Hesiod on Strife

14 September 2026

Hesiod on Strife

“Muses, from Pieria, glorifying in songs, come here, tell in hymns of your father Zeus, through whom mortal men are unfamed and famed alike, and named and unnamed by the will of great Zeus.  For easily he strengthens, and easily he crushes the strong, easily he diminishes the conspicuous and increases the inconspicuous, and easily he straightens the crooked and withers the proud – high-thundering Zeus, who dwells in the loftiest mansions.  Give ear to me, watching and listening and straighten the verdicts with justice yourself; as for me, I will proclaim truths to Perses.

“So there was not just one birth of Strifes after all, but upon the path there are two Strifes.  One of these a man would praise once he got to know it, but the other is blameworthy; and they have thoroughly opposed spirits.  For the one fosters evil war and conflict – cruel one, no mortal loves that one, but it is by necessity that they honor the oppressive Strife, by the plans of the immortals.  But the other one gloomy Night bore first: and Cronus’ high-throned son, who dwells in the aether, set it in the roots of the earth, and it is much better for men.  It rouses even the helpless man to work.  For a man who is not working but who looks at some other man, a rich one who is hastening to plow and plant and set his house in order, he envies him, one neighbor envying his neighbor who is hastening toward wealth: and this Strife is good for mortals.  And potter is angry with potter, and builder with builder, and beggar begrudges beggar and poet poet.”

(Hesiod, Works and Days, translated by Glenn W. Most, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2018, pages 87-89, lines 1-25, ISBN: 9780674997202)

1.  This opening passage of Works and Days is famous and well-known.  It has a dramatic feeling to it that draws the reader into the work from the first words.

2.  After Hesiod’s appeal to the Muses the passage opens with a depiction of how Zeus treats human beings; Zeus gives them fame and then removes it, he strengthens and crushes the strong.  This is a description of strife, or one facet of strife, that human beings are intimately acquainted with; that the powers that be may grant favors and then remove them for reasons that we do not know and cannot access.

2.1  This section is similar to the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ depictions in Medieval Europe; in fact the capacity of Zeus to lift people up and then to have them thrown down is very similar to how the Goddess Fortune is depicted.  You can find this kind of thinking in works from The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius in the poems of Carmina Burana, particularly the opening poem, ‘O Fortuna’. 

3.  The opening paragraph ends with the author saying he will give truths to Perses.  Perses was one of the sons of Helios.  Hesiod is addressing his subsequent observations about strife to the son of Helios, the Sun.  This gives a further cosmological dimension to this passage.  The name ‘Perses’ may be related to ‘pertho’ which means to sack or destroy; an appropriate god to address when discussing strife.

4.  The second paragraph begins by suggesting that there are two ‘Strifes’, not just one.  It is interesting to me that this kind of analysis is what we would today call a ‘philosophical move’ by which is meant in this instance, the unpacking of the meaning of a word.  By disclosing two distinct meanings, where previously it was thought that there was one, Hesiod is functioning philosophically.  You can see this kind of approach in Plato and Plotinus when they take a term and point to two or more meanings for that word; for example the word ‘logos’, or the word ‘beauty’, or other key terms.  Hesiod does not present these two Strifes by telling us a myth or allegory about how the gods divided Strife.  This is a kind of shift in reasoning and analysis that is taking place very early in Greek thought.

4.1  Notice that this kind of analysis relies on differentiation which is a noetic function because it is in Nous that differentiation first appears.  Here, Hesiod is using differentiation for the purpose of furthering the reader’s understanding.  When differentiation is used by the mind to further genuine understanding, that is wisdom.  When differentiation is used by the mind to generate anger, bitterness, and battle, that is ignorance.

5.  One Strife is ‘blameworthy’ because it fosters evil war and conflict.  I would put it that this is differentiation serving material ends and what we would call egoic concerns.

5.1  Hesiod states that humans only honor this type of strife out of necessity.  I suspect that this kind of honoring is perhaps making offerings to this kind of Strife, and Strife’s servants, to keep it at bay.  It is kind of like paying off someone who threatens you.  This is a major preoccupation of popular religion; if you don’t make offerings to this kind of Strife, bad things will happen to you.

6.  The second Strife, according to Hesiod, ultimately benefits humans by facilitating, or encouraging, them to work for their livelihood.  The primary motivator that Hesiod offers as an example of the second type of Strife is jealousy; one man has plenty of food and is on his way to becoming rich because he is working very hard.  This propels someone who is lazy to wake up in the morning so that by imitating the guy he resents, he too might become wealthy and productive.

