Brief Notes on Various Topics - 93

20 April 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 93

1.  Cicero, Alcinous, and Plato on Wisdom

“For Cicero, philosophy is the love of ‘wisdom’ (sapientia), and is ancient in fact if not in name.  Wisdom on the other hand is ancient in fact and in name, and can be defined as ‘the knowledge of divine and human things and of the beginnings and causes of each thing.’”

(Stephen Gersh, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1986, page 74, ISBN: 9780268014384)

Plato doesn’t talk about wisdom in this specific way as ‘knowledge of divine and human things.’  According to what I have found in some sources, this definition was widely used in Stoicism.  The merging of Stoicism and Platonism was not unusual.

We can see how widespread this way of understanding wisdom was by referencing the first section of The Handbook of Platonism by Alcinous:

“Philosophy is a striving for wisdom, or the freeing and turning around of the soul from the body, when we turn towards the intelligible and what truly is, and wisdom is the science of things divine and human.”

(Alcinous, The Handbook of Platonism, translated by John Dillon, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993, page 3, ISBN: 0198236077)

Dillon connects the definition above by Cicero and Alcinous to Stoicism in Dillon’s endnote on this section of the Handbook, “The definition of wisdom given here is Stoic in its inspiration, cf. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta 2.  35: ‘Wisdom is the science of the divine and the human . . . “ (as above, page 52)

Earlier in Dillon’s endnote he connects the definition of Alcinous to the work Definitions which is found in the Platonic corpus; however Definitions is not a dialogue.  It is simply a list of definitions of key terms in Platonic philosophy.  Most scholars doubt that it was written by Plato, but it seems to have circulated fairly early.  Dillon writes, “The initial definition of philosophy [by Alcinous], as orexis Sophias, ‘striving’ or ‘desire for wisdom’, seems to be just a watered-down version of that in the Platonic Definitions, where philosophy is defined as ‘the striving for knowledge of the eternally existent’ (tes ton onton aei epistemes orexis), but ultimately derives from Republic 5. 475B . . . “ (as above, page 51.)

The reference to Book V of The Republic is as follows:

“Then do you agree to this or not?  When we say that someone desires something, do we mean that he desires everything of that kind or that he desires one part of it but not another?

“We mean he desires everything.

“Then won’t we also say that the philosopher doesn’t desire one part of wisdom rather than another, but desires the whole thing?

“Yes, that’s true.”

(Plato, The Republic, translated by G.M.A. Grube, rev. C.D.C. Reeve, Plato, Complete Worbks, edited by John M. Cooper, Hacket Publishing Company, Indianapolis1997, Indiana, 1997, pages 1101 and 1102, 475b, ISBN: 9780872203495)

1.1  I enjoy seeing how these Platonic and Stoic views of wisdom merged and spread.  It’s an interesting episode in spiritual, and intellectual, history.  And it also demonstrates how porous the various Philosophies were to each other in the Classical period.

1.2  The strictly Platonic definition is highlighted in Alcinous when Alcinous highlights the ‘turning around the soul from the body’ and is, I think, based on Phaedo.  This separation of body and soul does not seem to be a focus in Stoic definitions of wisdom. 

1.3  The definitions above speak of knowledge of the human and the divine.  But the definition found in Definitions specifies what the divine is when it says that it is striving for the knowledge of ‘the eternally existent.’ 

What I see here is that wisdom is the use of the capacity for differentiation found in the human mind to distinguish, have knowledge of, that which is ephemeral from that which is eternal.  Human things, and their causes that are found in the material realm, are ephemeral.  Eternal things are noetic, or by analogy, that which is eternal is found in the Good and the One.

1.4  The separation of the soul from the body is the separation of that which is eternal (the soul) from that which is ephemeral (the body).  This will happen naturally when we pass away, but the philosopher enters into a discipline to enact that separation prior to nature’s processes because that separation is necessary in order to enter into the noetic and the realm of the One. 

1.4.1  The primary means for such separation are the ascetic practices as found in Phaedo and other Dialogues.

1.5  The mind differentiates things, places them into categories; that is what the mind does.  The human mind is the presence of the Noetic in the individual.  It is in Nous where differentiation first manifests and this capacity for differentiation is passed down by emanation to the human mind.  In a sense you could say that the mind is a fragment of the Noetic or a pale representation of the Noetic.

1.6  Normally when the mind differentiates the mind does so in service to the body.  The body is the presence of time and of cyclic existence in the individual.  But if the mind starts to have a dim awareness of that which is eternal, the mind can then use the capacity for differentiation in service to that which is eternal.  This happens, if it does happen, gradually, step by step; like a flower blossoming in a glen.

1.7  The mind can sense the presence of eternity because of the silence and stillness of the soul.  The soul is the presence of the Good and the One in the individual.  Because of that presence there is a unity in the individual; it is the unity of the One, and its presence as soul, that makes an individual an individual rather than just a random collection of parts. 

