Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 54

7 July 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 54 

1.  Anti-Platonism has a long history.  I think my favorite anti-Platonists are Hume and Nietzsche.  (As an aside, it’s interesting that there is not much that Hume and Nietzsche would agree on except for disliking Platonism.)  With Nietzsche his anti-Platonism is explicit, but, on the other hand, Platonism is just one item in a very long list of things that Nietzsche disliked. 

With Hume, his anti-Platonism is not aimed specifically at Plato but rather at metaphysics in general.  Hume was an empiricist and his dislike of metaphysics, and therefore of Plato, arises from his empiricist commitments.

A lot of modern philosophers are anti-Platonist for various reasons, but the ones that come up most often in the reading of contemporary anti-Platonism that I have done is the idea that Plato is somehow a totalitarian of some kind, and, secondly, that Plato is anti-science as the term science is used today.  Karl Popper is the best, and most influential, example of a modern philosopher who dislikes Plato for political reasons.  I’m not sure who gets the prize for disliking Plato because Plato is not science-based (Bertrand Russel?). 

These thoughts came up for me because I ran into a recently published review of Plato and his influence (a ‘review’ in the sense of ‘overview’) which was relentlessly hostile to Plato.  The reasons for the hostility were not new so it is not necessary to go into details.  But it was a nice reminder of how deeply and widespread the hostility to Plato is amongst contemporary Philosophers.

2.  In Plato’s Laws the amount of wealth an individual can accrue is restricted.  Leaders are required to live a life of very few possessions.  I think this can be viewed in two ways.  On a political level I think Plato was very aware of how wealth can corrupt the soul and drive someone away from being a caretaker for a community to seeking more of the power that wealth provides.  On an individual level, wealth can lead to a distracted mind that is focused on what it can do with all that money.  At both levels too much wealth is corrupting.

This contrasts with the world we live in today where wealth is greatly admired and sought after; almost as if wealth is good in itself, or a god.   Once again, I see how prescient Plato was and how his insights apply across the centuries.

3.  I have an ongoing project of comparing Platonism to Indian Dharmic traditions, as I’ve mentioned many times here.  I’ve come to the conclusion that the most significant difference between Platonism and Dharmic traditions is the noetic realm, nous, of the Platonic tradition which, as far as I have read, does not seem to have any equivalent in Dharmic traditions.  Noetic realities are a kind of bridge between the ultimate, the ineffable, and the material realm.  Without that bridge it is difficult to explain how the ultimate and the material are connected; there is this great chasm between the ultimate and the relative, or material reality.  And it takes a lot of complex unpacking to give some kind of analysis as to their relationship.

I suggest that the absence of the noetic in the Dharmic traditions of India leads to the dual/non-dual debate among Indian systems.  This is because without the noetic an analysis would have to argue that the material and the ultimate realities are not really at odds, and therefore they are non-dual, or that they are separate and distinct as in Classical Yoga and, I would argue, early Buddhism, and therefore dualistic. 

Platonism offers a third option that, I think, is neither non-dual nor dual; rather it is the unfolding of eternity through differentiation and metaphysical distance from the ultimate that is the operating principle for the generation of the noetic and the material domains.

4.  John Dillon’s collection of essays on Plotinus, Perspectives on Plotinus, is filled with insights and observations that clarify and illuminate the works of Plotinus.  That is why I enjoy reading this collection even though some of it goes over my head because of my lack of an academic background.  Here is an example from the first essay “Plotinus at Work on Platonism” which begins by quoting Ennead IV.3.17:

“’There is, we may put it, something that is a centre; about it, a circle of light shed from it; round centre and first circle alike, another circle, light from light; outside that again, not another circle of light but one which, lacking light of its own, must borrow.  (trans. MacKenna)” (As an aside, it is interesting to me that at times Dillon seems to prefer MacKenna’s translation over other translations that are available.)