The translator uses the word ‘envy’ rather than jealousy.  So envy is considered to a type of strife that generates competitiveness between people.  However, that competitiveness born of envy has the possibility of a positive outcome. 

I think this is a subtle, and fascinating, analysis.

6.1  It appears that human beings think of both of these Strifes as one thing; that is the psychology at any rate.  It seems to me that we tend to think of both kinds of Strife as the same because both of them generate conflict and that feels the same both at the level of body and mind. 

If we make a simple contrast perhaps we can get closer to what Hesiod is offering.  If we compare war with a competitive game (everything from wrestling to chess) I think it is possible to see the difference.  War is destructive; and in modern times the destructiveness has become amplified to an incredible degree.  Competitive games can, and often do, lead to tensions of various kinds, but they also lead to a kind of camaraderie among competing participants.  In other words, competition isn’t necessarily destructive.  This analysis has its limitations, and perhaps there is a better, or clearer, way of understanding the distinction that Hesiod is making; but for now, this is the best I can do.

7.  Hesiod’s analysis of Strife has had a lasting and profound impact on philosophy, particularly Classical Greek Philosophy.  Scholars suggest that this kind of analysis was picked up by both Heraclitus and Empedocles, both of whom viewed Strife as a cosmological, or elemental, principle.  Looked at in this way, that Strife is a cosmological or elemental principle, means that both kinds of Strife cannot be done away with in this world.  More concretely it suggests that manifestations such as war (for the first kind of Strife), and competitiveness and envy (for the second kind of Strife) are not accidents that appear due to random material, or historical, causation.  Instead, they are part of the nature of material existence itself.

This is difficult to accept.  It can, and often does, feel disheartening.  Feeling disheartened is not an argument against this view, but it is a barrier to looking at it clearly.

8.  Plato was very familiar with these discussions.  Hesiod lived roughly around 750 BCE to 650 BCE; exact dates are not known.  Plato lived roughly 428 BCE to 348 BCE.  This means that the topic of strife and its impacts on humanity had already taken place for about 200 years. 

It’s possible to see Plato integrating understandings of strife in works like the Republic and Laws when Plato talks about types of civil discord and also family discord.  But I am more interested in how these discussions impacted Plato’s metaphysics.

It is helpful, I think, to point out that Hesiod depicts the gods as deeply involved with strife; and not just the competitive kind.  The gods also participate in the first, destructive kind.  I think this is an indication that the gods are simply creatures, a type of living being residing in the material world.  In other words, the gods are not transcendent or even particularly wise.  The are long-lived and powerful, but in psychological terms they are human in every respect.  Therefore we cannot turn to the gods to resolve questions about strife and its place in the cosmos.

8.1  But there are questions and experiences that arise about the status of strife that turn us in a different direction.  There is the experience of beauty which seems to be in some sense beyond the concerns of strife.  Nor does a sunset generate a sense of competition.

And there is the experience of mathematics that opens our minds to a domain that is free from strife.  I don’t mean that mathematicians are immune from strife, particularly competitive strife.  I mean that numbers themselves, and their relations, are not hounded by strife.

And there is the experience of contemplation which is a turning within to a realm of silence and stillness.  I consider the experience of contemplation to be foundational for Platonism.  Contemplation is depicted in dialogues like The Symposium and Phaedrus.  Personally, I don’t think it is possible to understand Platonism without taking into account the practice of contemplation.

8.2  Plato’s great skill is that he fully acknowledges the presence of strife in the material world, but he also knows from personal experience that there are realms that are free from strife; primarily the noetic realm and the realm of the Good and the One.  It is because these realms are free from strife, both kinds of strife, that we are not trapped in the domain of strife, fated to endure strife’s arbitrary blows.

8.3  What Plato offers us is a roadmap to that which is beyond strife.  Strife is a constant presence in the material world, but the material world is a distorted image of the noetic where strife is absent.  But because the material world is an image, however distorted, of the noetic there are traces in the material world of that which is transcendent and beyond strife, discord, and suffering. 

What Plato has done, with great precision, is to show us (through reason, through myth, through allegory, through analysis) how to turn away from this realm of Strifes and Sorrows, to leave it behind, and return to the ineffable Good and the One.

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics - 107

9 September 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 107

1.  Methods for Reading Platonism

When we are reading the classics of Platonism, such as the Dialogues of Plato, or the Enneads of Plotinus, we tend to read them with what might be called as a primal question in mind that is focusing our reading.  We might hold this question consciously or unconsciously.  And the primal question isn’t necessarily the same each time we read from the classics of Platonism, which is one reason why rereading these classics often uncovers new insights that we didn’t notice before.  Here are a few examples of what I mean:

1.1  We might read Plato and Plotinus with the question in mind “What did Plato or Plotinus actually say?”  This might be thought of as ‘historical Platonism’ because we are  trying to place Plato and Plotinus in the stream of ancient philosophical history.  It’s not always easy, and is often quite difficult, to determine what Plato or Plotinus were actually saying.  It seems to me that this way of reading Platonic classics is the main one found in the Universities today.

