Brief Notes on Various Topics - 89

23 March 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 89

1.  A Few Quotes about Soul

1.1       “The blizzard, the blizzard of the world

             Has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the                    order of the soul.”

                                                         Leonard Cohen - The Future

Leonard Cohen’s songs became darker as he aged.  I wouldn’t say they became nihilistic, but themes involving a pessimistic view of humanity appear.  This is one of those songs. 

The first line of the quoted verse describes the feeling of being buried by the world we currently live in.  Innovations come at us in a fast and furious pace and there is no ability to pause and take in, or get ready for, what is coming at us.

I’ve been in blizzards.  When I was working on the north coast of Alaska I experienced a significant number of them that rose to the level of a ‘white out’.  The wind would howl and the snow would often move horizontally in the driving storm.  And you could only see a very short distance in front of you.  I think that is the kind of experience Cohen is getting at.

The blizzard has ‘crossed the threshold’.  I think Cohen means the threshold that keeps society functioning and somewhat orderly; in other words we have crossed the threshold of chaos. 

And by doing so the blizzard has ‘overturned the order of the soul.’  I listened to one commentary on this song that suggested that Cohen may have been influenced by the traditionalist movement because some of the imagery in the song seems to be strongly connected to traditionalism.  Cohen was influenced by many sources; his Jewish background, his long years of Zen training in Southern California, and he seems to have been exceptionally well read in various spiritual traditions.  So it’s possible, but I can’t say for sure. 

But I wanted to highlight this verse because one of the obstacles the we have in understanding what Platonists have to say about the soul is that the order of the soul has been overturned in modernity and so we are trying to understand what Platonism is saying about the soul, peering through the blizzard that Cohen refers to.  That is not an easy task.  It goes beyond differences of opinion about how the soul works, whether it has parts or is partless, what affections the soul has, and so forth.  It means that we have to wait patiently for a break in the blizzard in order to see what the Classical Platonists were saying about the ‘order of the soul.’

The ‘order of the soul’ refers, I think, in a Platonist context, to the Platonic project of turning away from sensory stimulation and bodily temptations and towards the immaterial soul.  That this is what is important rather than the blizzard of demands that the sensory domain and sensory stimulations that pull us away from that order.

1.2  “The soul must, therefore, be in this way both one and many, and divided and indivisible, and we should not be incredulous as to the possibility of a thing’s being identical and one in many places.  For if we were not prepared to accept this possibility, the nature holding all things together and administering them will not exist.  As it is, it is that which encloses all things in one embrace and directs them with wisdom, constituting on the one hand a multiplicity – since there is a multiplicity of beings – but also one, in order that the coordinating force may be one, and while orchestrating life in all its parts due to its multiple unity, exercising a wise leadership due to its indivisible unity.  In those things which are devoid of wisdom, the controlling unity imitates this. . . The soul, then, is one and many in this way; and the forms in bodies are many and one; bodies, in turn are many only; and that which is highest is one only.”

(Plotinus, The Enneads, Second Edition, Ennead 4.2.2, On the Substantiality of the Soul 1, Edited by Lloyd P. Gerson, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2025, pages 385-386, ISBN: 9781009604970)

I think Plotinus’s discussions about soul, found in many Enneads, are exceptionally subtle.  Plotinus gives a nod to various interpretations of the soul and how it works now and then that are not, strictly speaking, Platonic (according to footnotes they are often Stoic in origin).  I think what Plotinus is doing in these passages is letting his audience know that Plotinus knows of the numerous theories and interpretations that were circulating in the Classical World.  And perhaps some of his comments were directed at specific students who may have had a Stoic background.

In this quote Plotinus argues that the soul is both ‘one and many’, is both ‘divided and undivided.’  This is not easy to understand.  Plotinus knows this and refers to how incredulous this sounds.  I think what Plotinus is getting at is that how you conceive of the soul will depend on whether you are thinking of soul in the Noetic realm, or if you are thinking of soul in the material realm, as occupying individual bodies.  The forms of bodies are many and one; they are one because of the soul’s connection to the noetic.  But bodies are ‘many only’, that is to say that bodies are divided into parts and differentiated from each other.

From my perspective, the differentiation of bodies from each other is a result of bodies living under the reign of time.  It is time that shapes the material world as first this, then that.  The unity of the soul in the noetic is beyond time, transcends time.  (I think this is one of the primary reasons that Plotinus argues against the idea of the fully descended soul; because if the soul were fully descended it would be cut off from it source of unity and would not be able to function as that which gives unity to living beings.) 

This is a really beautiful passage that manages to reconcile many divergent views of the soul into an overall coherent presentation.

1.3  “There has been much controversy within the Platonic School itself [regarding the soul], one group bringing together into one system and form the various types and parts of life and its activities, as for example Plotinus and Porphyry; another, exemplified by Numenius, setting them up in conflict with each other; and another again reconciling them from a postulated original strife, as for instance Atticus and Plutarch.  These last maintain that there supervene on pre-existing disorderly and irregular motions other later ones which organize and arrange them, and from both of them they thus weave together a web of harmony.”

(Iamblichus, De Anima (On the Sou), translated by John F. Finamore and John M. Dillon, Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, 2002, page 49, ISBN: 9781589834682)

“Some posit that the essence of the soul is numerically one but then multiply it (as Amelius thinks by its relations and assignments or as the Orphics say by breaths from the Whole Soul), then rise from the multiplicity of the whole to the one soul that has laid aside these relations and locations relative to others, and free it from its division into the things that partake of it.  These thinkers, inasmuch as they reject its subdivision into its participating parts, preserve it completely whole and the same, and grant to it a single essence that is given limitation through individuation.”

