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 in becomes richer and full of possibilities that we had previously overlooked.

 

 

 

  

Brief Notes on Various Topics - 106

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).

I’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 saw 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, Pseudo-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 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 14^th 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 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 encountering 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.

 

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics - 105

17 August 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 105

1.  The Crisis of Quietism

Now and then I search YouTube using the key words ‘Quietism’ and ‘Quietists’ because I want to see if anyone has posted something new on that topic.  There are not a lot of posts about Quietism and often when I search nothing new has been posted.  But now and then there is something new.

There was a period in my life when I studied the Quietists of the 17^th century; people like Miguel de Molinos, Madame Guyon, Archbishop Fenelon, Francois Malaval, and other more minor participants in that short-lived spiritual movement.  I still find their works attractive and insightful.

It is instructive that there are more than a few posts that criticize the ‘heresy’ of Quietism.  This is because, after an initial period of acceptance and even encouragement, the Catholic Church declared Quietism to be a dangerous heresy and suppressed the movement and its writings.  I think the main reason for the suppression of Quietism is that the Church came to the conclusion that Quietism undermined the place that rituals and practices such as the Eucharist and Rosary, have in the lives and practice of the Church and, further, that this would undermine the role of Priests and other Hierarchs.

There is some truth to this view; for example, there were documented instances where nuns stopped the practice of the rosary and instead practiced the prayer of interior silence.  I see this as a shift from meditation with a cultivation of mental focus, to contemplation which, using the Quietists’ mode of expression, lifts the soul to the presence of God who is beyond and prior to all forms. 

This step from a spiritual practice that is, in some sense, based on material realities, to the contemplation of that which transcends material realities is a difficult one.  I think this is understandable.  To let go of, to separate the soul from, all material realities, including intellectual or mental realities, is a simple but subtle practice.  The experience of the fully transcendental is sublime, but it is also unstable.  Plotinus writes about this, describing how his experience of the One ends with a return to the body, how the pull of the body makes stabilization of the experience of the transcendental delicate. 

It has been my experience that in many instances when people are introduced to the idea of contemplation that transcends all bodily and material reality, it is hard to understand what they are being asked to do.  That was my initial experience with contemplation.  The instructions for contemplation are not complex, but it is often difficult for people to understand how to actually do it and how to know that their practice has been fruitful.

There is another dimension to this difficulty and that is that material practices, or sensory based practices, can be the basis for constructing an institution; some of these institutions have great power by possessing a particular sensory practice.  Institutions are reluctant to allow for something that is ‘beyond’ their range of power and because of this there is a tendency to view such a practice as contemplation negatively.

Platonism is not immune from this tension.  Although a writer like Plotinus is remarkably clear about stepping into the beyond that is beyond being, beyond intellect or nous, not all subsequent Platonists agree with this kind of presentation (see especially Ennead VI).  Some Platonists after Plotinus directly attacked this idea and offered instead a view that it includes complex ceremonials as the ultimate means for aligning with the ultimate, and that ultimate is a bodily, material, manifestation, usually the gods.  I suspect that this kind of tension, the tension between going ‘beyond’ all material manifestation, including the manifestations of intellect, and the idea that there is a material practice that in some sense is the ultimate, is found in most spiritual traditions, if you look hard enough.

When I did my recent search on YouTube using the word ‘Quietism’, sure enough there were some new posts, or posts I hadn’t noticed before, focusing on the heretical nature of contemplation and the practice of interior silence.  For those of us who understand Platonism to be a contemplative tradition, I think that it is helpful to understand the way contemplation was treated, and is still treated, by many who have a strongly negative view of ‘separating the soul from the body.’  Understanding this tension and its sources has helped me to understand the difficult place that contemplation holds in our society today and in the world of spirituality in general.  And this understanding has helped me clarify in my own mind, what it is that contemplation offers, which is access to, and understanding of, the Good, the One, and the Beautiful, and the presence of Eternity.

2.  What is a Platonist?

I had a thought this last week; it is that a Platonist is someone who enjoys, and looks forward to, reading the Dialogues of Plato.  This probably sounds too simple, and I suppose it is.  But at another level I think it points out something about being a Platonist, or perhaps what I might refer to as the ‘activity’ of Platonism. 

A Platonist has a strong, one might say intimate, relationship to Plato’s writings.  These writings are considered to be a source of wisdom and of insight across a wide range of human activity and endeavors.  And Plato’s writings are inexhaustible which means that a Platonist can return to them and find new insights and practices each time the Platonist engages with these writings.

