Plato’s insight into the image: that the illusion of the image is itself illusory, and yet cannot be done away with

the “problem of participation” is a *necessarily false problem*; what is questionable is *the situation in which participation can arise as a problem in the first place*

the two halves of the Parmenides correspond to the dyad, as the *illusory form-image relation (called participation)*, and the one as form as indifference of the two; the essence of Plato’s thought consists in the fact that this dialogue is essentially halved.

as Aristotle says, Plato thinks the one-dyad; hence the one is prior to the dyad as the indifference of its terms (or: form in itself: the indifference of form and image), and yet co-equal; hence it is a doctrine where thé “prior” is co-original with the “derivative”

the one corresponds to the comic, and the dyad to the tragic, and it is in light of the one-dyad that one must understand Plato’s remark at the end of the symposium that true poet must be able to write both comedy and tragedy

the philosopher is the himself the “new poet” who knows the refertiality of language an illusion and yet knows he cannot speak without it, or cease from speaking; or: a poet consigned to poetry, man consigned to humanity which hopeless aspires to the indifference of the god

this is a great “theme” appearing with all clarity in Aristotle: that the life of the gods, indifference between self and world, is at once too great for man, and yet cannot be renounced by him; or: he cannot but strive for an impossibility

(and of course everyone knows the “comic” solution which Christianity provided this problem, clearest in Dante’s Comedia, wherein the comic finally triumphs over the “pagan” co-originality of the “tragic” and “comic”, the one over the one-dyad (inheritance of Neoplatonism)).

in light of the Ethics and the De Anima, one might even call the Metaphysics of Aristotle a pessimistic treatise, the θεωρία which it describes being ambiguously both impossibly divine and yet unrenouncable for man; the genesis of Metaphysics its own impossibility

there is one passage of the De Anima in particular around which this whole ambiguity hinges, about the nature of the intellect, which has been a point of of most intense controversy for literally millennia

is the intellect there described the intellect of man or of god? the great difference between the “Christian” (really: hypostatique and salvatory or “comic”) and “Pagan” (really: hypothetical and “tragi-comic”)

clearest in comparison of the Thomistic and Peripatetic understanding of that passage (i forget which section exactly)

this thread just rough notes for personal clarification, almost certainly useless for anyone else