Dillon then comments on this passage:

“The important treatise Enn. VI 4-5 is an extended meditation on this theme (cf. esp. VI 5.5).  In this Plotinus is much more penetratingly analytical than his predecessors, even perhaps than Plato himself, and it profoundly affects his view of the world of Forms as can be seen particularly in the first part (chs. 1-15) of Enn. VI 7.  There is just one universe, not two or more, but we can either consider it superficially, as a congeries of physical objects, or we can see in it the workings of Soul, or we can penetrate to its Being, as a system of Forms, or ultimately we can apprehend it, mystically and ecstatically, as Absolute Unity.”  (Emphasis mine)

(Dillon, John, Perspectives on Plotinus, The Prometheus Trust, Chepstow, UK, 2025, pages 9 and 10, ISBN: 9781898910749)

4.1  I like the way that Dillon suggests that these different interpretations are different ways of considering, or looking at, or comprehending, the universe.  

4.2  I like the way that Dillon so succinctly touches on the noetic by his use of ‘Being as a system of Forms’, but that ultimately what Plotinus is depicting is mystical Absolute Unity. 

4.3  This is just one brief example of Dillon’s succinct style.  Dillon’s writing strikes me as very mature, the result of decades long engagement with Plotinus in particular and Platonism as a whole.  The reader is the beneficiary of all those years of study and pondering.

5.  I read Porphyry’s Letter to Marcella this week.  It’s short and can be easily read in a single sitting.  I think it is an inspiring work, a well-written summary of Porphyry’s view of Platonism and philosophy, and a profoundly ascetical work.  I think it tells us a lot about Porphyry’s views on Platonism and how Porphyry thinks Platonism should be applied in our lives.  There are a lot of pithy sentences that are worth remembering and pondering.  Here is an example:

“. . . no two things can be more entirely opposed to one another than a life of pleasure and ease, and the ascent to the gods.  As the summits of mountains cannot be reached without danger and toil, so it is not possible to emerge from the inmost depths of the body through pleasure and ease which drag men down to the body.  For ‘tis by anxious thought that we reach the road, and by recollection of our fall.  But even if we encounter difficulties in our way, hardship is natural to the ascent, for it is given to the gods alone to lead an easy life.  But ease is most dangerous for souls which have sunk to this earthly life, making them forgetful in the pursuit of alien things, and bringing on a state of slumber if we fall asleep, beguiled by alluring visions.”

5.1  “ascent to the gods” – I take this phrase to mean “ascent to the noetic” or “ascent to nous”, the second level, or hypostasis.  I tend to think of the term ‘gods’ to be a personification of the noetic realm and noetic realities.  I think this is consistent with the way that Platonism uses personification as well as consistent with the way Platonism uses devices like metaphor and simile.  So I would gloss the statement that opens the quote as “. . . no two things can be more entirely opposed to one another than a life of pleasure and ease, and the ascent to nous.”

5.2  The opening statement (which contains, from my perspective, personification) is followed by a metaphor that compares the hardships of mountain climbing to the rigors of spiritual practice, the spiritual ascent.  This is a point that is repeatedly emphasized in this Letter. 

5.3  The idea that we find our way to the ‘road’, or ‘path’, due to anxiety about the human condition, and by recalling our fall into matter (presumably through the recollection of rebirth and the intermediate state as spoken about by Socrates in Phaedo) is another insight of Porphyry’s worth thinking about.  This touches on such things as comprehending the brevity of human existence and that life is inherently filled with pain and suffering and impermanence. 

5.4  In the next statement Porphyry emphasizes that difficulties are natural for those walking a spiritual path.  Porphyry then adds that the gods alone lead a life of ease.  This confirms for me that the term ‘gods’ in the context of this Letter is a personification for noetic realities because nous, the second level, or hypostasis, of existence is free from strife.  It is only in the material realm where strife enters and, at times, seems to rule.

5.5  The quote concludes that the difficulties found in the material world benefit those who are in the material realm because the conditions of this world, its great difficulties, act as a reason for us to want to transcend materiality, the third level, or hypostasis.  This can only happen by turning away from pleasure as our guide to embodied existence and pleasure’s alluring visions; such visions only serve to bring us back to another life filled with strife and sorrow.

5.6  There are many other examples of insightful statements like this in the Letter, statements that emphasize the ascetic nature of Platonism and how asceticism is related to finding our way home to the Good, the One, and the Eternal.