The closest example to this is, in my opinion, found in the Confucian tradition and how the Confucian Sage is thought of as deeply involved with the Confucian Canon of writings such as the Analects and the Great Learning and so forth.  In a similar way, a Sage in Platonism is someone who is deeply committed to a lifelong engagement with the writings of Plato.

3.  A Friend’s Comments

A friend is visiting and I am enjoying the company.  He has been reading Blogging Platonism, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 which I put together from my posts here and publish in book form, available on Amazon.  He has been enjoying them and has some good questions about some of my posts.  It’s interesting to me, and instructive, to learn what people who read the blog posts find significant and what kinds of questions arise from those posts.  It’s helpful to get that kind of feedback. 

 

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics - 104

10 August 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 104

1.  The Human Condition

As I’ve been rereading the Laws of Plato I have been struck by how little the human condition has changed.  This morning I read a section in Book XI which discusses conflict within the family that law needs to address.  The two specific examples are when a father wants to disown a son and remove the son from the family altogether, and when a son has concluded that a father is no longer of sound mind and needs to be removed from making binding decisions.  In the first case, where the father wants to disown and remove a son from the family, the law that Plato proposes is that the father has to gather a significant number of relatives from both the father’s and mother’s sides to whom the father presents his case.  The son then defends himself from the father’s accusations.  And the gathering of relatives, minus the father, mother, and son, then votes; if more than half of the gathering votes to disown the son then that is what happens.  In the case of a son dealing with a father who is no longer of sound mind, the son is to present his case to some elders who then make the determination.

These are very human situations that people still deal with today.  In fact, as we live longer, it has become fairly common for children to figure out how to take care of their parents as their capacities dwindle. 

The tendency in our culture is to think of ourselves as having advanced beyond previous cultures and their concerns; but passages like this one (and there are many in the Laws) suggest that the human condition is what it was and always will be.

2.  Comparing Buddhism and Platonism

I have often compared Buddhism and Platonism because I spent decades studying and practicing Buddhism, reading many of its key texts, reading Sutras and Commentaries, and having endless conversations with Buddhist friends.  Buddhism was a big part of my life.  I’m not the only one who is making this kind of comparison; there seems to be a steady flow of Westerners who studied and practiced Buddhism and then at some point turned to Platonism as the focus of their spiritual understanding and as the guide to a genuine spiritual path.  How these comparisons are made varies depending on what kind of Buddhism was being practiced.  I have noticed, for example, that hose who practiced Buddhist Tantra, also known as Vajrayana, tend to focus primarily on metaphysics and they tend to compare and contrast Buddhist and Platonist metaphysics and/or cosmology. 

What I have consistently noticed is that comparing the metaphysics of Buddhism and Platonism quickly becomes complicated.  I think it is difficult, or at least a challenge, to meaningfully compare the two spiritual traditions from the perspectives of metaphysics and cosmology.  It can be done, but doing so seems to stretch one or both of the traditions so that one can find points of association or contact.

It is my own opinion that where Buddhism and Platonism really meet is in the cultivation of ethical restraints, that is to say the cultivation of asceses, or asceticism.  There is a remarkable commonality between the two traditions as to what kinds of ethical restraints and prohibitions should be practiced.  I’m not saying the two systems of ethical restraints are identical, but I am saying that there are a surprising number of shared demands on practitioners as to what ethical restraints are essential for purification and spiritual growth. 

3.  Humpty Dumpty

I sometimes humorously think of contemporary Platonism as resembling Humpty Dumpty from the famous children’s rhyme.  For those not familiar, Humpty falls off a brick wall and breaks into pieces, “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”

I say this because of the great variety of interpretations of Platonism circulating in the world today.  And, furthermore, that these interpretations are at times incompatible. 

I’m aware that Platonism has been extremely fertile in presenting multiple interpretations of central insights and that this happened very early in the history of Platonism.  For example, Aristotle reconfigured the nature of Platonic Forms, and there have been other examples like this.  What I have observed, though, is that in Classical Platonism these kinds of variations didn’t seem to fragment Platonism into rival factions.  In fact, I see in Classical Platonism consistent attempts at reconciliation such as interpreting Aristotle in a way that diminishes, or eliminates, or subordinates, the differences between Aristotle and Classical Platonism as a whole.

