Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 57

28 July 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 57

1.  Sometimes the disputes regarding how the metaphysical system of Platonism works reminds me of the different ways that music theorists will interpret a piece of music.  In the case of music, you have the music, and then you have the interpretation which, depending on what approach someone might take, will highlight different aspects of the music and/or come to different conclusions as to how the music holds together over the duration of the whole piece.

In the case of Platonism, you have the cosmos, and then you have the interpretations of how the cosmos works, how it unfolds, and how its manifestations work together to form a cosmos instead of a chaos.  I am particularly struck by how Platonism, over its long history, has had different interpretations of how eternal objects, or forms, or noetic realities, manifest; where they come from and their connection to other realities such as material objects.  I think it is a good thing that there is this history of differing interpretations and in at least some cases, multiple interpretations can be simultaneously true.  But personally, knowing this history has given me permission to treat these explanations loosely; by ‘loosely’ I mean without becoming attached to them or turning them into a dogma.

2.  “Can what causes no harm do anything bad?”

“Again, no.”

“Therefore, whatever can do nothing bad cannot be responsible for anything bad?”

“How can it?”

“Now, what about this: a good thing is beneficial thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And so responsible for our well-being?”

“Yes.”

“Good is not responsible for everything, only for those things which are good, not those which are bad?”

“Entirely.”

“Then since he is good,” I said, “the god cannot be responsible for all things, as most people say.  But he is responsible for only a few things for us men, but not for many of them.  For we have fewer good things than bad.  No one else is to be held responsible for the good things, but for the bad things we must look for any other cause but the god.”

“I think what you’re saying is very true” he said.

“Then we must not accept the following blunder from Homer, or any other poet, who makes a foolish mistake about the gods when he says that

‘two pitchers stand at Zeus’ door

Filled with fates, some good, some evil

And the person to whom he gives a mixture of both:

Sometimes he happens upon an evil one, sometimes upon a good one

But whoever he doesn’t but gives an unmixed portion of evil:

Grinding poverty drives him across the rich earth.

Nor is Zeus for us the distributor who:

            Has wrought both good and evil.’

(Plato, The Republic, translated by Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy, Plato, Republic, Books 1-5, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2013, pages 203-205, 379b-379e, ISBN: 9780674996502)

2.1  This reference to Homer, found in Book II of The Republic, is found in Chapter 24 of the Iliad.  Here is the translation by Richard Lattimore which I found online:

There are two urns that stand on the door-sill of Zeus.

They are unlike for the gifts they bestow:

An urn of evils, an urn of blessings.

If Zeus who delights in thunder mingles these and bestows them on man,

He shifts, and moves now in evil, again in good fortune.

But when Zeus bestows from the urn of sorrows,

He makes a failure of man,

And the evil hunger drives him over the shining earth,

And he wanders respected neither of gods nor mortals. 

2. 2 This is a striking example of the divergent views regarding the nature of the gods held by Plato and the view held by Homer and Hesiod as well as the Athenian tragedians such Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.  Plato regards the gods, and specifically Zeus, as incapable of causing harm; and from this starting point Plato draws out conclusions about the behavior of gods that clash with what others assert.

In contrast, Hesiod, Homer, et al, regard the gods as fickle, morally deficient, untrustworthy, and heartless.  The advocates for this perspective also draw out their conclusions based on their starting point.

2.3  I am curious as to when this view of the gods as incapable of causing harm emerged.  Perhaps it was a part of the teachings of Pythagoras or among the Orphics or in some of the mystery traditions; but I’m just guessing. 

2.4  The idea that the gods are incapable of causing harm creates its own version of the problem of evil; that is to say, if the gods are powerful then why is there so much evil, strife, and division in our world?  I think that the answer to that question, in a Platonic context, has to do with metaphysical distance from the transcendental Good as the cause of evil.  This is like cold being the absence of heat; if you sit right next to a fire you will be warm, but the farther away from the fire you sit, the colder you will feel.

