Plato, a Reality Game in Four Levels (Session 8)

Hello and welcome to the 8th session of Plato, a Reality Game in 4 Levels. I'm going to pass the mic off to Reza Nagristani now. Thanks Reza. Thank you everyone. Okay, so this starts with the discussion that we had previous session about the Third Man argument and the idea that where if what is exactly the relation between universal and the particular or forms and things.

And then hopefully we will get to work a little bit to Parmenides. And also next session hopefully Ray will be present so we'll have some discussion. So one of the, we mentioned that Velastus' exposition on the Thurban argument has some internal inconsistencies and not only that he attributes moves to Plato's

argument which are not supported anywhere in the entire work of Plato and are in fact in contrast and in opposition with the overall scope of Plato's Doctrine of Forms and one of the main one was self-predication. We talked about the idea that the attribution of the quality of self-predication to form creates some unwanted consequences precisely because what it does is that

it's at a very, on a very kind of implicit level, it aligns the distinction between qualities pertaining to particulars or things and qualities pertaining to form. Another thing is that once the distinction between the qualities of particulars and qualities of universals are collapsed, you get another unwanted consequence, which is often attributed

to Plato, but again, I don't think that this is something that Plato has ever said, at least in the sense that Velasquez is trying to present it. This is the idea that reality is consists of degrees so you have degrees of being degrees of reality now i'm going to continue a little bit on this you know thirdman arguments and move toward this

problem that is closely associated with self-predication, and that's, as I mentioned, the idea that reality consists of degrees. If you have heard that Plato, and this is something that also is supported by Aristotle, but Aristotle is usually a bad reader of Plato when it comes to the doctrine of forms, that the whole idea of the great chain of beings, the ladder of beings, is attributed by Aristotle to Platonic doctrine of forms, and that creates quite a metaphysical system that's what you

might call to be extremely inflated metaphysically inflated so So, First of all, when we are talking about degrees of reality, as soon as we talk about degrees

in Plato's work, degrees of reality, degrees of material reality, we are not talking essentially about being, but first and foremost about becoming. Because we mentioned that, at least for Plato, as in contrast to Parmenides, being belongs to realm of forms. And there is in fact a quality of timelessness about being, whereas becoming obviously creates

a temporal duration, has temporal characteristics. Now this is also another, I think it was the other that asked about the question of time Plato or what's Christian, I can't remember. So other than before moving to the discussion, this also creates a theory of time in Plato, closely associated to the thought of degree of reality becoming as that which encompasses degrees of reality and temporal account of time. Plato is someone who believes actually

in temporal account of time, but it's quite interesting that if you are familiar with Parmenides' conception of time, you know that it's essentially a closed loop. It's nothing is ever inside time. It's basically eternal and timeless in itself. Plato has this aversion of this Parmenidian account of time, and that's the timelessness of forms. so how is that the timelessness of forms he endorses timelessness of forms but also at the same time he endorses temporality or gives at least an account

of temporality you see this is becomes the question of how concepts or how of forms can be integrated with the sensible realm. The best way to put it is via Kant. We formulate this Platonic idea that God, in Kant, has intellectual intuition. Insofar as he has intellectual intuition, he has a direct access to reality. His intuitions are not sensible, he has direct access to reality, intellectual intuition.

But for humans, their intuitions are sensible. They come in a flux. And the way that we are being affected by these sensory fluxes takes time, unfolds in time. This is the idea that our intuitions are sensible. By virtue of being sensible, they take time. They, and that's the whole idea of the inner sense in Kant. They come in impressions, reproductions, and anticipations, successive experiences.

Okay? So they have a temporal quality. So, Kant, however, believes that, at least not explicitly, but the way that categories or concepts are introduced are more like Platonic timeless forms. So human thought, or thought in general, or mind, is comprised of two categories of time. One is temporal, rooted in the sensible intuition, which is discursive, it takes time.

And another one is the timelessness of concept. The formal aspect of it, not the content of the concept, the formal aspect of the concept, which is timeless. You mean how the concept of time itself is timeless? No, no, no. Essentially time for Kant only applies to mind. You see, Kant even doesn't believe in time. He's famous that he believes in the transcendental ideality of experience temporality. So he believes that time is sort of a cognitive, psychological, intellectual phenomenon, it's not an empirical material phenomenon?

Yes, yes. So he wouldn't, he would kind of scoff at someone like Henri Bursant or Manuel de Londo's thousand years of nonlinear history or that kind of thing? Yes, yes, absolutely, yes. The whole idea of temporality in Kant is transcendentally ideal. Transcendentally ideal means temporality is unreal. Now, Kant would say, at least in one way or another, would say that this doesn't mean that time is unreal in a physical sense. But simply we cannot talk about it precisely because without using the phenomenological account of time,

because if we talk about physical time without this phenomenological time or temporality, we commit dogmatic metaphysics. Nevertheless, he wants to talk about mind in relation to time. And by introducing forms, the formal dimension of the concept as timeless, and how it is related to the sensible reality in terms of temporalities, categories of the temporal. and this is exactly like Plato so forms are timeless what think about the

divided lines if the fourth segment is timeless but the way that it is connected with the sensible with the first segment that creates a temporality in mind exactly like in Canada because sensible things or sensible sensible impressions, sensibility in general, comes in a flux. The way that things come to our view, we hear them, we experience them, is like what Kant says, one goddamn experience after another. There is a component of becoming in this. And becoming, as I mentioned for

Plato is essentially connected to sensible things rather than to forms. Forms don't undergo becoming. Now one of the arguments of Velastus is that if Plato is willing to endorse the idea of this temporality, this becoming, then he also has to, in one way

or another, endorse a version of degrees of reality, ranks of being. Because that creates, you see, what it does is that, so you say that forms are in connection to the sensible material. Forms are being, sensible materials are covered by becoming. Which means that as soon as we integrate forms with sensible materials, we create a universe in which we can talk about degrees of being or degrees of reality. Some are coming,

some are lower, like purely sensible, some are like what you might call objects, are a little bit more real some like mathematical idealities or logoi are far more real and then you get the reality itself forms but i think this is a fundamentally confused idea these segments in the divided lines are not degrees of reality plato never would attribute degrees of reality ranks of being to these intermediary levels, lower levels.

That kind of relates to Dejardine's thesis about the four different levels and how pistis has to be interchangeable with the first level and dienoia is interchangeable with pistis. Yes, yes. You see, okay, let me read this. That answers some of the questions. So it's famous that

In Republic, Plato places becoming between being, the forms and the utterly non-existent. But there are primofasci two ways in which Plato could have interpreted this intermediate status of becoming. On the one hand, he could have viewed becoming as somehow a mixture of being, the forms, and a not-being conceived as an ontological principle or better stuff.

In favor of this interpretation would be the fact emphasized by Plato himself that to describe a change we must use both is or was and is not or was not. So change, a change we must use both is, was and is not. On the other hand, he could have taken becoming to be an ultimate and irreducible mode of existence on which indeed depends on being, the forms, but does not contain being as an ingredient. This is what you might call to be the Heraclitian understanding of becoming, as the ultimate

mode of existence. On the whole, it's the latter interpretation which comes closest to Plato's thought. Even in the Republic, it finds its clearest expression in the analogy of the line, where the relation of becoming to being is compared to the relation within the world of becoming of shadows and reflection to physical things. By the time of Timos and Sophists, an important change has been taken place in this whole idea of becoming and being and the implicit idea of degrees of reality in Plato's Republic,

which is the only place that you might say that, yeah, Plato actually does endorse some degrees of reality thesis. But by the time of, as I said, by the time of Timaos and Sophists, an important change had already taken place. Becoming is no longer thought to be internally inconsistent. This revolution is signalized in the Sophists by the recognition of an idea of change. The failure of becoming to be truly real could no longer be traced to its supposed self-contradictory character.

