8 September 2025
Brief Notes on Various
Topics – 63
1. Trouble at the Universities
Universities are in trouble these days, at least in the U.S., I’m not sure of the situation outside of the U.S. Many smaller Liberal Arts Colleges are closing down. These smaller colleges relied on donations and fees from current students, but the costs for running the institutions have gone up a lot in recent years and this has reduced their appeal to students who are similarly having monetary difficulties.
For the big Universities with huge endowments (some of these endowments are truly gargantuan) there is a widely held view among younger generations that a college degree is not worth the very high cost. It used to be the case that getting a college degree meant entry into higher earning jobs, but that seems to be less and less true. Young people can see this and a significant number are choosing to take other routes to a career such as apprenticeships or working several jobs, or gigs, to earn enough to move forward.
Part of the problem for Universities is that there has been a huge increase in bureaucrats who administer an ever growing list of regulations from various authorities. These bureaucrats do not teach, nor do they support the teaching function of the Universities, but they nevertheless have high salaries. But instead of trimming these administrative operators, big Universities have responded to this situation by shrinking or, in some cases, eliminating liberal arts degrees. Even some of these heavily endowed Universities have moved in this direction. And this, of course, impacts philosophy departments. There are more than a few youtube videos from people who decided not to pursue graduate degrees in philosophy for various reasons such as the expense, the lack of scope in philosophy departments, an indifference to the kind of philosophy they were interested in such as metaphysics, and so forth.
It is interesting to me that Platonists began responding to this situation many years ago, long before the problems I outlined above began to impact Universities as a whole. What I have observed is that the recent history of Platonism tends to establish some kind of organization (it might be educational, it might be a press devoted to Platonism, and so forth) to act as a means for informing people of Platonic Philosophy and to pass their understanding of that philosophy to future generations. There are a number of these groups and societies; for example the Prometheus Trust was founded, I understand, in the mid-1980’s. I know of other groups and societies, almost all of them quite small at this time, that have gathered with similar purposes. These groups do not always agree with each other about what Platonism is, but they share a common interest in the Platonic heritage.
A common element among these groups is that they have established themselves outside of a University context. And they are articulate about their need to be outside of the University because of the contemporary indifference, sometimes hostility, towards Platonism. I see this as an early understanding of how the University no longer provides nourishment for those who have a love of wisdom and who are searching for answers to the great question of life and death. My hope is that these small groups will grow over time and become seeds for a new society that is grounded in the transcendent.
2. The Sentences of Porphyry – Sentence 9
Hence there is a twofold death; the one, indeed, universally known, in which the body is liberated from the soul; but the other peculiar to philosophers, in which the soul is liberated from the body. Nor does the one entirely follow the other. (Thomas Taylor)
Death, therefore, is twofold, that which is generally recognized, when the body separates from the soul; and that of the philosophers, when the soul separates from the body. And the one does not at all follow the other. (Thomas Davidson)
There is a double death. One, known by all men, consists in the separation of the body with the soul; the other, characteristic of philosophers, results in the separation of the soul from the body. The latter is consequence of the former. (Kenneth Guthrie)
There are two kinds of death; one known as the separation of body from soul, and the other, the philosophical one, which is the separation of soul from body; and not always one is a consequence of the other. (Isaac Samarskyi)
2.1 This sentence is rooted, again, in Phaedo where Socrates explains that the philosopher is seen by non-philosophers as engaged in a kind of death practice; this is due to the philosopher turning away from the body which is where people tend to think of life as being centered. If you have no experience of soul, or of transcendence, then turning away from the desires of the body would be seen as a kind of absolute death that plunges into a nihilistic void.
2.2 The sentence goes on to suggest that there are two kinds of death. One is the body separating from the soul, which is natural and part of cyclic existence. This kind of death is what ordinary people, including secularists, mean by death. This kind of death is triggered by the disintegration of the body, its begoning.
The second kind of death is a philosophical death and it is when the soul takes the lead and separates from the body, leaving the body behind, rather than the body taking the lead and leaving the soul behind. If I think of the soul as the presence of eternity, the second death arises when the presence of eternity becomes the focus of one’s existence because the body is ephemeral.
This kind of death is not recognized as death by most people; instead I think most people would think of it as an insight, or a guiding realization. But it is appropriate to call it death because it results in the separation of soul and body, which is what happens in the first kind of death as well.
2.3 There are two kinds of death; the first is when the body disintegrates and this separates body and soul. The second is when the soul separates from the body because the soul has now become the primary guide and presence for the individual. This second death, the philosophers’ death, does not normally coincide with the death of the body which continues its life in accordance with its inherited karma and other factors of cyclical existence such as genetic inheritance and astrological destiny.
The philosophes’ death is brought about by practices of purification that turn the individual away from the pursuit of pleasure to the pursuit of the presence of eternity.
3. Plato and Aristotle
I was listening to an online presentation about a small section of a work of Proclus. In this section Proclus mentions in passing that Aristotle disagrees with Proclus’s view of the topic; Proclus quickly dismisses Aristotle and then continues with his major focus. The person presenting the talk noted that Proclus ‘never’ agrees with Aristotle.
I thought the remark was interesting. Over many centuries there has been a range of analyses about the relationship between Aristotle and Plato. Some seem to think of the two as in important ways remote from each other. Others think of Aristotle as essentially a Platonist even while acknowledging differences. Plotinus, according to Porphyry’s biography of him, found Aristotle worthy of inclusion as a Platonist; and Porphyry mentions specifically that Aristotle’s Metaphysics had an impact on the Enneads.
