20 October 2022

The Geography of Platonism Today

Platonism is a tradition that has developed over thousands of years.  Over this long span of time different interpretations of Platonism have emerged.  I think of these interpretations as communities, or loosely defined subdivisions, of the City of Platonism.  They all share a common polis, but each subdivision of the City of Platonism has its own rules and regulations and its own self-understanding.  Perhaps a good comparison would be the Cantons of Switzerland.  Here are some of the Cantons of Platonism as I see it at this time:

1. Academic Platonism – This is where most people are introduced to Platonism today.  Plato is viewed in this context as an important figure in the history of Western culture.  My personal experience, which has been affirmed by others, is that contemporary Academic Platonism is interested in Plato for the structure of Plato’s arguments, and for Plato’s place in the history of Western Philosophy.  But many contemporary academic philosophers reject Platonism as a living option and topics such as rebirth or the goal of attaining transcendence tend to be dismissed these days because they clash with the dominant views of materialism and reductionism. 

There are academics who find Platonism inspiring, but there are not many of them.

2. Christian Platonism – Early Christian authors such as Justin Martyr and, most famously, Saint Augustine, retained significant Platonist views when they converted to Christianity.  This has left a deep imprint on Christian theology and mysticism.  This has continued to be the case, though the explicitly Platonist interpretation of Christianity has been muted by the turn to Aristotelianism in the Middle Ages.  Nevertheless, Platonic Christianity has its articulate spokespeople today; Peter Kreeft is a good example.

3. Mathematical Platonism – There has always been a strong connection between mathematics and Platonism because numbers are a fine example of Plato’s doctrine of forms.  Mathematicians who hold to the view that numbers and their relations are discovered, rather than numbers and their relations being human creations, are Platonists and most of them are consciously aware of that. (As an aside, if you go on youtube and search for discussions on this topic you can find many.) Platonism nourished mathematical knowledge and was, in turn, nourished by mathematical approaches to philosophical issues.  For example, Proclus wrote a commentary on Euclid’s Elements and sought to adopt Euclid’s structure in Proclus’s The Elements of Theology. 

4. Aesthetic Platonism – In the arts, such as poetry, music, architecture, and painting, there are some who understand their own art or craft in Platonic terms.  The exalted place that Beauty has in the Platonic tradition, particularly in the writings of Plotinus, means that this is an easy connection to make.  Music and poetry are understood to be means for connecting with higher hypostases and even with Beauty itself.  Often this is heavily mixed with occult procedures, rituals, and history so that it is not always easy to see the specifically Platonic views.  But there were, and are, people who understand the connection and find the Platonic world view nourishing for their own aesthetic efforts.

5. Thomas Taylor Platonism – Thomas Taylor (15 May 1758 to 1 November 1835) was a British Platonist who was dedicated to translating the works of many Platonist authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Maximus of Tyre, Proclus, et al.  Taylor was the first to translate into English the entire works of Plato and Aristotle.  Taylor’s understanding of Platonism was heavily influenced by the works of Proclus (8 February 412 to 17 April 485).  Proclus was the head of the Athenian Academy and a prolific commentator on Plato, as well as writing original interpretation of Platonism such as the above-mentioned Elements of Theology.  Proclus’s approach is analytical in many ways, but it is also interested in the practice of Theurgy which becomes a central concern for Proclus and those who align with Proclus’s interpretation, such as Thomas Taylor.

Taylor’s translations have been the foundation for a contemporary understanding of the Platonic tradition.  It operates through the Prometheus Trust, whose home base is in England.  The Prometheus Trust is dedicated to making available Taylor’s translations, offering classes in the Platonic tradition, and in general supporting the presence of the Platonic tradition in the English-speaking world.  My observation is that many contemporary Platonists have studied with the Prometheus Trust or are in some way connected with the Trust; there are, for example, a number of youtubers, such as Mindy Mandell, who have this kind of connection.

I think it is instructive that the Prometheus Trust is not part of any academic institution; in fact, it is critical of Academic Platonism, which is understandable.  In some ways I feel that the Prometheus Trust offers a model for others who want to nourish the presence of Platonism in the world today. 

6.  Ascetic Platonism – There are some contemporary Platonists who are inspired by Plato’s, and others’, ascetic writing.  That is to say that they view Platonism as an ascetic spiritual tradition.  The Dialogue Phaedo is the primary resource for these ascetic teachings, though one can find the ascetic perspective scattered throughout the works of Plato and Plotinus. 

Ascetic Platonism understands Platonism as a spiritual tradition that closely resembles the monastic traditions found within Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.  For example, Eric Fallick, a Platonist Ascetic, writes, “Platonism is a spiritual or religious or soteriological system that offers a path to release from the endless cycle of reincarnation and its concomitant misery.  It belongs to a family of such systems comprising Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Orphism, Pythagoreanism and Platonism . . . “ (Eric Fallick, An Extremely Brief Introduction to Platonism, www.platonistasceticism.blogspot.com; also Eric Fallick’s book Platonist Contemplative Asceticism: Practice and Principle is a good resource for this perspective.)

It is difficult to know how much of a presence Ascetic Platonism has.  There is no organization dedicated to presenting this view, and asceticism as such is highly marginalized in modernity.  Nevertheless, I suspect that there have always been ascetic Platonists; you read stories about them here and there in the Platonic tradition.  And this way still has a presence even in the midst of modernity.

7. No doubt, I have left out some Platonist Cantons; for example, I suspect that there is at this time a Hindu Platonist Canton or Region, which means a Platonism that is informed by the Hindu tradition and Hinduism’s structures of interpretation.  But I have only been able to see it at the margins and don’t really know much about it.

Personally, I see all this activity as a sign of health.  In a time when materialism and reductionism dominate the world, it is a sign of the strength of the Platonic tradition that it has the capacity to flourish even in a cultural situation that would, at first, seem hostile to its presence.