Nor could the fact that it cannot be described without using is not, suffice to give it a lower status. For the sophist shows this to be equally true of the ideas." So you see, becoming... Plato, if we take Plato the way that we have introduced Plato as this idealist rationalist, becoming becomes paradoxical, because what is becoming is coming to be and ceasing to be. So it has both ingredients of is and was, temporal characteristics, and is and is not.

So then the problem emerges that, again, the Parmenidian paradox, because is and is not, We have already come to this conclusion that Plato thinks that the difference between these is formal, not substantive. But in Becoming, this becomes paradoxical. Because if you say that is not substantive, then the idea of Becoming becomes impossible, because Becoming is something that substantively comes to be and sees to exist.

So you see the mindfuck here. That's, I think, that's actually quite a genius, you know, understanding of the problem of becoming. That Plato, he sees that becoming is actually quite the bugbear of being. Particularly for his version of idealism. Because it, again, brings back the difference between is and is not. to a substantive level. So, the failure of becoming to be truly real could no longer be traced to its supposed self-contradictory character,

nor could the fact that it cannot be described without using is not suffice to give it a lower status. for the sophist shows this to be equally true of the ideas. It is therefore the categories of dependence and independence, or self-sufficiency, which now take over the major part of the job of ranking the levels of reality. Thus, although the realm of ideas and the world of becoming are both self-consistent, The latter depends on the former and on the respectable or place as well. The ideas are taken to have an Olympian self-sufficiency. After all, if there were no

triangularity there could be no triangles, but if there were no triangles would there not still be triangularity? To be sure, the receptacle appears to be as self-sufficient, ideas as receptacles of participation of things and particulars. To be sure, the receptacle appears to be as self-sufficient as the ideas. But this only means that its place at the bottom of the scale must be justified by other criteria. Again to account for the place of soul within the hierarchy would require detailed analysis of Timaeus.

So in Timaeus, Plato starts developing what you might call to be in fact a doctrine of degrees of reality, but not in the sense that what you might call to be ranks of being. Usually people who, so very briefly before I go to the technical parts, very briefly

This whole idea of ranks of being or ranks of reality that is attributed to Plato is because of two things. The confusing existence with being, one, the objects in the second segment of Divided line are existence. Ideas are beings. Existence are existence participate in being, are not

ranks of being. That's actually quite an interesting idea. That's the whole idea of idea. This is what we talked about, that it's thought according to Plato that gives, or You can say that it's only by virtue of thought that we can talk about existent things. If there was no, for example, forms or concepts of mind or categories, we couldn't really construct an object, existent object. So this is one, existence are not essentially being, or hence they don't fall into this

idea of ranks or chains of beings. That's one. Another one that creates this confusion that Plato in fact endorses a kind of vulgar chain of being or ladder of being worldview is because of the issue we were talking about in the previous session, that particulars are taken to be the copies of their archetypal models, namely forms. You see, this is particularly a misreading initiated by Aristotle.

So lower animals, you might say, are bad copies of higher order animals. And then it comes until you get to human and the soul in Aristotelian movie. And this essentially comes from a bad reading of Plato in the sense that particulars which undergo through the process of becoming or change are treated as copies of their perfect forms. What we talked about is that this whole idea of copy model needs to be completely cast aside.

This is not really something that Plato has ever endorsed. Things are not copies of forms. A dog is not a copy of a perfect dog. That creates, again, the confusion of self-predication. because that attributes to forms qualities of particular things. But universals cannot be dealt with with the qualities of particular things, like a particular is, or what you want to call, you know,

predicates that cover individuals, existent individuals. So two things, very briefly as I mentioned. idea of the ranks of being associated, that is being attributed to Plato, either comes from Aristotelian misinterpretation of Plato with regard to particulars universals, reading

them as copy models or the other one the idea of that's reality what you might call to be is comprised of ranks of beings precisely because in Plato's divided line you have conflated the difference between existence and being which first and foremost belong

to the realm of idols, ideas, forms. So this is I think also a very significant problem and it's a problem that is still a So many philosophers use or think along this line that they confuse existence with being. Plato, what...

Go on, Alex. Basically, you're basically the same... The same... Heidegger was kind of pissed off about people making... I mean, being and beings. Yes, yes. You see, the thing is that's... You know, what you might call to... For Plato, as if Plato was alive today and had a more contemporary vocabulary, Plato would say that being is essentially a philosophical category, not a scientific category. Philosophy not as a discipline, philosophy in the sense of the organon of mind.

Whereas when we talk about existence, then we are talking about a specific domain where some particular thing participates in being. How we can quantify it in a logical sense, what participates in being is what you might call to be an existent. Logoi, if you see in the divided line, what allows us to really distinguish existence

are logoid, they intermediate between forms, being, and individual predicates of particular things. book is read, the concepts, what you might call to be the concept of redness, for Plato might say that, is on the side of being, is timeless. But according to, for example, a logoy, what is logoy in today's term, what you might call

to be the domains of discourses. And for example, let's say, science. A particular thing, this book, needs to have such and such properties. to fall under the concept of redness, the formal concept of redness to count as a red thing. Now a red thing is different from redness for Plato. Redness, if you were going to translate the idea of redness from the Platonic vocabulary contemporary vocabulary you might say that this is what Kant or Hegel would

have called it the formal dimension of the concept the idea the idea A sort of question that I'm having is, what I was kind of thinking, but it might come into context with what you just said, is that I'm thinking that intermediaries would be to a certain extent in existence but through the being that it uh the being in which it participates

um it becomes constitutive of existences with a lower degree of being which sorry i missed i missed your last sentence can you repeat it um yeah so um i here i typed it out So, what would intermediaries be to a certain extent in existence, but through the being that it participates, is constitutive of existences with a lower degree of being, making ideas fundamentally foreclosed to thought, but being what is responsible for the reformation of the intermediaries, or so to speak, the reformation of the intermediaries, or like their modes

of perfection and adequation due to the fact that ideas are anterior to intermediaries which have a certain phenomenalized existential aspect? Yes and no, because it is genuinely, I think, hard in Plato's work to understand that as I mentioned these you know logoy for example as lower beings I don't think that

later Plato would call that these don't have beings in a being like you know as as as of as being of the items they are not timeless Plato would call this essentially are these These are thoughts, not the principle of thoughts. The principle thought is the idea. Thoughts are Logoi. Thoughts, all of our thoughts, have both formal aspects, the idea, and they have the contentual aspects, which is given by the sensible, by the second segment.

In fact, as I mentioned, that this is in Theaetetus, he introduces a new word for this, coma which literally means categories these are categories look away our categories what are what is exactly a category you know a category is something where You have, so basically in a Kantian sense, we talked about this, the categories in a Kantian sense, or pure concepts of understanding are these vehicles of thought that have been

constructed out of the manner, out of the manner by which principles of thought, principles of mind organize particular encounters with items in the world. This is interesting, you see, that categories are not derived from particular encounters with the group. Hence they are not purely sensible. Their material is not, they haven't been constructed from sensible materials.

They have been constructed by the manner through which mind organizes its encounters with particular items in the world. You can, if you were talking about, for example, artificial intelligence, you might say that these are invariances. For invariance detection, you don't need just one or two or three encounters with an object in the world to be capable of creating a category. First you need to have some logical principles and then you, according to these logical principles, you start to order your encounters with these specific items in the world, for example a

visual object and then you create a visual invariance. This visual invariance or category constructed by a logical principle, its material is given by the sense of a route, by particular encounters with material reality. Now this is the idea of taekoma as well, which pertains to the third segment of the divided line, Logoi. So previously in Republic, Logoi were introduced as forms, but in Theatetus, where Plato starts to develop his new theory of form, something that only completes with philebus, he doesn't

believe that Logoi or analytical idealities are forms of mind, they are taikoma, they are categories. And by as such they have been constructed by principles of mind, namely ideas, but their where materials are given by the sensor, round. So there is a certain degree of phenomenalization of the Ticoma? Yes, yeah. And then epistemic multimodality where it's like an epistemic pluralism, but only because

like you can't necessarily converge with regards to the intermediaries, but that the intermediaries are definitely susceptible to a sort of eliminative, subtractive force which sort of calls and refines them. Yes, well you see, this is something that, as you just mentioned, this is a problem that as soon as Plato begins developing his new theory of form, he sees that the problem of convergence arises. So if these are no longer forms, then are they going to converge upon ideas?