Because the soul is silent, still, and partless, it is difficult for the mind to notice it.  When the mind serves the body the needs of the body are noticeable sensory things.  But the Good and the One are ineffable, and the soul shares in that ineffability.  Nevertheless, its presence, the presence of eternity, is detected by its stillness and silence which contrast with the noise and agitation of the body. 

1.8  The turning to eternity is something the mind can do, but it is not easy.  It requires studying the works of Plato and Plotinus, meditation and contemplation, and a love of the wisdom that leads to that which is eternal.

1.9  Alcinous talks about ‘striving’ and the word ‘philosophy’ refers to love.  I think this is why we find erotic imagery in the Dialogues; these images are symbols of the love for wisdom that blossoms in the heart of the philosopher.

2.  Immanence and Transcendence

I have given some thought recently to the question of whether or not the Good and the One are transcendent or immanent.  In many ways the Platonic tradition offers us a transcendental view of the ultimate.  The allegory of the cave supports a transcendent view.  And Plotinus will use words like ‘here’ for the sensory/material world and there, or There, for the noetic or ineffable ultimate.  These ways of talking about the Good and the One, as well as the Noetic, support a transcendental view of the spiritual journey where you abandon the material domain and ‘move’ to the transcendental domain.

The one exception to this way of speaking that I can think of is when writers in the Platonist tradition refer to higher realities, such as the Noetic and the Ineffable, as ‘everywhere’ and ‘everywhen’ (eternal).  I think this suggests (‘implies’ might be too strong a word) an interpretation of ultimate nature that is immanent; that is to say that the ultimate is, in some way, not separate from that which is not ultimate.

One solution to these different modes of speaking is to think of them as tools for talking about spiritual practice.  The transcendental way of speaking is very helpful in creating a sense of dedication to practice that resembles the way a musician will dedicate his time to mastering an instrument, or a carpenter dedicating his life to his craft, and so forth.  I have personally found this manner of speaking very helpful for my own spiritual journey.

The immanent way of speaking is a kind of antidote to thinking that the Good and the One are so far away, that it is impossible for an ordinary person like myself to rise to the level of experiencing the Good and the One.  It’s like a person with a badly broken leg trying to become a ballet dancer. 

I think that when Platonic literature talks about the importance and significance of beauty it feels like leaning towards a more immanent approach to the divine.  I know that structurally the origin of Beauty is in the Noetic (and at times the ineffable), and that the beauty here is a poor reflection of the Beauty There.  Nevertheless, the way Platonists talk about beauty shields Platonism from becoming filled with Gnostic repulsion for material existence as well as shielding Platonists from the widespread nihilism of our own culture.

A second solution to these different modes of speaking is to remind ourselves that the Good and the One are only names for the ultimacy that Platonism points to.  In this way transcendence and immanence are seen as provisional ways of speaking about the Good and the One; they are tools for shifting our attention from the material world to a way of seeing and comprehending a world, that is both here and There, and that is the end of sorrow.

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 79

5 January 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 79

1.  Happy New Year Everyone!

Wishing you a prosperous and contemplative 2026!

2.  Grace, Again

I think one reason why some contemporary Platonists dislike the idea of grace, and in some cases reject the idea that grace is a significant aspect of Platonism, is that in the West grace is thought of as a kind of personal gift.  What I mean is that if the source of grace is God then the way grace is configured in the West implies that the God who grants grace is a person who has a personal relationship with the one receiving the grace.  This kind of understanding of grace is consistent with monotheism so it doesn’t cause any friction in a monotheistic context.

But in other philosophical and spiritual contexts it does cause friction and in these other contexts grace is understood differently; grace is still a gift, but it is not a gift given to us as individual persons.

In a Pure Land Buddhist context, I once heard impersonal grace explained as follows:  Suppose a man is very hungry.  This man recently lost his job and is alienated from his family.  He moved to the city just a few months before and doesn’t really know anyone.  He is sitting on a bench at a bus stop when he notices that someone forgot to take a bag of food with them onto the bus.  The bag is sitting against the bench.  The man waits for several hours but no one shows up.  The man decides to take the bag of food with him and this tides him over for the better part of a week.

The story was offered as a metaphor for grace.  The hungry man didn’t deserve the food and therefore what happened was not an exchange of goods.  But reality, or causation, unfolded in such a way as to prevent the man from going hungry. 

Switching back to a Platonist perspective, the presence of the Good and the One is a gift that people can receive and the gift nourishes the return to the One.  But it isn’t because we deserve the gift of this presence, and it isn’t because the One decides that I, as an individual will receive this gift of presence.  Rather it is that reality is structured that way; and by reality I mean the structure of metaphysical reality.  The gift of grace is a consequence of the everywhere nature of the Good and the One.  The gift of grace is a consequence of the everywhen nature of the Transcendental.  The gift of grace is a consequence of the everything nature of the Presence of Eternity.

