23 June 2023
Notes and Comments on Phaedo – 9
I’m going to quote from sections of the commentary on Plato’s Phaedo by Damascius. Damascius (462 – 538) was the last head of the Platonic Athenian Academy. The school was closed in 529 C.E. by Emperor Justinian; it was part of a crackdown on the remaining Classical institutes of learning and worship.
I don’t know when Damascius wrote his commentary on Phaedo. I will be quoting from two sections of the commentary. The first is Damascius’s commentary on the section posted in the previous post. The second quote is from a little later in the commentary, but it touches directly on the subject of ethics and the life of philosophy and for that reason I think it fits well at this point in my ‘Notes and Comments.’
“The first point: the philosopher despises physical pleasure.
“68. [64d2-3} In what way can ‘indifference towards pleasures’ be said to be peculiar to man in the stage of purification? Surely he shares it with those who have achieved the civic or the moral virtues? – The answer is that the others, though they do not seek pleasure as an end in itself (for each of them pursues his own end), will sometimes seek it as a means to an end, and even this cannot be said to those on the way to purification.”
Comment: Damascius is raising the question of the instrumentality of purification or, more broadly, the question of means and ends. Damascius suggests that at times people may pursue pleasure, as described in Phaedo, in order to achieve some end. For example, they might indulge in drinking after work with their boss in order to create a sense of camaraderie with the view in mind that this could help at getting a raise in wages in the future.
In contrast, Damascius suggests that philosophers practicing purification do not have this kind of transactional approach in mind. I think what Damascius is getting at is that purification is a matter of aligning with the One, of becoming more like the One, and thereby stepping closer to the presence of the One.
“69. [64d2-65a8] Because purification is its theme, the discourse starts with the lowest functions and proceeds to the highest: nutrition is common to all living beings, copulation goes with the irrational appetites, the wearing of ornaments is a form of irrationality found only in rational creatures. One could also start with the most necessary pleasures and ascend to the least necessary.
The commentator’s own division, however, is based on the objects of the appetites: they may be necessary and natural (food) or neither [necessary nor natural] (ornaments) or natural but not necessary (sex) or necessary but not natural (indispensable clothing and shelter).”
Comment: I suspect that ‘the commentator’ refers to Proclus, but I’m not sure if that is the case. Platonism developed this four-fold division of ‘appetites,’ what we might call ‘desires,’ and Platonist lecturers and teachers seem to have used it as a structure for discussing them. Appetites/desires may be:
We might think of ‘natural’ as ‘biological.’ I haven’t seen this structure in modern commentaries (though I have read only a few of them), but it seems to have had a place in late Classical Platonism. I can see how it would be helpful.
“70. But supposing the philosopher is a ruler, will he not affect the apparel that befits a kind? If he becomes a priest, will he not wear the sacerdotal garments? – This is answered by the addition ‘except in so far as absolutely inevitable.’
Or, rather, there is no question at all here of men in these functions, but only of the man in search of purification; if he should need sacred robes for this purpose, he will wear them as symbols, not as garments.”
Comment: It’s interesting that this kind of question arises. I suppose if you are the head of the Athenian Academy, which was famous, you might be called upon to serve in various capacities at civic functions; thus the concern. There is also the example of Plutarch, who became a Priest at Delphi in 95 C.E. This was a significant position and no doubt involved wearing priestly robes.
“71. Why does Socrates not declare the philosopher inaccessible to greed or ambition as yet? – Because his object was to prove the soul detachable from the body; that it exists independently of things extraneous to the body, is evident to anyone. Or perhaps the denial of these is implied in the denial of care of the body and in what he called the ‘directing of the soul towards itself [64e6].
“It seems plausible that these arguments also prove the soul immune against the influences of sense-perception and imagination.”
Comment: My own feeling about raising specifics like this, is that we need to keep in mind the circumstances of Phaedo. Socrates has only a few hours, at most. For this reason, at times in Phaedo Socrates speaks in broad strokes. For example, he does not bring up the full structure of purifications, such as its various levels; nor does Socrates cover all the specific asceses that purification refers to.
“72. [64e8-65a2] Plato, too makes separate activity the proof of separate existence, before Aristotle had used this argument. This is the purport of his conclusion: ‘it is evident that the philosopher detaches his soul from the body.’”
“73. [64e5; 65a2] Why ‘as far as possible’ and ‘more than other people’? – Because the soul can be detached only in the measure in which human nature permits this; genii (a type of deity, perhaps what some others refer to as ‘daemon’) and Gods detach themselves from the body in a different way.”