But then Plato actually is not someone who wants to patch up things. He would say, he later on in Phideos and Philebus, he in fact talks about this whole idea that even ideas cannot converge. This is really interesting. The only thing that can converge is the good. Good is the principle of convergence, not the ideas. With the understanding that what good is, what the good is for Plato, is the principle of thought as such. It is not a law, it's not a thought. It is the law that grounds thought in the first place.

If you are interested in this particular aspect, particularly this interpretation of later works of Plato with regard to the theory of forms, read the work of Paul Nuttwerk. Could you cut that in please? Paul Nuttwerk. Thank you. He and Herman Cohen were part of, you know, the founders of Kantian school. And Natorp and Cohen started to work, they were both heavily influenced by Plato.

And Natorp started to write a number of books and essays on the idea of the good. Because his project was based on the relation between logic and ethic, which is, you know, that in German idealism these are two faces of the same coin, logic and ethics. So he wanted to show that Plato had already come with something that Hegel or Kant thought

they developed, namely this intrinsic relation between logic and ethics, between the law and a thought that obeys the law or follows the law. And this law is not something that is, the law itself has basically what you might call to be, as I mentioned, is the foundation or the very principle of cognition, the very principle of thought. This is interesting that ethics, and this is already you get it in Plato, the system

of axiology is tied to the system of intelligibilities, theoretical intelligibilities, to the idea of truth and falsity. The same thing you get, for example, in Bernard Cohen and Paul Latour's exposition of how ethics is related to logic. It's because of this relation that the good is the law, the principle of the thought is that which allows us to come with a specific ethical laws, but also with thoughts.

And this law has a logical structure, and in fact you might say that it's the very structure of logic, not formal logic, but thought itself. We saw it, this is exactly what we got in the way that people like Rosemary Desjardins and Nicolas Recher had articulated the divided line. The divided line as a whole is the good. And you can read it as this idea that it founds thinking, it founds modes of cognition. It creates these, you know, movement, the real movement of thought.

This real movement of thought is what Plato would have called ethics, the real movement Should we have a very brief smoke break? Yes. All right, sounds good. Yeah, how about five minutes, ten minutes? Sure. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. my

Hey, Christian. Go. I just got disconnected, actually. Do you have the full sidebar conversation? Only from 8.06 because I couldn't find a cafe that was open. So I was just like walking around town. Well, if anybody has the full sidebar, if they can post it in the side, that'd be great.

I don't think there was that much stuff in it, but we want to save it. Thank you.

Sorry. No problem. Regarding the work of Paul Latourpe and Cohen, Cohen has some of his more religious writing

has been published. I'm not sure, but none of their philosophical works, I don't think that any of Paul Latourpe's works has been translated, but there are some good collections. Sorry? What are the names of these people? Herman Cohen. Herman Cohen. Oh, okay. Herman Cohen. He's a wonderful, wonderful philosopher once. And Paul Natur, which I typed his name on the sidebar. There are a few books, collection of essays on them that are in a detailed, you know, have, deal with the more philosophical writings of these two people.

So one of the things is that, you know, Republic, as I mentioned, Republic, Plato thinks it's a vulgar book. by the time that Theaetetus is being written, and you see the Republic is the Medial Period, Theaetetus is the shifting period, and things like Parmenides, Sophist, and Philebus and Timaeus are the most mature, particularly Philebus. So in Theaetetus, he already gets rid of the idea that Logoi or reasons

or mathematical idealities Are in fact forms. They are no longer forms. In Philebus he goes one step further By even getting rid of this whole idea of that Idus or ideas are forms. He only retain that privileged, timeless, fundamental status for forms, for the good, the idea of ideas, the form of forms. But there are in fact, people have, some philosophers have noticed this, that even in Republic, he

had already some inconsistencies, and Plato notices that finally, he wasn't really quite confident about this idea that for example Logoi are forms, or even ideas are forms proper. There are two instances where Plato says something like that. The good is beyond all forms. Okay? This is one. The good is beyond all things. And in Republic he says being is beyond all things. So this means that once you link these three maxims together, you see that good is beyond

all forms and good is beyond all things. It is the very law, the very principle that makes possible every other thing, be it ideas existent things it's a principle so good is the principle who does form as a principle so the good would ultimately be what's responsible for the refinement of the intermediate yes yes yes let me see if I have some I have some see if I have a

highlighted version of this essay by Paul not work It's a theory of the wheel. I have a three part interrelated question. Go on. One, how can we talk meaningfully about the forms given that their relationship to particulars is not a copy model?

It seems like there's a level of unintelligibility to forms. Forms are, at least in Republic, forms are principles of intelligibility. You see, the intelligible is not the sensible. Things are sensible. Right. You see, in order for this, but the whole idea is that the sensible, the intelligibility of the sensible is not something that is given. It can only be constructed by forms. By how you bring them under forms, you know, by way of these intermediary forms like lokoi, You investigate how, in what manner, in what way do they participate in forms.

Participation of forms is what you might call to be how they fall under forms, how they fall under ideas or concepts. But isn't that a copy model relationship? It is not really. Or an identity-non-identity relationship? It might, yeah, identity-non-identity relationship, yes. So it's not really a copy model. For example, is a tree a copy of treeness? No. Right. It's a concept of a tree. Right. Under which some sensible thing has fallen. You know, this is actually quite a sophisticated theory of conception.

Right. So then actually this is the second parts of the question are okay so thought has for human cognition has both formal aspects and sensible aspects but the formal aspects aren't they don't belong to human cognition the formal aspects are something that. They are not part, you see, it's kind of, this is my question as well, this is something that I have been struggling to understand. I think, so you see in Kant for example, the idea of transcendental is explained or is

articulated in terms of the relation to sensible experience, right? Where Kant says that something can be called...cognition is transcendental in which thought relates to objects of experience, So, this is transcendental. Transcendental, for Kant, is when cognition is related to the object of experience, namely transcendental is being defined at some core basic level in terms of experience and hence

sensibility. So German idealism, after Kant, reinterprets this idea of the transcendental, particularly Hegel. That's this again brings a question that's what is the transcendental itself? The transcendental itself is thought. Thought is really what you might call to be the system of forms.

of forms. Obviously, if we are not endorsed, because if we don't endorse the pure idealism of Hegel, we would try to go for a kind of a normativist with naturalistic term, we would say that okay then where there are where these forms or formal thoughts or laws of thoughts are coming from the thing is that yes they come from natural components there are the products individuated products of years of evolution right evolution of nervous system

and language ultimately but the thing is that this is the condition of their realization the condition of realization should not be mistaken for the how they function how what But they are themselves. This formal, this is, again, this is, these are, you know, why is that we are talking about Plato? Because Plato brings these problems, and these problems are still there in mathematics. This is ultimately the controversy between Brouwer and Hilbert. Hilbert, as I mentioned, is far more profound than Brouwer philosophically.

His ultimate sin is that he thinks about the completeness, he gets the understanding of what actually formal is philosophically, but then he tries to give a very stingy version of it in the domain of mathematics and then say that well this is all there is it's only formal and hence the formal dimension of mathematics is complete which obviously Goodell screws it up for him but but this is the case that's what What is exactly the formal when we talk about formal in contemporary sense?

