoverishment both of um of religion and of science or theology and science that they've they've uh both um sort of pretty militant at least in the United States both um pretty militantly refused to recognize yes the overlap

in their origins. Absolutely, yes. They've both suffered the consequences. Yes, I mean, you can see this essentially as a controversy or the fight between two highly bankrupt cults, the kind of New Age theologians or the theistic cult and the atheistic humanism. And for Plato, he essentially wants, and Finley really, I think, really interprets Plato on this front brilliantly, that Plato doesn't care about this idea of religion versus, he

just believes in philosophy. And the idea is that philosophy called gods of Plato, philosophy called transcendence of Plato is very different from religious transcendent because philosophical gods know as a matter of fact that their death is at hand, that they are simply, if they take themselves as gods in the sense of religious gods, that's just simply an illusion, an iconos, shadows. are achieved totalities. But in Plato's systems, there can never be achieved totalities because intelligibility does not allow this to happen. The principle of intelligence demands humans,

souls, to always treat achieved totalities as illusions, as things that can be overcome. even if that totality pertains to their own form. So I think that makes Plato a very dangerous thinker in the sense that he plants the seed that humanity needs to be overcome because the form of the human, if it cannot be subsumed under more general form, it represents yet another cave yet another prison achieved totality and Jens in spite of how much he

hates Plato that's sort of like what Nietzsche talked about in Zarathustra the idea of the human as sort of like a temporary stage kind of yes I think, have you read Beyond Good and Evil? Yeah, I have. And there, Nietzsche, as I mentioned, he says, there is a famous line that I can't remember the exact phrase, that he says that, you know, the configuration of the cave and the surface is essentially representing a grounded thought, a grounded form of thinking,

that this thought always operates according to some given ground, some solid base, bedrock. And as long as this thought is beholden to this solid bedrock, to this immutable ground, it cannot have, its ambitions are restricted. I don't think that Plato, however, represents this. This is a very, I think, a very traditional interpretation of Plato's allegory of cave, as we talked about. The more you read Nietzsche and Plato side by side, without prejudice, you see that

In fact, Plato, as you say, is very much a Nietzschean. However, the principles under which Plato thinks that this humanity, this manifest humanity, the totality of the form of man, can be overcome, are different from the prescriptions given by Nietzsche. Ultimately, as we talked about this, that's what makes Plato an idealist, rationalist, and Nietzsche a materialist. That Plato doesn't think that you can ever, using the material domain, using the domain

of the sensible, you can overcome this manifest totality of the human. You need to have intelligibilities. And that brought Maria was asking that, where was it? So there is no such a thing as sensible without intelligible. So you can think about this, that yes, there is no such a thing as sensible without the the intelligent, that the sensible are data, the givens. The givens are just illusory shadows.

The very fact that you can distinguish them as sensibles is precisely because you in fact are using principles or methods or measures by which you can organize these sensibilities, these sensible receptions. And what is the intelligible here that allows for this kind of organization is not laws of nature. That's not what Plato talks about. are classificatory generalities. From a modern perspective, you might call them concepts or categories. If you do not have, in a Kantian sense, if you do not have categories,

namely pure concepts of understanding, you won't have any experience whatsoever. There is no such a thing as an experience without categories of understanding that allow you to classify your encounters with particular items in the world, situated in space and time. Gaganistan is the name that Kant attributes to particular items. The fact that you have Gaganistan, particular items, which affect you and you can intersect into how thus and so they are affecting you is because you have objects.

Objects are objects of thought, objects with capital O, which are categories of space and time. at the first, at the most basic level, then categories of understanding, qualities, quantities, modalities, so on and so forth. I have a question. Hello, Christian. I thought that you were not supposed to be here today. Oh, well, I wasn't, but I ended up getting internet from the peoples who house I'm standing. They woke up and I got internet. Very committed.

Go on. I suppose so. It goes back to Theo's question of the transcendent, the transcendental, I think it feeds into the craftsman. It's regarding, I think, the two modalities of the one. And it seems like on one level, like as far as like one as like something that's capable of like unbinding and determining and limiting. It's like that one is like almost like weaponized by like a more transcendent one. It's like that capacity to set limits and to make determinations is rooted in another one.

Right. And then so it's that change of which limiting ones are weaponized, which is the work of the craftsman. Yes. Hard to say that it is really the worst of craftsmen, because the craftsman is the agent of mixture, to mictun, in the sense that you remember that we talked about it for Plato, and I genuinely think that Plato is the first philosopher that ever formulated coherently what intelligence is. And it's very simple. Intelligence is that which acts and expands the order of intelligibilities.