The man sitting on the bench at the bus stop might not have noticed the bag of food.  Or he might have decided not to take it even after waiting hours for someone to claim it.  The working of grace is not mechanical, it does not follow material sequences of causation.  But without grace I don’t think the spiritual ascent would be possible.

3.  Modern Stoicism

For about 15 to 20 years there has been a popular interest in Stoicism.  Before I retired, about three years ago, I worked at a spiritual bookstore and I can remember when books on Stoicism started becoming popular.  They became so popular that I created a subsection within the philosophy shelf just for Stoicism.  And the books sold well.  It appears to me that books on Stoicism are still selling well.

I have observed that there is some pushback about these books on Stoicism on the grounds that they are very selective about the teachings of Stoicism that they bring forth and talk about.  This criticism comes almost entirely from academics, particularly those who have a specialty in the Classical Period or Roman Philosophy.  I have read and listened to a number of these critiques and I have noticed that many of them note that popular Stoicism rarely mentions Stoic Cosmology, to pick one example.  Almost all popular Stoicism today is focused on ethics and/or self-help.

The point critics make about popular Stoicism not teaching about cosmology is, I think, misguided.  For example, contemporary Aristotelians drop Aristotle’s cosmology, I mean his material cosmology, because the cosmos that science has uncovered has displaced it.  The same could be said for Stoicism.  I suspect that the focus modern Stoics have on ethics is there because in our society there is little offered in terms of ethical guidance; nihilism is rampant and a completely subjective, hyperindividualistic approach to ethics dominates.  Stoic ethical teachings offer people a different perspective on ethics, one that is practical, one that people can actually access and use.  (As an aside, I should mention that some academics, like Pierre Hadot, had a very positive view of the ethics of Stoicism and I suspect this group is not critical of popular Stoicism.)

I wonder if Platonists today can learn from the success of popular Stoicism?  If contemporary Platonists used popular Stoicism as a model it would generate, for example, books on the ethical teachings of Platonism as opposed to an emphasis on metaphysical cosmology.  This would be a way of introducing Platonism to people by emphasizing the way of life aspects of Platonism.

A few posts back I suggested that the first step in living a Platonist life was to become a vegetarian.  A second step might be to simplify one’s life, that is to say to reduce possessions to essentials.  These kinds of teachings do have a metaphysical foundation in the Platonist tradition, but they also can function as a mode of access to Platonism that is not overly intellectual or overly analytical. 

4.  Afterlife Histories

There is an interesting process whereby the negative reputation of someone gets transformed after they have passed away; and this transformation almost always happens in a shift towards a positive assessment.  This has been observed by historians and sociologists for a long time.  An historical figure might have been enormously destructive and received a lot of condemnation during their lifetime; yet, as time passes, the assessment changes and people start thinking of them as, to pick one example, a ‘great military leader’ and the specifics of the negative assessment fade from social awareness; the negative assessment becomes something that only dedicated historians, and a few people who might be interested in the topic for random reasons, even know about.  An example of this is Alexander the Great; but there are many others.  If you are attentive you can watch this process happen in real time to figures of political and military importance who die during one’s lifetime. 

Part of it, I think, is a kind of general feeling that ‘one should not speak ill of the dead.’  And this sentiment aligns with the tendency for us to reconfigure the past in general in a more positive direction than may be warranted.  This seems to be a feature of most people’s minds, with the exception of dedicated pessimists.

I was thinking about this because late in 2025 I saw two posts on Youtube that were overviews of the life of Julian the Apostate.  In both cases the presenters lauded Julian as a hero who risked everything to bring back the position of Paganism in the Roman world.  Neither of the presentations mention the huge amounts of animals Julian sacrificed during his brief reign.  Well, I take that back; one of them said that under Julian the Pagan altars once again ‘ran red with blood.’  He said this as if it was a good thing.  And it was just a passing comment.

One of the presentations was by a Pagan Platonist, or Neo-Pagan Platonist, or perhaps a Neo-Pagan Neo-Platonist.  It makes sense that a Neo-Pagan would have a positive feeling about Julian, especially if he has a strong anti-Christian bias.

Still, I find it troubling that the zealous, I would say fanatic, devotion to animal sacrifice, which was a signature feature of Julian’s Paganism, goes unmentioned.  Consider, for example, that many countries have laws against animal cruelty; and this applies to the nations in which these presenters live.  This indicates that as a society we think of animals as lying within our ethical concerns.  It’s true that laws against animal cruelty are rarely enforced, but in principle the existence of such laws indicates a general ethical concern regarding how animals are treated.  But this kind of concern was absent from both presentations on Julian; not that this is unusual.  Books I’ve read about Julian don’t bring it up either.