It's not about where something is coming from, where Allah is coming from. Obviously Allah has origin, right? Otherwise you would be making a metaphysical or transcendent claim, right? we want to be transcendental rather than transcendent. It comes from somewhere, it comes from nature, but what it makes it formal in the last instance is how it is in itself, how it functions according to some internal rules or pattern-governed uniformities.

This is what and that pattern govern uniformity, those laws have autonomy in how they function, not where they are coming from. Obviously, if we are, again, it becomes this whole idea of the distinction between formal distinction of thought and being, Parmenides and being, and the substantive distinction, which Plato shows that doesn't work. You see, laws, by virtue of coming from nature, they have only a relative autonomy, precisely because they have been caused by nature.

And anything whose causality is being caused by nature ultimately doesn't have autonomy. So in terms of their origin, they don't have autonomy. But in terms of how they function according to their own rules, they have autonomy. But this autonomy is not substantive, it's form of autonomy. Autonomy of rules, autonomy of principles, by virtue of which they function, they operate. I was going to say this, this reminds me of kind of Alain Badiou's critique of Nietzsche

and Deleuze, that Badiou kind of says that Nietzsche and Deleuze, like their aversion to rules and forms and identity and that type of thing, their opposition to that is based in a value or ethical value that they don't want people to be constricted in how they think or how they live or that kind of thing. But Badoo says that laws are not a matter of, you know, you know, obedience to authority or, you know, the sort of, you know, trying to, you know, it's just, they're just sort of, they just are kind of like the laws.

Yeah, no, I completely agree with Badu. I mean, as someone who comes from the Deleuzean trajectory, it only took me time to understand that, you know, Badu is actually a fantastic philosopher, regardless of whether he's, regardless whether he agree with his theory of events or his politics or not. I think he's absolutely, he's more of a Plato of the New Age, precisely his war is with the Sophists, with Nietzsche, you know, with people who try to, not Sophists in a kind of vulgar sense, but with Parmenidian Sophists, with Eliottic Sophists, people who try to flatten the difference between thinking and being. Right.

Just because they think that the laws of thoughts ultimately are authoritarian, you know? Right. The truth is authoritarian. Right. But this whole thing of Nietzscheanism, if you take it to its ultimate conclusion, as we see, is once you do collapse the distinction between thinking and being, between truth as law, and, you know, material substance, then you will end up with the most authoritarian, you know, forms of politics and forms of thoughts. It's a debilitating move. It's a debilitating move. Right, which is, I mean, one of the things that, I mean, Nietzsche is by leaps and bounds one of my favorite philosophers,

but that's one of the things I find really tragic about Nietzsche. I mean, as an individual, he's a very tragic figure. I mean, I think that's one of the things that kind of drove him crazy eventually, is that he was trying so hard to create this philosophy of freedom that eventually it's like when everything is free, nothing is free kind of, and eventually, yeah. Yeah. That's kind of Bidou's take as well, is that freedom only really has meaning in contrast to laws. I mean, Bidou doesn't oppose the spirit or the motivation of what Nietzsche and Deleuze are trying to do.

He's not saying they should have been more obedient to authority. He's just saying it doesn't – they had some good ideas. It just doesn't really – they weren't able to really fulfill their own projects. This is true. And you see – Can I add something to that too? Sure, you go on. Just because I think this is actually an incredible problem for Kant, too. And I think this is where the categorical imperative comes out of, is this type of coordination problem to realize projects,

to realize some sort of cooperative idea. and it ends up being sort of... And I think this is why I still am really sympathetic to Nietzscheanism because that coordination problem is... It does seem like it's a struggle or a battle between... I don't know, which ideas stick or which... who can realize that within becoming. I don't know. But I also...

I think it comes back to this question of how forms gain traction on becoming at all, too. I was just going to say, in regard to what you said about Kant in relation to all this, One thing I really, about Leotard is that he, instead of, I mean, Kant, unfortunately, Kant's ethics, you know, very disturbingly were, you know, used by some people in a kind of authoritarian way with, you know, you have to do this, this, this, and this. But with Leotard, you know, Leotard, particularly in the different end, he tries to, you know, Kant's rather than focusing on the ethics of a second piece, he focuses on the ethics of third critique.

And he tries to actually find a way of how rules and Leotard tries to find a way of how rules and laws can ultimately, you know, be a ultimately in the long run, be a better path to freedom than, you know, than anything those of Nietzsche or Deleuze. Right. You see, yeah, no, with Kant, Kant I think is, as I have mentioned, you know, it's just astonishing thinker. I mean, you can't just compare even Nietzsche to Kant, really. I just believe that that would be a really, you know, dwarfing of Kant. But nevertheless, that's like Plato can't like early Plato has some vulgar ideas conservative ideas and

categorical imperative he gives a very profound in fact account of what categorical imperatives are. But when he comes to talk it through in a concrete sense, he really gives a shitty account. But you see, categorical imperatives, ultimately for Kant, are the transcendental itself. Are the laws, are the principles that condition the laws. I mean, yeah, this is sort of, I think for Kant, it's the categorical imperative is the only way that, it's the only way you, he's a bad Platonist, as I mentioned, he's like this young, naive Plato.

Plato, so he wants to kind of, if you see that everything in Kant, the way that Kant really elaborates these laws is quite good in terms of transcendental self. Well the way that he tries to make it, you know, to give good examples, concrete examples, You see that in those concrete examples, these categories of laws, of moral laws, become almost transcendent, beyond reproach. Hence, you can't really question their intelligibility anymore.

And that's why you see that these transcendental idealities ultimately can't associate them with God. This is the God hypothesis in Kant, that God is the hypothesis that Plato doesn't do this. Plato tries at the end in Philebus to show that the good, the foundation of the law, is nothing transcendent. It's something that's what you might call to be the principle of cognition. The principle of cognition. So whereas Kant tries to dissociate ethics from cognition in order to uphold the categorical

imperative, Plato at the end tries to join, shows that ethics is ultimately logic, is cognition itself. is a this is a fantastic I think a revolutionary idea and the only philosopher that I think gets close to this is Espinoza right that will this is real this happens in the youth of pro to where we're essentially Socrates argues that this the question he asks is does God command the good or does God or is the good that which God commands? And you end up having to say that God is subordinate to

the good. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. As I mentioned, I mean, Plato, you know, Plato, obviously, he talks about God in so many places, but that's not the God we know. And obviously when he talks about God, even that God that Plato cherishes, the divinity itself, ultimately is subordinated to the good. And the good is the principle of intelligence, is the principle of cognition, to which all beings can participate. human and human is really an exemplification of this participation and by virtue of this Plato like Confucius believes that there is in fact nothing

that can bar this possibility of human become a god literally simply by participating in the form of the idea of the good. I mean this strikes me though as like even it solidifies the Nietzscheanism of I think of Plato in some ways that the good is or that God is subordinated to the good implies You see, it's not Nietzschean. I see, you see, when you read Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche gives a very naive interpretation

of Plato without realizing that Plato is really the thinker of the abyss, is really the thinker of subversion. And he obviously, you know, this is what I, I mean, the whole course is about this, that Plato is not Platonism. When you really read Plato, you see that it's a fundamentally different person that you understand orthodox, from an orthodox Platonist philosophy. I think the issue kind of comes from, I mean, it can definitely be understood in terms of Deleuze where Deleuze's event is like this obscure corrosive negativity but it's not

anything determinate. So you can think of the abyss that Nietzsche wrangled with as this large body of indeterminate by this large indeterminate obscure body. Yes. And, I mean, this is this large, obscure body is why Vadu wrote, calls Vadu Deleuze Inglitari's work potato fascism, you know? Yes. It's for that obscurity. Absolutely. Why did he call it proto-fascism? because I remember there was a time, it was relatively early on,