So to act and expand on the order of intelligibilities, you not only require limitation principles, but also delimitations, unbinding principles. that's, for example, you know, making a better cake, a Solaresian example. The crafts of making a better cake require you to know certain principles of how such and such ingredients can be put together, can be combined according to such and such ratios and proportions. Now, this gives you a good cake, but creating what Plato might call the form of cake, the

form of cake requires you to in fact broaden your search for new ingredients composed of theoretical and practical intelligibilities. And that you cannot do it unless you move toward multiplicities, expanding, branching your search into different experiential encounters with new materials, new entities in the cosmological expense. Delimitation or binding, which is the principle, the first modality of the principle of the

one, is the one that allows you to create a product. What creates you a better product is the process of unbinding, branching out, branching out and seeing different intelligibilities, the multiplicity of the universe as such, combining them back together and create more higher order unities. I'm curious about the necessity of self-reflection for intelligence. like the difference between the way that like the tiger genome makes the best possible tiger

versus like the uh you know the the intelligent um uh you know uh human craftsman who sort of needs to like needs to understand in order to self-cultivate Yes, I mean, that's exactly, you know, there is a human exceptionalism in Plato, no doubt about it. All rationalists are human exceptionalists, me included. But human, not understood as substance, simply an open-ended form. an open-ended form that is characterized by the function of logos and language, logic

and language. Animals don't have that. They might have it, but in a rudimentary sense. What allows humans to move to the next level of the game, to the third and fourth segment, precisely the function of logic and language, which we will talk about when we are talking about theatres, because that's the work where Plato for the first time talks about the function of logic and language, and why is it so important for this idea of craftsmanship. Can I ask a quick question? Absolutely, yes.

Are the forms eternal, timeless? The forms are eternal and timeless in the sense that, as I mentioned last week, their instances change. But their form, so their contents, their particular context, their contextuality changes over time. Mutability. But their form doesn't change. Their form is eternal. So forms are eternal because there are not substances to be changed. Particularities that fall under forms change because they are substances.

Forms as such are immutable, are eternal. But are forms made by the demiurge? Yes. Forms are crafts of the demiurge. Yes. So there is a time where they were not, so they are not actually eternal. Is that... You see, I think there are two different ideas here. One eternality, namely the idea that things don't change over time, and there is the idea that whether there is a beginning or not. Having a form, having a beginning, namely coming to the being, is different from the

idea that whether it changes or not. The form of beauty has corrupted by the form of the good, by the principle of intelligence. It always didn't exist, at least in later work of Plato. In Republic, you would say that it always existed, even in the first place, along with the idea of the good. But in later works, like in Philebus, it says that it had a beginning. It was crafted by the form of force, the form of the good.

But having a beginning, this doesn't mean that it is essentially being under the same processes or principles that change regular substances, regular things. for something to have a beginning doesn't mean or basically come into existence come into being this doesn't mean that it is doesn't tell us anything that whether it is going to change or not let's put it that way

so the form of beauty even though it has come to being by the principle of the good this doesn't mean that it's going to change because the beginning the idea of coming to existence does not imply the idea of becoming I have one question so the openness and like the branching out would sort of be like the routing out of like the past dependencies for new forms? Can you elaborate a little bit?

Like sort of like what are the necessary like steps like in advance in order to like realize like this new like perfect ability of the overcoming of forms through like seeing what is necessary in order to get to a certain point? I think Plato would say that you might not be satisfied with this answer, but this is what Plato calls love, eros.

is Plato says that any instance of intelligence is driven by love for more intelligence you can interpret this entirely teleologically as a tendency of a system No, I think that actually answers my question very well. Okay, so... As I mentioned, the idea of demiurge is extremely important in Plato's work precisely because

It is something that brings particularities and generalities, things participating in forms and forms in which particularities partake in, under the same coherent space. in the sense the idea of demiurge is what mediates between the intelligible level and the sensible level. So from this perspective

the idea of Demiurge in Plato as I mentioned to Theo just a moment ago represents a transcendent nos a transcendent intelligence Demiurge itself is not the idea of a good as such it acts like the good so Plato doesn't want to say that nos, intelligence, is the good itself he wants to say that intelligence is the only thing that acts

like the good that acts like the principle of the good two different things intelligence is not the good itself intelligence is what acts as the good it is subordinated to the principle of the good while at the same time it is above the soul and the ordinary world which it constantly produces. So intelligence, in Plato, the nos, is what produces the world.

