Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 41

7 April 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 41

1.  I was reading some of the essays by John Dillon from his new book Perspectives on Plotinus and at the same time rereading from the Orations of Maximus of Tyre.  I was reading them now and then and going back and forth between them.  I came away with a pleasing feeling of continuity; that is to say I feel a sense of common purpose between Dillon and Maximus as well as a common approach in their essays.  They both have great respect for the Platonic tradition.  They both ground what they are saying in the Platonic heritage, including older texts.  They both write in a focused, essay, style; I mean that each of their writings is focused on a particular topic of Platonism which the authors then unpack, showing how the topic of the essay relates to other topics in Platonism and/or Platonism as a whole.

2.  A friend of mine disagreed with my assertion in “Brief Notes on Various Topics 40.3” that presenting Platonism to college students needs to be done in a manner that can connect with them by presenting Platonism in a way that does not clash with the assumptions of modernity; at least not too much.  This means that starting with the topics of transcendence, or asceticism, is unlikely to make sense to young people in our culture at this time because of its materialism, nihilism, and reductionism.  

My friend pointed out that Platonism is not a tradition that is for most people.  Rather, Platonism is for the few.  My friend was suggesting that crafting a presentation of Platonism to appeal to undergraduate college students (perhaps in an Introduction to Philosophy class) implicitly means that I want Platonism to be a popular ‘Dharma’ or a ‘universal’ Dharma.  I think this is a fair point.  We in the West are used to thinking of religions and spiritual traditions as having the goal of universal appeal and, potentially, universal adherence.  This is true of Christianity.  But it is also true of a religion like Buddhism which has always had a strong push to convert others to its tradition(s).  

But not all spiritual traditions, or religions, think of their mission in the world as including converting large numbers of people to their tradition.  A good example are what I might call ‘spiritual arts’.  I am thinking of things like tea ceremony, tarot, I Ching, body-centered practices like Chi Gong, various meditation traditions and contemplative traditions, traditions like Jainism, and so forth.

Platonism more closely resembles these kinds of practices. There are differences, for sure; for example, Platonism seems to be more heavily invested in reading, studying, and interacting at multiple levels with most of these traditions and practices.  But then again, there are differences between any two of these non-universalistic traditions. 

In a number of Dialogues Plato presents the requirements for being a philosopher.  In Phaedo those requirements are ascetic.  This is also true in other dialogues.  In addition, in The Republic Plato mentions things like having a good memory, being a quick learner, and living what we today might call a ‘minimalist’ life.  Such a description presents a calling that is for a limited number of people.

2.1  When thinking about this a bit more, it came to me that the idea that a particular engagement in human affairs is not normally considered to have universal appeal.  For example, if someone is a gardener that person does not normally think of gardening as something that everyone should do.  Or someone who practices calligraphy as a hobby does not normally think of calligraphy as something that everyone should practice.  But when it comes to spirituality it seems to be the case that people think of spiritual traditions as for everyone, or accessible to everyone, and that if the spiritual tradition or practice is not universal in this way that it is somehow a failure when compared to traditions that do have a universalist approach.  I think that happens in Buddhism, particularly Mahayana Buddhism, because of certain ideals of compassion which are interpreted as being fulfilled when all people align with the Buddhist understanding of compassion; I’m thinking, for example, of the Bodhisattva Vows.  I think this happens in Christianity and Islam because of their supersessionist tendencies.  But, again, Platonism is not like that and is content to appeal to a limited number.

3.  In the Timaeus Plato writes, “. . . the motions that have an affinity to the divine part within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe.  These, surely, are the ones which each of us should follow.  We should redirect the revolutions in our heads that were thrown off course at our birth, by coming to learn the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, and so bring into conformity with its objects our faculty of understanding, as it was in its original condition.  And when this conformity is complete, we shall have achieved our goal: that most excellent life offered to humankind by the gods, both now and forevermore.”

(Plato, Timaeus, translated by Donald J. Zeyl, Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 1997, page 1289, 90c-d, ISBN: 9780872203495)

3.1  This helps the reader understand why astronomy is an important study in Platonism; because studying the revolutions of the universe connects us with the divine, linking the universe to the divine within us.  

3.2  One of the revolutions included would be the revolution of the sun, or the solar cycle.  This links astronomy to the contemplation what I call ‘waiting for the sun’.  I’ve posted about this before, but here in Timaeus is the explanation of the significance of this contemplation.  

4.  Most people use the word ‘theurgy’ as a synonym for magic.  I recently looked up the word ‘theurgy’ in an online dictionary and ‘magic’ was the first meaning listed.  I take a narrower, more specialized, view of theurgy.  In a Platonic context, based on Iamblichus’s influential On the Mysteries, theurgy is a sacrificial system that argues for the efficacy of blood sacrifice; that is to say the slaying of living animals as an essential part of theurgic ritual practice.  It’s not that all theurgic rituals require blood sacrifice; rather it is that theurgy is the foundation which permits animal sacrifice when it accords with the theurgic view.  I think that incorporating this perspective on ritual sacrifice into Platonism from Iamblichus onward, was a setback for Platonism that should be rejected.  The antidote is to be found in Porphyry’s Abstinence which argues against the slaying of animals either for ritual purposes or for slaying them for food.  A second antidote is to be found in the Platonic teachings on non-harming.

5.  On an everyday level Platonism is a gift that slowly transforms one’s life for the better.  At one level, the Platonist practitioner becomes more aware of what it means to live a virtuous life and why someone should strive to live a life of virtue.  On another level, what happens is that the Platonist practitioner begins to perceive material objects as symbols, or instantiations, of divine, or higher, realities.  This ability adds additional dimensions of experience to our ordinary life.  And these additional dimensions are invitations to transcendence and to that which is eternal.

6.  There is a passage in The Laws where the Athenian Stranger refers to an Egyptian artistic tradition which has lasted for 10,000 years; unchanged for all that time.  This was a style of painting which had strict rules for the procedures of painting bodily forms.  Clinias responds that this is “Fantastic!”, which I think in this context means something like ‘unbelievable’.  (As an aside, there are contemporary traditions of painting that strictly control the manner in which bodily forms are presented; I am thinking at the moment of Tibetan Thangka painting with which the West has become somewhat familiar in the last 50 years or so.  This tradition has rules governing the placement of bodies and other elements and these rules go back many centuries.)   The passage continues with a discussion of an Egyptian tradition that does roughly the same thing with music.  The Athenian Stranger clearly approves of this and wants to see this kind of tradition planted in the Greek world.  

It is difficult to conceive of an artistic or musical tradition that has lasted 10,000 years.  Many traditions in the arts in our culture today (music, painting, sculpture, poetry, and so forth) don’t last 100 years; some don’t last 6 months.  Think of what it would mean to sing a song that was 10,000 years old.  Think of what it would mean to live in a culture where that would be celebrated.  It would be a very different world.  (This discussion is found in The Laws at 656d-657c)

Later in The Laws the Athenian Stranger says, “The music we ought to cultivate is the kind that bears a resemblance to its model, beauty.”  (668b)