Today the situation looks different to me.  Perhaps I am overinterpreting this, but the different streams of Platonism don’t seem to be inclined to interact and I have observed that in at least some cases a particular interpretation is adamant about its greater explanatory range and merit.

I don’t think there is anything that can be done about this; I think it is just a matter of letting this moment of intense differentiation within Platonism run its course.  Patience is, I think, the best response in this situation.

4.  Safe Harbor

Everyone knows that life is difficult; it’s not unusual for people to say exactly that.  Any human life is faced with challenges; happiness is rare and brief while strife is frequent and enduring.

When I read the works of Plato, when I read the works of the Platonic tradition such as the works of Plotinus, I feel like I have found a safe harbor from the inevitable difficulties, the inevitable storms, of life.  Reading even a few pages of one of Plato’s Dialogues, or a few paragraphs from the Enneads of Plotinus is in itself to experience the possibility of peace, serenity and transcendence.  This is a great gift; I would call it a grace.

 

  

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 103

3 August 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 103

1.  Lloyd Gerson on Proclus

Lloyd Gerson has published his analysis of Proclus in his latest book, The Platonism of Proclus.  Its release date is not specified, but it looks like it will be some time this year.  It’s interesting to me that, according to the write-up on the book on Amazon, Gerson approaches Proclus through the commentaries that Proclus wrote on various Platonic dialogues.  According to the write-up there are about 3,000 pages of portions of these dialogues that have survived.

The choice Gerson has made to base his study of Proclus on these commentaries, instead of works like The Elements of Theology or Platonic Theology is unusual; at least as far as I have observed there is a tendency to focus on these kinds of works in contemporary scholarship on Proclus, though I might be wrong about that.  This shift in focus will, I think, generate a ‘different’ Proclus than the one who emerges from reading works like the Elements.

I’m not a fan of Proclus, but I am a big fan of Gerson.  I look forward to reading Gerson’s book on Proclus and finding out how Gerson interprets Proclus.

2.  Transcendence

There is a YouTube channel that I listen to now and then.  The presenter has studied the Dialogues of Plato thoroughly and can easily refer to them and often paraphrases key passages.  The presenter is focused on political philosophy and interprets Plato in the tradition of Leo Strauss, Carl Schmitt, and Alexander Dugan, among others.  His understanding of Plato’s philosophy is that Plato is primarily a political philosopher and he doesn’t really go into other aspects of Platonism.

When listening to one of his recent talks I became aware of how he uses the word ‘transcendence.’  He used the word frequently in this particular talk so I got a good sample of how he understands ‘transcendence.’  When he used the word transcendence what he meant was moving from a limited context to more encompassing context; meaning that when you shift your understanding from a more limited view to a less limited view you are ‘transcending’ the limited view or understanding. 

This is how he maintains his focus on Plato as a political philosopher (and I wonder if others who maintain this idea also use ‘transcendence’ in this way; I’ll have to listen to them to see if it is a general pattern).  So even when Platonist writings speak of the transcendental he interprets that in worldly terms. 

This is not unusual; many people use the word ‘transcendence’ in this way.  Carl Jung uses it that way.  And I once heard a recording of a talk by Roger Scruton in which he used the word in exactly that way which kind of surprised me. 

You might think of this way of understanding transcendence as ‘horizontal’, like shifting focus from a small forest grove to the forest as a whole; something like that.  Or, perhaps, shifting one’s focus from a particular symphony to the symphonic tradition as a whole.  Like I said, it’s a common way of understanding what ‘transcendence’ means.

But in Platonism transcendence is ‘vertical’; to transcend means to leave behind material reality as the focus of one’s attention.  This is done by turning away from sensory stimulation, whether pleasurable, painful, or neither pleasurable nor painful.  It is the practice of the asceses that trains us to engage in such turning away.

Transcendence in Platonism is not aimed at a larger context; it is aimed at the experience of the ineffable (which is prior to all contexts) rather than a more convincing explanation of some aspect of reality or mental formulation.  The Good and the One are ineffable; as Plotinus points out the Good is not good.  We call it the Good, as a kind of stand-in for its actual reality which is beyond affirmation or negation and beyond conceptualization. 

I think this is difficult for people to understand.  The contemplation of the ineffable is simple, but it is, at first, difficult to recognize, and difficult to stabilize.  But that is the reality of transcendence that Platonism asks of us.