(As above, page 51)

These quotes give the reader a good idea of how the topic of the soul occupied many philosophical minds who came up with a variety of analyses.  It’s interesting that Iamblichus specifically mentions the Platonic school as having controversies about the soul.  Iamblichus would know since he was a major source of the controversy over whether or not the soul is fully descended (which was Iamblichus’s view) or only partially descended (the view of Plotinus and Porphyry), retaining a presence in the higher hypostases.  But leaving Iamblichus’s own view aside, the quotes are a good example of how varied views of the soul were in the Classical Period.

I think this makes sense because the soul is a kind of mystery.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the soul is ‘ineffable’ (although you could make a case for that).  I would use the analogy of music to explain what I mean by the mystery of the soul.  When we listen to some music that moves us and speaks to us, it is difficult to explain exactly what is going on.  There are theories about this; some are psychological, some are evolutionary, some are structural (I mean the structure of music and how music shapes sound), and so forth.  These theories are not necessarily contradictory, and they have some explanatory value, but they don’t seem to go to the heart of the matter.  In a similar way, there are many theories of the soul, but there always seems to be a certain feeling of incompleteness about them.  I don’t mean that these theories are futile; I mean that there is always something left over after an explanation is given and that what is left over feels like it is significant, perhaps the most significant aspect of the soul.

2.  The Geometrical Method

I’ve been thinking about the geometrical method in a philosophical context, as opposed to a mathematical context.  There are not a lot of examples of philosophers who used the geometrical method.  The most prominent that I know of are Proclus and Spinoza.  I have been thinking mostly about the geometrical method in the context of Platonism and I have been wondering if the geometrical method is an appropriate usage, or method, for a Platonic context?

My thinking is that a method shapes what it is possible to say about the topic that the method is applied to.  If you use the geometrical method you are, by using that method, excluding approaches that lack the strict inferential structures demanded by geometry.  But I’m not convinced that this is legitimate.

For example, Plato expresses many of his ideas, some of which are core ideas of his philosophy, using myth, allegory, metaphor, and other similar structures.  At these key points in his dialogues he does not use the geometrical method (does Plato ever use the geometrical method?  I suppose you could say that a dialogue like Parmenides is rigorous, but I think the arguments found therein elude geometrical formulation.) 

I other words, by using the geometrical method, a philosopher like Proclus, especially in a work like The Elements of Theology, is excluding insights and wisdom generated by non-geometrical means.  This is an unnecessary limitation, and I think it shrinks the vastness of Platonic philosophy, and Platonic wisdom, rather than illuminating it.

3.  Precepts Defined Tradition

There are different ways of distinguishing one spiritual tradition from another.  Within the Buddhist tradition different levels of practice and types of commitments are defined by the ethical precepts that a person agrees to incorporate into their lives.  For example, lay people take some basic precepts that describe certain ethical restraints; there are five or ten of these precepts, or vows, depending on the Buddhist tradition.  There are also a longer set of precepts or vows known as the Bodhisattva Precepts; in East Asia the Bodhisattva Precepts consist of 10 major and 48 minor precepts.  There are also two versions of the Bodhisattva Precepts used in different Tibetan traditions.  For those who wish to practice Buddhist Tantra there are a set of what are called Samaya Vows that govern a student of tantra’s relationship to the tantric tradition.  And there are also the Monastic Precepts that consist of hundreds of regulations.  Each collection of precepts defines the specific Buddhist tradition and they, the precepts or vows, act as the gate into that specific Buddhist tradition.

Platonism is not a precepts defined tradition.  I mean by this that people tend to define being a Platonist as accepting metaphysical ideas, such as Nous, rather than accepting specific ethical disciplines that are defined by precepts or vows.  I think this is why most people when they read in the dialogues explicit ethical teachings tend to skip past them; because they don’t think of these ethical teachings as central to Platonism.  An example of this would be mathematicians who consider themselves to be Platonists because Plato offers philosophical support for certain theories about the ontological status of numbers; that numbers and their relationships are not human inventions but are discovered by human inquiry.  This view does not require any ethical training or commitments.

Personally, I would like to see the ethical teachings, particularly the teachings regarding ethical restraints, become more prominent and assume a more central role for defining what it means to be a Platonist.  The teachings of ethical restraint do not cover everything about Platonism, but they play a critical role in the process of purification that makes the divine ascent possible.

4.  The Space Between Religion and Philosophy

I read somewhere that Platonism ‘sits between what we today would call religion and philosophy.’  I hadn’t thought about that perspective for a long time; for some reason it returned to my mind recently; probably because I’ve been thinking a lot about Platonism as a religion and if that makes sense. 

I think it can be said that Platonism is a religion if by religion you mean human activity that is focused on that which transcends the material world.  It is true that not all religions focus on transcending the material world; but if an human activity does focus on transcending the material world, I would call that activity religious in nature.

On the other hand, if I look at religions more as social institutions and the center of cultural continuity that is often ritually expressed, then Platonism doesn’t really seem to fit what would be described in this kind of analysis.

And as I have often said, contemporary philosophy has concerns and methods that are very far removed from what Platonism uses or focuses on.  Contemporary philosophy rejects the idea of the transcendental and is often ideologically captured.  There is an historical relationship between Platonism and contemporary philosophy, but the activities of Classical Philosophy and Contemporary Philosophy are so different that it is not an exaggeration to say that they are estranged.

If I were to express this ‘between’ condition of Platonism (between religion and philosophy) I think I would say that Platonism is a Wisdom tradition; meaning that Platonism is focused on Wisdom, its cultivation and its application.  I think you can connect the Wisdom approach of Platonism with something like the Perfection of Wisdom tradition in Mahayana Buddhism because both are textual traditions, both are concerned with transcendence or with ‘going beyond’, and both are focused on study and contemplation as the primary means for achieving what each tradition means by ‘going beyond’.