What produces? This is an idealist thesis here, as I mentioned. You cannot have anything called world or unrestricted universe unless you have a configuring factor. and a structuring edifice called the mind. There is no such a thing as existence. There is no such a thing as a world. Well, there is no such a thing as an unrestricted universe, own world, without the mind that structures it. This structuring means that rendering it intelligently, giving it a structure.

By virtue of giving it a structure, it brings it into light. It gives what you might, in contemporary sense, it is existential quantification. So is it kind of like in Kant, like without the Demiurge, you wouldn't have the Gegenstand? Yes, without the principle of the mind, which is intelligence, you won't have a Gegenistan. You won't have a Gegenistan without object. And you won't have object without categories.

Nevertheless, even though intelligence should not be confused with the good as such, nevertheless, in Plato's work, you can't really define intelligence without understanding. It's a structural connection with the principle of the good. So, in Fideon, there is this paragraph, there is this conversation that addresses this idea

that the principle of intelligence, that intelligence cannot be understood without elaborating, a structural relation with the good. So I will read this paragraph for you. However, I once heard someone reading from a book, as he said by Anaxagoras, and asserting that it is mind that produces order and is the cause of everything. This explanation pleased me. Somehow it seemed right that mind should be the cause of everything. And I reflected that if this is so, mind in producing order sets everything in order and arranges each individual thing in the way that it is best for it.

Therefore, if anyone wished to discover the reason why any given thing came or ceased or continued to be, he must find out how it was best for that thing to be. or to act or be acted upon in any other way. On this view, there was only one thing for a man to consider with regard both to himself and to anything else, namely the best and the highest good, although this would necessarily imply knowing what is less good since both were covered by the same knowledge.

And... I'm sorry, where is that from? It's from FIDO. FIDO? Yes, it's from section 97b8 to D5. So... Plato essentially, I mentioned that, you know, in Plato is the first philosopher of intelligence in the sense that he gives a fully irreducible account of intelligence by virtue of its connection, its structural connection with the principle of the good.

the transcendental and the transcendent dimension. In this sense, Plato is the first author, the first philosopher, who thinks that intelligence, the description of intelligence, the definition of intelligence can never be reduced to a physical description. So, In this sense, Plato chooses more effective examples in Fido, in Republic, in Philippus, more effective examples to show the inadequacy of mere physical explanation to describe what intelligence is.

He takes them from the sphere of ethical and axiological reality, first focusing on Socrates' specific predicament with regard to the nature of the relation between intelligence and the intelligent. according to palato if we restrict ourselves to physical factors in describing what intelligence is we can correctly explain only the manner and the means by which socrates went to prison and remains there in terms of his organs of locomotions bones nerves joints, etc., and they're functioning, basically the material realm.

But this completely fails to give the reason why he went to prison and remains there despite the real possibilities that he had not to go to prison and to have fled from it. According to Plato, so the idea that this is like the last culminating part of Republic, Plato wants to absolve Socrates and gives him that famous status of him being the first philosopher, that he represents the principle, he's the exemplification or epitome of the principle of intelligence, precisely because his actions are no longer determined by the physical description of who

Socrates is, but only by the form of Socrates that allow him, that demand him to abide by certain objective principles that are not given in advance by his physical states. So the reason that Plato goes to prison and abides by his sentence and he doesn't escape

from it, is the true cause of his actions. Namely, he abides, according to Plato, Socrates abides by his forms. And it is the form that explains his actions. Intelligence is an spontaneous domain. the spontaneity of which is, speaks of the autonomy of form explaining actions of particularities,

particular persons or animals or souls that fall under it. This is what Kant would have called the figure of the will. The figure of the will, as I mentioned, is the locus, is the site of autonomy for Kent. Not wilker, free choice, but will. What is will? Will is when thoughts explain your actions. And no matter what kind of... So let's put it that way. Sebastian, do you know any of you know the work of Sebastian Rode? So Sebastian Rode is a very brilliant young philosopher,

whose work centered on German idealism, self-consciousness, and categories of temporality. R-O-D-L, Sebastian Rode. Now, Rodelick gives a really meticulous account of the will as the site of the autonomy of intelligence, self-consciousness, the order of reason and thinking. it goes like this that you see if we have reduced the idea of intelligence to physical behaviors merely intelligent behaviors that sentience have and we are also sentience you know we are animals

but also we are not just animals because we have a different order under which a formal order under under which we fall, and that's the order of reason of self-consciousness. So, for sentient, mere sentient beings, they have intelligent behaviors, but they do not have intelligence in a Platonic or Kantian sense. Why? Because their actions are determined by a specific circumstances. For example, desires fall under this category. I want water.