when I was getting into academic philosophy, and I felt like Deliz and Guattari's work was sort of like, you know, the key to freedom, and I was very, I remember being very disturbed. We have all been there. I remember being very disturbed by that, it seemed like a very killjoy comment by Badoo, but I guess looking back on it now, it doesn't seem like it was quite as, quite as killjoy as I thought it was. Yes. No, you see, basically it's, it's a little bit like, um, Badu's, Badu's take on Deleuze and Quattari's, uh, uh, combined work is a little bit like what you were, um, uh, Theodore, what you were saying about, um, about Nietzsche and his, his, um, you know,

theory of, you know, anything goes freedom also being kind of a route to authoritarianism? Is that a little bit like what Badoo's take on like A Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Edifices? Well, it's been a while since I've read it. But my friend is high. He sort of brings in this sort of breeding, and I am pretty sympathetic with it. It's basically like the fact that Nietzsche and Deleuze bring in this for them, the abyss is like this indeterminate body that sweeps you away and that indeterminacy doesn't have any like internal regulation of the components that are within it and so if you this is why Reza I

think says that Plato is the true thinker of the abyss is because Nietzsche and Develos get sort of fascinated by this sort of indeterminate obscure abyss whereas Plato tries to formally operationalize the abyss in its sort of constitutive lovely power yes you see is this is all I can say is that the one who can conceive of an intelligible abyss is capable of navigating it, is capable of breaking apart one firmament after another. But a person who doesn't believe in the principle of intelligibility, like reasons, like Nietzsche,

ultimately is going to end up on his back, supine, staring at the sky above, thinking it's the abyss. Well, okay, I feel like I need to defend yourself. of course I'll do a terrible job but the I mean was it just two weeks ago we ran into this strange thing that happens in Plato where thinking is that which tries to create these totalities

but it cannot and thinking does that but a thinking that is invested in the good is the one who can is a kind of a thought that is capable of freeing itself from the trap of totalization that's that's the that's the thing the thoughts or logo or reasons can be trapped at any moment by illusion of totalities. I mean, in that model just seems like, you know, we've now made thought, it's not an

object that, or it's not a, it doesn't belong to human intelligence anymore, it's something that human intelligence partakes in. Yes. So it seems so similar to the way that Christian is talking about this sort of like Deleuzian just force or an ancient will. No, but you see, that's the thing. It appears to be transcendent to you, but it's not transcendent precisely because what is exactly what human intelligence participates in. As I mentioned, Plato, unlike Kant, tries to mend the connection between logic and ethics,

and we know that the good is ultimately an axiological principle, right? So Plato wants to create the best con in the world, the long con in the world ever imagined by a human being. Let's hypothesize the principle of the good, right? As the principle of intelligence. We don't know what it is, but we know that it involves with all those segments of the divided line, the whole idea of separation and integration of these materials in order for further intelligibility.

So human intelligence only shows a phase of this divided line where these things are integrated. But by participating in this hypothesis, is capable of actualizing it, determining what it is in fact, the principle of intelligence. Precisely because the principle of intelligence is the ethics of intelligence, and the ethics of intelligence demands what? Expanding the order of intelligible. See, this is a long con. This is a fantastic, I think, Plato needs to be rendered sexy rather than, you know,

this kind of old fart from Sidious Taste of Athens. He actually creates this kind of abducting man from the dirt and water to something else. So it's almost like you'd be willing to, and maybe Plato too, like, dispose of the principle of the good if something better comes up in its ability to, like, delimit reality and constitute it? I don't think so, because you see, this is the point that the good is the principle of

cognition. And any other alternative other than cognition, or namely a principle that allow us to expand the order of the intelligibilities, would lead into a totality. At some point we say that this is intelligible, hence we stop at this point. This is the end of our history right but this is that's where the real movement of thought comes good is the communism the real movement of thought that constantly grinds through anything resembling the end of history to achieve totality the illusion of

perfection beat God human or something yes any more discussion Hunter Maria I I mean, it seems kind of like, in a way if this project is sort of continuing a Nietzschean, Deleuzian vision of emancipation by appropriating Plato for it and kind of throwing Nietzsche and Deleuz both under the bus, sort of like,

the difference is really this like convergence or this like accumulation of increased knowledge. that's like something that Nietzsche and Deleuze don't really have because they flatten thought and Yes, it's not just the accumulation of knowledge, but you would say that Deleuze and Nietzsche as you know Ray would say is that they have flattened the distinction between rules necessary for cognition and emancipation, and understanding of the constraints required for the enabling

of the project of freedom, which is our loco, our reasons, and how they can be served to advance toward the ideas, forms, and on the other hand, laws in a very, what you might call to be, what Plato calls conventions. So once you flatten these two, you take all rules to be conventions and get rid of the whole idea of this idea what are exactly rules of rules of rules that allow us to

cognize to expand the order of intelligibility to see constraints of reality so on and so forth in order to be free then you cut yourself at the knee you you have to come up with an alternative and any other alternative that you come up with is going to be a variation of the given whether it's nature whether it's God where it is material reality where our pre-individual singularities so on and so forth you know and then hence comes back to this idea that these are all because without thought without something that can question these domains and expand them, and without reason that has the power to do

so, you get trapped in a totalized version of these things, namely nature, technology, individual singularities so on and so forth and hence they become unemancipated right to me I guess this this seems sort of well it does stay with this Nietzschean-Delusians project of freedom it's less like their version of freedom and more the freedom toxical freedom based on you know constraints which of you know of Laetitard, Badoo, Derrida, Nancy, Agamben, the sort of the

more sort of the more contemporary sort of legal freedom philosophers if that makes sense? Yes I mean the thing is that freedom is ultimately what is exactly freedom? So freedom is comes in two varieties, the negative freedom, freedom from something, and positive freedom, freedom to do something, okay? So freedom from something is essential, but once you take it as sufficient to be the core idea of freedom, it can be pathological,

precisely because ultimately leads to freedom from what makes you free freedom from the thoughts from the kind of you know resources that allow you to be free so it it it it comes back and eats itself if it is right what freedom to do something yeah that's that's a niche and yeah but freedom to do something positive freedom is the idea that ultimately autonomy are properly understood is something that requires theoretical and practical reasons, namely not only the constraint of reason but also the constraints of reality and how they need to work together in order

for to enable us to transform ourselves, to have a different self-conception of ourselves. That's where the only autonomy lies. And obviously, you know, this kind of freedom is a task, a task. And there are rationalists who only go for positive freedom. I think that's also a mistake. You need to have both because this is essentially a Foucaultian idea. Foucault, he might strike you as an anti-rationalist, but he's a social rationalist, in the sense that Foucault shows all of his books are about this, that the labor of positive freedom requires

also the consciousness of negative freedom, because you just can't go on and build this process of project of emancipation without not knowing that the very acts that you do might in fact have been already subverted by powers, by social powers. There are sometimes you need to be freed from these constraints, constraints of certain you know, systems in order to be capable of engaging in the positive freedom. So this is a matter of subtlety between how you can consciously integrate these two together

so they can reinforce one another rather than excluding one another. So what's the relationship between the good and the unconscious on the one hand and capitalism and their relationship to each other. Like what role does capitalism play in the good? If Plato was contemporary, he would say capitalism is an idea. As an idea, it might be good. it might be bad, it's good you participate in it.