6.  I sometimes think of Platonism as a kind of oasis.  I suspect that image comes to me because I live in a desert region and have experience with what an actual oasis feels like.  The desert surrounding the oasis of Platonism would be the desert of modernity. 

To refer to modernity as a desert is, I think, an apt metaphor.  Things grow in the desert and the desert has its moments of beauty.  But what can grow and flourish in the desert is limited compared to other ecosystems.  In a similar way, things can grow in modernity; it is even possible for some new insights to emerge in the context of modernity.  But the mental ‘ecosystem’ of modernity restricts what is possible, particularly in terms of spirituality and transcendence.

An oasis in a desert is a place where things can grow and flourish even though they are surrounded by the harshness of the desert.  The oasis of Platonism is where understanding can flourish even though this oasis is surrounded by a hostile environment. 

The desert is vast.  The oasis is small.  Yet I think the oasis will outlast the desert.

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 41

7 April 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 41

1.  I was reading some of the essays by John Dillon from his new book Perspectives on Plotinus and at the same time rereading from the Orations of Maximus of Tyre.  I was reading them now and then and going back and forth between them.  I came away with a pleasing feeling of continuity; that is to say I feel a sense of common purpose between Dillon and Maximus as well as a common approach in their essays.  They both have great respect for the Platonic tradition.  They both ground what they are saying in the Platonic heritage, including older texts.  They both write in a focused, essay, style; I mean that each of their writings is focused on a particular topic of Platonism which the authors then unpack, showing how the topic of the essay relates to other topics in Platonism and/or Platonism as a whole.

2.  A friend of mine disagreed with my assertion in “Brief Notes on Various Topics 40.3” that presenting Platonism to college students needs to be done in a manner that can connect with them by presenting Platonism in a way that does not clash with the assumptions of modernity; at least not too much.  This means that starting with the topics of transcendence, or asceticism, is unlikely to make sense to young people in our culture at this time because of its materialism, nihilism, and reductionism.  

My friend pointed out that Platonism is not a tradition that is for most people.  Rather, Platonism is for the few.  My friend was suggesting that crafting a presentation of Platonism to appeal to undergraduate college students (perhaps in an Introduction to Philosophy class) implicitly means that I want Platonism to be a popular ‘Dharma’ or a ‘universal’ Dharma.  I think this is a fair point.  We in the West are used to thinking of religions and spiritual traditions as having the goal of universal appeal and, potentially, universal adherence.  This is true of Christianity.  But it is also true of a religion like Buddhism which has always had a strong push to convert others to its tradition(s).  

But not all spiritual traditions, or religions, think of their mission in the world as including converting large numbers of people to their tradition.  A good example are what I might call ‘spiritual arts’.  I am thinking of things like tea ceremony, tarot, I Ching, body-centered practices like Chi Gong, various meditation traditions and contemplative traditions, traditions like Jainism, and so forth.

Platonism more closely resembles these kinds of practices. There are differences, for sure; for example, Platonism seems to be more heavily invested in reading, studying, and interacting at multiple levels with most of these traditions and practices.  But then again, there are differences between any two of these non-universalistic traditions. 

In a number of Dialogues Plato presents the requirements for being a philosopher.  In Phaedo those requirements are ascetic.  This is also true in other dialogues.  In addition, in The Republic Plato mentions things like having a good memory, being a quick learner, and living what we today might call a ‘minimalist’ life.  Such a description presents a calling that is for a limited number of people.

2.1  When thinking about this a bit more, it came to me that the idea that a particular engagement in human affairs is not normally considered to have universal appeal.  For example, if someone is a gardener that person does not normally think of gardening as something that everyone should do.  Or someone who practices calligraphy as a hobby does not normally think of calligraphy as something that everyone should practice.  But when it comes to spirituality it seems to be the case that people think of spiritual traditions as for everyone, or accessible to everyone, and that if the spiritual tradition or practice is not universal in this way that it is somehow a failure when compared to traditions that do have a universalist approach.  I think that happens in Buddhism, particularly Mahayana Buddhism, because of certain ideals of compassion which are interpreted as being fulfilled when all people align with the Buddhist understanding of compassion; I’m thinking, for example, of the Bodhisattva Vows.  I think this happens in Christianity and Islam because of their supersessionist tendencies.  But, again, Platonism is not like that and is content to appeal to a limited number.