On the other hand, there is a long discussion in the Enneads about Aristotle’s Categories. Plotinus disagrees with the specific categories that Aristotle refers to and offers a different set of categories as an alternative. Porphyry would later follow up on his teacher’s interest in Aristotle’s Categories and write an Introduction to Aristotle’s work.
There is a kind of friction between Aristotle and Plato that keeps resurfacing in the Platonic tradition. Lloyd Gerson wrote a book called Aristotle and Other Platonists demonstrating that discussions about this relationship are still very much alive.
My own view centers on two of Aristotle’s works; the Metaphysics and the Nicomachean Ethics. I find both of these works to be Platonic in spirit.
My feeling about this relationship between Plato and Aristotle is that it is a source of creative friction. By ‘creative friction’ I mean that Plato and Aristotle differ enough on significant topics that if one is inclined to consider the two compatible it takes some work to reconcile them. It’s not impossible, but the compatible nature of the two isn’t obvious. Because a lot of Platonists have, down through the centuries, felt a need to depict the two as essentially compatible, and have acted to show that they are, this lights a fire of creative investigation and analysis in service to this project. Because the relationship between Plato and Aristotle is not obvious, the nature of that relationship is regularly revisited. I think that is to the benefit of Platonism as a whole; my feeling is that this ongoing conversation clarifies Platonism and Aristotelianism and that this benefits the philosophical community as a whole.
4. Plotinus’s Way
I came across another author who thinks that Plotinus is a ‘rationalist.’ As I have previously stated on this blog, I don’t consider Plotinus a rationalist because his writing is not systematic in the way rationalists seek to write, and because Plotinus relies on what we might call ‘intuition’ and the practice of contemplation for insight into noetic realities as well as the transcendental.
But I think I got an inkling of why some writers refer to Plotinus as a rationalist; I think it comes from those who advocate for theurgy. The contrast between a ritual-based approach and a contemplative approach is reconfigured among theurgists as a contrast between a ritual-based approach and a rationalist approach (and I think they mean ‘intellectual’ or ‘analytical’ when they use ‘rationalist’ in this context). My feeling is that theurgists don’t really understand what a contemplative approach means or how contemplation is the foundation for the Way of Plotinus and that contemplation is not ritual-based or rationalist .
To give an example of what I mean, consider that Porphyry in his book On Abstinence argues that the philosopher should refrain from eating meat because doing so makes contemplation more difficult; that is to say, eating animal flesh is a hindrance to the practice of contemplation. In this kind of context one can see how contemplation governs a whole range of Platonic practices. In other words, the foundation of the insights found in the Enneads is not analytic reason; it is the practice of contemplation.
I’m not saying that Plotinus is irrational or doesn’t care about reason or doesn’t ever use reason in his writings. I’m suggesting that the starting point for Plotinus, the ‘first thing’, is the practice of contemplation and his reasoning follows from his experiences of contemplation. It is also necessary, I think, to point out that what Platonists meant by ‘reason’ differs in significant ways from what contemporary philosophers mean by reason. For example, the use of structures of comparison, such as metaphor, simile, as well as the use of mythos, are embedded in what Classical Platonists mean by reason while contemporary philosophers have a much narrower understanding of reason which confined, for the most part, to structures of inference that can be depicted in symbolic logic.
I’m not surprised that those who advocate for the use of theurgy and a ritual-based approach to Platonism do not seem to grasp the primacy of place that contemplation has in the works of Plotinus. I have run into similar misunderstandings when interacting with various spiritual traditions. For example, a lot of Westerners these days interpret Zen meditation (which is actually a form of contemplation) as a type of therapy; I mean that they use Zen meditation as a kind of adjunct to therapy. There are other misunderstandings along these lines.
Ultimately I understand contemplation as the practice that embodies Plotinus’s advice to ‘take away everything.’ When everything is taken away you are left with the Good, the One, the Beautiful, and you find yourself in the presence of eternity.
5. A Message from Emily Dickinson
Exultation is the going
I read the first quatrain as a description of letting go of our worldly attachment; we go ‘past’ the houses (symbolizing the human world), ‘past’ the headlands (symbolizing the world of nature), and by going past these (what a Platonist might refer to as ‘turning away’) we find our way to ‘deep eternity’. We turn away from what is ephemeral, such as the houses and headlands, and when we do so we find ourselves in the presence of deep eternity.
In the second quatrain Dickinson is contrasting the feeling of our first encounter with the presence of eternity with those who have dwelt in this presence consciously for a long time. The sailor symbolizes someone who as at home with the sea. Those from the mountains, from ‘inland’ are new to the sea, new to the experience of eternity.
The sailor might not understand, or might not recall, the exultation that the first realization can bring. I think Dickinson is referring to a sudden opening to the transcendental which I think was likely the nature of her own experience. In my own experience, and in the experience of many people I have spoken with and observed, the opening to the transcendental can happen gradually, step by step; like the slow blossoming of a flower. I don’t view these as contradictory though entire traditions have regarded one or the other as definitive.
In this poem Dickinson is offering us her own experience of the presence of eternity. Because she was a poet, she wrote about in a poem, rather than in an essay or treatise. It is interesting to note that Dickinson’s life embodies some of the classic aspects of a spiritual practitioner; I am thinking particularly of her love of solitude and reclusion.
I enjoy finding these messages from eternity and find them inspiring for my own journey.