Or I want food. I'm starving, I want food. So you see that I want food is a foreign cause that completely cancels out the relative autonomy of my desire my desires are not mine this is the whole point of camp the desires can never attain autonomy can never express autonomy because they belong to the domain of foreign causes their cause is coming from somewhere else i'm hungry so i'm hungry i want food that's my thoughts that my practical thoughts in response to these foreign costs i want food so in order to acquire food I do such and such given in circumstance a specific circumstance to bring

the food once I reach the food once I consume the food my action the goal of my action the goal of of my thought ceases to exist. So the actions of the intelligent behaviors, you might say, are actions that are driven by exhaustible ends or finite ends. Ends once reached cease to exist. But according to Plato and Kant, intelligence is not only having this kind of finite ends. It has something more.

It has what you might call to be infinite ends or inexhaustible ends. What are these inexhaustible ends? These are ends of thoughts, of self-conscious thoughts belonging to the order of reason according to Kant. For example, not only I have desires that conform to exhaustible finite ends, but also I have infinite ends, like the idea of justice. I want to be just, I want to be healthy. Healthiness for me is a time general end, is not something that can simply be fulfilled

under this or that condition. It is something that all of my actions exhibit in every circumstance and in every instance. And they can never be exhausted by the result of my particular actions. When I am healthy, when I, healthiness for me is a general thought or justice is a general thought. At this socio-historical juncture I might do this and attain a specific result. Attaining this specific goal does not exhaust the general thought of justice

because all of my actions not only fall under these general thoughts which belong to the domain of intelligence rather than simple intelligent behaviors but also are explained by them, are identical with them. And this is Socrates. Socrates has a courage of truth. It's a thought, it's a form. His actions are no longer driven by circumstantial desires or wants or certain intelligent goals need to be attained

at particular instances of time and once reached are going to go away transiently. But all of his thoughts are now under the form of Socrates. All of his actions exhibit the form of Socrates, the courage of truth. He does not want to leave the prison. He wants in fact to stay there, to set an example, make, exhibit an action that correspond to his form rather than to his physical state of mind. That sort of explains why when he says, like, if he could get out, what would he do?

Yes, yes, absolutely, yes. Or, as I mentioned, I think Foucault gives a really, really brilliant analysis of this in his last lecture. This is exactly what distinguishes philosophers from other souls. not in the sense of today's Charlottes and academics, but philosopher as a specific type of soul, a soul that only acts on behalf of its form, hence can be said to be a manifestation of the principle of intelligence and by virtue of that an exemplification

of the good. A philosopher rejects, like Socrates, rejects to be part of the politics. He in fact says that I do not want to be part of politics, I do not want to die for a political cause. Because for Socrates, politics essentially based on particular ends, particular time, specific thoughts, what you might call to be so so historical struggles at a specific junctures. For him that doesn't really explains the idea of intelligence, the idea of the good. Philosophy does that because philosophy is driven by the

forms, by the idealities, like the idea of justice, the idea of the good, the idea of beauty, knowledge, so on and so forth, that are immutable, that they are time in general, that they can never be exhausted by a certain moment of socio-political action. He is willing to die for philosophy and set an example of his own form, but he's unwilling to die for a political cause. That's what a philosopher is, someone who by virtue of exhibiting time general ends in their pure form can question but also modify, challenge, subvert all time specific ends,

things that appear to be simply ends or toward which we strive, but nevertheless are simply illusions, because they are exhaustive. They are as specific to moments. They do not really express the totality or the unities of forms in their intelligible dimension. Questions before I move forward?

trouble distinguishing how you would be able to determine desire from these higher ends which you're talking about. You see, what are exactly desires? desires are practical pieces of action or practical thoughts that correspond to fulfillable goals in particular circumstances so desires are essentially defined by their finite ends ends that one so what is exactly you see this is essentially an argument about practical reasoning. So we have practical

reasoning about what to do and what to think. I want to do X. A want is a desire and not essentially in a delusional sense desire but simply wants, all wants in a more general sense. If I want to do X then I have a practical thought of how to reach X and to fulfill it. Given such and such circumstances, once I'm in this circumstance I have this practical piece of practical reasoning that if I am in situation CI or circumstance CI I ought to do the X in order to reach Y. I do this

according to some, using some techniques, skills, actions, so on and so forth. Once I do that, this end will be fulfilled in that particular circumstance and ceases to be a want for me. You see, it ceases to be a want for me, like a food. Once I have it, I don't want it anymore until a later moment. But the idea of healthiness or justice, even if you have fulfilled it, a particular instance of justice, a particular instance of healthiness, that idea never goes away.

