Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 29

29 May 2024

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 29

1.  I tend to be broadly accepting of the items, the Dialogues and Letters, in the Platonic Canon.  Even dialogues such as Rivals or Axiochus I tend to accept as authentic.  It wouldn’t bother me if some of these items turns out to be definitively not something Plato wrote, it’s just that the reasons offered for rejecting this or that item strike me as not very strong.  I’m not the only one that thinks this way; Waterfield in his recent biography of Plato referred to the back and forth among scholars regarding the authenticity of the Letters and how this back and forth at times feels more like a change of fashion than anything else.

I think I started feeling this way when I discovered Alcibiades I.  I first encountered an edition of Plato’s Complete Works in the Edith Hamilton et al edition.  This edition leaves out Alcibiades I (along with other dialogues).  As I learned more about the Platonic Canon I learned that Alcibiades I was an important dialogue in Late Classical Platonism.  I found an edition of the dialogue and read it.  I think it is a wonderful dialogue and I can see why it attained prominence.  Marginalizing this dialogue seemed arbitrary to me.  Since then I have been skeptical regarding the tendency among some modern scholars to whittle away at the Canon.

2.  One of the things I like about Platonic spirituality is that it has a deep understanding of causality, particularly when causality is applied to spirituality.  Having met hundreds of spiritual teachers from many various traditions, my feeling is that many contemporary spiritual teachers do not understand causality.  More accurately, many contemporary spiritual teachers seek to do away with causality when talking about spirituality. 

I am referring specifically to the process of purification in the Platonic tradition, how it works and its specific practices.  Purification is the causal basis and process for the spiritual ascent and spiritual realization.  This view is also taken by Mark Anderson in his book Pure; I’ve posted about this before so I won’t go into details here.  Asceticism is a part of purification; other parts are the cultivation of virtues and Platonic contemplation.  If we understand purification from the perspective of causation, then we can also understand Platonic asceticism in the same way.

3.  I was talking to a friend recently about the music of Bach.  My friend attended a concert of vocal music by Bach.  He noticed how Bach will take a theme and sometimes expand the theme so that it lasts longer, and sometimes shrink the theme to something like half its original length.  My friend is a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and has been for a long time.  And what came to his mind after the concert is that spiritual teachings have the same kind of temporal flexibility; at times a particular view or practice will be presented briefly, while at other times it may be discussed at great length.

I thought this was insightful.  It reminded me of how Plotinus will sometimes mention a theme in passing and at other times unpack it at great length.  This is also true of Plato.  A good example of this is the topic of Beauty.

4.  I find it amusing how often nihilists will insist that life is meaningless and at the same time argue vehemently that people should do X, or live in a way that the nihilist approves of.  At some deep level I don’t think it is actually possible for a human being to be a nihilist; it’s just an idea people enjoy for a few years so they can shock others.

5.  I recently heard a Theravada monk talk about Dhamma practice; he compared it to carpentry.  I like those kinds of analogies.  He further unpacked the analogy by pointing out that if someone wants to become a carpenter it is insufficient for them to simply gather information about carpentry; at some point they have to actually cut boards and hammer nails.  In a similar way, the monk suggested, it is insufficient to simply gather information about the Dhamma; he even mentioned that extensive knowledge of the Suttas is insufficient.  What is necessary is the practice of Dhamma and he specifically mentioned the practices of purification and ethical discipline.

I feel this way about Platonism; I mean that it is necessary to practice purification and ethical discipline as understood in a Platonic context.  This is the Platonic path.  It includes things like vegetarianism, contemplation, refraining from drugs and alcohol, sexual restraint that leads to chastity, and so forth. 

Personally, I think that if one is practicing purification then gathering information about Platonism through reading the Dialogues and the Enneads is transformed into a spiritual practice; the reading becomes an act of purification in that context.  This happens because the teachings presented in the Dialogues and Enneads is clarified through the practices of purification.  Without these purification practices it is almost inevitable that misunderstandings of the written texts will arise.