1.2  We might read the classics of Platonism with the question in mind “What can we do with Plato’s, or Plotinus’s, ideas?”  At this level we are dealing with the metaphysical structure of Platonic thought and how its teachings, its categories, fit together (or don’t fit together).  Some Platonic philosophers are highly focused, and very concerned, with this question and tend to focus on Dialogues or Enneads that are metaphysical in nature, while at the same time sidelining, to various degrees, those works that are not primarily metaphysical in nature.  It is at this level where we have discussions about the nature of the levels, or hypostases, or about soul and its nature, or about emanation and how it works, and so forth.

1.2.1  Another level of focusing on “What can we do with Platonic ideas?” will look for instruction as to how to live one’s life.  The above entry, 1.2, is about understanding Platonism; but at this level it is about behavior with the main focus being ethics as found in the Virtues and the teachings on Ethical Restraints.  Here the reader is gleaning from the classics of Platonism the teachings on how to live in accordance with Platonist teachings such as non-harming, vegetarianism, refraining from sexual misconduct, refraining from acquiring too many possessions or too much wealth, and so forth. 

1.3 The last approach I offer is “Where might these ideas, the ideas found in the classics of Platonism, lead?” if given a new lease on life under circumstances that differ from those that Plato and Plotinus lived under.  Here we are using the classics of Platonism as a resource for addressing the contemporary world in which we live.  A good example of this is how Plotinus spends time writing about Astrology which Plato barely mentions.  This is because the period in which Plotinus wrote was a high point in Roman and Greek thought regarding Astrology which was very widespread.  Another example is how Plotinus addressed the emerging Gnostic movements; Plato does not talk about Gnosticism because there were no Gnostics during Plato’s lifetime. 

Platonism has been very successful throughout its long history in addressing these new concerns and understandings.  I believe this openness to addressing these new concerns is one of the primary things that keeps Platonism fresh and relevant as the specific circumstances change and create new, and previously unaddressed, ways of comprehending the world in which we live.

2.  Pangle’s ‘Interpretive Essay’

At the conclusion of Thomas Pangle’s translation of the Laws of Plato Pangle has an ‘Interpretive Essay’.  It’s about 125 pages.  It is meticulous and brings up certain aspects of the dialogue that, I suspect, are easy to overlook.

On the other hand, I was struck by how Pangle’s approach avoids metaphysics and mysticism.  Pangle’s approach is to view Laws as a political treatise; that is common these days. 

Pangle was heavily influenced by Leo Strauss.  Pangle studied under Alan Bloom who studied under Leo Strauss.  I’ve mentioned this linkage before, but I bring it up again here because I think it is a good illustration of Strauss’s influence.  What I am highlighting is how Strauss tended to view Plato’s Philosophy as a whole as a political project.  According to what I have read, Strauss was reluctant to engage in Platonic metaphysics, and seems to have had the idea that Late Classical Platonism (which he refers to as ‘Neoplatonism’) with its emphasis on metaphysics as somehow distorting Plato’s thought.

I suspect that Strauss inherited this view from 19^th century German Historiography; it was widespread in Germany that the Late Classical Platonists had in some sense deformed Platonism due to their interest in elaborating metaphysics as well as their interest in mysticism.  Mysticism was viewed negatively as opposed to a ‘scientific’ approach.  The overall idea is to advocate for a Plato who was a proto-analytic philosopher; looked at from this perspective, the mystical elements in Plato and Platonism can be ignored as backwards and superstitious.

I don’t think Strauss or Pangle were that extreme.  I am not widely read in Strauss, but from what I have read I think Strauss accepted Plato as having metaphysical and mystical interests (meaning that Plato was not a proto-analytical philosopher).  But I do think that Strauss thought it was more significant to sift a view of politics from Plato than to sift a metaphysics from Plato.

I view this as yet another example of the anti-metaphysical bias of modernity.  It is very pervasive.  And I think of this bias as a significant, perhaps the most significant, barrier that a modern reader has to overcome if they really want to access the world that Platonism uncovers.  There is a range of anti-metaphysics; it can be sarcastic and dismissive as in Hume, it can be embedded in progressive thought as in Carnap and Ayer, it can be rooted in historicism and reductionism as in Heidegger, and so forth. 

