2 February 2026
Brief Notes on Various Topics – 83
I think there is a turning point for people studying and/or practicing Platonism which is experienced as the arising of trust. By ‘trust’ I mean what a lot of religious people mean by ‘faith.’ But the word ‘faith’ goes beyond the focus of my observation.
I mean by ‘trust’ that after some time in study and practice there arises a kind of satisfaction with what has been presented. Parts of Platonism come together and the coherence of the tradition is accessible in broader strokes and more complex relationships between various aspects of Platonism.
It’s not that everything suddenly becomes perfectly clear. It’s more like that because of past occurrences of the arising of clarity, you become more comfortable in not knowing everything because there is the experience that over time, what once was opaque will become accessible.
At the beginning of any new study there has to be some trust in the sense that you cannot know if your studies will bear fruit. They might, but they might not. There is no guarantee. (I recall that Spinoza writes about this in his brief autobiographical essay.) This is where the virtue of courage comes in; it takes carriage to move forward at this early stage and make the decision to enter into the philosophical study and practice that Platonism requires. And it may be a year or more before there is a glimpse of an overall Platonic context that allows for understanding to grow.
But if one persists, reads regularly, practices the ethical restraints (asceses), and ponders what Platonism has to say, the sun of understanding will eventually appear one fine morning.
2. Disputes
There are disputes that arise within a philosophical or spiritual tradition that can go on for a very long time without resolving. Sometimes the disputes will result in a breakup of the tradition with one side adhering to view X, while the other side adheres to view Y. When this happens, it is likely that no reconciliation will be forthcoming because the stakes have become too high.
In Platonism there are such disputes and they arose very early in the life of the Platonic tradition. I am thinking of the disputes over the nature of Noetic Forms as found in Plato and the alternative found in Aristotle.
Another dispute that arose much later, during the Late Classical Period, centers on the nature of soul. This is the famous dispute between those Platonists who regard the soul as always connected with higher realities and that the soul is never fully fallen into materiality. Plotinus is often sighted as the significant presenter of this point of view.
The contrasting view is that the soul has fully fallen into materiality and is disconnected from transcendental realities. Examples of those holding this view are Iamblichus and Proclus.
So there are two views of how the soul works; the first is called ‘the fully descended soul’, and the second is called ‘the partially descended soul. But there is another possibility which, as far as I can tell, has not been explored. And that is that soul does not fall and does not descend; we could call it ‘the undescended soul’. I can understand why this possibility does not receive attention; at first glance it raises too many difficulties centered around things like purification and what the divine ascent would mean in such a context. Still, I don’t think it should be dismissed without examination and contemplation.
3. Is the Cosmos Comprehensible?
Plato speaks to us in all kinds of way; I mean that Plato uses many different means to express the truths of this world including observation, inference, metaphor, simile, and other comparisons, allegory some of which are elaborate and some more straightforward. I take this to mean that the comprehensibility of the cosmos cannot be contained through the use of a single method of expression; Plato seems to be indicated that to comprehend the cosmos requires the use of numerous alternatives. Some of these alternatives also include things like purification (that is to say that comprehending the cosmos is dependent upon purification) and contemplation.
Plato might be making a stronger statement; that the cosmos is ultimately not comprehensible to the human mind. (I am reminded of a Chinese tale, which I think is from Zhuang Tzu, that read; the human mind is small small. The cosmos is vast vast. What is small small cannot contain what is vast vast.) I don’t recall a passage from the Dialogues where Plato says this explicitly, but the ineffability of the Good and the One, and its transcendental nature would seem to point in this direction. Later Platonists such as Plotinus and Dionysius the Areopagite are explicit about this. But this commitment to ultimate incomprehensibility is not universally shared. Some Late Classical Platonists such as Proclus tend to side with the idea that the cosmos is comprehensible by human intellect. It is only very recently that I came to that conclusion and it kind of surprised me because I don’t really think it fits in with the Platonist tradition as a whole.