From a Platonist perspective, any animal sacrifice, let alone the elaborate and relentless sacrifices of Julian, means you have not come to terms with Platonist ethics or, I would argue, the ethics of the community in which the presenters reside.  I say this about Platonism because the foundation of Platonist ethics is non-harming and the application of that foundation is found first in ways of life that include animals in the embrace of non-harming. 

5.  Breaking Free

The material world is a kind of trap because the material world is a region of suffering and sorrow.  Platonism offers us a way of breaking free from the trap of material existence; that is the purpose and the meaning of Platonic Teachings, the Platonic Way, the Platonic Dharma.

6.  Solitude in Platonism

The pursuit of solitude, or understanding solitude as a spiritual practice, is not prominent in Classical Platonist literature like the Dialogues and the Enneads.  But there is a kind of reference to solitude in what I might call the ‘penumbra’ of Platonism.  For example, Plotinus famously refers to the ultimate ascent to the ineffable One as a journey of the ‘alone to the alone.’  In addition, Plato mentions in several Dialogues how the Philosopher will be seen as marginal to the society in which the Philosopher dwells because the Philosopher is focused on the immaterial transcendental while almost all people are focused on the material world.  This implies a kind of solitude; it might not be actual solitude in the sense of a hermitage, but these representations of the Philosopher indicate a psychic and social distance, even a separation from most people.

I’m not aware of the topic of solitude being discussed within a Platonist context.  For example, I don’t find it in the Handbook by Alicnous and I don’t recall solitude being a topic in the Orations of Maximus. 

But there are hints, now and then, of Platonists who have given up material possessions and live a life that is withdrawn from material concerns.  I find these examples inspiring and uplifting.  Perhaps it is time for contemporary Platonists to incorporate an explicit commitment to solitude as part of the ascent to the transcendental.

7.  Does the Soul Have Parts?

I was reading what Alicnous has to say about the soul in his Handbook (discussion of the soul is found on pages 31-34 and consists of three sections; 23, 24, and 25, in Dillon’s translation).  Section 24 is titled ‘The Soul and Its Parts’.  It is a very clear presentation of the idea that the soul has parts (an affective part, a part that reasons, and so forth).  And it is consistent with writings on the soul found in Classical Platonist literature both before Alcinous and after him.

Nevertheless, I lean towards viewing the soul as partless, as having no parts.  First because the soul is immaterial and I don’t see how it is possible for that which is immaterial to have parts.  On what basis would the parts be distinguished?

Second, I think of the soul as the presence of the One (and the Good) in the ephemeral individual.  The One is the source of unity in material things; the One is why a thing is a thing and not nothing.  But it seems to me that unity implies a partless reality.  Without a partless immaterial reality individual material things could not even emerge in the material world.

Third, I think of functions like reason as a part of mind rather than soul.  My interpretation is that the main function of mind is differentiation and reason is a tool of differentiation.  I think of mind as the presence of the noetic in the material individual because it is in nous where differentiation first appears. 

In other words, the soul does not reason, nor is soul irrational.  Because the soul is prior to differentiation it is neither rational nor irrational.

Fourth, I think of the affective aspect of the individual to have its origin in the body (and the mind’s relationship to the affective body is to either work to actualize affective desires or to curb them through the cultivation of virtues and other types of purification).  I understand ‘affective’ to mean primarily emotions and desires.  Emotions and desires appear regularly in a manner that is cyclic; the material world is the world of cyclic existence and for this reason the affective aspect originates in the body rather than the soul.

I realize that viewing the soul as a partless unity is different from the standard presentation of the soul as having higher and lower parts and functions.  Nevertheless, these are my current thoughts on the nature of the soul which I offer for your consideration.

  

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 77

15 December 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 77

1.  Alcinous Defines Philosophy

In this post I’m returning to the definition of Platonic Philosophy as given by Alcinous in Alicnous’s Handbook of Platonism, translated by John Dillon.  I posted this quote before; but here I want to focus solely on the definition.  In the previous post I quoted the whole section in which the definition appears.  Here I am using a narrower focus.

“Philosophy is a striving for wisdom, or the freeing and turning around of the soul from the body, when we turn towards the intelligible and what truly is, and wisdom is the science of things divine and human.”  (Page 3)

I think it is worth noting that Alcinous strongly links Philosophy to wisdom.  This is not surprising as the name of the tradition, Philosophy, means love of wisdom.  I think this definition of Alcinous would not have been controversial, or contested, by the tradition or by anyone affiliated with Platonism for the first 800+ years.  For all that time wisdom stood at the center of the tradition.

I think we need to recover that understanding.  I say this because I think the foundational nature of wisdom has become obscured by a number of sources who place other things at the center that they consider to be more significant.  This kind of replacement makes it difficult to access Platonism on its own terms.

Alcinous goes on to unpack wisdom.  First Alcinous states that wisdom is the ‘freeing and turning around of the soul from the body.’  This is done by distinguishing what is of the body and what is of the soul.  Wisdom is making those distinctions and then acting upon them in one’s life.