3.  In the Timaeus Plato writes, “. . . the motions that have an affinity to the divine part within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe.  These, surely, are the ones which each of us should follow.  We should redirect the revolutions in our heads that were thrown off course at our birth, by coming to learn the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, and so bring into conformity with its objects our faculty of understanding, as it was in its original condition.  And when this conformity is complete, we shall have achieved our goal: that most excellent life offered to humankind by the gods, both now and forevermore.”

(Plato, Timaeus, translated by Donald J. Zeyl, Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis, 1997, page 1289, 90c-d, ISBN: 9780872203495)

3.1  This helps the reader understand why astronomy is an important study in Platonism; because studying the revolutions of the universe connects us with the divine, linking the universe to the divine within us.  

3.2  One of the revolutions included would be the revolution of the sun, or the solar cycle.  This links astronomy to the contemplation what I call ‘waiting for the sun’.  I’ve posted about this before, but here in Timaeus is the explanation of the significance of this contemplation.  

4.  Most people use the word ‘theurgy’ as a synonym for magic.  I recently looked up the word ‘theurgy’ in an online dictionary and ‘magic’ was the first meaning listed.  I take a narrower, more specialized, view of theurgy.  In a Platonic context, based on Iamblichus’s influential On the Mysteries, theurgy is a sacrificial system that argues for the efficacy of blood sacrifice; that is to say the slaying of living animals as an essential part of theurgic ritual practice.  It’s not that all theurgic rituals require blood sacrifice; rather it is that theurgy is the foundation which permits animal sacrifice when it accords with the theurgic view.  I think that incorporating this perspective on ritual sacrifice into Platonism from Iamblichus onward, was a setback for Platonism that should be rejected.  The antidote is to be found in Porphyry’s Abstinence which argues against the slaying of animals either for ritual purposes or for slaying them for food.  A second antidote is to be found in the Platonic teachings on non-harming.

5.  On an everyday level Platonism is a gift that slowly transforms one’s life for the better.  At one level, the Platonist practitioner becomes more aware of what it means to live a virtuous life and why someone should strive to live a life of virtue.  On another level, what happens is that the Platonist practitioner begins to perceive material objects as symbols, or instantiations, of divine, or higher, realities.  This ability adds additional dimensions of experience to our ordinary life.  And these additional dimensions are invitations to transcendence and to that which is eternal.

6.  There is a passage in The Laws where the Athenian Stranger refers to an Egyptian artistic tradition which has lasted for 10,000 years; unchanged for all that time.  This was a style of painting which had strict rules for the procedures of painting bodily forms.  Clinias responds that this is “Fantastic!”, which I think in this context means something like ‘unbelievable’.  (As an aside, there are contemporary traditions of painting that strictly control the manner in which bodily forms are presented; I am thinking at the moment of Tibetan Thangka painting with which the West has become somewhat familiar in the last 50 years or so.  This tradition has rules governing the placement of bodies and other elements and these rules go back many centuries.)   The passage continues with a discussion of an Egyptian tradition that does roughly the same thing with music.  The Athenian Stranger clearly approves of this and wants to see this kind of tradition planted in the Greek world.  

It is difficult to conceive of an artistic or musical tradition that has lasted 10,000 years.  Many traditions in the arts in our culture today (music, painting, sculpture, poetry, and so forth) don’t last 100 years; some don’t last 6 months.  Think of what it would mean to sing a song that was 10,000 years old.  Think of what it would mean to live in a culture where that would be celebrated.  It would be a very different world.  (This discussion is found in The Laws at 656d-657c)

Later in The Laws the Athenian Stranger says, “The music we ought to cultivate is the kind that bears a resemblance to its model, beauty.”  (668b)

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 39

3 March 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 39

1.  I’m enjoying the new book on Plotinus, Perspectives on Plotinus: The Collected Essays of John Dillon.  They seem to be written with great clarity and dedication.  Some of the essays are technical and require a background in Late Classical Platonism to access.  But many of them are written at what I think of as a college level.  