And there is another really important thing here. You see, desires are essentially susceptible to ranking. I can have more important individual preferences, I can have less important individual preferences and desires, and it goes ad infinitum, right? But general thoughts don't have rankings, that's an important thing. So let's put it this way, I want to be just and also I want to be healthy. One time I imagined that it's raining outside and I had promised my friend to meet him so

So I can help him with his work, okay? But I have already a cold. I do not want to go outside because it's raining and compromise my health. But I also want to help. No matter what you do here, you are essentially exhibiting the unity of general thoughts. At the level of particularities, particular actions, they have rankings. But at the level of general thoughts, you have only intelligible unities. No matter what you do, you exhibit a general thought, exhibit a unity of them. So this is actually a very, very complex issue brought by Ansukom, a British philosopher.

She is the one who talks about a ranking of general thoughts. I really suggest any of you who are interested in this idea of ranking, why is that general thoughts don't have ranking? They have intelligible unity, but no ranking, no hierarchy. Read Self-Consciousness by Sebastian Rogen, which is a very, very sophisticated argument against Elizabeth Anscombe. You see, Maria, desires are defined by particular ends.

You can have desires that originate from general thoughts, but desires in their various specificity, they correspond to particular or exhaustible ends, finite ends, and that's what desires are. Actions or practical thoughts that are being oriented towards such and such ends that are distinguished by their capacity that once fulfilled once reached once attained they go away yes general thoughts can have their own desires but desires but

they are irreducible to desires as such you can have desire for more knowledge knowledge, you can have desire for more justice. But the very fact that you have this desire that can always move, expand this horizon toward more intelligible ends is because you have time, general thoughts, what Plato calls the force. And Socrates, in the last part of symposium where Plato wants to absolve Socrates, shows why there was a mistrial here, to show Socrates is the only citizen of Athens who fully correspond to his form, the form of a philosopher. Are general thoughts, are you able to, without reducing them to mere desires, can general thoughts be described?

They can describe, as I mentioned, they can describe, you see, both desires, or practical thoughts and time general thoughts can be distinguished by the kind of ends which they exhibit whereas for desires you have exhaustible time specific or finite ends time general thoughts or thoughts as such they do not have a specific ends. Their ends is a matter of exploration and this is this is something that Plato always has it in all of his work that thinking

has ends which are not given in advance. They are a matter of exploration and the matter of exploration is that once thought realized that it has something of the good, a form of forms, that it abides by the form of the good, that you can explore the ramification of what it actually is and how it can act, and that's what exactly intelligence is ultimately. So the principle of the good, as I mentioned, is connected structurally with the principle of intelligence. is this idea of this recognition that I conform to a form, to an eternal form, to a time-general

thought rather than time-specific thought. And once I fully appreciate this and my actions now exhibit the time-generality of my thoughts or my form, then I am capable of expanding what I am actually as Socrates, as Plato. So... I have a quick question. Sure, absolutely.

Well, so, you know, this, like when I think of, say, like Zizek's reading of Lacan or something, this reminds me of the difference between desire and drive. Uh-huh. and I'm curious I guess what what it is that distinguishes this reading of Plato as a sort of kind of contemporary ethics as an alternative to materialism that distinguishes um uh sort of you know being willing to die in the name of a form from from something like drive from you know like or or from you know like fidelity to a truth procedure that's um

that's uh sparked by an event i don't think that's um it's just a matter of i think the the focus and the accent of these vocabularies and lexicon as i mentioned plato is a teleological thinker And he would not call it a drive, but a tendency. And that's exactly, there is a word for it, a striving. A striving is precisely this tendency. But this striving, as I mentioned, is not understood as in materialistic sense, in the modern Lacanian, Freudian sense. For Plato, this is exactly what reason is, what intelligence is.

