Brief Notes on Various Topics - 107

9 September 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 107

1.  Methods for Reading Platonism

When we are reading the classics of Platonism, such as the Dialogues of Plato, or the Enneads of Plotinus, we tend to read them with what might be called as a primal question in mind that is focusing our reading.  We might hold this question consciously or unconsciously.  And the primal question isn’t necessarily the same each time we read from the classics of Platonism, which is one reason why rereading these classics often uncovers new insights that we didn’t notice before.  Here are a few examples of what I mean:

1.1  We might read Plato and Plotinus with the question in mind “What did Plato or Plotinus actually say?”  This might be thought of as ‘historical Platonism’ because we are  trying to place Plato and Plotinus in the stream of ancient philosophical history.  It’s not always easy, and is often quite difficult, to determine what Plato or Plotinus were actually saying.  It seems to me that this way of reading Platonic classics is the main one found in the Universities today.

1.2  We might read the classics of Platonism with the question in mind “What can we do with Plato’s, or Plotinus’s, ideas?”  At this level we are dealing with the metaphysical structure of Platonic thought and how its teachings, its categories, fit together (or don’t fit together).  Some Platonic philosophers are highly focused, and very concerned, with this question and tend to focus on Dialogues or Enneads that are metaphysical in nature, while at the same time sidelining, to various degrees, those works that are not primarily metaphysical in nature.  It is at this level where we have discussions about the nature of the levels, or hypostases, or about soul and its nature, or about emanation and how it works, and so forth.

1.2.1  Another level of focusing on “What can we do with Platonic ideas?” will look for instruction as to how to live one’s life.  The above entry, 1.2, is about understanding Platonism; but at this level it is about behavior with the main focus being ethics as found in the Virtues and the teachings on Ethical Restraints.  Here the reader is gleaning from the classics of Platonism the teachings on how to live in accordance with Platonist teachings such as non-harming, vegetarianism, refraining from sexual misconduct, refraining from acquiring too many possessions or too much wealth, and so forth. 

1.3 The last approach I offer is “Where might these ideas, the ideas found in the classics of Platonism, lead?” if given a new lease on life under circumstances that differ from those that Plato and Plotinus lived under.  Here we are using the classics of Platonism as a resource for addressing the contemporary world in which we live.  A good example of this is how Plotinus spends time writing about Astrology which Plato barely mentions.  This is because the period in which Plotinus wrote was a high point in Roman and Greek thought regarding Astrology which was very widespread.  Another example is how Plotinus addressed the emerging Gnostic movements; Plato does not talk about Gnosticism because there were no Gnostics during Plato’s lifetime. 

Platonism has been very successful throughout its long history in addressing these new concerns and understandings.  I believe this openness to addressing these new concerns is one of the primary things that keeps Platonism fresh and relevant as the specific circumstances change and create new, and previously unaddressed, ways of comprehending the world in which we live.

2.  Pangle’s ‘Interpretive Essay’

At the conclusion of Thomas Pangle’s translation of the Laws of Plato Pangle has an ‘Interpretive Essay’.  It’s about 125 pages.  It is meticulous and brings up certain aspects of the dialogue that, I suspect, are easy to overlook.

On the other hand, I was struck by how Pangle’s approach avoids metaphysics and mysticism.  Pangle’s approach is to view Laws as a political treatise; that is common these days. 

Pangle was heavily influenced by Leo Strauss.  Pangle studied under Alan Bloom who studied under Leo Strauss.  I’ve mentioned this linkage before, but I bring it up again here because I think it is a good illustration of Strauss’s influence.  What I am highlighting is how Strauss tended to view Plato’s Philosophy as a whole as a political project.  According to what I have read, Strauss was reluctant to engage in Platonic metaphysics, and seems to have had the idea that Late Classical Platonism (which he refers to as ‘Neoplatonism’) with its emphasis on metaphysics as somehow distorting Plato’s thought.

I suspect that Strauss inherited this view from 19^th century German Historiography; it was widespread in Germany that the Late Classical Platonists had in some sense deformed Platonism due to their interest in elaborating metaphysics as well as their interest in mysticism.  Mysticism was viewed negatively as opposed to a ‘scientific’ approach.  The overall idea is to advocate for a Plato who was a proto-analytic philosopher; looked at from this perspective, the mystical elements in Plato and Platonism can be ignored as backwards and superstitious.

I don’t think Strauss or Pangle were that extreme.  I am not widely read in Strauss, but from what I have read I think Strauss accepted Plato as having metaphysical and mystical interests (meaning that Plato was not a proto-analytical philosopher).  But I do think that Strauss thought it was more significant to sift a view of politics from Plato than to sift a metaphysics from Plato.

I view this as yet another example of the anti-metaphysical bias of modernity.  It is very pervasive.  And I think of this bias as a significant, perhaps the most significant, barrier that a modern reader has to overcome if they really want to access the world that Platonism uncovers.  There is a range of anti-metaphysics; it can be sarcastic and dismissive as in Hume, it can be embedded in progressive thought as in Carnap and Ayer, it can be rooted in historicism and reductionism as in Heidegger, and so forth. 

The anti-metaphysical stance can be observed mostly as critical absences when considering what a modern philosopher or scholar writes about Plato.  If metaphysics is simply absent from their work on Plato, that is a sign that the scholar has absorbed, or actively accepted, the anti-metaphysical bias of our time.  The examples can be general (such as not dealing with the hypostases), or they can be very specific (such as refusing to deal with, touch on, or examine, Plato’s teachings on rebirth even when holding a class on a dialogue where rebirth is extensively discussed).  Absences are harder to spot than presences.  The absence of metaphysics in modernity is not normally noticed because it is the norm.  But as you become more and more familiar with Plato’s views you begin to notice that certain aspects of his philosophy are often neglected and that those aspects are either explicitly metaphysical in nature, or emerge from Plato’s metaphysical commitments.

2.1  The contemporary bias against metaphysics, while directly impacting modern interpretations of Platonism, also impacts other spiritual traditions.  During my period of studying Buddhism I often heard people, sometimes scholars, say that, for example, the Buddha was uninterested in metaphysics.  It took me a long time to realize that this view of the Buddha, and the Buddhist tradition, is a projection of the anti-metaphysical bias of Western modernity onto an ancient Indian tradition.  Once you see this anti-metaphysical bias operating in the West, you can also see it operating in how the West treats non-Western traditions; and this opens up these non-Western traditions, such as Buddhism and Jainism in a surprisingly rich way; by ‘rich’ I mean multifaceted in a way that adds depth and complexity to those traditions that often was previously missed.

2.2  Returning to Western philosophy, once you see the anti-metaphysical bias of modernity you begin to see how contemporary Western philosophy, despite its claims, is just as metaphysical as other metaphysical systems; that modernist philosophy has its own first principles, to pick one important example.  This shifts one’s understanding of modern philosophy significantly as you begin to see it in a larger context.

2.3  One of the results of uncovering the absence of metaphysics in contemporary Western philosophy is that other dimensions of meaning emerge that were not noticed before.  For example, it becomes clear why Plato would present some of his most significant teachings in the form of myths and allegories; because metaphysical truths sometimes need those kinds of structures in order to present and discuss them.

There is a kind of flatness to a lot of modern Western philosophy and I think that is because the metaphysical dimension has been, for the most part, with significant exceptions, lost.  When we read from the Platonic classics we become aware of that metaphysical dimension and the world we live becomes richer and full of possibilities that we had previously overlooked.