Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 20

23 April 2024

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 20

1.  I wonder what it was like to study with Plato.  There are all sorts of theories ranging from basically an ancient classroom setting to a structured set of initiations that mimicked some mystery traditions.  These are not necessarily exclusive.

From what I have read it seems that the Academy was keen on mathematics.  That makes sense to me because numbers are, I think, the most accessible example of a non-sensory reality; by ‘most accessible’ I mean that people use them everyday and are familiar with them.  For this reason numbers are a good place to start out exploring Forms and other non-sensory realities. 

I tend to think that contemplation was practiced but perhaps only by ‘advanced’ students.  I base this on fragmentary evidence such as remarks attributed to Xenocrates that he practiced silence for one hour every day. (As an aside, I suspect that this ‘one hour’ was two of our hours.) This is found in Diogenes Laertius; perhaps it is in other sources as well.  But the practice of contemplation is well attested in Plato’s Dialogues with episodes depicting Socrates falling into trance states of some kind (for example in Phaedrus and The Symposium.)  It’s hard for me to discern if contemplation was done as a group practice; that is to say I don’t recall that being specifically mentioned. 

All of this is very vague.  But Aristotle reports that Plato gave lectures and it is likely that Plato’s latest Dialogue would be something the Academy during Plato’s lifetime would have eagerly looked forward to and discussed.

I wonder what the criteria were for attendance?  Plato came from a wealthy background and did not need to charge for his instruction and Plato’s teacher, Socrates, opposed charging for philosophical instruction.  This implies that there were no financial barriers.  Perhaps people became ‘members’ simply by hanging out over an extended period of time and offering their own services when such were needed. 

It's unlikely that we will ever know for sure; but if my idea that Plato was a spiritual teacher in the manner of teachers in Dharmic traditions has merit, then perhaps we can use that as a model for what went on at the Academy.  In such a setting the primary activity would be the teachings, in both written and oral forms such as lectures and discussions, as well as including everyday interactions, with their teacher Plato.  Plato was both the holder, or recipient, of an ancient tradition(s) and the communicator of that tradition to the Athenian community and context.  Plato understood what wisdom, transcendent wisdom, is.  And Plato understood how to teach others the path to the attainment of that wisdom.  That would be reason enough for many to attend the Academy for many years.  And it is reason enough for us to read, study, and contemplate the Dialogues today.

2.  The other day I heard, on a recorded lecture, a complaint about analytic philosophy and how analytic philosophers often distort philosophers’ views by reshaping those views in accordance with their own criteria of how a philosophical argument should be presented.  The lecturer was referring to a philosopher who has a significant literary output and how an analytic commenter reconfigured the view from a literary work by turning the view into a syllogism. 

There are a significant number of philosophers who also wrote literary works; Jean Paul Sartre and Iris Murdoch are recent examples.  The insistence that a philosophical argument must take a specific form, such as that of a syllogism, means that arguments that use allegory, metaphor, and other devices that Plotinus refers to as ‘comparisons’ are in some sense inherently deficient.  Turning these views into a syllogism would, from the analytic point of view, only improve them.

Platonism is very far from that way of looking at philosophy because the founding documents of the tradition, the Dialogues of Plato, are packed with allegory and other types of comparisons.  And these allegories are very powerful and fertile in their meanings.  The Allegory of the Cave is powerful because it is an allegory, not in spite of it being an allegory. 

3.  You can look at the divine ascent in Platonism as the gradual shedding of individuation, or differentiation.  I mean that as the practitioner ascends to Nous, and then past Nous, to the One, less and less remains of that which differentiates the self from the Universal until the differentiations are completely shed in the act of absorption into the Good, the One, and the Beautiful, absorbed into the Eternal.

4.  I was deeply involved, as a young man, in antiwar activities.  I no longer think it is possible to bring about an end to war, or to even reduce the extent of war.  I came to this conclusion with great reluctance.  Platonism helped me make the transition.  It’s not that Platonism is pro-war; rather it is that Platonism understands that the cause of war is embedded in the material conditions of being a human being.  In Phaedo Socrates says that war comes from greed; but the tendency is to write history as if particular individuals through their actions bring about war.  But the passage in Phaedo suggests that as long as there is greed, there will be war. 

And there is another reason; we live in the realm of differentiation and strife.  That is the nature of this realm.  Therefore, war is inevitable.

But there is a way out; follow the path to transcendence and at the end of the journey, there is the grotto of true peace.