Late Classical Platonism

4 July 2023

Late Classical Platonism

1.  Things change, as Heraclitus pointed out.  And this applies to philosophy, just like anything else.  Over time philosophies will develop, change, take on new views, add explanations, unpack implications, etc.  This is simply what human beings do.  Humans have bred many varieties of dog, many kinds of apple, introduced many types of guitars, etc.  The same process happens to philosophical traditions, and this happened to Platonism in the Late Classical period, roughly the third century through the sixth century, common era, or roughly Plotinus to Boethius.

2.  This happens because we live in the realm of differentiation and division which is the mark of the third hypostasis. 

3.  Differentiations and divisions can take unexpected turns; a bass guitar’s music is very different from that of a classical guitar, and a dachshund does not look at all like a wolf.  In the same way later developments of a philosophical tradition can be dramatically different from what the founder, or the earlier proponents, advocated; think of how Hegel’s spiritual idealism morphed into Marx’s materialism.

4.  In the Late Classical period I see four different types of Platonism establishing their presence and their distinct interpretations of the Platonist tradition: 1) Contemplative Platonism, inspired primarily by Plotinus and Porphyry, 2) Theurgic Platonism, inspired by Iamblichus and his followers including Proclus, 3) Christian Platonism, inspired by Saint Augustine and other former Platonists who converted to Christianity, and 4) Jewish Platonism which is represented by Philo of Alexandria. 

I am going to be commenting on the first three because I don’t know enough about the development of Jewish Platonism.  I have read completely contradictory views on the place of Jewish Platonism; some reject the idea and some accept it, but to varying degrees.  I am not in a position to sort out the various views at this time.

5.  You can think of these traditions as branches of a great tree.  The trunk consists of the Dialogues of Plato.  The roots of the tree are older traditions like Pythagoreanism and Orphism and possibly other mystery traditions.  The branches are a symbol of the process of differentiation.

6.  I am going to briefly contrast the traditions by how they treat certain topics: the One, the Hypostases as a whole, the human Soul, Purification, and Asceticism.

7.  In Contemplative Platonism the One is the ultimate goal for practitioners; the teachings of this tradition, e.g. Plotinus, have been aptly summarized in the phrase ‘Return to the One.’  The One is considered to be completely ineffable and beyond affirmation or negation, or any kind of predication.  In the Contemplative tradition it is the process of contemplation that gives the practitioner access to the One; and the One is understood to be present as an interior reality that can be contacted through interior cultivation.

The Theurgic tradition frames the goal of returning to the One as beyond the capacity of human beings.  Because of this the Theurgic tradition turns to magic for assistance on the divine ascent.  It appears that contact with various deities is substituted for a return to the One.  Thus the Contemplative and Theurgic tradition have different views of the ultimate goal of the Platonic tradition.

Christian Platonism reconfigures the nature of the One which in Christianity becomes the person of Jesus Christ.  At times one can find in Christian Mysticism the teachings of Contemplative Platonist ineffability; e.g. Mystical Theology by Dionysius the Areopagite.  Such teachings do exist and have had an influence on Christianity; but for the majority of ordinary Christians the idea of the ultimate being ineffable is not their experience.  Instead, the ultimate is a specific personality, that of Jesus.  In Christianity, the Platonist tradition is understood to be ‘missing’ this critical truth, the truth of Jesus as God.  For this reason, Christian Platonists see Platonism as a precursor to Christianity, as paving the way for Christianity, and as being completed in Jesus.

8.  In Contemplative Platonism the metaphysical map that is used to teach how the cosmos emanates from the ultimate, the Good and the One, has three levels, or hypostases.  The first is the One itself.  The second is ‘Nous’, usually translated as ‘intellect’, sometimes as ‘mind’, sometimes as ‘spirit’.  Nous is the first appearance of differentiation which has three parts: Being, Life, and Intellect or Mind.  The third level or hypostasis is Soul and in the realm of soul are included the cosmos as a whole, the processes and cycles of the cosmos, and eventually the individual entities of the material world.

In Theurgic Platonism the three-level map is made much more complicated.  For the purposes of this brief overview, I will mention only the insertion of an additional level, or hypostasis, between the One and Nous.  It is here that the Theurgic tradition places the gods and goddesses and deities of various kinds.  These deities are considered to be above being and are referred to as ‘henads’, or ‘ones’.  The purpose of Theurgic practice is to connect with these deities, or henads, through ritual practice.  Thus the change to the metaphysical map facilitates the theurgic program of magic and occult manipulation.

In Christian Platonism the Platonist map is used in a modified way.  Like Platonism, Christianity regards the ultimate as the creator of all things.  However, like Theurgy, Christianity developed a series of intermediaries who facilitated, or blocked, depending on your point of view, access to God; these included a ‘terrestrial hierarchy’ and participation in rituals such as holy communion.  Some scholars suggest that orthodox Christianity is a theurgic tradition and I suppose you can look at it that way.  Others deny the connection.  Perhaps it depends on how you understand theurgy.

9.  In Contemplative Platonism the human soul is understood to retain a connection to the One; that is to say there is within the soul a ‘spark’ of the one, or the light of the One and of Intellect or Nous.  We are usually not aware of this due to being distracted by sensory existence.  But it is there, quietly waiting for us to turn to it.  This presence of the One (what I like to call the presence of eternity within the ephemeral individual) is what makes the return to the one possible (not easy, but possible).  Plotinus, in Ennead IV.8, The Descent of the Soul into Bodies, offers the contemplative view with Plotinus’s usual clarity, “And if one ought to dare to express one’s own view more clearly, contradicting the opinion of others, even our soul does not altogether come down, but there is always something of it in the intelligible; but if the part which is in the world of sense perception gets control, or rather if it is itself brought under control, and thrown into confusion [by the body – translator’s addition], it prevents us from perceiving the things which the upper part of the soul contemplates.”