Intelligence is the only thing that always wants more of itself. It is driven by self-love. It's like I almost want to imagine that there's something more, like, more anarchistic in, like, the Zizekian or, like, Bedouin. Ethic? I don't know. I don't really have a clear question. I think with Badu, I think Badu probably gets closer to Plato because, I mean, if this is a problem that interests you, I recommend Bruno Bastille's Badu without Zizek.

Because, like, the whole thing with, like, drive is that, like, Zizek always likes to put a whole lot of emphasis that, like, despite whatever, like, you know, fidelity to whatever, like, mathematical event in Bidou is, there's, like, some, like, irreducible, like, excessive dimension, which is what, like, drives the material sustenance of that. But like, I mean, that's just like an extremely, I think, reified like emphasis on this like irreducible like negativity. So I think I think Padua would actually get like much closer to Plato here and be closer also to like Hegel, too, with regards to like being able to act in accordance with the notion.

I mean, yeah, you might have some irreducible materiality there, but that doesn't mean that commitment to carrying out acting in accordance with your notion is inherently going to fail. It is. For Plato, as I mentioned, it's the duality of intelligence and the intelligible. There is no intelligence without the intelligible. And there is no intelligible without the intelligent. So they presuppose one another in the sense that we cite in the divided line that for intelligence to have in fact the sensible, to have the organization of the shadows and the organization of them into pistis and then further on to Dionysus and other stuff, is that it requires to expand the realm of the intelligible.

It's a striving to excavate further and further the order of intelligibility and act on them. And that's deracination, that uprooting of itself by broadening the scope of the intelligible and finding itself in the intelligibility of being, again, creates further tendency or in a positive feedback loop aggravates the tendency or the striving to become more intelligent. And to the sense that for Plato, this becomes an axiological, an ethical definition of intelligence, that intelligence always needs to maximize its capacities. So yeah, so there's like a degree of accumulation, kind of, that there wouldn't be president of Zizek,

like a sort of like expansion of human knowledge sort of. Yes, yes, yes. That makes sense. Thank you. Absolutely. So just to finish, you know, I want to read before I move forward to read a passage, another passage from Fido, where Plato talks about...so I mentioned that,

you know, intelligence, according to Plato, he's the first philosopher who says that intelligence intelligence cannot be reduced to physical description, physical state. It's essentially something formal. And the true cause of intelligence, in this sense, is the form of the good. Physical abilities or physical characteristics are what you might call to be in Platonic sense co-causes or secondary causes. They are subordinated to the domain of the first causes, basically the conformity to the realm of forms, ultimately the form of the good. So there is this passage in Philemon, where Plato says, now all these things are among

the necessary causes which the god uses as subservient in achieving the best result that is possible, but the great mass of mankind regard them, not as accessories but as the sole causes of all things, producing effects by cooling and heating, compacting or rarefying, and all such processes, but such things are incapable of any plan or intelligence for any purpose. For we must declare that the only existing thing which properly possesses intelligence is soul, and this is an invisible thing, whereas fire, water, earth, and air

are all visible bodies, and a lover of intelligence and knowledge must necessarily seek first first, for the causation that belongs to the intelligent nature, and only in the second place for that which belongs to things that are moved by others and of necessity, set yet others in motion. We too then must proceed on this principle. We must speak of both kinds of cause, but distinguish causes that work with intelligence to produce what is good and desirable for the intelligent from those which, being destitute of reason, produce their sun-dry effects at random and without order."

So, you can, the idea of, you know, the idea of demagogic inter-mediation between the good and intelligence ultimately can be described under three brief, you know, conclusive remarks. is that first the doctrine of intelligence in Plato as a cause of things does not hold only on the physical level that is simply placing intelligence alongside factors and forces of physical nature. Two, intelligence is structurally connected to the good and it is in the good that

we find an indispensable reference point for explaining the generation becoming and being of things. What I mentioned that mind is what structures the world and the difference in the structuring abilities of mind is what ultimately leads to how the structure of the world can be imagined. A fully conventional idealist, never let extremely important I think thesis, that you can't try to in fact even conceive of how to change the world if you do not know

how to change in the structuring capacities of the mind or intelligence. Or in dialectical materialist sense, pace marks, you can't simply go and change the world without not knowing what kind of difference of concepts of the world you can bring about, kind of concepts of the world you can craft. You can't go on and change the structure of the world without not knowing what exactly, what kind of structuring abilities your mind

has, your conceptual abilities have, and then being capable of renegotiating the limits of these conceptual structuring abilities. Three, as the end of the final passage from Fidei indicates, it is necessary if we are to reach this viewpoint, to embark on what Plato calls the second voyage, that is to reach the plane of the intelligence, whose summit is the good, Indeed, Plato says clearly that we must acquire the knowledge of the best and the worst.