This turning has two aspects; the first is turning to the intelligible, what I would call the noetic, and the second is turning to what truly is, what Platonism calls the Good and the One.  What the intelligible and the Good have in common is that they are eternal.  The Good is eternal by its nature, eternal as such, or eternity qua eternity.  The intelligible, or noetic realities, what Whitehead called ‘eternal objects’, are eternal due to their metaphysical closeness to the Good and the One.  I would sum up this turning by saying that Wisdom means to be turning to, or towards, eternity.

The primary distinction of Wisdom, then, is to distinguish what is eternal from what is ephemeral.  What is eternal is the divine.  What is ephemeral is human, or of this world.

2.  Three Levels of Meaning in the Dialogues of Plato

In the Dialogues of Plato the reader is engaging with writing that functions at three primary levels.  These levels are rooted in the three levels, or hypostases, of Platonic metaphysics.  The first level in a Dialogue is the Good and the One.  Sometimes this is brought up explicitly but more often it is pointed to and suggested.  An example of bringing it up explicitly is when Plato refers to the Good in The Republic.  An example of pointing to the Good and the One is found in the opening of Plato’s Dialogue The Laws; I am thinking of the first word of the Dialogue is ‘God’ which is a word for the One in a Platonic context.  This can be more indirect as when Plato writes about recollection and points indirectly to higher realities through this discussion.

The second level is noetic; one might call it archetypal.  The noetic level is where eternal truths are found such as numbers.  When Plato talks about numbers Plato is referring to this second level.  Plato will sometimes personify this level using names of various deities as symbols for eternal noetic realities; this is a kind of indirect pointing.

The third level is the level of cyclic existence.  When Plato refers to human life and its many facets Plato is pointing to the realm of cyclic existence which is present in the human body.  These teachings mostly appear as what I call ‘instruction’, that is to say that Plato is referring to what human beings must do, as embodied beings, to walk a spiritual path in their lives.  In some ways instruction is easy to overlook.  This is because we are often focused on the characters and the plot of a Dialogue and the storyline is what attracts us.  But after some familiarity with the Dialogues we begin to notice that Plato offers us instruction on how to become a Philosopher which means adopting practices conducive to, and defining of, the Philosophical tradition.  You can spot these instructions because they are almost always askeses, meaning they are almost always in the form of ascetic practices that the Philosopher adopts.  This level of instruction is very fruitful and once a reader perceives this level he finds a wealth of such instruction in the Dialogues.

These three levels of meaning are not usually presented in a sequence, but I suspect that they are to be found in all of Plato’s dialogues.

3.  When Friends Give Advice

A friend of mine recently said to me that I should give up philosophy.  He asked me if I knew that he felt that way.  I responded that I have known that for years and that it doesn’t bother me that my friend feels that way.

This is not the first time someone has made this suggestion.  I suspect that this kind of suggestion is made to anyone who has a commitment to a spiritual life of any kind.  I have observed this happening to other people.

Plato talks about this in several dialogues where Plato points out that people will think of Philosophers as inept and kind of buffoonish.  Some devout Catholics have written how casual Catholics often find their devotion to the tradition kind of embarrassing, indicating that what Plato wrote about is not exclusively a problem for practitioners of Philosophy.

It's not a big deal once you realize that people have different destinies. 

4.  A First Glance at the Chaldean Oracles

4.1 I have noticed that the Chaldean Oracles make an appearance in a lot of Platonist writings that were written after Plotinus.  I thought it might be a good idea to find out about the Oracles so I decided to read the translation by Ruth Majercik. 

The Chaldean Oracles were composed during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, 161 – 180 C.E.  The authors are Julian the Theurgist and his father Julian the Chaldean.  How, exactly, it was written is speculative but it may have been written, or received, in a trance state while Julian the Theurgist was practicing theurgy. 

The Chaldean Oracles are currently in a fragmentary state; the complete text has been lost but there are a significant number of quotes found in various sources.  Majercik catalogs these quotes, dividing them into two types; quotes that are regarded as securely part of the Chaldean Oracles, and dubious quotes.

The Chaldean Oracles remind me of Gnostic writing in general.  They are visionary and dogmatic; by dogmatic I mean that the Chaldean Oracles state their view as a revelation rather than as a discovery that others can share.  If you compare the Timaeus with the Chaldean Oracles I think you will understand what I am referring to.

Plato writes myths and allegories, but the tone of oracular writing is, I think, different.  In Plato’s devices the reader is being invited to unpack what is written; in contrast, in oracular writing the reader is being told to accept them as they are, even when they are very opaque and mysterious. 

To the extent that the Chaldean Oracles had an influence on Iamblichus and Proclus, I think it may have influenced them to lean toward a stance of talking down to the reader who, presumably, needs to follow their instruction.  Compare, for example, the tone of The Mysteries by Iamblichus to the tone Plato uses when he has Socrates offer instruction in philosophy; to be honest they feel like two different worlds.  Plato uses dialectic, oracular writing uses dogmatics.  I suspect the Chaldean Oracles also influenced the two of them to write in a very complex and opaque style which seems to be well-suited to oracular literature.