The anti-metaphysical stance can be observed mostly as critical absences when considering what a modern philosopher or scholar writes about Plato.  If metaphysics is simply absent from their work on Plato, that is a sign that the scholar has absorbed, or actively accepted, the anti-metaphysical bias of our time.  The examples can be general (such as not dealing with the hypostases), or they can be very specific (such as refusing to deal with, touch on, or examine, Plato’s teachings on rebirth even when holding a class on a dialogue where rebirth is extensively discussed).  Absences are harder to spot than presences.  The absence of metaphysics in modernity is not normally noticed because it is the norm.  But as you become more and more familiar with Plato’s views you begin to notice that certain aspects of his philosophy are often neglected and that those aspects are either explicitly metaphysical in nature, or emerge from Plato’s metaphysical commitments.

2.1  The contemporary bias against metaphysics, while directly impacting modern interpretations of Platonism, also impacts other spiritual traditions.  During my period of studying Buddhism I often heard people, sometimes scholars, say that, for example, the Buddha was uninterested in metaphysics.  It took me a long time to realize that this view of the Buddha, and the Buddhist tradition, is a projection of the anti-metaphysical bias of Western modernity onto an ancient Indian tradition.  Once you see this anti-metaphysical bias operating in the West, you can also see it operating in how the West treats non-Western traditions; and this opens up these non-Western traditions, such as Buddhism and Jainism in a surprisingly rich way; by ‘rich’ I mean multifaceted in a way that adds depth and complexity to those traditions that often was previously missed.

2.2  Returning to Western philosophy, once you see the anti-metaphysical bias of modernity you begin to see how contemporary Western philosophy, despite its claims, is just as metaphysical as other metaphysical systems; that modernist philosophy has its own first principles, to pick one important example.  This shifts one’s understanding of modern philosophy significantly as you begin to see it in a larger context.

2.3  One of the results of uncovering the absence of metaphysics in contemporary Western philosophy is that other dimensions of meaning emerge that were not noticed before.  For example, it becomes clear why Plato would present some of his most significant teachings in the form of myths and allegories; because metaphysical truths sometimes need those kinds of structures in order to present and discuss them.

There is a kind of flatness to a lot of modern Western philosophy and I think that is because the metaphysical dimension has been, for the most part, with significant exceptions, lost.  When we read from the Platonic classics we become aware of that metaphysical dimension and the world we live in becomes richer and full of possibilities that we had previously overlooked.

 

 

 

  

Are Platonists Lonely?

31 August 2026

Are Platonists Lonely?

1.  “This is the life of gods and of godlike and blessed men, deliverance from the things of this world, a life which takes no delight in the things of this world, escape in solitude to the solitary.”

(Plotinus, Ennead VI.9, On the Good or the One, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988, page 345, ISBN: 9780674995154)

Armstrong has a footnote, on page 344 and 345, to this quote, “These last words, in the common translation ‘flight of the alone to the Alone’, are the only words of Plotinus at all generally known and remembered.  He uses the ‘alone to the alone’ formula elsewhere in the Enneads when speaking of our encounter with the Good (1.6.7.8; VI. 7. 34.7) It is in fact a fairly commonplace Greek phrase, generally, but not always in a religious context.  The closest parallel to Plotinus’ use of it is in Numenius fr. 2 . . . See E. R. Dodds ‘Numenius and Ammonius in Les Sources de Plotin . . . It does tell us something important about the mysticism of Plotinus, but can be misleading if considered in isolation from the rest of his writing about the spiritual life and Porphyry’s account of Plotinus as he knew him.”

It’s interesting that the ‘alone to the Alone’ seems to have been displaced by the use of ‘solitary’ and ‘solitude’ in recent translations such as this Armstrong quote, and others; see below.

2.  “This is the way of life of gods, and divine, happy human beings, the release from everything here, a way of life that takes no pleasure in things here, the refuge of a solitary in the solitary.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, Ennead VI.9: On the Good or the One, translated by Lloyd Gerson et al, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2025, page 902 (second edition), ISBN: 9781009604970)

3.  “This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, VI.9, On the Good or the One, translated by Stephen MacKenna, Larson Publications, 1992, page 709, ISBN: 9780943914558)

There is some confusion about the MacKenna translation.  It appears that in the earliest edition MacKenna uses ‘the alone to the Alone’ phrasing.  In 1917 MacKenna published Ennead I together with a ‘Conspectus’ (a summary or overview of Plotinus) and it is in the Conspectus that the ‘alone’ phrasing is used.  MacKenna may have also used that phrasing when he first published his fifth volume of the complete Enneads in 1930.  But the details are murky.  Here is what I found online at Internet Archive, for MacKenna’s earlier translation:

“This is the life of the gods and of godlike and blessed men, a liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, a flight of the alone to the Alone.”