It is the knowledge of the bipolar structure of all principles. So this is also another thing that sets Plato apart from the kind of Christian take on the good as a transcendent. that Plato thinks that in order for us to understand how we can conform to the form of forms, the form of the good, and basically Buddhist graph intelligence through this principle of conformity, is not that we should know the best, but we should always see the principles under different polar modalities, the best and the worst, the possible and the impossible,

the contingent and the necessary, so on and so forth. If intelligence is able to attain the status of gods, why isn't that? I mean that sounds like a particular attainable desire rather than a process which is Can you repeat it one more time? Yeah, yeah. I said if intelligence in its striving is able to attain the status of gods that makes it sound as if it's merely a satisfiable attainable particular desire. Yes, absolutely. And that's what I said, that philosophical gods

are different from religious gods. Because philosophical gods are the gods that always their death is at hand. There are totalities which are simply illusions. And they need to be vanquished by the principle of the good. So then the good has this strange character of both being the object towards which we strive or the object towards which things strive but it's also the unbinding of this thriving the unbinding of the striving it's the thing it's um it's something it's almost a it's a not it's a non-being yes absolutely it is a non-being it's tomian it's it's forms are tomian they are they are paramedian non-beings yes which Plato calls them being of course that's what being

it's for later i wonder though about the desire spout by illusion hence wanting to ban all posts can you can you elaborate on this bit more yeah um it's trying to like entangle yeah this difference between desire and is the unattainable like the thing that that desires and is entrenched within and if desire is satisfiable or it's a spouse from these

particulars okay you see Plato tries to distinguish as I mentioned that mere Mere desires, qua intelligent practical behaviors or circumstantial actions, and desires that fall under the general concepts. Desires in themselves as circumstantial, and that's what wants are, individual preferences are. Desires in themselves, in their discrete particularities, are fully satisfiable. But once desires are falling under general thoughts or general concepts or infinite ends,

they are no longer satisfiable. So it's the same source. The desire for justice, the desire for love, this is the desire for a general thought, a general end. It can never be satisfied. And this is like, so this is a more virtuous or more worthy desire. Yes, absolutely, yes. I just wonder, yeah, how do you put that together in terms of, I guess I'm going back to art and like the sensible, and it seems like a poet or a rap citizen that would make, that

would make the audience emote or desire perhaps desire something it seems like they could espouse a desire for a generality like love etc in the same kind of virtuous way sure yes I don't think that Plato would argue against Plato specifically wants to get rid of the poets and artists, artisans, not artists, that's a different thing for Plato's vocabulary, to get rid of them because the kind of, as I mentioned last week, the kind of poets that he's castigating are the kind of poets that in fact do not want to evoke these general thoughts, these virtuous thoughts.

They want to say that this and this about the specific social concrete examples of their time, Athens. You know, basically they, and that's what I think is a really interesting thing. A philosopher who simply tries to take side with concrete political examples, just like a poet or an artist, is a sophist for Plato. doesn't have a courage of truth. It's not a virtuous philosopher. It's not a virtuous court. It needs to be banished. Another question I have, just before we wrap up,

I'm just curious about... just I guess the gap in the cave between the illusion within the cave and outside the cave like there's no causal connection like if you're taking the like the allegory like in the story like the outside of the cave is completely separated from the inside yes and the sun doesn't reach there

but you see that's exactly what a striving is so Plato even the sunlight sun for example you can water it down as a metaphor of the good, the form of forms. Even though the sun rays don't reach to the nethermost parts of the cave, nevertheless there is something that Plato wants to say, something is inside the prisoners, a tendency for a striving, a love for the light, a love for higher order intelligible unities. This love is that tendency, that drive for the intelligible, that is embodied within

every thing that can be said to be intelligent, even if it is mere animal, to which we also belong. So Plato is quite actually liberal in this sense. very is even for me as a rationalist the kind of a fanatic rationalist I won't say this but Plato wants to say this Plato wants to embrace a cosmological aspect of intelligence that even if you are rudimentary intelligence a mere animal a tiger a lion a human as an animal you nevertheless have a germ of this striving and this germ of striving simply starts with conforming to your

own form but if I have the means of reason the means of logos and language that's when I see that my own form is even subsumed under more general form And it is not really the totality of what there is. Any more questions before we conclude today's session? so that's kind of where true philosophy comes in in a way is showing me that there's something