But the ongoing problem with this depiction in Classical Platonist works is that the gods actively generate harm, at last this is true in the depiction Homer offers and which Plato refers to.  Plato rejects Homer’s depiction of Zeus consciously dishing out harms and blessings because to accept such a depiction would mean having to give up the idea that the gods are incapable of causing harm.

2.5  Personally, I think that the resolution to this difficulty is to distinguish between what Homer and Hesiod are referring to from what Plato and Platonists are referring to.  Tentatively, I refer to the Homer and Hesiod view as a ‘realistic’ view of the gods because the view is based on the way our material world exhibits so many negativities and evils and accounts for their presence by arguing that the evil in the world is, at least to an extent, due to the fickleness and evil of the gods.

The Platonist view of the gods as being incapable of causing harm I refer to as the metaphysical view of the gods.  It is not based on observations of the material world; instead, it is based on the metaphysical structure of higher realms such as the noetic and the One.

I accept both views as true.  I think the way the gods are depicted by Homer, Hesiod, and so forth, is how the gods themselves actually behave.  That is why I consider the gods to be what I call ‘third things,’ meaning material realities. 

I also accept the metaphysical view, but what I think is being referred to in the metaphysical view is what I call shards of light.  The One is often described using the metaphor of the sun.  If sunlight is put through a prism the light separates into rays of various colors, what I call shards of light.  In a similar way, when the One and the Good descend into the noetic the unity of the ineffable is made partially accessible by being differentiated into shards of Good.  I think when the Platonist tradition refers to the gods as only capable of good, and never capable of harm, they are referring to noetic shards of the Good; and the tradition has given these shards the names of the gods.

3.  Porphyry’s Sentences -- 3

Here are some translations of Sentence 3 of Porphyry’s work ‘Sentences,’ also known as ‘Launching Points to the Realm of Mind’:

Things essentially incorporeal are not locally present with bodies but are present with them when they please; by verging towards them so far as they are naturally adapted to verge.  They are not however, present with them locally, but through habitude, proximity, and alliance.  (Thomas Taylor)

The incorporeal in itself, not being present to the body in a local manner, is present to the body whenever it pleases, that is, by inclining towards it insofar as it is within its nature to do so.  Not being present to the body in a local manner, it is present to the body by its disposition.  (Kenneth Guthrie)

Non-material beings, while not occupying a place with material beings in the spatial dimension, are nevertheless present next to them whenever they wish, interacting with the material in the way they are characterized by interaction; and without being physically present, they are still present in interaction.  (Isaac Samarskyi)

3.1 In this sentence Porphyry opens the topic of how the corporeal and the incorporeal are related, how they interact.  It may seem at first that the differences between the corporeal and incorporeal would make interaction between the two difficult, or maybe even impossible.  But Porphyry offers suggestions as to how to these two realms of reality are related to each other and how they interact.

3.2  The translations suggest that the incorporeal intermingles with the corporeal through ‘inclination’ or ‘disposition.’  This is not clear to me; perhaps there is a commentary that unpacks this in a way that I would find more accessible.

But perhaps something like this might be indicated: when we see three apples we are seeing material reality in the apples, and we are seeing noetic reality in the three that is present.  The number three is ‘inclined’ to mingle with the apples that are present, to interact with them. 

Other examples might be incorporeal realities such as justice, wisdom, purification, and non-harming.  These kinds of realities influence our bodies and are inclined to manifest in bodies open to their presence.  An incorporeal reality like non-harming or justice is inclined to bodies that are, in a sense, prepared for that incorporeal reality to be present; like a guest who is welcome to a friend’s home.  But because incorporeal realities are everywhere they are not cut off from their everywhereness when they are comingled with a corporeal body or reality, even though that corporeal reality is limited by being placed in time and space.