Once you take it as a totality, as something that represents every, basically can fulfill the requirements of other ideas, of other forms, that becomes pathological. And that's, I think, by the new identification of Plato as a first communist, is quite close to this, that capitalism is a form. Capitalism has been emancipative, you know, capitalism has been emancipative. But capitalism comes with a price, precisely because it creates a cognitive dimension wherein

you take it to be the ultimate form. But Plato says that no idea can ever be the totality. Every time that you see a totality, that's where you need to know that this is not the good. That this is not the good. That this is just an illusion. But how, and what sense do you mean the idea of capitalism is a totality? You said totality in the sense that capitalism, a historical understanding of capitalism is achieved totality in the sense that it becomes, it represents itself as the engine of time

and the pilot of history, the pilot of history, it becomes the pilot of history, that there is no path outside of history which is not through capitalism. This is the idea of totalization in progress, or achieved totality, which is something that Marx already comes up with by reading of Hegel. Achieved totalities usually surface at the level of historical judgments, historical consciousness. In capitalism, you can say it's a mode of cognition, even not a mode of economy, ultimately

a mode of historical cognition that represents itself to be the totality of history. Basically you can't find something that ultimately doesn't lead to capitalism or doesn't move through capitalism. This is what I mean by totality of capitalism. Quite a Hegelian understanding of totality. It sort of seems like... I'm sorry, go ahead, Andrew. Well, what about the unconscious? That is really a difficult question, I think. I think for me to be capable of thinking about this question, I need to know what exactly

is meant by the unconscious I hate to jump in but really we hello as a you we really speak this this concretely about unconscious without forgetting that this was a conceptual category created in order to sort of like bifurcate something at some point in a history of consciousness so you have to keep that in mind when you ask what about consciousness because otherwise you get caught into like thinking that consciousness is something like concrete that existed throughout history and it's always been there and you know that i mean i don't know if i'm maybe i'm wrong but like but like for me it's it's an interesting idea and i'm interested in it and there's some uses to it

and i want to learn more reza's been writing about like the importance of psychoanalysis on facebook a little bit lately hunter and mo i no i you see don't take me wrong uh this is it's not that i do for example try to kind of question that there is no such thing as unconscious no absolutely i have read i have read about it it seems to me that uh when we talk about unconscious um we're just talking about a different kind of consciousness sorry that's it i'm gonna like turn my microphone off sure uh when we talk about uh unconscious uh it's very easy to bunch up uh you know uh lump together a lot of problems under the same umbrella term unconscious even when even

if we try to narrow it down to just psychoanalytical unconscious but i think you are probably referring to the social unconscious, like a kind of a geistic unconscious. Yeah, a kind of collective libidin. Yes, collective unconscious. That becomes even more difficult. I mean, to be honest, I really don't know. I need to really understand what exactly we mean, at least philosophers, when they talk about unconscious. Is it, are we talking about, are we talking about simply what you might call to be kind

of material forces? Yeah, I mean, like a power of dynamical systems to drive becoming that is not representational. Yes. Well, the thing is that... Go on, Kristen. I was gonna say, I think Lacan does give some pretty good provisional answers. And he wasn't a neuroscientist, he wasn't at all the best mathematician, but he did have an explicitly mathematical comprehension of it. I wouldn't say it's, in the way that he puts it, I wouldn't say it's the unconscious doesn't have anything to do with representation. It's very mathematical. He talks about the chain of signifiers, very linguistic, inferential.

So, I mean, it seems to me that the problem kind of revolves around what sort of, like, functional dispersive systems combined with, like, principles of neuroscience are sort of, like, constitutive of, like, the obscure habits and also, like, their structural relations to problems of capitalism and what I mean this is a very provisional answer but I you know I think looking at the unconscious as algorithmic is is very a

very useful perspective and then you know the problem of analysis sort of becomes what types of interventions are able to give the unconscious, are able to restructure the unconscious in order to give it more continuity and traction on reality, which entirely demands lots of discontinuity. My friend Atai talks about, he uses Kabbalah and basically like the breaking of the shells in Kabbalah is very much a discontinuity, a rupture, a lovely force of the particulars of experience.

And so then the problem becomes how to heal the unconscious, so to speak, which, or in the context of Kabbalah, it's really interesting because mother is mathematics. And so there becomes this issue of how, of like wielding the body of math, how are you able to level the Kelly pot, the shells that people are trapped in, in order to create this healing and to reconfigure sort of the algorithmic and the hunt.

I mean, I definitely think a real engagement with mathematics and neuroscience would be crucial for a long-term realistic approach to this problem. And you see in Plato a few times, like, Socrates will say that he had a dream or something, and Desjardins sort of describes it as these not-yet-anchored opinions. or hunches or inklings, and then she sort of contrasts it with Aristotle's bottom-up approach to Plato's top-down approach, so I think maybe there's a little bit of something possibly, like this awareness of cognitive science, like proto-cognitive science there, possibly.

Yes, those are adumbrations though. I mean, it's famous that Socrates had already this idea that he has been infected by some divine force. It's kind of what you might call it to be the adumburation technique, which Socrates is famous. Socrates is not like Plato who uses different things. very intuitive thinker and he uses adumbration that's abductive reasoning but the thing is that all of these still it's not really clear to me that unconscious is not exactly the same as something not see not being exposed or

explicit to up to consciousness you see two different things so when hunter talks about material forces or material powers which which is more of a kind of in the tradition of you know marks psychoanalytical marks in reading I don't I think we need to be very careful and as I said I really genuinely don't know I haven't thought about this in detail, but all I can say that we need to be very careful on when we're talking about this kind of material forces or powers, networks of power as being represented as unconscious.

We need to be careful of when we are saying that they are not represented, they can, they, you know, two different things. Unconscious being not represented doesn't mean that this is unrepresentable in principle. majority I have seen of people who talk about in fact unconscious in terms of these material forces, they go for the second one, that these are in principle unrepresentable. But that again comes back to the rationalism charge, that how can you in fact diagnose

the constraint of these material forces, to say that they are unrepresentable, putting a priori limit both on what can be represented and also on how why is that they are unrepresentable that that well that doesn't work that becomes what Brandon calls the semantic naivete but Reza doesn't that tradition of unconscious that the talking about unconsciousness comes from talking about at least simplified by by Freud himself about his representation in dreams I mean concept of unconsciousness came with a concept of his representation now other people might have dismissed that or or not I'm not

sure because I don't I'm not a big reader of hard to say but I don't think that's really the case because for Troy for Freud the unconscious is always coupled with the idea of trace okay what is exactly trace like a trace of trauma trace is is a representation a representation of the unconscious realm but a representation that is cute it can only be purely approached to experience to experience okay this is interesting that's traces trace is is a representation is you know it's trace it back to some origin of hysteria right but for Freud

different from Kant or other rationalists is that this trace is not something that can be represented by the logic of for example thought but is something that needs to be tracked through the structure of experience itself. So first I think more is not that kind of someone who says that unconscious is unrepresentable in principle. And as I mentioned, not every Marxist who believes in fact, for example, something like social unconscious, believes that the unconscious is unrepresentable in principle. But unfortunately some do. And as I mentioned, that leads to problems.

