13 October 2025
Brief Notes on Various Topics – 68
1. Moving Beyond a Defensive Posture
If you hold a view that is a minority view in your culture this often puts you on a defensive footing. I mean that the dominant culture will see criticizing a minority view as natural and unproblematic and often as not something that needs justification or even much thought. In such a situation those holding a minority view need to spend a lot of time deflecting the criticisms that most people will bring up. A negative consequence of this is that the minority view can become stuck and unable to find the time and resources to unfold and grow their own understanding.
The steady critique of metaphysics in modernity puts those who view classical metaphysics not only as legitimate, but as the finest philosophical study possible, in such a position. One way or another, most contemporary philosophers, particularly academic philosophers, reject metaphysics as such and have what they consider to be an articulate critique of the entire enterprise.
There is only so much one can do in response to those who hold such a critical stance. I see the position of those who view classical metaphysics as valuable as in a position similar to someone today who writes music who faces constant criticisms for using procedures the critics regard as outdated. Imagine if, for some strange reason, academics had decided that the minor scale was outdated and passe. Furthermore, their view was that anyone who wrote music using the minor scale was a throwback to an earlier time that did not understand that the minor scale was unacceptable in our enlightened times. It would be difficult for a composer who was using the minor scale to defend himself; at some point the composer would simply have to let the music speak for itself, and for himself.
2. War and the Causes of War
There have been several books published recently that investigate if war happens because of human nature. Those who think of war as the result of human nature view war as inevitable. In contrast, those who regard war as conditional, as the result of specific circumstances, don’t regard war as inevitable.
This discussion has been going on for a long time. Plato touches on this topic in Phaedo, but most extensively in Book I of Laws. Plato doesn’t explicitly land on one side or the other of the debate as it is currently framed, but Plato does argue that war is not the purpose of the State and this interpretation runs against those who think of war as an inevitable consequence of human nature.
My own thinking about this is that war is a manifestation of differentiation and differentiation is pervasive in the material realm. War is the most explicit mode of differentiation.
3. Me and Christianity
I thought I would take a moment and share my own views regarding Christianity. I think this is a good time because I have noted in several posts the translation of Pagan anti-Christian works translated by David Litwa and this might be interpreted as reflecting my own view. Here are a few observations:
3.1 I don’t consider myself to be anti-Christian. I was raised in a secular household where religion in general, and Christianity specifically, were not a topic of conversation or interest. Of course I picked up some of the basics of Christianity from the culture at large, but there was no encouragement towards Christianity, or any other religion, in the home.
3.2 When I first became interested in religion I turned to Buddhism. This was in the 70’s and there were a lot of Buddhist teachers coming to the U.S. at that time. But my interest in Buddhism was not motivated by a hostility to Christianity. While studying and practicing Buddhism I noticed that many young people of my own age were strongly motivated to study Buddhism by a more or less strong hostility to either Christianity or Judaism. At the same time I didn’t really understand where that came from, but I simply noted that this was the case. I can remember early in my period of study of Buddhism telling others involved in the same studies that I didn’t have negative feelings about Christianity; and this set me a bit apart though I wouldn’t say it became a significant issue.
3.3 It was only after studying Buddhism for decades that I became interested in Christianity which I approached in the same spirit that I had approached Buddhism when I began studying it. For the most part, Christianity was new to me.
3.4 I found Christianity to be a mixed bag; there were some things that I found uplifting, and, at the same time, other things that I found problematic. I didn’t mind this; I had come to the same conclusion about Buddhism and over time I found this mix to be true of every religion.
3.5 One of the movements in Christianity that I studied a lot, because I found it nourishing, was the 17th century teachings known as Quietism. I eagerly read Madame Guyon, Miguel Molinos, Bishop Fenelon, Francois Malaval, and other, less well known, advocates of this teaching. Quietism as a movement was eventually crushed and officially labelled a heresy, which is still true today. Yet I found myself nourished by its teachings; even today I am still very impressed by Quietism which has influenced how I view and understand mysticism and spirituality in general.