3.3  It is intriguing that the translations appear to imply that noetic, or incorporeal, realities have agency.  These realities have an inclination, a disposition, and they can ‘act on’ material realities.  These may be metaphors which would be consistent with Platonic writing.  But it is also possible that Porphyry is pointing to the reality of mind in the noetic plane; that is to say that mind is one of the primary realities of nous and since incorporeal realities are everywhere, the mind-based reality of agency can be inferred as present in incorporeal realities in general.

In other words, incorporeal realities differ from the way some contemporary physicists talk about realities such as force, spin, and the many other aspects of that discipline, when those realities are thought of as merely mathematical deductions, lacking in things like soul and mind.  This indicates the world view of Platonism is more in line with the idea of a living cosmos guided by the noetic realities of soul, life, and mind.

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 56

21 July 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 56

1.  One of the aspects of Platonism that interests me is how the soul is variously depicted.  At times the soul is depicted as immune from the temptations of the body and not involved in the desires for sensory stimulation and sense-based pleasures.  At other times the soul is depicted as having more complex contours such as reason, emotions, and capable of succumbing to the seductions of the material world.  Sometimes this more complex soul is depicted as having a three-part character and extended metaphors are used to illustrate this such as a chariot with two horses pulling in different directions.

I think the difficulty here is that at times the distinction between soul and mind is not clear, and at other times the soul is being described differently depending on which level of reality, or hypostasis, the discussion is centered on.  This happens in Platonic discourse where the same term has different meanings depending on the hypostasis that is being referred to.

I lean toward viewing the soul as a manifestation of the first hypostasis; I like to say that the soul is the presence of eternity in the ephemeral individual.  But you could say that the soul is the presence of the Good and the One in each individual.  Or you could say that the soul is the presence of the transcendent, that which is immortal and unchanging, in the mortal and changing individual.  I tend to view the soul as not under the influence of things like emotions and reason.

I lean toward viewing the mind as a noetic reality and as a manifestation of the second hypostasis.  I say this because a primary function of mind is discrimination, by which I mean making distinctions.  The first hypostasis is ineffable and therefore does not make distinctions.  The second hypostasis does make distinctions and this is possible because of the emergence of mind as an emanation from the first hypostasis.

I think looking at mind and soul in this way makes sense of the idea, found particularly in the Phaedo, of separating body and soul as the task of philosophy.  Mind belongs to body and part of the task of philosophy is to separate soul from mind; not an easy thing to do.  But because mind is inherently an instrument of distinction and discrimination, and the Good and the One is not a realm of such activity, the mind needs to be separated from the soul in order to ascend to the One.  If this separation does not happen the soul will remain captured by the second hypostasis, and reside in the noetic instead of the final ascent to the fully transcendental.

But the mind is an immortal unchanging reality, as all noetic realities are.  That is why, I think, that the individual tendencies built up over lifetimes travel with the soul into subsequent lives; because both mind and soul are immortal and unchanging.  The sharing of these two aspects by both mind and soul makes it difficult for the soul to separate from mind, but it can be done (see Ennead VI.9).

2.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that David Litwa was working on a translation of Porphyry’s Against the Christians based on the fragments remaining as quotes in critiques of this work.  Litwa has now published his translation and it is available on Amazon; there are both hardback and paperback editions.  I haven’t read it yet myself, but I hope to do so soon.

3.  I don’t think Platonism is about aligning with the Gods.  Rather, I see Platonism as the process of aligning with eternity. 

4.  The world feels more spacious when the truths of Platonism become a part of one’s consciousness and daily life.  I mean that the rise and fall of material things takes place in a larger context, a kind of vessel that contains all of these ephemeral appearances, but is itself not dependent on these ephemeral appearances. 

In Platonism time expands; first time expands cyclically into everlastingness.  Then time dissolves into eternity, that from which time emerges.

In Platonism our own troubles (material, psychological, political, personal and interpersonal, and so forth) are placed within a larger context and because of this they lose much of their punch.  This is very healing, and stabilizing.

