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.