4.  “THE SOUL’S ULTIMATE FATE IS DETACHMENT AND FLIGHT.

“Such is the life of the divinities; such is also that of divine and blessed men; detachment from all things here below, scorn of all earthly pleasures, and flight of the soul towards the Divinity that she shall see face to face (that is, ‘alone with the alone,’ as thought Numenius).”

(Plotinus, Complete Works, Ennead VI.9, Of the Good and the One, translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, First Edition 1918, Reprinted 2017 by Kshetra Books, Jon W. Fergus editor, page 94, ISBN: 9781974518968)

Both Guthrie and Armstrong reference Numenius as a source for the phrase ‘alone with the alone (or Alone)’.  Guthrie published his edition in 1918 so the Numenius edition Guthrie is referring to is before 1918; but I don’t know the specifics about the source Guthrie uses, though Armstrong does provide more detail.  I suspect that the Numenius translation may be the original source for this phrase, but I’m not sure about that.  Both Armstrong and Gerson indicate that the phrase is used in other places in the Enneads and Armstrong suggests it was used in various religious and non-religious contexts.

4.1  ‘Solitary’ and ‘alone’ overlap, but they also have their differences.  For example, the life of Plotinus was not solitary; neither was the life of Plato.  The house where Plotinus gave his lectures and where his students met, according to Porphyry’s description in The Life of Plotinus was a busy place with people coming and going and even the presence of children who were left in the care of Plotinus when their parents died.  Plato founded an Academy inhabited by students who were guided by Plato and perhaps other teachers as well.

But you can be alone even in the midst of other people.  This is a common observation and something that many people experience. 

4.2  It appears to me that ‘alone’ is a slightly more helpful translation because I think it is easier to link being alone to the inward turning that is at the heart of Platonic practice.  And I think it is easier to explain that this aloneness, this inward turning, is not a negative experience.

5.  The sentence opens by stating whom the sentence refers to, “This is the life of gods and godlike men.”  The opening refers to gods and godlike men.  I read this as indicating that gods and men have the ability to engage in the philosophical ascent to the Good and the One.  I interpret this as putting gods and humans on the same level in terms of their spiritual capacity or potential.  Gods can make the divine ascent if they pursue the path of renunciation and contemplation found in the Platonist tradition.  As I just mentioned, it places gods and humans on the same level.  Humans can ascend to the Good and the One and so can gods.  But most humans will not do so, and most gods will not do so.  This is because most gods and humans are distracted by sensory attractions and mental fabrications and desires.

5.1  My own view is a bit broader than this; I admit it is eccentric.  But I would not confine access to the divine ascent to the Good and the One to gods and humans.  I’ve mentioned this before, but I consider birth as an oak tree to be an auspicious birth because it allows for a contemplative existence and an embodied stability that would bring the oak, or could bring the oak, to the noetic.  In other words, I don’t map spiritual capacity based on evolutionary placement; I mean that just because a creature is more ‘advanced’ from an evolutionary perspective, does not mean that they are inherently more spiritually advanced.  Again, I realize this is a bit eccentric; I offer it for your consideration.

6.  The next phrase reads, “deliverance from the things of this world, a life which takes no delight in the things of this world.”  This sums up the essence of the Platonic Way of Life.  You can read about this in Dialogues like Phaedo.  It is a step by step, gradual path.  First you learn to withdraw from obviously harmful things of this world; you learn this through the system of ethical restraints which, again, are found in Dialogues like Phaedo.  You become a vegetarian, withdraw from harming animals by eating them or sacrificing them for the purposes of misguided rituals.  You refrain from acquiring luxuries.  And so forth.  This process of withdrawing, also often referred to as ‘turning away’, becomes broader and at the same time more subtle.

This is a life that has found the peace of transcendence; even if it is just a glimpse of that reality.  That peace surpasses the ‘delights’ of the things of this world.

Such a journey is slow and takes focus and dedication.  Indeed, it takes many lifetimes. 

7.  The closing phrase is famous, “escape in solitude to the solitary”, or “a flight of the alone to the Alone.”  As I said above, I prefer the ‘alone to the Alone’ over ‘solitude to the solitary’ because I think that ‘solitary’ doesn’t indicate strongly enough that this is an inward, contemplative, journey.  The usage also does not, in my opinion, really align with the lives of Platonists.  I mean by this that neither Plato nor Plotinus were solitaries (and, in addition, neither was Socrates).  There are examples in Platonic history of solitary practitioners (and I suspect that at this time and in this culture the way of the solitary practitioner might be particularly suitable) but the point is that physical solitude does not seem to be required for the ascent to the Good and the One if we go by the biographies of Plato and Plotinus.  And since this is Plotinus we are quoting, I think it is a particularly relevant point.