I previously mentioned that I was looking forward to Dillon’s essay on grace in Plotinus, “A Kind of Warmth.”  I’m happy to report that it surpassed my expectations.  It is the best essay on grace in Late Classical Platonism that I have come across.  There are other essays on this topic that I have read that I enjoyed and learned from; but these others were written by committed Christian authors and Dillon brings a non-Christian perspective to the topic.  For me grace is a significant topic because I view grace as essential to understanding the nature of the One.  Dillon points out in the first paragraph of the essay that for most people it is difficult to think of grace as part of a metaphysical system where the ultimate, The One, is non-personal.  But I don’t think that grace is necessarily connected to metaphysical personalism.  In any case, I think this essay will be a catalyst for a reconsideration of the role that grace plays in Platonism.

2.  It is revealing how strongly ascetic the life of a guardian, as depicted in The Republic is supposed to be.  At the end of Book III this is emphasized:

“Consider, then, whether or not they (the guardians) should live in some such way as this, if they’re to be the kind of men we described.  First, none of them should possess any private property beyond what is wholly necessary.  Second, none of them should have a house or storeroom that isn’t open for all to enter at will.  Third, whatever sustenance moderate and courageous warrior-athletes require in order to have neither shortfall nor surplus in a given year they’ll receive by taxation on the other citizens as a salary for their guardianship.  Fourth, they’ll have common messes and live together like soldiers in a camp.  We’ll tell them that they always have gold and silver of a divine sort in their souls as a gift from the gods and so have no further need of human gold. Indeed, we’ll tell them that it’s impious for them to defile this divine possession by any admixture of such gold, because many impious deeds have been done that involve the currency used by ordinary people, while their one is pure.  Hence, for them alone among the city’s population, it is unlawful to touch or handle gold or silver.  They mustn’t be under the same roof as it, wear it as jewelry, or drink from gold or silver goblets.  In this way they’d save both themselves and the city.  But if they acquire private land, houses, and currency themselves, they’ll be household managers and farmers instead of guardians – hostile masters of the other citizens instead of their allies.  They’ll spend their whole lives hating and being hated, plotting and being plotted against, more afraid of internal than of external enemies, and they’ll hasten both themselves and the whole city to almost immediate ruin.  For all these reasons, let’s say that the guardians must be provided with housing and the rest in this way, and establish this as a law.”

2.1  Overall, this is a description of a life that resembles a life vowed to poverty.  Minimal possessions, no ownership of private property, and no interaction with wealth symbolized by gold and silver.  

2.2  The rejection of gold and silver is complete; the guardians are not even to be in the same room.  Plato seems to be very aware of how corrosive wealth is, meaning how wealth turns one’s attention away from spiritual life and eventually spirituality completely fades from sight.

2.3  On one level this is a description of how the higher, sometimes called ‘rational’, soul should function.  The higher soul, which supervises the appetitive soul and the emotional soul, has to be strict in order to serve its functions of maintaining balance between the parts of the tripartite soul.  

2.4  On a social level, I think a passage like this is descriptive of the ideal philosopher whose rational soul has guided him for a long time.

(Plato, The Republic, Book III, translated by G.M.A. Grube, rev. C.D.C. Reeve, Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1997, page 1052, 416d-417b, ISBN: 9780872203495)

3.  I think there are two arguments supporting vegetarianism within a Platonic context.  The first is the one put forth by Porphyry in his treatise on abstaining from eating or sacrificing animal flesh.  Porphyry’s view, which is stated early in the treatise, is that a vegetarian diet is necessary for a philosopher in particular because such a diet is supportive of the practice of contemplation.  From this perspective, vegetarianism is a tool for walking the Platonic path that resembles reading Plato’s Dialogues, or studying mathematics, or understanding the nature of emanation.

The second argument is that killing animals either for food or for the purposes of ritual sacrifice, as in theurgy, is deliberately harming living beings and doing so unnecessarily; that is to say there is no good reason to slaughter animals.  This argument focuses on the harm done to the animals that are slaughtered for food or for ritual purposes.  This is the argument that Plutarch seems to favor (because Plutarch’s essays on vegetarianism survive in only a partial state it’s not possible to state this definitively.)

The two perspectives are not mutually exclusive; both, I think, are valid and you will find aspects of the second argument in Porphyry and the first argument in Plutarch.  