This is just a first impression; I have often changed my mind about spiritual works after rereading them. 

4.2  Both Iamblichus and Proclus wrote commentaries on the Chaldean Oracles; both of these are now lost.  The work is focused on theurgy and one can regard the Chaldean Oracles as the source, or a significant source, of what would become Platonic theurgy.  At times I have considered referring to Post-Porphyrian Platonism as “Chaldean Platonism” meaning Platonism that is shaped in significant ways by the Chaldean Oracles; I modeled the name after “Christian Platonism”.  The Chaldean Oracles view theurgy as the necessary practice and means for spiritual ascent, just as Iamblichus did and it may be that Iamblichus either got this idea from the Chaldean Oracles or the Oracles supported the view of Iamblichus in significant ways.  I think it is noteworthy that a primary source for theurgy in Platonism was a non-Platonist text.  Both the Chaldean Oracles and Iamblichus through Proclus view wisdom as insufficient for spiritual ascent which represents a major shift in understanding from the Platonic heritage.

4.3  I referred to the Chaldean Oracles as a non-Platonist text in 4.2 above.  But I think it is noteworthy that in contemporary discussions about Post-Porphyrian Platonism some authors will refer to the Chaldean Oracles as a ‘Neoplatonic’ work, or ‘Neoplatonic’ text.  The reason for this is that it was the Post-Porphyrian Platonists, such as Iamblichus and Proclus, who seem to have been most fascinated by this work, for this reason the association has become an historical one.  I don’t think that the Julians who wrote the Oracles had this specifically in mind, but that is what happened.  I use the term ‘non-Platonist’ for the Chaldean Oracles because the work displaces central understandings of the Platonic tradition such as the transformative nature of wisdom as well as wisdom’s soteriological function and after rejecting the sufficiency of wisdom creates a supersession based structure that places ritual above wisdom.

4.4  In some ways I find the interest in these kinds of works in Post-Porphyrian Platonism to be a bit embarrassing.  At another level, I think the Chaldean Oracles were what I might refer to as a ‘fad’ or a passing fancy.  I’m reminded of certain channeled works that were very popular for a few years and have now vanished; in particular, I am thinking of those channeled works that were produced in the 1960’s and 70’s.  The Chaldean Oracles have that kind of feeling for me.

5.  Wisdom

I’ve been thinking a lot about wisdom and wisdom traditions.  This has happened, I think, because of the growing realization of how wisdom was ejected from Platonism by the Post-Porphyrian Platonists.  Here are a few thoughts about wisdom:

5.1  Wisdom is a kind of knowing.  Wisdom can be divided into two broad types.  The first is practical wisdom and the second is transcendent wisdom which, in a Platonic context, refers to Philosophical Wisdom.  Platonist literature talks about this basic division in episodes where someone possesses skill in a practical field of learning.  An example would be someone who is a skilled physician, or a skilled in music, or in steering a ship, and so forth.  Someone who is skilled in steering a ship is wise in the ways of the sea.  Someone who is a skilled physician is wise in the ways of the human body.

Transcendent wisdom is also a kind of knowing, but it is knowing about that which applies to all existing things; that is to say it is metaphysical wisdom.  For example, insight into impermanence is a kind of wisdom because it applies to all material things.

5.2  Wisdom is knowing the truth, which is often hidden, about material things, but it is also knowing the truth about non-material realities.  Wisdom does not stop at the material metaphysics; that is just a first step on the path of wisdom.

5.3  Wisdom is a turning toward that which is non-material and therefore that which is eternal.  Wisdom does this by making distinctions and following up on those distinctions.  The basic distinction is to separate that which is ephemeral from that which is eternal. 

5.4  Wisdom is a function of mind; I don’t consider it to be a function of soul.  I say this because it is mind, due to its connection to the noetic, that makes distinctions.  The soul is the silent presence of eternity which the path of Wisdom leads us to.

5.5  Transcendent Wisdom refers to knowledge about the eternal; how to recognize it, how to approach it, how to dwell There.

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 76

8 December 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 76

1.  Embracing the Past

To be a Platonist means admiring the past; or at least admiring one thing from the past.  It means basing the activities of your life on artefacts from the past in the form of written works such as Plato’s Dialogues. 

This is obvious, but I think it is worth considering how this Platonist relationship with the past runs counter to the spirit of our time which considers the modern world to be the result of overcoming the past.  This is a feature of modernity that is pervasive.

I’m not sure if this difference in attitude towards the past results in intense friction; I tend to think that it results in a kind of low-level but constant disconnect with central features of modernity. 

