Is Platonism a Dharmic Tradition?

16 December 2022

Is Platonism a Dharmic Tradition?

As my practice of Platonism has blossomed, and as I have become more secure in the view, theory, literature, and Way of Platonism, I have been struck, at times, by how similar Platonism is to Dharmic traditions.  By “Dharmic traditions” I mean the traditions of India; in particular, Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.  I studied and practiced Buddhism for about 30 years, both in the U.S. and abroad.  I also spent time delving into the Jain tradition, though I did not have a formal Jain teacher.  Because of this background I often see similarities between Platonism and Dharmic traditions that perhaps others might miss.  Here are a few thoughts on this topic:

1.  I’m not the only one to make this observation about Platonism.  In another post I quoted Eric Fallick from his essay An Extremely Brief Introduction to Platonism, “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, compromising Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism.”  (See the online blog – platonistasceticism.blogspot.com )  In addition, Indian scholars such as Vishwa Adluri seem to see a connection between Dharmic traditions and Platonism, as well as some Western scholars such as Edward Butler. 

2.  The implication of looking at Platonism this way is that understanding Platonism is better done through a comparison with Dharmic traditions than it is done by comparing Platonism with contemporary Western philosophy.  This is because the concerns of Western philosophy have drifted very far from the concerns of Platonism; this is acknowledged by Western philosophers themselves when they write on their relationship to Platonism.

3.  In my own case I was introduced to Plato’s Dialogues when I was a Philosophy Major at University.  But Platonism was never presented in a Western University context as a spiritual, or religious, or salvific, system.  After leaving University I subsequently took a deep dive into Buddhism.  When I returned to Platonism decades later, I saw Platonism with new eyes and Platonism made more sense and felt more alive and relevant to my life.  I no longer saw Platonism as a step that inevitably lead to contemporary philosophy; rather I saw it as an approach to life that had been abandoned by Western Philosophy under the influence of modernity.

4.  One teaching that links Platonism to Dharmic traditions is the centrality of rebirth.  This is a teaching that the West has rejected because rebirth does not have a place in materialist, or reductionist, world views.  The intensity with which the West rejects rebirth was demonstrated to me in my long association with Western Buddhism.  During my period of involvement with Western Buddhism I saw how Western Buddhists carefully discarded anything in traditional Buddhism that clashes with Western materialist and modernist assumptions and foremost among these is rebirth.  Numerous Western Buddhists, referring to themselves as ‘Secular Buddhism’ refer to rebirth as a ‘superstition’ (their word) and therefore something to be discarded.

I think the rejection of rebirth in Platonism was foundational for the subsequent rejection of rebirth in Dharmic traditions on the part of Western practitioners of those traditions.  I say this because Western culture had already become skilled at sidelining the teaching of rebirth in Platonism and therefore it had those skills ready at hand when confronted with the pervasive, and definitive, teachings on rebirth in Dharmic traditions such as Buddhism. 

5.  Another common view shared by Dharmic traditions and Platonism is the presence of what I call the Ascetic Ideal.  I mean that the practices of renunciation are foundational for traditions like Platonism and Jainism.  Furthermore, that these traditions share an analysis of the spiritual journey that views renunciation as causally related to spiritual realization.

6.  Vegetarianism, and sometimes what we would call Veganism, is also a teaching shared by both Dharmic and Platonist traditions.  This dietary restriction is understood to be a necessary component for the practice of Philosophy in the Platonic tradition; see Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Killing Animals.

7.  It is unclear to me if there is enough evidence to show a direct historical influence between Indian Dharma traditions and such Western traditions as Pythagoreanism and Platonism.  I wouldn’t say there is no evidence for such connections, but I have not run across what I would think of as evidence that most historians would consider convincing.  The most telling evidence I have run across is that Plotinus, after finishing his studies with Ammonias Saccas in Alexandria, tried to make it to India to study with Indian teachers of wisdom.  The journey to India was thwarted (see ‘The Life of Plotinus’ by Porphyry) and Plotinus ended up in Rome, to the West’s good fortune.  But this does show that Plotinus had an awareness of Indian traditions and teachings, though how extensive this knowledge was is not known.  And Plotinus was many centuries later than Plato or Pythagoras.  Still, the idea of an actual relationship between Dharmic and early Western philosophy is an intriguing possibility.