A third presentation of vegetarianism in the Platonic tradition isn’t exactly an argument, but it is worth mentioning.  I am thinking of ancient biographies of Plato that depict Plato being vegetarian from birth and suggesting that Plato’s parents were vegetarian.  I see this as a symbolic sign of what one might call the ‘holiness’ of Plato.  It indicates that vegetarianism was a longstanding practice of philosophers in the Ancient Classical World.

4.  I live in the desert.  Summer in the desert here can be very hot, up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, or 49 degrees Celsius.  A glass of cool water is very refreshing on days like that, even though I have air conditioning.  Reading Plato’s dialogues resembles that experience; reading the dialogues is refreshing because their source is the refreshing spring of eternity.

5.  One of the differences between the contemplative branch of Platonism (Plotinus, Porphyry) and the theurgic branch (Iamblichus, Proclus) is their method of presentation.  In the contemplative branch there is a lot of use of techniques like allegory, metaphor, symbol, and so forth.  The reader finds these in Plato and Plotinus, but most richly in Plato.

In the theurgic branch there is a tendency toward greater rigour as is found in Proclus.  This rigour is based on Euclid’s Elements which Proclus wrote a commentary on.  The Elements of Theology by Proclus attempts to use this kind of method to present his understanding of Platonic cosmology and metaphysics.

I favor the approach found in Plato because I think it uses all the capacities of the human mind and appeals to a wide range of types of mental comprehension.  I think this reflects the ability of Plato to use numerous structures in his dialectic, including allegory, simile, symbol, myth, syllogistic, and so forth.  In Plato the reality of the teaching exists before the method of presentation.  In Proclus the method preempts the teaching.  Or you could say that in contemplative Platonism the reality gives birth to method(s) whereas in theurgy the method preempts the teaching.

Brief Notes on Various Topics - 38

17 February 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 38

1.  My experience of learning within the context of Platonism is that such learning has two phases.  One phase is full of insights, the understanding of meanings and implications that were previously elusive or difficult to access, and the making of connections between various Platonic presentations both within the work of a single author (such as Plato’s Dialogues) and across time among various authors in the Platonic tradition.  This phase is exciting and encourages someone experiencing this phase to continue with their Platonist study and practice.

The second phase is kind of ‘dry’.  I mean that there are times when the reading of Platonist works seems more like a task or duty and the practices, such as purification, asceses, and contemplation, do not seem to yield noticeable results.  This second phase is a kind of challenge.  It tests our commitments and stability.

I have found that after I went through these phases several times, experiencing the second phase was no longer an obstacle.  I simply waited patiently for this second phase to pass, which invariably it does.  

2.  “Socrates:  But among so many arguments this one alone survives refutation and remains steady: that doing what’s unjust is more to be guarded against than suffering it, and that it's not seeming to be good but being good that a man should take care of more than anything, both in his public and in his private life . . . “

(Plato, Gorgias, translated by Donald J. Zeyl, Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1997, page 869, 527b, ISBN: 97808722034950)

3.  I think that for some of the dialogues it is difficult for people to see their ascetic nature and teachings.  Some dialogues, like Phaedo, are explicitly ascetic and those teachings are difficult not to see.  But for others, like The Symposium, the ascetic nature of the dialogue is not as strongly placed or as obvious.  The Symposium has a lot of flirtatious remarks that are placed in the context of a drinking party.  The dialogue also has a lot of humor.  

The asceticism of The Symposium appears in two contexts.  First, when Alcibiades describes how he tried to seduce Socrates but failed because Socrates was not interested in an erotic relationship with Alcibiades.  This clearly presents us with a portrait of Socrates that has left behind sexual desires.  I think some people miss that because Socrates is not a monastic in the way that, for example, the monastic followers of the Buddha are.  I think we tend to think, or picture in our minds, an ascetic as part of a community of practitioners who are identifiable by their clothing, comportment, and other signals (like their haircut).  But Socrates is not living that kind of life; instead Socrates is wandering around Athens and interacting with numerous people from all stations of life and even going to drinking parties if the occasion arises.  The commitment of Socrates to a chaste life is, therefore, given to the reader through his interaction with those who would seduce him.

