7 November 2022

Peter Kreeft Contrasts Modernity and Platonism

“Plato and Aristotle live in adjoining towns in the same country; we live in a different country, a brave new world, in which an idea is only an opinion, a form is only a shape, an end is only a personal motive, a substance is only a chemical, happiness is only a feeling, virtue is only prudery, justice is only legality, souls are only religious superstitions, and judgments that claim objective truth are only judgmentalism and intolerance.”

(Peter Kreeft, The Platonic Tradition, St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, Indiana, 2018, page 39.)

 

I think Kreeft’s summation of the chasm between modernity and the view of Platonism is insightful and well-written.  A few comments:

1. I can’t remember where I read this, it was years ago, but it was pointed out that in the Classical world Paganism and Christianity and Judaism shared significant foundational understandings.  Both Paganism and Christianity and Judaism adhered to the understanding of transcendental realities.  All of these traditions also affirmed that a life devoted to understanding and experiencing the transcendental was a well-lived human life.  Pagan philosophy, and Platonism in particular, battled with Christianity over many issues, not the least of which was political power.  But from the perspective of modernity, Paganism and Christianity are opposed to the modernist project and share a world view.

2. There has never existed a culture like modernity, a culture that dismisses the reality of the non-sensory and the transcendental.  There have always been materialists; early Buddhist discourses mention them in India, and the atomists of Greece also come to mind.  But it is only in modernity that materialism and reductionism dominate the culture.  For modernity this simply means that all previous cultures were wrong.  But for some of us who are more skeptical about our own cultural situation, it suggests that modernity is disturbed, and disturbing, and leaves out the central realities that make human life worth living.

3. For the contemporary Platonist this situation is a challenge that previous Platonist writings are unlikely to address.  We will have to figure out how to negotiate the situation on our own, learning from each other how to walk the Platonic Way in spite of the drawbacks of modernity.