3.  Hidden Heritage

I listened the other day to another person who wants to merge Platonism with Buddhist Tantra.  Naturally they think of theurgy as the culmination of Platonism and draw upon the authors who wrote from a theurgic perspective and then attempt to show significant similarities between Theurgy and Tantra (usually Tibetan Buddhist Tantra, but they sometimes make brief references to Shaivism and its Tantric manifestations as well).

What came to mind after listening to the presentation is the idea that Platonism is, in a sense, a hidden heritage.  By that I mean that for over one thousand years, Platonism was embedded in other spiritual traditions who interpreted Platonism as insufficient on its own terms and needed something additional in order to be complete; this additional something was supplied by the non-Platonist tradition.  Christianity was the most successful among those traditions that took this approach.

When I say that Platonism is a ‘hidden heritage’ I mean that Platonism as a sufficient spiritual tradition that does not need supersessionist assistance.  What I am intuiting is that contemporary theurgy is replicating this context by arguing that wisdom is insufficient for the divine ascent and that therefore carefully crafted rituals (some of which can violate, or at least undermine, basic Platonist ethics) is essential.  It’s like the centuries long habit of having Platonism embedded in other spiritual contexts is internalized, but instead of using Christianity, they use theurgy.

This is just an intuition, but it arises out of my reading of theurgic works both ancient and modern and being impressed by how casually ceremonial efficacy is substituted for wisdom. 

3.1  Rereading this, it came to me that perhaps I mean something more like a ‘hidden hermitage’ than ‘hidden heritage’.  The two aren’t contradictory, but I think the image of Platonism as a hidden hermitage leads in nourishing directions.  Platonism is about turning away from, or turning around (periogoge, apostrophe).  It is a turning away from basing one’s life on sensory gratification and fulfilling pleasures.  It is a turning towards soul and its presence and following its guidance to the One.  It is a turning away from the unsatisfactory nature of material existence to the serenity of the hermitage of the transcendental.

3.2  Rereading this again, I think what I posted could be construed as asserting that Platonism, or Orthodox Platonism, to use Gerson’s phrase, is in some way sealed off from interacting with other traditions.  That isn’t what I am getting at.  What I am getting at is that a tradition like Buddhism does not normally think of its tradition as needing ‘completion’ by following, say for example, Confucianism.  Imagine if East Asian Buddhism elevated the teachings of Confucius above, or over, those of the Buddhist tradition itself.  I’m not saying that East Asian Buddhism was not influenced by Confucianism, I’m pointing out that the relationship between East Asian Buddhism and Confucianism was not one of supersessionism.  In contrast, the Platonic tradition has been in a relationship with other spiritual traditions in exactly that way, primarily through the way traditions like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have placed Platonism in a ‘handmaid’ role.  It is my view that Theurgy does exactly the same thing to Platonism and that the move that Theurgy makes vis a vis Platonism is structurally the same as other spiritual traditions; that is to say the Theurgic tradition's relationship to traditional, or Orthodox Platonism, is that of supersessionism.

What I think is needed is for Platonism to become confident of itself in the sense that Platonism is a complete spiritual tradition with the insights and resources to function as a guide for spiritual understanding, transcendence, and awakening to the presence of eternity. 

4.  Natural

There is a section in Laws, Book X, beginning about 891c, where Plato discusses first principles.  Plato contrasts those who think of first principles as found in nature with those who think of first principles as transcendental.  Plato begins by referring to those who consider fire, water, earth, and air are the first principles.

This reminded me of the discussion in Phaedo where Socrates talks about how he was, as a young man, initially attracted to Anaxagoras, but was disappointed by Anaxagoras’s material explanations of causation (even though Anaxagoras seemed, when Socrates first encountered him, to place Mind as a first principle).  In Laws Plato points out that those who think of the elementals as first principles argue that soul is derivative of the elementals.  The Platonist view is that soul precedes elementals and material realities, that the immaterial precedes the material, and is the foundation for that which is material.  You can read modern philosophers such as Bernardo Kastrup arguing the same thing (I’m not saying that Kastrup is a Platonist). 

The more I read and reread Plato I find these kinds of connections between dialogues.  I sometimes like to say that Plato’s Dialogues are actually a single book with each dialogue being a chapter; one reason I say this is because of the way insights and themes are revisited, expanded, sometimes amended.  This offers the sense that the reader is sharing in the unfolding thoughts of Plato over time, even when Plato is talking about the timeless.  I find that feeling very inviting.