2.  Cruelty

Human beings are immensely and consistently cruel to each other; I am not thinking of cruelty at this moment in a subtle way.  I mean cruelty in very gross and obvious ways.  Some of this cruelty is widely supported as in the enthusiastic response to war by most people. 

It is also true that human beings are immensely and consistently cruel to other creatures, to animals of various kinds.  There is a lot of confusion about this because there are certain animals, such as pets, for whom we are inclined to act towards with great affection and caring and at the same time other animals that are just as intelligent are treated very poorly by human beings.  There are even laws against cruelty towards certain animals while other animals are, as the saying goes, fair game.

Plato’s teachings on non-harming and non-retaliation run counter to this habit of cruelty.  In a world, and amongst the human species, where cruelty is approved of, even in very horrific forms, it is difficult to put non-harming into practice.  And being committed to these teachings, and their attendant practices, will separate such practitioners from widespread societal habits and norms.

But it is worthwhile to enter into the way of non-harming; for those who want to walk the spiritual path of Platonism, it is essential.  Commitment to the way of non-harming calms the mind and body, and this calmness is a precondition for turning to the soul, turning to eternity.

3.  Those Who Oppose Transcendence

I’ve been aware for quite a few years that there are those who oppose transcendence.  One such group are materialists; they are widespread but my remarks here will not be about them.  I’m more interested in the group(s) that oppose transcendence for what they regard as spiritual reasons.

From my perspective, I am thinking about groups, or views, that regard something prior to transcendence as ultimate and that therefore transcendence is to be avoided.  Most often the anti-transcendence views come to rest on some kind of unusual sensory experience as the ultimate.  Others, though, regard ritual, often precisely and repetitious done, as the key to attain that which is ultimate.

For example, one of the reasons those who opposed the Quietists in the 17^th century was that the interior silence advocated by the Quietists undermined the status of certain key Catholic rituals, including the Eucharist.  This was the ground for regarding Quietism as a heresy.

Another example of the view of ritual that is similar to that which opposed the Quietists is found in theurgy which ejected Wisdom because contemplative Wisdom leads to ineffable transcendence.  In contrast, theurgy is focused on sensory deities, Gods and Goddesses, who have all the characteristics of third things.

Another example is the way Jungian psychology interprets the realm of images in the form of archetypes as the ultimate achievement of human consciousness; that is to say that becoming aware of archetypes and their functions surpasses something like Wisdom that leads to the experience of that which is beyond all images and from which all images emerge.

There are also individuals who talked about an ultimate reality beyond image, beyond affirmation and negation, who had difficulties with authorities who regarded this approach as suspect.  I am thinking of Meister Eckhart as one famous example.

I suspect that there are various reasons for wanting to halt the spiritual journey before stepping into the ineffable.  But one reason for some, I think, is fear.  In a way, an early experience of the transcendent that precedes image can feel like falling off a cliff.  This can be very uncomfortable.  Plato addresses this in the allegory of the cave in terms of feeling blinded by the light upon emerging from the darkness of the cave; it takes time to accustom oneself to this light and one possible reaction is to reject the experience altogether as nothing more than an uncomfortable sensation.  If you have a good spiritual teacher, a good and experienced guide, a practitioner can stick with it and get past those early moments of fear and discomfort.  The Dialogues of Plato are such a spiritual guide.

4.  Phaedo

I tend to think of Phaedo as Plato’s most significant, most important, dialogue.  This means that I take the teachings put forth in Phaedo as definitive and interpret other teachings in accordance with Phaedo’s teachings and perspectives.

I think this accounts for some differences I have with other contemporary Platonists.  I have observed, for example, that Parmenides is sometimes thought of as being the most significant, or highest, teaching that Plato offers us.  I can understand that; there is a great amount of wisdom in Parmenides.  But I tend to read Parmenides as expanding on teachings presented in Phaedo such as how predication works and the implications of living a life based on the experience of transcendence.

What I find in Phaedo that leads me to place Phaedo in the center of the Platonic Canon, so to speak, is that Phaedo offers the reader specific instruction on how to live a philosophical life.  This happens specifically in the famous passage where Socrates lists various activities that a philosopher will refrain from participating in such as being concerned about beautiful clothing and jewelry, or involvement in sexual pursuits and pleasures.  What I have found is that most readers don’t look at these kinds of passages as instruction; I can understand this because for many years I had the same response.  I mean that I didn’t read this passage as Socrates giving me, the reader, instruction in how to live a Philosophical life.  Instead I read it as Socrates, and/or Plato, giving their opinion, or reporting on their own lives.  These passages of ascetic instruction are embedded in a moving narrative and perhaps the presence of the narrative hides the teaching function of these ascetic passages.  I mean that by becoming wrapped up in, and attentive to, the unfolding story of the last hours of the life of Socrates, and his interactions with various people, we may react to Phaedo on a strictly literary level, concluding that Phaedo is a very well written story.  The shift to understanding Phaedo as a kind of guidebook for living a Philosophical life happens, I think, by repeatedly reading Phaedo.  What I mean here is that by rereading Phaedo we can approach the dialogue with the story of the last hours of Socrates already a known feature and so the story drops a little bit into the background and the teachings of Phaedo move into the foreground.  I don’t mean that the story found in Phaedo disappears; I mean that the presentations of guidance for a philosophical life are finally noticed as actually having that function.  When that happens it is very satisfying and one realizes that all of Plato’s dialogues are written in multiple layers, and one of those layers is the layer of instruction.

