/lit/ - Literature

This was posted in a thread a few days ago:
>Also, have you heard of the Alexander of Aphrodisias interpretation of Aristotle? He argues that the unmoved mover and the agent intellect are the same thing. And it's a fascinating argument with a lot of evidence to back it up, especially if we distance ourselves from the tradition of commentary (and all its ulterior motives) and return to the text itself.
A few people said it was bait. Why? Can any Aristotelian-chads spill the tea? It seems like a normal-sounding, perhaps even boring, take to me.

Love your serial effortposts, but unfortunately I never got to ask you a critical question:
>Obviously one can only arise to knowledge of this being through long efforts of knowledge of more particular things. Aristotle says "nothing in the mind which is not first in the senses," and this is what he means. He's a kind of hybrid empiricist (we start as blank slates and begin grouping and distinguishing things in the world in our experience) and idealist/rationalist (because the real forms of things really exist, we CAN be blank slates to some extent, because we either find or recognize or otherwise recapitulate the real objective distinctions/groupings of things as we sort through our experience). The end of this long process of empirical recognition of simultaneously ideal and real realities is that we arrive at extremely general categories, and at judgements and statements that are valid for whole "types" of things, like "living things in general" or "physical/corporeal entities in general." And beyond even that level of generality lies the genus of "first things," the genus that includes BOTH living and non-living/corporeal things, and not just those but also purely notional things - because it includes ANY-THING that IS (be's) in any way whatsoever, because it is the genius "Things that Be" (things that are). That's first philosophy, but it's also LAST philosophy because it's what you arrive at only after long efforts.
I understand where you're coming from, that Aristotle is working his way to a "general science" of the highest level of abstraction. But isn't it seriously misreading Aristotle to conflate being as a kind of genus?

I thought Aristotle had argued extensively against that kind of idea. Furthermore, isn't there a general tendency for Aristotle to condemn a kind of "wisdom of unity" that seems to be implied here? e.g. being is not a genus, the form of the good is not knowable, sophia is useless compared to phronesis (and that's a good thing), etc. It seems like a major problem for the possibility of wisdom.

What exactly is the taxonomical relationship between intellect and soul? I know that Aristotle views the functions of a soul as a kind of "differentia" (e.g. animals stand apart from plants because they have sensitive faculties, and humans stand apart from animals because they have rational faculties). I also know that he views "higher" life forms as possessing all the functions of lower life forms (e.g. humans are rational souls, but they also have sensitive, nutritive, etc. souls too). But is that enough to think of "soul" as having a taxonomical tree, complete with genera, species, and differentia?

Finally, is the unmoved mover a kind of rational soul? I know that the soul is the form of the body of a living creature. But if the differentia is what gives identity, the differentia is always related to a difference in form, and the soul is a form, then wouldn't it make sense to think of the unmoved mover as a soul?

>Thought thinks itself because it shares the nature of the object of thought.
What the hell is he talking about here? Is he talking about self-consciousness? Is he talking about thoughts leading to other thoughts (instead of interacting with objects in the outside world)? Is he talking about how thoughts interact with the forms of substances in the world (and thus share an immaterial nature)? It just seems so vague and sloppy to me.

Does anybody with a university-tier journal subscription have access to the following:
https://www.pdcnet.org/ancientphil/content/ancientphil_1997_0017_0001_0047_0062
https://www.pdcnet.org/ancientphil/content/ancientphil_1993_0013_0002_0323_0340
https://www.pdcnet.org/collection/show?id=revmetaph_1999_53_1_0146_0146&file_type=pdf
https://www.pdcnet.org/ancientphil/content/ancientphil_1998_0018_0002_0496_0497
https://www.pdcnet.org/ancientphil/content/ancientphil_1999_0019_0002_0461_0461
Unfortunately, Sci-Hub doesn't have any of them.

I know that "doxa" is normally translated as opinion, but is it better to conceive it as "judgment", at least in a philosophical sense? With that understanding, would it make sense to speak of "the categories", e.g. things that are said of things, propositions, judgments, etc., as ultimately what "doxa" consists of? In that way, I think you can build a chain of ideas from Plato's Divided Line, through Aristotle's Categories, and right up to Kant's Transcendental Logic in the CPR.

>>22467887
>Love cannot be self-referential.
*blocks your path*
try moving THIS unmoved mover

What's the relationship between Plato's eikasia from the Divided Line and Aristotle's phantasia from De Anima, if there is any?

Also, how many fucking words did the Ancient Greeks have for the "look" of things? Were they the inventors of lookism or something?

It makes sense why Aristotle wouldn't see a body moving in a circle as change, even though Newtonian physics demonstrates that that body is always changing direction. Aristotle is a systems thinker. Change is merely a successful movement from one stable system to another. Anything that falls short of that isn't change.

Why does everybody focus on Aristotle's conception of energeia? Why don't they focus more on kinesis? Not every motion is an end in itself. In fact, most motions seem to be not ends in themselves but rather means to another end, probably in a series of endless kinetic motions. A lot of examples of actions which are "intrinsically" "energeia" can be transformed into "kinesis" if framed a certain way and vice versa.

How well does Aristotelian philosophy play with Hermeticism?

It seems like Aristotelian terminology is perfect for trying to understand the occult and occult forces in general. Matter, form, potentiality, actuality, causes in a broad sense, etc. In fact, it might be too good for understanding things in general.

e.g. dunamis vs. energeia when it really should be dunamis vs kinesis, of which energeia is a special kind of kinesis. Now we have colloquial words like "energy", which is not exactly related to a being-at-work in such a way that it becomes the most of what it is capable of being. Kinesis makes more sense.

How exactly do things like force and motion work with hylomorphic substances? Are forces "things" themselves, substances of change that act on other substances, or are they properties of substances? Is a collision a mere transfer of properties from one substance to the next? I'm having a hard time seeing how energeia works in the big picture.

How would intangible objects like love, knowledge, etc. get classified under Aristotelian metaphysics? They're not like your average universal, which can be applied to specific, concrete substances. And if they don't exist, then why are they so influential? If knowledge doesn't exist in some way then we couldn't even function.

If we were to design a curriculum of 50 books that a child/young teenager should read before they turn 16-18, what would they be?

Essential books that help him navigate life's problems and teaches them the way the world really is.
Lessons learned from fables or myths or history and that give a good and virtuous framework of the world while hopefully, teaching them how to think and be good junior scholars.
Books of skills might be acceptable.
No ideological books, niche esoteric recontextualizations or convoluted circlejerking books.

I read Aristotle for the sole purpose of gas lighting peons with an endless stream of logic games that produce nothing of value and lead nowhere except toward anxiety for the unlucky person my semantics are directed at