8.  But the usage of ‘alone’ has its own difficulties because many people equate ‘alone’ with loneliness; hence the title of this post.  I asked this question about Platonists and loneliness because I have heard Platonists mention this, and talk about this, over the years.  This comment about Platonists being lonely, or the Platonic Path being a lonely path, comes from a variety of perspectives; it’s not confined to a particular type of contemporary Platonism.  I think there are a number of reasons why this comes up.

8.1  The first is peculiar to our time and place.  To be a Platonist at this time and in this culture, is to be a stranger in a strange land.  Platonism is not in sync with the broad assumptions and first principles of the world we live in today.  Plato writes in some of his Dialogues about the philosopher who is culturally clumsy and the object of humor, or even derision; so this difficulty is not new.  But I do think the difficulty is more acute today simply because it is difficult to find others who regard Platonism as a spiritual path rather than just another philosophy like empiricism or naturalism or materialism. 

8.2  A second reason is that the specific path of Platonism has a different understanding of what today we call spirituality than is the one widely used.  Today ‘spirituality’ is primarily connected with self-help and is often explicitly oriented towards material goals, such as improving one’s job performance.  In contrast, Platonism is a renunciant tradition and advocates a life lived as simply as possible.  Platonism’s view was, for a long time, actually the dominant view of what spirituality means.  But in modernity terms like spirituality were transformed, often by psychology, into a therapeutic modality which in traditional terms is very far from spiritual commitments.  This is difficult for people to see because the therapeutic model is pervasive.

8.3  It is reasonable that a Platonist in today’s world would feel alone, and that this feeling of being alone would, at times, manifest as loneliness.  That is a natural consequence of the Platonic spiritual path in a culture that is focused on material gain and the cultivation of strife.

9.  But I don’t think that the term ‘alone’ in the sentence that is quoted actually refers to loneliness.  I suspect that the term refers to the way the Good and the One are sufficient unto themselves; that the Good and the One are ‘alone’ in the sense that the Good and the One are not reliant on anything else.  Rather, everything else is reliant on, dependent upon, the Good and the One, upon the transcendental, the transcendental as such. 

In this context the ‘alone’ here refers to the uniqueness of the Good, of the One, of the Eternal.  The Platonic path is a flight of the alone to the Alone because the Good and the One are present within us so that this unique, and eternal, presence is not far away.  I refer to this presence as our soul and it is turning away from that which is sensory to the soul, the presence of the Good and the One in the individual, that is the Platonic journey.

The ‘alone’ is the presence within of the ‘Alone’ that is transcendental and eternal.  Awakening to that presence is the sublime possibility of a human life.

 

  

Brief Notes on Various Topics - 106

24 August 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 106

1.  Dwelling in the Past Because it is our Home

I was listening to a young, contemporary, British philosopher who, like many young British philosophers, is committed to the analytic tradition.  He had a quick, breezy way of talking about philosophy; and a kind of confidence that doesn’t seem to rest on broad learning.  He was suggesting that contemporary philosophers and students of philosophy should not waste their time reading philosophers from the past because only contemporary philosophers really know what they are talking about.  His conception of ‘philosophers from the past’ was vast and included Plato as well as figures like Wittgenstein, which surprised me.  But perhaps I should not have been surprised; the hostility towards the past is a defining feature of modernity and of ideological thinking (for example, Chairman Mao’s attack on the ‘four olds’ or the French Revolution’s systematic attempts to erase the past from France).  If you are able to see how this operates in contemporary thought and approaches to issues, strange as this talk I listened to may seem, it actually makes sense.  I admit I was somewhat surprised that Wittgenstein was included in the list of ‘past philosophers’ that we should not waste our time on; but modernist movements have a long history of turning on their own members as the movement inevitably breaks apart into differentiated factions (and in Laws Plato points out that factional disputes can be the most destructive kind of disagreement).

I’ve posted on this topic before, but I’m doing so again because it was such a pure example of this tendency to view the past solely as something to overcome rather than as a source of wisdom and insight.  I have difficulty thinking of a contemporary philosopher that rises to the level of Plato or Plotinus; I could be wrong, and that would make me happy.  But that’s how I see it.