5.  Middle Platonism

I have a fondness for what scholars today refer to as Middle Platonism.  Middle Platonism covers a significant period of time.  The Academy founded by Plato went through a period of extreme skepticism but following a kind of restoration, a kind of return to what Plato actually wrote we enter into this period of Middle Platonism.  Generally speaking this period lasts into the second or third centuries of our era. 

These periods of Platonism are a tool that contemporary philosophers and historians use to designate periods in the long history of Platonism.  Middle Platonists didn’t think of themselves as Middle Platonists, of course.  But the term is a convenient way to designate a certain time period in the history of Platonism.

Specific Platonists from the Middle period that I am fond of are Maximus of Tyre, Alcinous, and Plutarch.  Plutarch is the most complex because Plutarch had many interests beside philosophy including history and literature.  He spent a great deal of time on these other interests and the majority of his writing is about historical or literary topics.  This doesn’t bother me because I am also interested in literature and I enjoy reading ancient views on this topic.  But Plutarch does discuss Platonism fairly frequently and he was clearly well versed in Platonism.  As I have mentioned in a number of posts, Plutarch wrote three essays on refraining from harming animals and vegetarianism which documents the existence of vegetarianism in the Middle period of Platonism.  But Plutarch discusses other Platonist topics as well such as the nature of forms and Platonist ethics in general.

In contrast to Plutarch’s wide ranging interests, Maximus’s writings are narrowly focused on Philosophy, specifically Platonism.  Often when he writes about a topic in Philosophy he will directly quote, or paraphrase, a dialogue; so Maximus is rooted in study of the dialogues.  I particularly appreciate that Maximus wrote about the practice of contemplation in a Platonic context in one of his most beautiful Orations.

As far as I know there is only one work on Platonism by Alcinous, the Handbook of Platonism.  Some scholars suggest that the handbook was written for those who were teaching Platonism.  Others think it had a wider circulation.  Of these three writers Alcinous is the most systematic which is in line with the purpose of a Handbook.  Alcinous writes with clarity as he covers various topics in Platonism and because of this we have a good idea of how Middle Platonists understood their own tradition.

One Middle Platonist I have not read, but hope to get to in 2026, is Apuleius.  I have wanted to read the philosophical works of Apuleius for a long time and I’m hoping I will be able to read what he has to say soon.  Apuleius is most famous for his work The Golden Ass which is a very early example of a novel, according to scholars.  But I am more interested, again, in his philosophical works.

One thing I have observed about Middle Platonists is that as a group they seem to have an interest in literature; their works demonstrate literary skill and that they have spent a lot of time reading and studying literature.  I think this is in keeping with the Platonist tradition as a whole because Plato was a very skillful writer so it is only natural that those interested in literature would find Plato’s works attractive.

I have to confess that I prefer these Middle Platonists to the Platonists who wrote in the Late Classical period.  For my purposes I think of these writers as ‘Post-Porphyry’ and beginning with Iamblichus.  There are a number of contrasts, I think, between these two groups (Middle Platonists vs. Post-Porphyry Platonists).  The first is that the writing about Platonism found in Middle Platonism is direct and far more accessible than that of Post-Porphyry authors.  Middle Platonists seem to think of their task as to transmit what Plato wrote, what Plato’s views were, instead of elaborating on Platonism based on their own eccentricities.  Middle Platonists refrain from complicating the Platonic system and presentation which became an obsession with Post-Porphyry Platonists.

The other aspect of Middle Platonist writing that I appreciate is that they seem to me to have a strong interest in ethics and virtue.  This is likely controversial, but it seems to me that this focus on ethics and virtue declines in Post-Porphyry Platonism as elaborate cosmology assumes center stage.  I’m not saying it is completely absent from Post-Porphyry Platonism but it seems to me the unnecessary complexity of the cosmology which they present takes a lot of energy away from other aspects of Platonism such as ethics and virtue.

For these reasons, if I were teaching a group of students an ongoing course in Platonism my recommendation for further reading beyond the Dialogues and the Enneads would be the writings left to us from the Middle Platonists rather than the writings of the Post-Porphyry Platonists.  I think the Middle Platonists are more grounded in actual Platonism (what I sometimes call Orthodox Platonism), less prone to elaborately complex and difficult to understand mental speculations, and write in a manner that is helpful to the daily practice of Platonism.  Contemporary Platonists are very fortunate to have the resources left to us by these Middle Platonists.