5.  Porphyry’s Sentences: 2

“Things essentially incorporeal, because they are more excellent than all body and place, are every where, not with interval, but impartibly.” (Thomas Taylor)

“The incorporeal in itself, by the mere fact of its being superior to every body and to every place, is present everywhere without occupying extension, in an indivisible manner.”  (Kenneth Guthrie)

“Intangible beings are present everywhere, not in the form of disjointed beings, but as a whole, and it is their integrity that allows them to be above any location.” (Isaak Samarskyi)

5.1  The second ‘Sentence’ contrasts the nature of material beings with the nature of noetic, or non-material beings.  Material beings are located in space and time.  Incorporeal beings are not located in space and time; instead incorporeal beings are ‘everywhere.’

5.2  How does that work?  How could that which is non-material be everywhere?  It is like the sun being everywhere on earth, even when it is night.  The sun is a presence for earth.  The metaphor of the sun fails as a noetic reality, but it is communicative as a symbol.

Or you could say that the everywhere nature of the incorporeal resembles numbers.  The reality of numbers is found everywhere and is not limited to a specific location.  Even in a situation when a particular number is not instantiated, that number is still a presence in that situation in the manner of a potential.

5.2.1  The everywhere nature of the incorporeal would seem to undermine the idea of the fully descended soul that became a part of some streams of late Classical Platonism.  If the soul, an incorporeal reality, is fully descended then it is not everywhere; instead it is separated from at least some part of the cosmos.

5.3  It seems to me that what Porphyry is communicating here is what we today might refer to as the holographic nature of the incorporeal.  I mean that in a hologram, a part of the hologram contains the whole of that reality in the sense that the whole can be presented from only a part.  It would be difficult to reconstruct a table from only a small part of the table; say a small piece of a table leg.  But what Porphyry is saying is that the everywhere nature of incorporeal realities does not shatter those realities.  Instead those realities are whole wherever they are found, which is everywhere.

5.3.1  There exists a literary device which resembles this holographic nature.  It is called ‘synecdoche’ and it happens when a small fragment of a reality is used as a stand in for the whole.  Some people say, for example, ‘wheels’ as a stand in for ‘car.’  In news media synecdoche is often used to simplify a presentation by saying something like ‘Downing Street said’ or ‘The White House said’ and so forth.  Both of these are stand ins for more complex realities.  This is not exactly the same as a hologram, but I think it might be a part of what Porphyry is presenting.

5.4  The translators use three different terms to indicate the superior nature of the everywhere reality of the incorporeal: ‘more excellent,’ ‘superior to,’ and ‘their integrity.’  I understand this superiority to refer to three facets of incorporeal reality which are: that they are everywhere, that they are everywhen, that they are present to everything.  This three-part nature is received from the Good and the One as differentiations of eternity.

6.  I was walking on the side of a road in the early morning light of summer.  There was very little traffic; the desert landscape was windless with only a distant bird calling out now and then.  I saw someone walking on the side of the road coming towards me; this happens now and then.  I’m not the only one who likes early morning walks.

As he came closer it seemed to me that I recognized him.  We came close and he turned around, joining me in my walk.  I asked him who he was.  He told me he was Plato and he thought he would join me to encourage me in my journey on the path of Philosophy.  I accepted this.  We walked on without much talking.  Plato indicated he wanted to go down an almost invisible, unpaved, side road and I agreed.

We came to an attractive building, two stories tall.  Two people opened the door and greeted Plato who introduced me to them.  The building was in a mediterranean style with a courtyard surrounded by rooms.  A fountain was in the middle of the courtyard from which our hosts offered me a cup of water which was fresh and cool.