So let us honor our philosophical ancestors by reading their works, contemplating their insights, and living the way of life that they have kindly placed before us.

2.  Private Shrines

Athenian:  “No one is to possess shrines in private households.  When someone has it in mind to sacrifice, he is to go to the public ones and sacrifice, and hand over his offerings to the Priests and Priestesses who supervise their purification; and he is to join in the prayers, and anyone else he wishes is to join in the prayers with him.

“These things are to be done for the following reasons: Shrines and gods are not easy to establish; doing this sort of thing correctly requires a certain amount of thought.  Yet it’s customary, especially for all women, and for those who are sick in some way, or in danger, or at a loss (in whatever way someone might be at a loss), or, conversely for those who’ve received a stroke of good luck, to make sacred whatever happens to be at hand at the time and promise to establish shrines to gods, daimons, and the children of gods; and through fears caused by waking phantoms or by dreams, and likewise when recalling many such visions, they produce remedies against each of them by filling every house and every district with altars and shrines, establishing them in open places and wherever someone happened to have such experiences.  For all these reasons, one must act in accord with the law now stated [against private household shrines]; . . . There is to be no possession of shrines in private households.”

(Plato, Laws, Book X, translated by C. D. C. Reeve, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 2022, pages 353-354, 909d-910c, ISBN:9781647920463)

2.1  I have to admit to being puzzled by this particular teaching.  There are several reasons.  First, I have a lot of experience with home altars, particularly from my period of Buddhist study and practice.  I am also familiar, from my studies in Japan, that those who practice Shinto often have a home altar known as a Kamidana.  And there are many other examples of traditions that suggest their practitioners have a modest home altar.  I have difficulty seeing this as disruptive or damaging.

2.2  People spontaneously create shrines at locations where something significant has happened to them.  The most common example I can think of in the U.S. are roadside shrines that mark where a car crash happened; these roadside shrines are usually a kind of memorial for someone who died in the crash.  Again, I have difficulty thinking of these as somehow damaging to good order in a political sense, or damaging to our relationship to the divine.

2.3  In East Asia, and many other cultural spheres, a shrine to the residents’ ancestors is common.  Regular rituals are conducted at the shrine for the ancestors. 

2.4  Plato seems to be concerned with the arising of what we might call ‘weird’ cults and these cults might find a foothold in a household context.  That is a problem; but so is the behavior of officials, like Priests, at public shrines, and I have difficulty distinguishing the dangers that either might generate.

2.5  I could see, for example, a household shrine for honoring our Platonic Ancestors.  I’m not thinking of anything elaborate (nothing theurgic); but my taste tends towards minimalism and others might want more elements on their Platonic Ancestors Altar than I would.  I don’t have a problem with that.  Such an altar would be for the purpose of veneration rather than sacrifice; I’m thinking it might mimic how ancestor veneration is done in various spiritual contexts.  Perhaps Plato would not be put off by such an arrangement because such veneration would not be a result of a private experience, nor would it be an attempt to introduce a new deity or form of worship; and these seem to be concerns of Plato in the quoted passage.

I’m not saying that such a Platonic Shrine should be required.  On the other hand, I don’t think it should be prohibited either.  And, in a way, I don’t think you can really effectively prohibit such activity because people, as I mentioned above, spontaneously produce such shrines in a variety of circumstances.

2.6  When I run into a teaching like this, where I have difficulty understanding what Plato (or Plotinus, when I’m reading Plotinus) is offering, I’ve learned to bracket the teachings and simply let them settle in my own mind.  I often find that later on, sometimes weeks later, sometimes much later, the purpose of the teaching becomes clear.  Perhaps this is such an example.

3.  Dionysius the Areopagite: Letter One

“To the monk Gaius:

“Darkness disappears in the light, the more so as there is more light.  Knowledge makes unknowing disappear, the more so as there is more knowledge.

“However, think of this not in terms of deprivation but rather in terms of transcendence and then you will be able to say something truer than all truth, namely, that the unknowing regarding God escapes anyone possessing physical light and knowledge of beings: His transcendent darkness remains hidden from all light and concealed from all knowledge.  Someone beholding God and understanding what he saw has not actually seen God himself but rather something of his which has being and which is knowable.  For he himself solidly transcends mind and being.  He is completely unknown and non-existent.  He exists beyond being and he is known beyond the mind.  And his quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of him who is above everything that is known.”

(Dionysius the Areopagite, Letter One, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, translated by Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem, Paulist Press, New York, 1987, page 263, ISBN: 9780809128389)

3.1  There are ten letters of Dionysius of various lengths.  Letter One is, I think, the shortest.  The focus of this Letter One is the nature of contemplation and what it means to be fully transcendent.

