Thinking out some things

"Aristotle and Plato are at one in their sense that the highest form of activity is not that of him who is striving to gain, but that of him who has gained what is most truly worth the gaining, and who now enjoys it."

Dante and Aquinas. p. 262 online source.

This is coming from a different disposition than Aquinas (and perhaps from Plato and Aristotle). The real point is that one who has the highest activity is one who never would have to have strove in the first place - pure actuality - because every other kind must be derived. This sentence makes no sense from its dispositions. From the point of view of analyzing pure actuality, it cannot be done to make sense of us, but only as what we lead to and are oriented to as towards the best good - "loving God better than ourselves" whatever that might mean (and we can't love anyone else more than ourselves except for God - which is why it would make sense that we love others in God - although I don't know if another ratio is given).

Because with everyone else it is about the intensio - the "ascent" - the progression in virtue, the vision. At least I am thinking Aquinas here - and extrapolating from that section on intensio and the different modes of being and perfection - and doing Aristotelian things with that inasmuch as I realize that naturally we cannot actualize all of our perfections in the complete sense of operations (because we sleep for one thing, and one operation can exclude others) - but it is something that happens not only through time but also can happen in a better way for us - in other words, I am using the Neoplatonic modes of "eminence, remotion, and negation" which are found in Aquinas and also sourced in Platonism itself (for sources on this see footnote 118 p. 277 "Contemplating Aquinas") not immediately to jump to God, but also as a conceptual way of seeing our end, inasmuch as we can be understood to have such an end - and here I might be conjecturing and adding things falsely - through our capacity to conceive of it. And here what I might simply be doing is taking "theology" of the summa for granted and mixing it indiscriminately with what is philosophically attainable.
But such an end, regardless of its possibility of philosophical justification or even "pointing" can be claimed in philosophy as a "hermeneutical tool" of reading ourselves - reading our levels of being in light of a kind of regulative principle of perfection - I say "regulative" instead of "causatory" because "participation" is more loaded, perhaps, although "regulative" is "causatory" if you're Platonist or even if you're Aquinas taking Plato and turning his subsistent ideas into non-subsistent ratios in the mind of God. Or even, perhaps, if you're Aristotle - if you play around with "final causality" a good deal. The only problem with this idealism or regulative mode of perfection is how to account for per accidens and potentiality? the answer is distinguishing between kinds of being, which Aquinas said was not Plato's forte, insofar as he had trouble according "being" to material things - the genius of Aristotle working on the genius of Plato as far as Aquinas is concerned - wait.

"In the Sophist Plato deals explicitly with the nature of being and gives the clearest statement on being in his entire works. He considers the universe of byeings from a dynamic point of view, that is, how they intereact and influence one antoher, and defines being as the 'power to act and be acted upon.' (cit). He understood being, however, in terms of movmeent (kinesis - greek letters) and conceived life and even thought as motions. He correctly grasped that Being was not static and insisted that perfect being must contain life and knowledge. This involved him in the contradiction that perfrect reality impeded motion, which was anathema to his entier system (cit). Aristotle's theory of act,a nd the deeper meaning of actulaity (energeia/entelecheia) as the action or actualization of a substance, already complete within itself, alowed Aquinas to overcome this problem (Right - got to find different "modes of being/perfection" in Aquinas - the next step of my research and I WILL have my first chapter - and I don't HAVE to cite commentaries on Aquinian Aristotelianism and Platonism or Plato's or ARistotle's texts necessarily - these things can DIRECT me where to find my sources in Aquinas - I must remember LENGTH - I can put it all in my bibliography. For the purposes of my text, I am going to orient myself purely in the Thomist synthesis, which is large enough - just have to work with more texts than the Summa perhaps - and remember - this must be only the first part!!!!! which describes the context of the second part, which is the existential and particular analyses of sorrows.)
: life and knowledge do not necessarily imply movement. Being, considered in itself as simple act and perfection, is the most fundamental activity of all; it has its end and fulfilment in itself and needs nothing else to act upon. (I have antipathies about saying something like this so quickly)
Aquinas's philosophy of being is well known and needs only abrief outline; Being is primary, he holds, in two related respects. First, the concept of ens ('that which is') is the most universal and funadmental of all; it is presuppsoed by all other concepts and is implied in them. THe concept of beign is the primum cognitum; every other notion makes explicit already silently affirmed in the universal assertion: 'reality is'. But more important than this mental concept of ens is the
(from p. 261-p. 262)
ac by which beings in the first place exist, that is, are actualised and enacted, as opposed to the only alternative, which is nothingness. This i the meaning attached by Aquinas to the verbal infinitive 'to be' (esse). The act of being, however, is not simply a neutral function determining the optino between existence or non-existence. It determines also the level of existential perfection enjoyed by an individual. It is not only the 'act of all acts', but also the 'perfection of all perfections'. (cit - QDP 7, 2, ad 9 - Hoc quod dico esse est actualitas omnium actuum, et propter hoc est perfectio omnium perfectionum.') The act of being is a variable value which determines the status of the individual in the hierarchy of being. Esse is the first participation in divine goodness, containing virtually within itsel fall other perfections. The value scale of existence ultimately accounts for the hierarchy of reality: gradus in ipso esse invenitur (ST I, 48.2)

HOLD THAT THOUGHT.
what am I doing?