Comment: This is an intriguing comment. First, separation of the soul from the body, it is noted, is accomplished to the degree human life permits, and within the context of an individual life. This adds a nice note of practicality to the teaching. Second, Damascius remarks that deities of various kinds can also separate their souls from their bodies, but that they do so in a ‘different way.’ I’m not familiar with the literature on how deities would separate their souls from their bodies. Personally, I don’t see why deities would use a distinct process of separation. My intuition is, in order for deities to separate soul and body (in other words, to practice philosophy) they would need to practice purification and the same asceses as human practitioners of philosophy. Again, I haven’t read the counterargument to this; on the other hand, I have the backing of, for example, the Buddhist tradition in this matter. I view deities as contingent, mortal, beings who are subject to becoming and begoning (birth and death). They are part of the third hypostasis of genesis and samsara and live in the same world as humans, plants, and animals do. My conclusion, therefore, is that the teachings of purification and asceticism are just as applicable to deities as they are to other living beings in the hypostasis of becoming and begoning.
Later in his commentary, Damascius makes some comments about purification that I think are applicable to this discussion. Here they are:
“120. One who is purifying himself and endeavoring to assimilate himself to the Pure must in the first place discard pleasure and pain as far as possible; secondly, the food of which he partakes should be simple, avoiding all luxury, and it should also be in accordance with the laws of justice and temperance (that is to say, free from the taint of bloodshed [this comment is in the commentary]) and with divine command and ancestral custom (for a diet that, in defiance of religious law, offends against animal life and coarsens the vital spirit, will make the body unruly towards the soul and unfit to enter into contact with God); thirdly, he must suppress the aimless motion of irrational appetite (what indeed could arouse desire or anger in one who has disengaged himself from all external things?), but if anything of the kind should ever stir in waking or sleeping, it must be quelled speedily by reason; fourthly, he must detach himself from sense-perception and imagination, except in so far as it is necessary to make use of them; in the fifth place, the man who wants to be set free from the plurality of genesis must dissociate himself from the multifarious variety of opinion; the sixth and last precept is to escape from the complexity of discursive reason and seek the simpler forms of demonstration and division as a preparation for the undivided activity of the intellect.”
(Damascius, Commentary On Plato’s Phaedo, translated by L. G. Westerink, The Prometheus Trust, Gloucestershire, UK, 2009, pages 74-76, ISBN: 9781898910473)
There is another translation of this passage by Eric Fallick, who publishes a blog on Platonist Asceticism and has posted his translation:
“. . . the contemplative philosopher is one wanting as his goal having been made one with the (hypostases) above himself and to be theirs rather than of himself: on which account (Plato) says ‘(it is not lawful) for the not pure to touch the pure.’
“It is necessary for one being purified and hastening to be made like the Pure first to reject pleasures and pains as far as he is able; second, he must nourish himself with plain, simple food without luxury, but also food that is righteous and temperate (but this is untainted with blood and spotless) and that is holy and in accord with ancestral practice (for food that is unholy and harming animals and coarsening the spirit makes the body intractable to the soul and unfit for contact with God); third, he must cut off the unharmonious wrong motion of the appetitive irrationality (for what would one standing aloof from all external things desire and with what would he be angry?), but if ever such a sort of thing would be moved either awake or asleep, it is most quickly put down by the reason; fourth, he must keep away from all sense-perceptions and imaginations, as far as it is not necessary to use them; fifth, the one wanting to be released from the multiplicity of becoming is to be separated from the opinions of all various sorts; the sixth precept out of all of them, is to escape the variegated complexity of thought and pursue the simpler expositions and distinctions with a view to becoming accustomed to the undivided intelligence.”
(Damascius, Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo, translated by Eric S. Fallick, platonistasceticism.blogspot.com, August 15, 2021)
1. In this section Damascius connects purification with vegetarianism when he mentions food that is ‘free from the taint of bloodshed’. Damascius is, I believe, basing this on Porphyry’s On Abstinence. I say this because Porphyry argues that killing animals, either for food or for sacrificing them in rituals, coarsens the soul, making the soul, or spirit, unfit for the ascending to higher hypostases. In addition, Damascius makes reference to this kind of food as ‘ancestral’; that is an argument that Porphyry makes in On Abstinence, that anciently people did not indulge in meat and that it was only due to historical cataclysms or other misfortunes that people began to eat the flesh of animals.
2. Plato does not explicitly mention
vegetarianism in Phaedo. I think
that is for two reasons; first, by mentioning a number of ascetic practices the
implication is that all of them are to be practiced (this is a common way of
speaking and writing.) Second, my
feeling is that it was so well known that vegetarianism was foundational for
the philosophical life that mentioning it would have been unnecessary.
3. It is interesting, and somewhat unexpected, that Damascius remarks on escaping from discursive reason for a simpler type of cognition. I think this simpler approach to cognition has to do with what Plotinus refers to as ‘comparisons’ as a method in Platonist consideration of philosophical issues and life. ‘Comparison’ in this context means things like metaphor, simile, allegory, etc. As the practitioner ascends to higher hypostases, access to them is found by using these kinds of comparisons rather than through the analytic approach of contemporary philosophy. Why? Because the analytic approach divides and dismembers both material things and objects of thought. But the philosophical ascent is an ascent to greater and greater unity, not greater and greater division. And it is the comparison found in devices like metaphor and allegory that demonstrate often hidden unities.
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