3.2  There is a strong thematic connection between Letter One and Mystical Theology, the brief, five page essay on the nature of the divine ascent.  It’s almost like Letter One is a kind of addendum to Mystical Theology.

3.2.1  For example, both Mystical Theology and Letter One play with the images of darkness and light; in Letter One the ultimate is at one point referred to as ‘transcendent darkness.’  (I like to use the phrase ‘luminous darkness’ when referring to the way Dionysius talks about the mystical and transcendental.)

3.3  Brief as Letter One is, there is a progression embedded in it.  The opening paragraph, two sentences long, offers us two examples of how opposites work.  First there is the relationship between darkness and light; light disappears darkness.  Then there is the relationship between knowledge and unknowing; just as light makes darkness disappear, knowledge makes unknowing disappear.  These are two examples of how some types of opposites are mutually exclusive.

3.3.1  The use of the word ‘unknowing’ is a usage that readers find scattered through his writings.  In the context of the second sentence of the first paragraph, the word ‘unknowing’ would appear to mean ‘ignorance’; that it to say that knowledge makes ignorance disappear.  But Dionysius uses ‘unknowing’ because he wants to make a point about how knowledge of the divine is also a kind of transcendental unknowing; see below.

3.3.2  This usage of the word ‘unknowing’ was used widely in subsequent Christian Mysticism.  A good example is The Cloud of Unknowing which is an anonymous text of mystical theology written in England in the late 14^th century.

3.4  In the first sentence of paragraph 2 (the third sentence) Dionysius suggests that we should not think of what he is referring to in terms of deprivation; rather we should think of what he is referring to in terms of transcendence.  It is natural to think of light and darkness by noting that light deprives us of the experience of darkness.  Similarly, knowledge deprives us of ignorance, or to use Dionysian terminology, of unknowing.

Instead, Dionysius offers that when encountering God through unknowing we ‘escape’ physical light and ‘knowledge of beings.’  I see this as Dionysius’s way of transcending being; in Platonic terms the Good and the One are beyond being.  In Dionysian terms, God is beyond light and knowledge of beings. 

In the next sentence Dionysius clarifies that transcendent darkness is hidden from light; I read this as meaning that the transcendental is metaphysically before light, prior to light, because transcendent darkness is the cause of light. 

3.5  “Someone beholding God and understanding what he saw has not actually seen God himself but rather something of his which has being and which is unknowable.”

This sentence is making the point that the ultimate is beyond our understanding.  The implication is that if we have a spiritual experience that also includes understanding then that is not the experience of God, or of the Good and the One.  An experience that includes understanding may be valuable, but it is an experience that is on the way to the ultimate, not the ultimate itself or as such.

3.6  There are three levels operating in this brief letter.  The first level is the sensory; for example the sensory experience of light.  The second level is the realm of being or nous or the realm of Platonic Forms.  These are abstract realities which can be accessed by mind which is why, I think, at one point Dionysius pairs mind and being.  The third level, the highest level, is beyond being and mind and is accessed only through mystical contemplation.  It is not difficult to see how this three tiered metaphysical cosmology is rooted in the Platonic tradition.

If we keep in mind this three-fold metaphysical cosmology we can comprehend that the shifting meanings of words like ‘dark’ and ‘light’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘unknowing’ take on different meanings depending on which level the term is pointing to.  This is similar to the way the word beauty is used in Plotinus and how the meaning of beauty shifts depending on if it is sensory beauty, noetic beauty, or transcendental beauty.

3.7  Dionysius concludes, “And this quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of him who is above everything that is known.”  Here Dionysius is saying that unknowing leads to the knowledge of that which is above everything that is known.  Earlier Dionysius uses unknowing almost as a synonym for ignorance.  But here, at the conclusion, unknowing is transformed into the knowledge of God, the transcendental, what I would call the presence of eternity. 

3.8  I think the most important prior Platonic works for understanding Dionysius are Plato’s Parmenides and Enneads V and VI, particularly VI.9, by Plotinus.  Reading these before reading Dionysius will clarify many of the seemingly paradoxical passages of Dionysius, both in this Letter One and in Mystical Theology.

I have been told that there is strong evidence that Dionysius was familiar with the commentary on Plato’s Parmenides by Proclus.  I have not read this particular work, but if you are so inclined you might want to find the connections that scholars refer to.

3.9  The influence of Dionysius on Christian Mysticism is extensive and profound; both in Catholic and Orthodox traditions.  Dionysius is one of the most successful transplants of the Platonic tradition into another spiritual context where Platonism in this new environment was able to flourish.