So if it is really the case, and it comes back to the question of how this, you know, the question of the good capitalism and the unconscious, then it's the good, at least the good for us, the good for us, not the good in itself, requires the intelligibility of these constraints that whether they are in fact such material constraints or not and if there are are we capable of modify such constraints overcome such limitative terms imposed on us by these social powers and then that becomes

again backs the idea of emancipation I always I always think of I think of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive as one of the first of all one of the best movies ever made but also like a great film that illustrate how unconsciousness or like representations or traces of unconsciousness are are limited by the structure of experience. It perfectly illustrates that in the most vivid way for me. Kafka. For those who've studied that film, because that's what really that film is about. It's about how this 75% of the film, which is the dream that the blonde girl has in the beginning of a film,

she goes to sleep, already has taken out a contract on her ex-lover's life, goes to sleep, and re-experiences the whole, whole relationship even the fact that she's gonna wake up and kill herself is already in the dream she knows she's gonna kill herself once the news comes or she kind of is unconscious consciousness of it and basically she wakes up and kind of like finishes finishes the job and so I think I think that's to me that to me it shows actually how how it is possible to somehow show this trace or like deal with it I mean I want to hear Hunter's own thought about this but very briefly this is I think in order for us to really to be capable of answering

like even in a very rudimentary sense the the connection between the good as as a principle of what you might call to be emancipation for example capitalism as a state of totality in history and the unconscious namely power and material forces that have been subsumed by the system of this totality, by capitalism, we need to give a few accounts of various things. One is that what is exactly unconscious? Do we mean that simply we do not have the conscience of it, or it's not basically, simply it doesn't

fall under consciousness, or it's something that actively impinges on our cognition, on our consciousness. It impinges and also even drives. Yes, drives. And if that's the case, then we should say that whether it is unrepresentable in principle or it is representable. Because that ultimately comes whether it's intelligible or ineffable, right? So it's almost like you're saying that the idea of the unconscious is the final frontier before you arrive at the Philosopher's Stone or something. Like, that the idea that the unconscious is an absolute limit to thought that drives it, in the way that, like, I don't know, Zizek talks about it or something, is something that thought itself could sort of understand and break down and transcend.

Yes. Yeah, I mean, I genuinely disagree fundamentally with any kind of philosophy that gives a priority or privilege to unconscious as some sort of drive for thought. Because the very fact, this already creates a very sophisticated maneuvering, because the very fact that I had diagnosed this being the engine of thought. means that I have already detected constraints and I have already used thoughts in order to talk about unconsciousness okay which creates again

then then how can really unconscious if I was really driven by things and how is that I can in fact diagnose such a you know principle that drives thoughts that's comes back to the idea of Plato that we're talking about that the or or what Brandon calls it's a semantic naivete that's when we say that all all forces of cognition and reason have been subsumed by the social and power relations of capitalism, then by virtue of this, I have already robbed myself of conceptual resources to make this diagnosis in the first place.

I don't think that people like Lacan exactly make that error. And I think it's very sympathetic a little bit to Plato. You know, and you can think like the effort to unbind our constraints as the real movement is sort of, it ends up going in a liberating direction. I think the point is that you can represent the forces of the unconscious, and you can mathematize them in order to unbind them.

And with respect to – there's one other thing I wanted to say. Just go on. Let's see if I remember. Okay. Okay. Well, what about on the practical level? Oh, yeah. Okay. Collective designer is a real force to be reckoned with. Sure, it is. It is a force to be reckoned with, but so has other forces, you know. But the thing is that we cannot... We cannot... Two things.

In order to really understand it's a force to be reckoned with, and to properly handle it, we need to prioritize conceptual cognition. One. Two, reckoning with the force of desire doesn't mean that desire is something that is foreclosed to thinking. Hence, ineffable, right? So, which again comes back to this battle between the rationalists, the idealists, the transcendentalists and the empirical the various proponents of the of the

critical theory or what you might call to be the materialist materialists in a sense that they are coming from a they don't believe in the in a formal distinction between thought and being but I think that you can't really have any coherent materialism without in fact being rationalist without being at at at least as the most minimum level, understanding one, there is no a priori limitation over what can be represented, one.

And two, the source of representation is conceptual cognition. I remember I was going to say it. It has to do with your response. I briefly mentioned this before, but I mean, This gets to the crux of the debate between Zizek and Bajiu, because basically Zizek says, well, fidelity to the event, you need some sort of irreducible object A or desiring force that sort of constitutes the material force which backs your conception.

mathematical constitutive trajectory and then Badeau's like well I mean yeah of course oh and then Zizek also says that and this is why he I think Zizek is way more Kantian is because for him there's the abyssal acts which sort of redetermine the formation of the unconscious But with Bidou, the event becomes something very determinate and mathematizable. It's not an abyssal, indeterminate act. It's something that has a determinate range in the scope. So I think the emphasis that Zizek places on Bidou requiring love and religion to back the fidelity of the event,

I mean, he's totally right. But that sort of irreducible material force, I don't think it is irreducible. I think it just remains to be delimited. And so like following Bidu, you could say that, well, if you've got this irreducible material force, love or religion or whatever, like any sort of obstacles that come in the way because of that irreducibility can be entirely leveled with conceptualization. Yeah, no, I agree on these points, and I just remembered something in answer to Hunter. I should have asked you, when you said that desire is a force to be reckoned with, I should have asked you,

what do you do you refer to Plato's concept of desire or desire in contemporary sense like kind of a delusion sense because if you because Plato has a theory of desire that's called yearning philia or striving this and that's that's that's a rational desire it's also it's really interesting to know that the theory of yearning, going desire for Plato, is aware he gives, he shows that he is not a thinker who believes in the distinction between form and matter. He thinks that this is a pseudo distinction, we shouldn't even talk about this, form and matter. Form

matter the distinction between them is a pseudo distinction he is a met up ultimately the metaphysics of Plato is based on the distinction between process and place process and place process is ultimately what yearnings are for Plato or desires are, which are, you know, they have different rankings. They have different rankings. They can be, you know, simple pleasures, they can be pleasures mixed with reasons, or completely rational. So he has, so it also comes back to that idea of becoming. The idea

of becoming Plato, this old paradox of becoming, Plato becomes almost nonexistent once he gets rid of the distinction between form and matter, and instead refounds metaphysics on process and place where processes can be talked about in the context of active and passive powers from which they arise. Does he talk about learning in the syllabus? Well, actually, the theory of yearnings or basically this process place and active.

Yeah, he says, like, love is to bring forth upon the beautiful, and Eros does not give up. Yes, but also Kimals. Kimals is also where he first introduced this. sorry chagis i just muted you because of an echo but you can mute yeah and the republic in book six he says eros does not give up until with that part of the soul whose affinity makes it possible it can lay hold of and enter into union with the really real and so give birth to intelligence and truth so that's for the yearning yeah yes There is, I mean, it's very interesting that the metaphysics of Plato,

Sellars at least thinks that, Velasquez also thinks that, they think that it's Heraclitian, not Parmenian. His rationalism is Parmenian, his metaphysics is Heraclitian. So, I mean, his idea of desire is based on his metaphysics of process and place, which is the fundamentally Heraklitean idea of becoming, rather than the distinction between form and matter. That does sound a lot like Deleuze. Without talking about Deleuze, I sort of want to clarify some of my own thoughts about how

this version of Plato is being talked about. It's, well, one, you can partake and participate in the movement of communism or of intelligence, but ultimately it won't be for you, and then, I mean… It would be for intelligence, yes. Because once you take that it is for you, then you have taken yourself as a totality. Yeah, exactly. And you see this is basically, isn't it the whole idea of the intelligence that we are using right now, dealing with the same problem, that we think that humans basically have the rights, exclusively have the rights of intelligence,

and precisely that they are the only species that can enjoy these rights, right? But once we understand that, in fact, we cannot be intelligible even to ourselves other than by participating in this project, we give rise to a different form of human for which we are just simply was an illusion in history. it seems like Diogenes looking for a man with his lantern in broad daylight I mean I think Deleuze's criticism of like the image of thought is that the image of thought

makes thought a reactive it makes it reactive rather than active in the sense in the Nietzschean sense of the word and that what thought actually is for Deleuze and I think for Nietzsche too is that thought is it's not submissive to being it's not it's not docile or submissive to what is it it uh takes part in the creation of being but that I think there's an there's a a dark twist to that in that its thought is actually taking part of the creation of intelligence, but not for the thinking subject, intelligence for itself. And then…

