15 September 2025
Brief Notes on Various Topics – 64
1. Gaps in the History of Platonism
Two weeks ago, I posted about how I asked some AI sites for a list of what those sites considered are the most significant books in Metaphysics in Western Philosophy. (This was Brief Notes on Various Topics – 62, dated 1 September 2025, Item 4.) I have continued with investigating this focus this past week by downloading a few lists of essential reading in Western Philosophy that were compiled by Youtube Presenters who have channels focused on philosophy; I confined the downloads to people who have academic qualifications.
The reading lists mimicked what I found in AI; mainly, that there is a very long gap after Aristotle who is followed by early modern philosophers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume. What I would like to do here is to highlight two books from this timegap that I think are significant in the history of Platonism, and for philosophy in general, but do not appear in lists of significant philosophical literature when doing online searches of various types.
The first book to consider is The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Boethius was born about 480 and died in 524. Boethius lived after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and is often considered to be the last Classical Scholar of the Roman period due to his scholarly commitments and vast knowledge of the Classics.
The Consolation was written when Boethius was imprisoned, charged with treason in a conspiracy that was hatched against Boethius by powerful forces at the court of the Ostrogothic King Theodoric. While in prison awaiting execution Boethius wrote the Consolation.
The book became a great success in the medieval period. There are about 400 manuscript copies of the Consolation that have survived and that we can refer to, indicating the widespread circulation of this work. It was hugely influential with images found in the book being widely used in art, and poems from the book being set to music. For these reasons alone I consider the Consolation to be essential reading. But there is more; the Consolation is a serious work of philosophy in the Platonic tradition. It grapples with the nature of suffering, fate, and transcendence. It is a book that has helped countless people down through the centuries right into the present. The absence of the Consolation is, to my mind, kind of embarrassing; it would seem to imply that contemporary academic philosophers are unaware of it, or haven’t read it, or both.
For Platonists in particular who have an interest in how Platonism developed over the centuries, and how Platonism shaped Western culture, the Consolation is essential. Even today it is widely read and talked about.
The second book I want to highlight is the Periphyseon by Johannes Scotus Eriugena. (I don’t think I’ve mentioned this book before on this blog.) Eriugena lived from about 800 to 877 CE. He was an Irishman who ended up at the Carolingian Court of Charles the Bald in about 845. He wrote the Periphyseon in the 860’s.
The Periphyseon is a work of Platonic Metaphysics and Theology. But the specific heritage of Platonism that Eriugena connected with differs from that of the Classical Period of Platonist Philosophy. His inspiration and grounding in Platonism was based on his reading of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite in which one finds such works as Mystical Theology and the Divine Names as well as works on celestial and terrestrial hierarchies. Eriugena translated these works into Latin and in this way he became a conduit for philosophical mysticism in this period. In contrast, Eriugena was not acquainted with Plotinus or Iamblichus or other late Classical Platonists (I suspect the availability of Plato and Aristotle was very limited; likely confined to translations by Boethius.)
I first encountered the Periphyseon (also known as The Divisions of Nature) many decades ago in the form of selected passages of the work; that was the only book available in English that I could find. Later the University of Dublin translated the book, but their edition was very expensive and didn’t stay in print for very long. Recently, though, a translation by I. P. Sheldon-Williams, edited by John O’Meara, has become available at a reasonable price. Now those who are interested in the book in the English speaking world will be able to read it from cover to cover.
I have found the selections of this work that I have already read to be very inspiring. The author frames his examination of nature, by which he means the cosmos as whole, including the transcendental, into four categories or divisions:
Spiritually, the idea unfolds of returning to the first category; so the purpose of the work is salvific.
These are two examples of books that ‘fill in the gap’ that is present in most overviews of Western Philosophy at this time. There are others, but for me these two are both significant and worthy of a Platonist’s time and attention. Perhaps becoming aware of this gap in suggested reading material in the context of Western Metaphysics will inspire me to develop a reading list of my own.