even beyond my fidelity to my own project or or a project that i and some other people are involved in that yes yes as i mentioned that this is that this is very important part of palato that all forms the principle of intelligence in general is always under this different modalities possibility and impossibility what is the actuality of my form and the possibility of perfection that it permits me, that it affords me there is also I need to think about the impossible. From my standpoint as a human, there are impossible forms, there are

something that humans cannot be, impossibilities, like becoming a divine. But according to Plato, it's not just a matter of actualizing the possible, but making the impossible possible, and hence bring it back to the domain of actions. Once I make the impossible possible, other forms to which I can correspond to, I can ruminate and act on how to make the possible actual and become part of that form. Essentially this is an emancipatory project that Plato wants to put forward, that we should not think about the totalities that are given to us,

even if that totalities is a totality to which we are completely beholden, like the totality of being human, the totality of justice, the totality that appears to us as justice, but nevertheless it's not the totality of justice as such and the the good or the object towards which things strive is it's not or is it unified is it what about conflicts in striving You see, conflict is a part of the process of construction.

It's a process of construction and it's fully dialectical. That in fact Plato thinks that his conflict is necessary for the process of integration. Because, and the reason that Plato, as for example, in contrast with someone like Lyotard in De France. I love Lyotard. Is an optimist. It's because he thinks that the domain of the conflicts are essentially conflicts arise from particular experiences.

And so far, as the experience can only be possible by virtue of forms, namely by the intelligible domain, these conflicts will be overcome as we move further and further into the domain of intelligible. Whereas for Lyotard, precisely he has, in tradition of the Deleuze and the continental philosophy, he does not believe in this overriding domain of intelligible against the domain of the sensible. He thinks that our lived experiences create more and more diremptive tendencies, more conflicting tendencies, that simply the intelligible cannot patch, the

intelligible cannot commensurate or integrate. But then again, as Kant would have said, the very fact, and that's what Plato would have said, what is exactly that allow us to have experience, live particular experiences in the first place, if not intelligible generalities, concepts, forms, categories, so on and so forth. There is no such a thing as a given experience for any particular species. So it sounds almost like the hierarchy of forms is important too. Like that once you're striving for forms, sort of inexhaustible desire, there's still a hierarchy.

like it's better to strive for higher forms yes yeah as i mentioned the higher forms are higher you see this whole idea of striving is a process of construction process of demagogic craftsmanship that's you start from the most basic form the form to which you think you are immediately attached. I am a human, I want, I have such and such self-interest, I want to perfect them. But through this process of construction, you also do something, you expand the order of intelligibility of who you are and what your position in the world is. And once you do this, you are inevitably driven forward by this expansion of the intelligible.

And hence, what appears to you as impossible from the perspective of your actuality, your actualized form, proved to be possible. And what is possible proved to be actualizable, to be attainable. And the highest form is the sub-book coming of the human itself. Yes, yes, absolutely, yes. and this is what makes Plato, I think, quite a very subversive idealist, rather than the quietist kind of idealism, precisely because not just the form of the human, but any totality that is considered to be a completed, achieved totality of a form

proves to be ultimately an illusion. that needs to be overcome. Not just on epistemological grounds of expanding knowledge, but more importantly as an axiological maxim. It's in fact you ought to, as a matter of ethics, to do that. Ethics of intelligence. next week is it alright if we talk a little more about non-being sure sure I will still I want to talk about a little bit about third man argument because it's a little bit of a no mind twister very nice is considered to be

one of the most complicated philosophical problems of all time I I think it's kind of fun to just a little bit move toward a little bit less vulgar or popular aspects of Plato toward more technical analytic aspects of Plato and then yes the idea of non-being which I would love to talk about what is it exactly the tomeon for Plato should we read the Permanentis or is that what the Is that right? Okay, yes. So for next week, if you can read the first part of Parmenides, which he talks about largeness, the third one argument. And also I would like you to read, if we can get into it next week,

otherwise the week after, the part in Sophist, It's the conversation between the Aetetus and the Eleoticus range, where they talk about being and non-being. Cool. You're talking about the Parmenides, the dialogue, not the book that you have? Yeah, just the dialogue, yeah. Great. And then if you could stay after, I think Mo wants to meet up with you to talk about some next semester or something like that. Sure, sure. Are there any last questions that people have? No? Thanks very much. It was a great class. Absolutely. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.

Thank you. Have a good week, everyone. Take care.