Yes, but it translates, you see, Plato, I don't think that… as I said, Plato makes a distinction between good and the good life. The good life partakes in the good. It's a life, a mixed life that partakes in the good, right? And the good life is the life of the thinking subject, of minds and souls, right? And gods or animals. But the good is ultimately what there is, what the being is, what the principle is. And in fact, the whole idea is that as soon as we think that the good life, our good life,

is the good itself, that's when it becomes an evil life. I mean, this is sort of why I'm curious why I use the term, why I use this word good. It's called agathon. Agathon. Agathon. Agatha, you see the idea is that the good, what you might say, why is it good? Because Agatha means something that can, a unity, an intelligible unity, for which every existent being.

what also later on Plato would say form, as strives. That's called the good. I think you bring up Theo. Agoston is very different from eudaimonia. Eudaimonia is a good life, happiness, welfare. Agoston is very different. Go on, Christian. Sorry. One more thing just to add on to it really quick before is that it, yes, capitalism might shed, you know, shed its skin and become something else. But I don't understand where, like, there's no reason to be utopic about that because capitalism's shedding of its skin wouldn't be for the thinking subjects that we are now.

it would be for intelligence itself right so that's why I think it's good for intelligence first of all I don't have any problem with something being utopia I think we need to embrace the thought of utopia not not in a kind of a cheesy sense like Thomas more but what is wrong with utopia for a striving for utopia right because what is utopia exactly the thought from nowhere and nowhere this is what utopia means and no no place that is outside of time and a specific a state of a specific place in history

What I was going to say is I think you're right Theo to emphasize the way that Bill Lewis critiques the image of thought, kind of gets into the problems of totalization that Reza brought up. And you can almost see this in the evolution of Reza too. Like in his differential cruelty way back in 2009, he talks about the ontological cruelty which is kind of like this obscure determination but then problematizing it into this, like problematizing it along the lines of justice which then, you know, from there it's like

like you can sort of see how Reza fell on a rationalist path because he saw that this sort of obscure cruelty in DeLose needs to be rendered sort of determinate and explicit in its power to level reality, destroy images of thought, and unbind limitations to reach greater expansion and freedom. I refuse to comment about all their work. I was about to ask you to comment on the capitalist necocracy. Or like the idea of thinking beyond the sun.

Anyway, you just don't want to talk about it. No, I mean I can see that there are obviously, you know, any person who says that, I'm totally a different person is inadvertently lying not that I've written in a version lying because there are connections you see we think and we we once but there is a twist in thinking that once you try to take one direction to its ultimate conclusions you might come fundamentally seeing your conclusions are diverging from the premises that you were starting with it's non-motonic I mean thinking is not a lot of tonic and obviously there are connections and I think yes it's still this whole idea of you know if you are

talking about this image of excess and Bataille land and other people that's does ultimately you might call to be a very materialist so basically I think what I is great precisely because he tries to create this link between material reality and not just material forces material reality as such and capitalism see this is this is actually I think a very interesting that the link for that is the excess excess of not just Sun but excess of material the

reality or thoughts right so of course he has to go certain take certain moves to make such a connection and shows that they are one and the same thing, capitalism and this excessive material reality. But I think that's exactly, I think that essay is insufficient to deal with that problem, but also there is still something that at least is still something I'm trying to think about is that rationalism precisely because it abolishes all a priori constraints upon

itself, all limited terms that have been in the first instance put on it, it creates already a platform, a platform, a theoretic platform to think beyond this horizons, whether it's material reality or capitalism and so on and so forth. Now of course the question becomes that this is simply an abstract formal platform. What does it mean to make it concrete? That obviously is a question that philosophy by itself cannot answer, right? philosophy can tease out the very significance of this problem. You were mentioning Bataille and this problem of excess.

And, you know, it's an interesting problem and I think it's tied to what you've been talking about regarding the real movement, though I definitely don't think Bataille provides a sufficient answer to the problem. I think this actually gets into what I was mentioning regarding Zizek and Bidou and the whole thing about love and religion. Because the problem with excess and bataille is that it's not, it's this sovereignty as non-knowledge, it's very Deleuzian too.

But then when you begin to think, and it's also this sort of material force or whatever, and I think the corrective for that would be to look at this sort of quantitative excess as sort of coupled or as the sort of momentum of conceptual thinking that creates that force of thought which is constitutive of a subject. And so it's how you leverage that quantitative material force with a determinate conceptual precision in its capacity to determine reality, the power of that force along with the precision

of that force, etc. Interesting, huh. And then religion and love is like striving to unbind and increase potential, etc. Yeah, isn't it like the death drive isn't actually emancipatory, it's conservative because it sort of, you know, the death drive has capitalism. forces humanity to die slash live in its own way, but that thought is a space. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.

Were you going to say something else? Go ahead. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, because I don't think an alliance with just sort of death is sufficient just because that itself is its own restraint. I mean, if you're just lovely, you're not sort of generating, and I think that that's basically unsustainable. A different way around that is the force that wields conceptualization

is something that you basically need to leverage that force in a way that it's like a continuity that is able to persist in discontinuity, and one that's able to... It is conservative in that it needs to preserve itself, but it's mutable in its boundaries, in its range. Thank you.

I need to think about these, particularly in relation with Plato. Well, we can probably, I mean, as I mentioned, Ray is hopefully going to show up next week. And if he shows up, we can talk about this, and I will definitely ask Ray to talk about Plato a little bit, his significance, more contemporary significance. And hopefully we can think a little bit about these things. And the cell I owe you, the Parmenides, the opening of Parmenides, which is I think a fantastic work. And I think that's it for today.

I need to be somewhere quite urgently. But let's hear if you have final questions. And are we going to look at the philibus at some point? Because you mention it so much. Yes, I know. I mean, I will try. OK, so we have two more. This was basically our last regular session. There is one with Ray. we can put one last session for this filibus and talk it through. Because it's absolutely, I think, the most mature work I've played. And it's quite clear. It would be great to talk about it. But we, at least the theme of it,

we talked about the whole idea of demiurgic principle of intelligence. the craftsmanship. That's basically Phillips. But we will go through it in more detail. Thank you. Would you be able to at some point, like, what you want or don't want for the paper? anything related to Plato would be fine. Basically. Yeah. Okay. Yes. I mean, particularly my recommendation is that

if you want a specific... Okay, yeah, we'll be down soon, okay? Sure. If you want to target a specific works of Plato, The best ones, obviously Republic, Philebus, Phido, Sophist, and Parmenides. Theaetetus is quite complex, and I think reading Theaetetus is quite a daunting task. if you think this is difficult yet, this is far more difficult. And unfortunately, because of time,

probably we won't be able even to talk about it because I think it's a really important work precisely because that's where Plato starts to not only develop his new theory of form, but he talks about the significance of logic and language. I have a sort of unrelated question, But I was wondering if you had any suggestions for further reading on Confucianism. I've read some of Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont's stuff on Confucianism. But I was just curious if you had any suggestions. I really like . There are a few ones. I can put them on the Google Drive books. But some of them that I don't have PDFs of them is Philip Ivanhoe.

I think Ivanhoe's book, I think I've forgotten the name of it. It's some sort of Confucian sagehood or something like that. It's a famous book. But yes, I will put them in the Google Drive. I can put something that both about, you know, so in order to, Because Confucianism, there are good texts about Confucianism, but in order to understand the significance of Confucianist philosophy, it's also great to think about its historical trajectory in China from Confucianism, no Confucianism to new Confucianism of like Mo

and you know, Xi'an Chili. So I will try to come up with a few books that do try to cover this trajectory. Another great, I think I mentioned this in this class, another great source on anything related to Chinese philosophy, including this trajectory of Confucianism, is a two volume called Sources of Chinese Tradition. Thank you. Absolutely. All right, we're a little bit over, so I'm just going to end the broadcast now. But yeah, thanks a lot for your time, Reza.

Thanks, everyone. Have a great weekend. Reza, please don't go.