2. The Sentences of Porphyry: Sentence 10
We do not understand similarly in all things, but in a manner adapted to the essence of each. For intellectual objects we understand intellectually; but those that pertain to soul rationally. We understand plants spermatically; but bodies idolically (i.e. as images); and that which is above all these, super-intellectually and super-essentially. (Thomas Taylor)
We do not think in the same manner in all things, but in a manner consonant with the essence of each. In intellect, for example, we think intellectually; in soul, logically; in plants, seminally; in bodies, phantasmically; and in what transcends these, inconceivably and superessentially. (Thomas Davidson)
Thought is not the same everywhere; it differs according to the nature of every being. In intelligence, it is intellectual; in the soul it is rational; in the plant it is seminal; last, it is superior to intelligence and existence in the principle that surpasses all these [that is, the One – note by the translator]. (Kenneth Guthrie)
Everything exists in everything, but in a way that corresponds to the nature of each entity: in the mind - noetically, in the soul – rationally, in plants – through seeds, in bodies – in the form of images, and in the transcendent – unknown and beyond being. (Isaak Samarskyi)
2.1 Here Porphyry is presenting his view of how different types of things differ in their mode of understanding. Deciphering this sentence feels complex because at times Porphyry seems to be referring to different types of biological things, such as plants as opposed to those biological things that have a mind.
2.2 Porphyry seems to be saying that different things have different modes of thought, and I take thought as interacting with the material world. But again, there is a source of confusion in that mind interacts noetically, which refers to the second level of existence, but the soul interacts rationally and the question that arises for me is if that aspect of reason is also noetic or does it refer to the material world.
2.3 Maybe if we lay out the items referred to in a different way it might be helpful:
mind nous
Looked at in this way Porphyry is describing the path of ascent that goes through several means of understanding, ending in the transcendence of those modes in the One that is beyond being. Looking at these categories and their interactions, I tend to see their relationships in this way:
plants seeds
2.3.1 I’m not exactly sure what Porphyry means by suggesting that the mode plants use to interact with the world are seeds. But tentatively, the seeds of plants are responsive to things like temperature, rain, dry spells, and many other conditions. It is through this interaction that the seed of a plant knows when to sprout.
2.3.2 Bodies interact with existence through images. (I wonder if this includes dreams for Porphyry?) In Platonism material images are often thought of as imitations; such as paintings being imitations of actual things. Perhaps Porphyry is thinking of that kind of relationship.
2.3.3 The previous two types of things and their modes are materially bound. In this third type of thing, mind, we move to the noetic. Mind has the function of making differentiations and the source of these differentiations is nous. (Incorrect differentiations are not found in nous; they are due to the diminished capacity of materially embodied minds to access noetic realities outside of contemplation.) As an aside, discriminations by the mind that discriminate between that which is eternal from that which is ephemeral is the appearance of wisdom.
2.3.4 I understand the soul to be the presence of eternity in the ephemeral individual; this seems to differ from Porphyry’s schema a bit. Porphyry links the soul with reason, but I tend to see reason as a function of mind, specifically as a tool, or set of tools, for noetic discrimination. In a sense you could say that reason is noetic discrimination which is why the principles of reason transcend material instantiations.
3. I listened to a short Youtube where two philosophers were talking about how philosophy should not be taught to young people because young people tend to like arguing too much. They suggested that philosophy should have a kind of age requirement of about 30 years old.
Looking back on my own philosophical studies I can understand what they mean. I think it is easy for younger people to misinterpret arguments or views, to simplify discussions that are inherently complex.
On the other hand, it seems to be the case that a lot of older philosophers are not exactly free of these tendencies. Personally, I think what is needed is a good teacher who can show that there is more to philosophy than crafting arguments or unpacking the meaning of a word or phrase. There are also ethical restraints, purifications that shape one’s life in the world, how that life manifests; and that is just one example. This embeds philosophy into the life of the practitioner so that insights, as opposed to arguments, are tested in the realm of experience.
4. A Manner of Speaking
Words are slippery things. I mean that that words are subject to shifting usages, definitional drift, and becoming and begoning as older words vanish and newer words emerge. This applies to the context of Philosophy as much as any other area of life.
And I have been thinking about how this applies to contemporary Platonism. Such a focus has started me thinking that contemporary Platonism needs to develop and cultivate its own vocabulary and terms. I say this because key terms of academic Platonism are recent inventions that have become very widespread and in important ways misrepresent the Platonic tradition. The obvious example is the word ‘Neoplatonism’ which I have discussed several times on this blog. But there are others as well. And there are terms, such as ‘reason’, that have a range of meanings in Classical Platonism that is absent from contemporary usages of that word and I think this leads to misreadings of works from the Classical Platonist period.
As Platonism re-emerges from its eclipse under modernity, I think it will be natural for Platonists to reconnect with key words and phrases from the Platonic tradition with the idea of understanding what these words mean in the context of Classical Platonism without having a thick layer of modernist assumptions making it difficult to access what is being said. I have already seen a few contemporary Platonists spontaneously move in that direction.
In short, I think Platonism needs to discover a distinctly Platonic manner of speaking, a manner of speaking that is more congenial to its transcendental insights than what we currently have.
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