The second context for The Symposium as an ascetic teaching are the two scenes where Socrates withdraws from what is around him into a contemplative trance; these are found at the beginning and end of the dialogue.  I have written about these before so I’ll just mention them here.  This kind of withdrawal, this turning away, is a demonstration of the Ascetic Ideal and its method; that method being to turn away from sensory stimulation.

4.  When considering the life of Socrates I think it is helpful to view Socrates as someone who entered the ancient path later in life.  According to our sources (Plato and Xenophon) Socrates was married and had children, and Socrates also participated in warfare in defense of Athens.  Both of these would tend to depict Socrates as an ordinary householder rather than a spiritual practitioner.  

What I’m suggesting is that the life of Socrates can be viewed as having two periods; the first was as an Athenian citizen immersed in the life of the polis, including politics, family, and war.  The second was after Socrates became aware of, and became initiated in, ancient teaching(s).  This second period came after he went to the Oracle of Delphi, and after his own initiations in ancient mysteries, and after he met Diotima.  As Socrates himself reports, these experiences changed his life in significant ways; most importantly, he became a philosopher.

There are two dialogues that I think illustrate this development.  The first is Parmenides where an elderly Parmenides interacts, and critiques, a very young Socrates.  Here the young Socrates is interested in philosophy but has not yet matured.  The second dialogue is Phaedo where Socrates talks about his interaction with Anaxagoras’s teachings and how Socrates was at first very much attracted to them, but upon examination found them wanting.  In this passage we see a somewhat older Socrates still wanting to understand deep philosophical issues, but not yet exposed to the teachings that would guide Socrates in that task.  We do see this full maturity and philosophical insight in a dialogue like The Symposium and The Republic.  

I think it is easy for most people, including myself, to relate to this kind of biography which has a ‘before and after’ structure to it; meaning before he found the actual Way of Philosophy and after Socrates had found this way.  I think this is one of the reasons why Socrates as a kind of archetype has been so relatable down through the centuries; the story of Socrates is one that nearly all of us can relate to.

5.  Those readers who are particularly interested in Plotinus might want to know that a new collection of the scholar John Dillon has been published that contains 21 essays on various aspects of Plotinus’s writings and understanding.  The essays were published in various journals over a period of many years.  Dillon is famous as a scholar of Middle Platonism, but it is good to see his essays on Plotinus brought together in one volume.

The title is Perspectives on Plotinus: The collected Essays of John Dillon.  It is published by The Prometheus Trust in England; a group dedicated to the perspective of Thomas Taylor, but which has, in more recent years, widened its publishing to include books by Platonist scholars who are not necessarily connected to their organization.

I just got the book myself and have not had time to read it yet.  Looking at the titles of the essays cover a wide range of topics.  Some of the essays focus on unpacking specific Enneads, or even a passage in an Ennead.  Other essays discuss the relationship between Plotinus and other philosophers such as Philo.  Some essays discuss ethical issues, and so forth.

I am particularly interested in an essay Dillon wrote on the way Grace works in Plotinus’s writings.  The essay is titled “A Kind of Warmth”: Some Reflections on the Concept of ‘Grace’ in the Neoplatonic Tradition.  In the first year of this blog I wrote several posts about Grace in Platonism.  It is my view that Grace plays a significant, even crucial, role in Plotinian thought.  That’s not original with me; you can find Christian Platonists who argue for the importance of Grace in Plotinus but they naturally tend to interpret Grace in the manner of their Christian tradition.  Because of my many years of study in a Buddhist context, I tend to understand Grace in the works of Plotinus as closer to, though not identical with, the teachings of Pure Land Buddhism on the topic of Grace.  On the other hand, there are a number of contemporary Platonists who reject the idea of Grace as having any place in Platonism.  I tend to think that in this case they are likely influenced by contemporary secular materialism in coming to that conclusion.  It will be interesting to read what Dillon has to say on this topic.

I’m glad to see this collection made available and I look forward to reading what it has to offer.  For those interested it can be purchased from Kindred Star books in the U.S. which can be found at kindredstarbooks (dot) com.  For those in England you can go to prometheustrust (dot) co (dot) uk.