They took me to one of the rooms.  It was a large room and there were other people already there, all of them in silence.  Some were sitting on chairs, others on cushions, others standing, but I picked up that they were all in contemplation.  My hosts explained that this was the hall of contemplation and that there was also a hall of study and a hall of dialectic and others they would tell me about at some other time.  They gestured for me to join them.  I looked around for Plato and saw him standing near a window already engaged in contemplation.  I found a chair and sat down.  The hosts explained to me that a session of contemplation in this place would last ten thousand years.

 

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 55

14 July 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 55

1.  I’ve started reading the Enneads at night.  This is new for me.  Most of my reading is done in the early morning hours.  I was looking for a way to settle down before sleep, to sort of bring my mind to a place that prepared it for rest, and I thought that the Enneads might be a good vehicle for that.  I don’t think this would work for someone who is reading the Enneads for the first time because the Enneads can be complex and dense.  But after years of reading the Enneads I have become familiar with its language and the modes of expression that Plotinus uses.  The result is that I am more relaxed and at ease with the writing.  I also think that the ease I am feeling is due to many years of practice in contemplation bearing fruit.  I think that some of Plotinus can be difficult to understand if the reader has no experience with contemplation and the mystical, which is to say transcendental, experience.  Passages that directly refer to this kind of experience are hard to access without the reader having some experiential base.  I’m not saying that readers have to have attained full union with the Good and the One in order to understand these passages; but some kind of brief encounter with the transcendental is very helpful.

I any case, I am finding reading the Enneads right before sleep very relaxing and seems to have a positive impact on the quality of my sleep.

2.  Metaphors matter.  And the specific metaphor chosen to make a point also matters.  I started thinking along these lines because of the various metaphors that I have run across for the spiritual journey and ascent; not only in the Platonic tradition but in other spiritual traditions as well.  (As an aside, it might be a fruitful project to gather the metaphors for walking the spiritual path that are found in the Dialogues.)

One metaphor for spiritual work is cultivation; I mean things like gardening.  You cultivate the garden of the soul so that the soul can blossom.

This kind of metaphor contrasts with metaphors of athletic training where spirituality is compared to rigorous training involved in gaining facility in various sports.  This is in some ways similar to the metaphor of the spiritual warrior because warriors also undergo intense physical training in order to be ready for combat.  The comparison leads to an understanding of ‘doing combat’ with temptations in order to subdue them.  There are entire books, both ancient and new, that base their view of spirituality on the archetype of the warrior; it has a broad appeal.

But I think we should be careful with our metaphors in the context of spirituality because the metaphors have a tendency to be taken literally; in the case of the warrior metaphor, it has happened that a spiritual tradition that uses this type of metaphor begins to laud real life warriors with little discrimination or understanding of the mayhem that is the warrior’s purpose.

The Buddha liked to use the metaphor of crossing a river and that spiritual training is designed to take practitioners to ‘the other shore.’  The Platonist tradition appears to like using metaphors involving an image of ascent such as climbing a ladder or a mountain path.  These are very useful metaphors and are unlikely to slip into supporting questionable behavior.

3.  One of the most difficult tasks for a Platonist practitioner is learning how to negotiate the chaos of the human realm.  I mean that human institutions, particularly political institutions, do not have the welfare of spiritual practitioners in mind, nor are they concerned that what they are doing may not be helpful for a spiritual practitioner.

Economic, political, and military dislocations are very frequent in human affairs and all of them can be disruptive for those on a spiritual path.  There seems to be a tendency in the history of philosophy for some philosophers to want to place themselves in the midst of such chaos as guides, or teachers, who understand how to stabilize such situations.  This rarely works (in fact I can’t think of a single situation in which it did work). 

It is my view that at some point in the philosopher’s journey the philosopher comes to a realization that they must leave such situations behind as best they can; that is to say the philosopher needs to withdraw from the fields of politics, economics, and military strife as much as is possible in the context of their particular situation. 

