Quodlebital Questions, Further Ambitions

It has been quite some time indeed since last I wrote here. I have read rather a lot since then (though always, less than I should have liked), and I have learnt much, thought much, and undergone some rather transformational experiences. All of which is to say: I am renewing my studies with greater commitment and greater zeal than ever, but that my continuing education has left me with more questions than answers, much like Book B of the Metaphysics.

I still am planning to work through all of Plato carefully. I purchased Bruell's book, which on the basis of his Hipparchus commentary alone was worth buying. I highly suspect spending a year with that book and its companion dialogues will do much to teach me what it means to live like Socrates. Preliminary expectorations on The Hipparchus to follow tomorrow or the day after, but I thought I would proffer a short list (you know how I love those) of the serious questions which linger in my soul. Since my memory is poor, I cannot even remember them all at present; I shall have to re-edit this post when I remember more of them. But here they are in their naked honesty, and in no discernible order:

• What is Plato's understanding of metaphysics? What exactly are the ideas, the forms, the looks, etc.? Are they separate substances?
• Why is Book Λ of the Metaphysics so strange? Why does it seem sometimes as if Aristotle is quietly undermining his 'teaching' on the Prime Mover?
• Why, if the κόσμος is eternal, is the Prime Mover (and/or the Christian God) necessary? The former simply, and the latter for creation? Especially if the eternal production of offspring according to nature is not a per se cause and effect, but only an accidental one? 
• Is matter the origin of mind? 
• Is Nietzsche right that the essence of democracy, in all its irresistible diminution to nihilistic mediocrity, is present in the Faith by its very nature? 
• Does Nietzsche think differently about the saint than about the simple believer? Can the saint as he understand it be noble? 
• Is there a difference between love and the will to power?
• Is injustice mightier and more advantageous to body and soul than justice?  
• Is revenge satisfying? How different from justice is it truly?
• How opposed are reason and revelation? Is their quarrel only a challenge raised by revelation against philosophy, and not the reverse? Does philosophy offer a challenge to revelation? Can it?
• How can we reconcile or unify two bodies of thought, both of which seem right considered alone, but when joined seem to contradict one another?

It is more refreshing than I thought to bring such questions into the open; to get an outline on my ignorance, I could say. To search for the answers I am first studying Plato and the Straussians, struggling my way through Aquinas (whom I could, not inaccurately, describe as a luminous flood), and reading Ibn Rushd's (Averroes') short treatise On the Harmony between Religion and Philosophy. More about that and esoteric writing (especially when it comes to the twentieth century Thomists like Maritain and Gilson) very, very soon. But next, more Plato.