7 July 2025
Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 54
1. Anti-Platonism has a long history. I think my favorite anti-Platonists are Hume and Nietzsche. (As an aside, it’s interesting that there is not much that Hume and Nietzsche would agree on except for disliking Platonism.) With Nietzsche his anti-Platonism is explicit, but, on the other hand, Platonism is just one item in a very long list of things that Nietzsche disliked.
With Hume, his anti-Platonism is not aimed specifically at Plato but rather at metaphysics in general. Hume was an empiricist and his dislike of metaphysics, and therefore of Plato, arises from his empiricist commitments.
A lot of modern philosophers are anti-Platonist for various reasons, but the ones that come up most often in the reading of contemporary anti-Platonism that I have done is the idea that Plato is somehow a totalitarian of some kind, and, secondly, that Plato is anti-science as the term science is used today. Karl Popper is the best, and most influential, example of a modern philosopher who dislikes Plato for political reasons. I’m not sure who gets the prize for disliking Plato because Plato is not science-based (Bertrand Russel?).
These thoughts came up for me because I ran into a recently published review of Plato and his influence (a ‘review’ in the sense of ‘overview’) which was relentlessly hostile to Plato. The reasons for the hostility were not new so it is not necessary to go into details. But it was a nice reminder of how deeply and widespread the hostility to Plato is amongst contemporary Philosophers.
2. In Plato’s Laws the amount of wealth an individual can accrue is restricted. Leaders are required to live a life of very few possessions. I think this can be viewed in two ways. On a political level I think Plato was very aware of how wealth can corrupt the soul and drive someone away from being a caretaker for a community to seeking more of the power that wealth provides. On an individual level, wealth can lead to a distracted mind that is focused on what it can do with all that money. At both levels too much wealth is corrupting.
This contrasts with the world we live in today where wealth is greatly admired and sought after; almost as if wealth is good in itself, or a god. Once again, I see how prescient Plato was and how his insights apply across the centuries.
3. I have an ongoing project of comparing Platonism to Indian Dharmic traditions, as I’ve mentioned many times here. I’ve come to the conclusion that the most significant difference between Platonism and Dharmic traditions is the noetic realm, nous, of the Platonic tradition which, as far as I have read, does not seem to have any equivalent in Dharmic traditions. Noetic realities are a kind of bridge between the ultimate, the ineffable, and the material realm. Without that bridge it is difficult to explain how the ultimate and the material are connected; there is this great chasm between the ultimate and the relative, or material reality. And it takes a lot of complex unpacking to give some kind of analysis as to their relationship.
I suggest that the absence of the noetic in the Dharmic traditions of India leads to the dual/non-dual debate among Indian systems. This is because without the noetic an analysis would have to argue that the material and the ultimate realities are not really at odds, and therefore they are non-dual, or that they are separate and distinct as in Classical Yoga and, I would argue, early Buddhism, and therefore dualistic.
Platonism offers a third option that, I think, is neither non-dual nor dual; rather it is the unfolding of eternity through differentiation and metaphysical distance from the ultimate that is the operating principle for the generation of the noetic and the material domains.
4. John Dillon’s collection of essays on Plotinus, Perspectives on Plotinus, is filled with insights and observations that clarify and illuminate the works of Plotinus. That is why I enjoy reading this collection even though some of it goes over my head because of my lack of an academic background. Here is an example from the first essay “Plotinus at Work on Platonism” which begins by quoting Ennead IV.3.17:
“’There is, we may put it, something that is a centre; about it, a circle of light shed from it; round centre and first circle alike, another circle, light from light; outside that again, not another circle of light but one which, lacking light of its own, must borrow. (trans. MacKenna)” (As an aside, it is interesting to me that at times Dillon seems to prefer MacKenna’s translation over other translations that are available.)
Dillon then comments on this passage:
“The important treatise Enn. VI 4-5 is an extended meditation on this theme (cf. esp. VI 5.5). In this Plotinus is much more penetratingly analytical than his predecessors, even perhaps than Plato himself, and it profoundly affects his view of the world of Forms as can be seen particularly in the first part (chs. 1-15) of Enn. VI 7. There is just one universe, not two or more, but we can either consider it superficially, as a congeries of physical objects, or we can see in it the workings of Soul, or we can penetrate to its Being, as a system of Forms, or ultimately we can apprehend it, mystically and ecstatically, as Absolute Unity.” (Emphasis mine)
(Dillon, John, Perspectives on Plotinus, The Prometheus Trust, Chepstow, UK, 2025, pages 9 and 10, ISBN: 9781898910749)
4.1 I like the way that Dillon suggests that these different interpretations are different ways of considering, or looking at, or comprehending, the universe.
