24 August 2026
Brief Notes on Various Topics – 106
1. Dwelling in the Past Because it is our Home
I was listening to a young, contemporary, British philosopher who, like many young British philosophers, is committed to the analytic tradition. He had a quick, breezy way of talking about philosophy; and a kind of confidence that doesn’t seem to rest on broad learning. He was suggesting that contemporary philosophers and students of philosophy should not waste their time reading philosophers from the past because only contemporary philosophers really know what they are talking about. His conception of ‘philosophers from the past’ was vast and included Plato as well as figures like Wittgenstein, which surprised me. But perhaps I should not have been surprised; the hostility towards the past is a defining feature of modernity and of ideological thinking (for example, Chairman Mao’s attack on the ‘four olds’ or the French Revolution’s systematic attempts to erase the past from France). If you are able to see how this operates in contemporary thought and approaches to issues, strange as this talk I listened to may seem, it actually makes sense. I admit I was somewhat surprised that Wittgenstein was included in the list of ‘past philosophers’ that we should not waste our time on; but modernist movements have a long history of turning on their own members as the movement inevitably breaks apart into differentiated factions (and in Laws Plato points out that factional disputes can be the most destructive kind of disagreement).
’ve posted on this topic before, but I’m doing so again because it was such a pure example of this tendency to view the past solely as something to overcome rather than as a source of wisdom and insight. I have difficulty thinking of a contemporary philosopher that rises to the level of Plato or Plotinus; I could be wrong, and that would make me happy. But that’s how I see it.
So let us honor our philosophical ancestors by reading their works, contemplating their insights, and living the way of life that they have kindly placed before us.
2. Private Shrines
Athenian: “No one is to possess shrines in private households. When someone has it in mind to sacrifice, he is to go to the public ones and sacrifice, and hand over his offerings to the Priests and Priestesses who supervise their purification; and he is to join in the prayers, and anyone else he wishes is to join in the prayers with him.
“These things are to be done for the following reasons: Shrines and gods are not easy to establish; doing this sort of thing correctly requires a certain amount of thought. Yet it’s customary, especially for all women, and for those who are sick in some way, or in danger, or at a loss (in whatever way someone might be at a loss), or, conversely for those who’ve received a stroke of good luck, to make sacred whatever happens to be at hand at the time and promise to establish shrines to gods, daimons, and the children of gods; and through fears caused by waking phantoms or by dreams, and likewise when recalling many such visions, they produce remedies against each of them by filling every house and every district with altars and shrines, establishing them in open places and wherever someone happened to have such experiences. For all these reasons, one must act in accord with the law now stated [against private household shrines]; . . . There is to be no possession of shrines in private households.”
(Plato, Laws, Book X, translated by C. D. C. Reeve, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 2022, pages 353-354, 909d-910c, ISBN:9781647920463)
2.1 I have to admit to being puzzled by this particular teaching. There are several reasons. First, I have a lot of experience with home altars, particularly from my period of Buddhist study and practice. I am also familiar, from my studies in Japan, that those who practice Shinto often have a home altar known as a Kamidana. And there are many other examples of traditions that suggest their practitioners have a modest home altar. I have difficulty seeing this as disruptive or damaging.
2.2 People spontaneously create shrines at locations where something significant has happened to them. The most common example I can think of in the U.S. are roadside shrines that mark where a car crash happened; these roadside shrines are usually a kind of memorial for someone who died in the crash. Again, I have difficulty thinking of these as somehow damaging to good order in a political sense, or damaging to our relationship to the divine.
2.3 In East Asia, and many other cultural spheres, a shrine to the residents’ ancestors is common. Regular rituals are conducted at the shrine for the ancestors.
2.4 Plato seems to be concerned with the arising of what we might call ‘weird’ cults and these cults might find a foothold in a household context. That is a problem; but so is the behavior of officials, like Priests, at public shrines, and I have difficulty distinguishing the dangers that either might generate.
2.5 I could see, for example, a household shrine for honoring our Platonic Ancestors. I’m not thinking of anything elaborate (nothing theurgic); but my taste tends towards minimalism and others might want more elements on their Platonic Ancestors Altar than I would. I don’t have a problem with that. Such an altar would be for the purpose of veneration rather than sacrifice; I’m thinking it might mimic how ancestor veneration is done in various spiritual contexts. Perhaps Plato would not be put off by such an arrangement because such veneration would not be a result of a private experience, nor would it be an attempt to introduce a new deity or form of worship; and these seem to be concerns of Plato in the quoted passage.
I’m not saying that such a Platonic Shrine should be required. On the other hand, I don’t think it should be prohibited either. And, in a way, I don’t think you can really effectively prohibit such activity because people, as I mentioned above, spontaneously produce such shrines in a variety of circumstances.
2.6 When I run into a teaching like this, where I have difficulty understanding what Plato (or Plotinus, when I’m reading Plotinus) is offering, I’ve learned to bracket the teachings and simply let them settle in my own mind. I often find that later on, sometimes weeks later, sometimes much later, the purpose of the teaching becomes clear. Perhaps this is such an example.
3. Dionysius the Areopagite: Letter One
“To the monk Gaius:
“Darkness disappears in the light, the more so as there is more light. Knowledge makes unknowing disappear, the more so as there is more knowledge.