3.6 When I eventually found a home in Platonism I picked up that some significant Platonists were strongly anti-Christian and/or anti-Monotheist. The influence of some of these Platonists, like Thomas Taylor, is considerable.
I see the anti-Christian Platonists of today as of basically two types; first are those that think of themselves as Pagans or Neo-Pagans. They tend to think of themselves as in some sense returning to a kind of original Platonism, a Platonism before it was appropriated by Christianity. They tend to align themselves with such Platonists as Iamblichus and Julian.
The second group of anti-Christian Platonists tend to be secular and they want to present a secular version of Platonism to the world. This involves removing Christian influences on Platonism. But this project also involves editing out aspects of Platonism found in the Dialogues.
3.7 I’m not a Pagan (I’m not anti-Pagan either). Because of this the presentation of Platonism by contemporary Pagans doesn’t have a strong pull on me. As I have mentioned before, I tend to see Platonism as monist and idealist.
3.7.1 When I say I’m not a Pagan I mean that I’m not a Pagan in the way that contemporary Pagan Platonists depict Paganism. I believe in the existence of living beings like nature spirits and forces that seem abstract but I think have consciousness and life. Where I diverge is that I think of these kinds of living beings as sharing the same world, or realm, or hypostasis, as human beings, animals, and plants. I don’t think of them as part of, for example, nous. And I am very much ill at ease with the idea of henads because I think that even the gods of the Greek pantheon are creatures of this realm. From a certain point of view believing in things like nature spirits would cause some people to think of me as a Pagan. But from another point of view, my conception of nature spirits, and so forth, differs from how most Pagans seem to think of them. The closest any spiritual tradition has come to the way I think of these matters is the Shinto tradition with its understanding of ‘Kami’. Perhaps I will expand on this in a future post.
3.8 What I find attractive in Christianity are certain Christian mystics. I have a strong liking for Dionysius the Areopagite and it was reading his Mystical Theology which lead me to Platonism; because of the strongly Platonic nature of that work, as well as the other works of Dionysius such as The Divine Names. And, as I said above, the mysticism of the Quietists has had an enduring influence on me.
3.8.1 The fact that Quietism is an official heresy in the Catholic tradition, and that Quietism is explicitly rejected by most Protestant traditions, has made me cautious about Christianity as a whole.
3.9 I think that the intense anti-Christian views held by some modern Platonists has, at times, cramped modern Platonism. An important example for me is the rejection of grace as a significant factor in Platonism by some (most?) modern Platonists outside of Catholic Platonists. I think this is unfortunate and is due, I think, to the role that grace plays in Christianity. My own understanding of grace was formed during my period of Buddhist studies; in particular the way that Pure Land Buddhism thinks about grace, which I see as compatible with the way grace works in Platonism. But it has been my observation that this Buddhist resource for understanding grace is not known or appreciated among modern Platonists who are strongly anti-Christian.
3.9.1 Another example along the lines of grace is asceticism. Again, it has been my observation that strongly anti-Christian modern Platonists tend to ignore Platonist asceticism because they associate asceticism with Christianity. I don’t see it that way. Instead, I see Christian asceticism as rooted in Platonic teachings on asceticism and as an essential part of the Platonic tradition.
3.10 Christianity is a huge, complex, tradition. Because of this it is difficult to make generalizations that cover the whole range of Christian traditions. In my own case, I value Christian mysticism, particularly that of Dionysius and the Quietists, and the teachings on grace which I think is only fully understandable in the context of mysticism.
But most Christians are not mystics. So in the end, my appreciation of Christianity is rather limited or selective. This is similar to my relationship to Buddhism; there are aspects of Buddhism that remain from my period of Buddhist studies. But there are also aspects, such as Buddhist teachings on emptiness, that I no longer align with.
No comments:
Post a Comment