4.2 I like the way that Dillon so succinctly touches on the noetic by his use of ‘Being as a system of Forms’, but that ultimately what Plotinus is depicting is mystical Absolute Unity.
4.3 This is just one brief example of Dillon’s succinct style. Dillon’s writing strikes me as very mature, the result of decades long engagement with Plotinus in particular and Platonism as a whole. The reader is the beneficiary of all those years of study and pondering.
5. I read Porphyry’s Letter to Marcella this week. It’s short and can be easily read in a single sitting. I think it is an inspiring work, a well-written summary of Porphyry’s view of Platonism and philosophy, and a profoundly ascetical work. I think it tells us a lot about Porphyry’s views on Platonism and how Porphyry thinks Platonism should be applied in our lives. There are a lot of pithy sentences that are worth remembering and pondering. Here is an example:
“. . . no two things can be more entirely opposed to one another than a life of pleasure and ease, and the ascent to the gods. As the summits of mountains cannot be reached without danger and toil, so it is not possible to emerge from the inmost depths of the body through pleasure and ease which drag men down to the body. For ‘tis by anxious thought that we reach the road, and by recollection of our fall. But even if we encounter difficulties in our way, hardship is natural to the ascent, for it is given to the gods alone to lead an easy life. But ease is most dangerous for souls which have sunk to this earthly life, making them forgetful in the pursuit of alien things, and bringing on a state of slumber if we fall asleep, beguiled by alluring visions.”
5.1 “ascent to the gods” – I take this phrase to mean “ascent to the noetic” or “ascent to nous”, the second level, or hypostasis. I tend to think of the term ‘gods’ to be a personification of the noetic realm and noetic realities. I think this is consistent with the way that Platonism uses personification as well as consistent with the way Platonism uses devices like metaphor and simile. So I would gloss the statement that opens the quote as “. . . no two things can be more entirely opposed to one another than a life of pleasure and ease, and the ascent to nous.”
5.2 The opening statement (which contains, from my perspective, personification) is followed by a metaphor that compares the hardships of mountain climbing to the rigors of spiritual practice, the spiritual ascent. This is a point that is repeatedly emphasized in this Letter.
5.3 The idea that we find our way to the ‘road’, or ‘path’, due to anxiety about the human condition, and by recalling our fall into matter (presumably through the recollection of rebirth and the intermediate state as spoken about by Socrates in Phaedo) is another insight of Porphyry’s worth thinking about. This touches on such things as comprehending the brevity of human existence and that life is inherently filled with pain and suffering and impermanence.
5.4 In the next statement Porphyry emphasizes that difficulties are natural for those walking a spiritual path. Porphyry then adds that the gods alone lead a life of ease. This confirms for me that the term ‘gods’ in the context of this Letter is a personification for noetic realities because nous, the second level, or hypostasis, of existence is free from strife. It is only in the material realm where strife enters and, at times, seems to rule.
5.5 The quote concludes that the difficulties found in the material world benefit those who are in the material realm because the conditions of this world, its great difficulties, act as a reason for us to want to transcend materiality, the third level, or hypostasis. This can only happen by turning away from pleasure as our guide to embodied existence and pleasure’s alluring visions; such visions only serve to bring us back to another life filled with strife and sorrow.
5.6 There are many other examples of insightful statements like this in the Letter, statements that emphasize the ascetic nature of Platonism and how asceticism is related to finding our way home to the Good, the One, and the Eternal.
6. I sometimes think of Platonism as a kind of oasis. I suspect that image comes to me because I live in a desert region and have experience with what an actual oasis feels like. The desert surrounding the oasis of Platonism would be the desert of modernity.
To refer to modernity as a desert is, I think, an apt metaphor. Things grow in the desert and the desert has its moments of beauty. But what can grow and flourish in the desert is limited compared to other ecosystems. In a similar way, things can grow in modernity; it is even possible for some new insights to emerge in the context of modernity. But the mental ‘ecosystem’ of modernity restricts what is possible, particularly in terms of spirituality and transcendence.
An oasis in a desert is a place where things can grow and flourish even though they are surrounded by the harshness of the desert. The oasis of Platonism is where understanding can flourish even though this oasis is surrounded by a hostile environment.
The desert is vast. The oasis is small. Yet I think the oasis will outlast the desert.