(Plotinus, Ennead IV, IV.8.8, The Descent of the Soul into Bodies, translated by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1984, page 421, ISBN: 9780674994881)

In the Theurgic tradition the soul is viewed as cut off from the One.  The terminology used in the Theurgic tradition is that the soul is ‘fully descended’ into the third hypostasis, into materiality, and there is nothing remaining of the one within the soul.  This means that there is no reason to engage in contemplation as an inward turning has nothing to turn to.  Instead of contemplation the Theurgic interpretation advocates for the use of ritual magic that connects the theurgic practitioner to the deities which the theurgic rewriting of the metaphysical map have inserted between the One and Nous.  The connection to the One is made by the human practitioner connecting to the gods who are placed ‘next to’ the One.  It is therefore only through the intermediary of the gods that we can approach, but not return, to the One.  This is similar to orthodox Christianity which places intermediaries in the form of rituals and hierarchies between its members and God.

Proclus very clearly states this theurgic view of the soul as follows, “Every particular soul, when it descends into temporal process (the third hypostasis – my addition), descends entire: there is not a part of it which remains above and a part which descends.”

(Proclus, The Elements of Theology, Second Edition, Proposition 211, translated by E. R. Dodds, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, page 185, ISBN: 9780198140979)

10.  Purifications in Contemplative Platonism are a set of practices that serve to create a sense of stability in one’s life through things like civic virtues, and more elevated practices that focus on wisdom.  Purification also contains such lifestyle practices as vegetarianism and non-harming.  Vegetarianism is a major practice of purification, inherited from earlier spiritual traditions such as Orphism and Pythagoreanism.

In Theurgy purification means, primarily, ritual efficacy; meaning doing a ritual correctly so that the body aligns with the deity for whom the ritual is done.  Practices such as vegetarianism are dismissed, sometimes with great vehemence.  In the case of vegetarianism, it is argued that contact with some deities requires blood sacrifice, meaning the ritual sacrifice of animals, something that is prohibited in the Contemplative interpretation.  All that matters to the theurgist is ritual completeness.

Christian Platonism falls somewhere between these two.  Ritual efficacy is important in such rituals as holy communion.  On the other hand, the commandments and other ethical injunctions serve a similar purpose as purification in the Contemplative tradition.  And on the specific issue of animal sacrifice, Christianity moved to prohibit that practice as it gained more power in the Late Classical period.

11.  In the dialogue Phaedo it is clear that the Platonist tradition is an ascetic tradition.  This is supported by many other quotations in other dialogues, but the Phaedo is unmistakable in its advocacy of the Ascetic Ideal.  The Ascetic ideal is instantiated through practices of purification, such as vegetarianism, sexual restraint, and refraining from alcohol, among others.  Asceticism is the means whereby a practitioner separates his soul from his body, as far as he is able to do so, in preparation for death when full separation takes place.

In the Theurgic tradition asceticism is sometimes practiced by individuals, but it does not have the centrality that it does in the Contemplative stream of Platonism.  What is most important for the theurgists is ritual efficacy and completeness.

Christianity had a long history of asceticism, but it is now almost entirely lost.  For example, there used to be a sense of ‘contempt for the world,’ and books written with that title, thriving monastic communities, and an admiration for ascetics even if their practices were uniquely strange, such as the ancient stylites.  Personally, I think that the ascetic ideal was brought into Christianity by former Platonists, but that is a controversial view.  More relevant, is that today asceticism is not a feature of Christianity; it is true there are a few monasteries left.  But the widespread admiration for asceticism has disappeared and there has been a steep decline in monastic vocations.

12.  The above are just brief notes that I have pulled together.  But this has helped me to understand the different directions that different interpretations of Platonism have taken.  In some ways they are very different even when they use the same vocabulary and reference the same ancient works, such as the Dialogues.  It may look like they are more similar than they really are when casually encountering them.  This is not unique to Platonism.  If I were to offer an instructive comparison, because of my long association with Buddhism, I would compare the Contemplative and Theurgic traditions in Platonism to the Chan (aka Zen) and Tantric traditions in Buddhism.  What I am looking at is how Chan minimizes ritual (though does not eliminate it), whereas Tantric Buddhism is all about elaborate ritual.  In the Chan tradition Bodhisattvas and deities of various sorts are given their due veneration, but the primary practice of Chan is interior contemplation.  In contrast, in the Tantric tradition ritual contact with deities through such practices as visualization and ceremony, are foundational.  In terms of asceticism, the Chan tradition in China was a monastic tradition; all the famous Chan Masters lived in accordance with the Buddhist monastic regulations (this included vegetarianism).  In contrast, Buddhist Tantra is frequently transgressive of these kinds of ascetic demands.

I don’t want to take this comparison too far; there are differences between Buddhism and Platonism that make such comparisons complex.  On the other hand, I think it has some value.

As readers here likely already know, I follow the contemplative tradition of Platonism and its associated practices of ascetic purification.  This is the journey I am on and I am satisfied that this understanding of Platonism is the way to the Good and the One.