“However, think of this not in terms of deprivation but rather in terms of transcendence and then you will be able to say something truer than all truth, namely, that the unknowing regarding God escapes anyone possessing physical light and knowledge of beings: His transcendent darkness remains hidden from all light and concealed from all knowledge. Someone beholding God and understanding what he say has not actually seen God himself but rather something of his which has being and which is knowable. For he himself solidly transcends mind and being. He is completely unknown and non-existent. He exists beyond being and he is known beyond the mind. And his quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of him who is above everything that is known.”
(Dionysius the Areopagite, Letter One, Pseuo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, translated by Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem, Paulist Press, New York, 1987, page 263, ISBN: 9780809128389)
3.1 There are ten letters of Dionysius of various lengths. Letter One is, I think, the shortest. The focus of this Letter One is the nature of contemplation and what it means to be fully transcendent.
3.2 There is a strong thematic connection between Letter One and Mystical Theology, the brief, five page essay on the nature of the divine ascent. It’s almost like Letter One is a kind of addendum to Mystical Theology.
3.2.1 For example, both Mystical Theology and Letter One play with the images of darkness and light; in Letter One the ultimate is at one point referred to as ‘transcendent darkness.’ (I like to use the phrase ‘luminous darkness’ when referring to the way Dionysius talks about the mystical and transcendental.)
3.3 Brief as Letter One is, there is a progression embedded in it. The opening paragraph, two sentences long, offers us two examples of how opposites work. First there is the relationship between darkness and light; light disappears darkness. Then there is the relationship between knowledge and unknowing; just as light makes darkness disappear, knowledge makes unknowing disappear. These are two examples of how some types of opposites are mutually exclusive.
3.3.1 The use of the word ‘unknowing’ is a usage that readers find in scattered through his writings. In the context of the second sentence of the first paragraph, the word ‘unknowing’ would appear to mean ‘ignorance’; that it to say that knowledge makes ignorance disappear. But Dionysius uses ‘unknowing’ because he wants to make a point about how knowledge of the divine is also a kind of transcendental unknowing; see below.
3.3.2 This usage of the word ‘unknowing’ was used widely in subsequent Christian Mysticism. A good example is The Cloud of Unknowing which is an anonymous text of mystical theology written in England in the late 14th century.
3.4 In the first sentence of paragraph 2 (the third sentence) Dionysius suggests that we should not think of what he is referring to in terms of deprivation; rather we should think of what he is referring to in terms of transcendence. It is natural to think of light and darkness in by noting that light deprives us of the experience of darkness. Similarly, knowledge deprives us of ignorance, or to use Dionysian terminology, of unknowing.
Instead, Dionysius offers that when encounter God through unknowing we ‘escape’ physical light and ‘knowledge of beings.’ I see this as Dionysius’s way of transcending being; in Platonic terms the Good and the One are beyond being. In Dionysian terms, God is beyond light and knowledge of beings.
In the next sentence Dionysius clarifies that transcendent darkness is hidden from light; I read this as meaning that the transcendental is metaphysically before light, prior to light, because transcendent darkness is the cause of light.
3.5 “Someone beholding God and understanding what he saw has not actually seen God himself but rather something of his which has being and which is unknowable.”
This sentence is making the point that the ultimate is beyond our understanding. The implication is that if we have a spiritual experience that also includes understanding then that is not the experience of God, or of the Good and the One. An experience that includes understanding may be valuable, but it is an experience that is on the way to the ultimate, not the ultimate itself or as such.
3.6 There are three levels operating in this brief letter. The first level is the sensory; for example the sensory experience of light. The second level is the realm of being or nous or the realm of Platonic Forms. These are abstract realities which can be accessed by mind which is why, I think, at one point Dionysius pairs mind and being. The third level, the highest level, is beyond being and mind and is accessed only through mystical contemplation. It is not difficult to see how this three tiered metaphysical cosmology is rooted in the Platonic tradition.
If we keep in mind this three-fold metaphysical cosmology we can comprehend that the shifting meanings of words like ‘dark’ and ‘light’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘unknowing’ take on different meanings depending on which level the term is pointing to. This is similar to the way the word beauty is used in Plotinus and how the meaning of beauty shifts depending on if it is sensory beauty, noetic beauty, or transcendental beauty.
3.7 Dionysius concludes, “And this quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of him who is above everything that is known.” Here Dionysius is saying that unknowing leads to the knowledge of that which is above everything that is known. Earlier Dionysius uses unknowing almost as a synonym for ignorance. But here, at the conclusion, unknowing is transformed into the knowledge of God, the transcendental, what I would call the presence of eternity.
3.8 I think the most important prior Platonic works for understanding Dionysius are Plato’s Parmenides and Enneads V and VI, particularly VI.9, by Plotinus. Reading these before reading Dionysius will clarify many of the seemingly paradoxical passages of Dionysius, both in this Letter One and in Mystical Theology.
I have been told that there is strong evidence that Dionysius was familiar with the commentary on Plato’s Parmenides by Proclus. I have not read this particular work, but if you are so inclined you might want to find the connections that scholars refer to.
3.9 The influence of Dionysius on Christian Mysticism is extensive and profound; both in Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Dionysius is one of the most successful transplants of the Platonic tradition into another spiritual context where Platonism in this new environment was able to flourish.
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