This is not an original observation.  A classic example is Lao Tzu abandoning his job as an archivist for a Chinese state during the Warring States Period and vanishing in the mountains to the West, never to be seen again.  Surprisingly, this kind of withdrawal is also found in Confucian history when the Mongols took over China in the withdrawal of some Confucian Sages from participation in what they regarded as a corrupt State.

In the West we have models such as the Desert Fathers who withdrew into the desert of Egypt to practice as hermits.  And in Platonism we have a few precious stories about Platonist practitioners who gave up positions of wealth and influence to practice the Platonic Dharma.

I have not been able to discover a formula for how to negotiate the chaos of the human realm.  It is helpful to know that others have found a way to step away from human involvements.  But inevitably our specific situation will differ from what others lived in and so there will always, I think, be an element of discovery as we find our way in this difficult and dangerous world.

4.  Porphyry wrote a work that is sometimes called ‘Sentences’ and has also been given the title ‘Launching Points to the Realm of Mind’ by Kenneth Guthrie who translated the work.  I think Guthrie’s title is a good one because it points to the purpose of the short work which is to highlight features of the ‘realm of mind’, meaning Nous, or the realm of forms.  ‘Mind’ in Guthrie’s title refers to noetic mind, one of the three primary aspects of the Noetic Realm: mind, being, and life. 

Guthrie has the view that the sentences found in Porphyry’s work are based on certain passages in the Enneads of Plotinus.  This makes sense since Porphyry was a student of Plotinus, but the sentences may also refer to other Platonic writings.

It appears to be the case that Guthrie’s translation is a kind of update of the translation of the same work by Thomas Taylor, who published his translation as part of a collection of some of Porphyry’s work.   

The title ‘Sentences’ is a little misleading since some items consist of more than one sentence and some are a paragraph long.  I wonder if the title ‘Topics’ might be more accurate.

Here is the first sentence:

Every body is in place; but nothing essentially incorporeal, or any thing of this kind, has any locality.  (Thomas Taylor) 

Every body is in place; the incorporeal in itself is not in a place, any more than the things which have the same nature as it.  (Kenneth Guthrie)

Every material body is in a spatial dimension with its own place, while none of the non-material beings have such a spatial dimension.  (Isaac Samarskyi)

4.1  The Isaac Samarskyi translation was published in 2024.  There is also a fourth translation published in a scholarly journal that I can’t figure out how to access yet.

4.2  This opening sentence gives the reader the basic difference between noetic realities and material realities.  Noetic realities are not placed in space, they have no coordinates or mappable locations.  This point is made by pointing to the ‘incorporeal’ nature of nous itself and noetic realities residing in nous.

4.3  The overall focus of ‘Sentences’ is to illuminate the nature of the incorporeal for the student of philosophy which is why this sentence opens the work.

4.4  I think this work might have been used by Porphyry as an outline for instruction, as prompts for when he would give a talk about nous, and as a way of distilling the topic to its essentials which the student could use to recall the points that were made by Porphyry in such a talk.

4.5  I think ‘Sentences’ or ‘Launching Points to the Realm of Mind’ can be used today by students of Platonism as a tool for contemplating the incorporeal and as a guide to the noetic.

5.  Two weeks ago I posted some thoughts about a Platonist Canon; that was item 53.3.  I think I would add the works of Olympiodorus to such an imagined canon.  I think his works fit in with the contemplative and ascetic understanding of Platonism which I find in the Dialogues and the Enneads. 

I want to clarify that I am not opposed to people reading and studying what I call hyphenated Platonism.  I have learned a lot from various Christian Platonists, particularly about the specific nature of Platonic Grace.  And though I am at variance with Theurgic Platonism, I have benefitted from reading their works because even when I disagreed with what they are saying encountering their different views helped me to clarify my own understanding and has allowed me to articulate what I refer to as Contemplative Platonism with a greater assurance.

The purpose of thinking about a Platonic Canon is to sift through the vast library of Platonism to uncover the jewels of the contemplative and ascetic teachings found therein. 

 

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 54

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.