Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 34

30 December 2024

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 34

The year 2024 is coming to its end.  Somehow it seems fitting to write one of my ‘Brief Notes’ posts to conclude this year.

1.  This year I became aware of a few Platonic groups that I had not known of before.  The kind of groups I am referring to are outside the University setting, they are small in number of members, and they are dedicated to following the Platonic teachings as they understand it and to the best of their abilities.  Some groups like this have been around a long time; I’m thinking of the Thomas Taylor group(s) as a good example.  And some are only a few years old.

When I think of these groups I become optimistic.  Most of these groups will likely fail from a worldly perspective (the group will disperse due to complicating life circumstances, monetary difficulties, differences in shared visions, and so forth) but I see these groups as like seeds cast upon the ground.  Most seeds do not germinate, but some do.  Over time some will take root and grow; that may take many years to happen but that’s OK when you see the things of this world from the perspective of eternity.

2.  The Way of the Solitary Practitioner appears to me to be the manner in which Platonism as a spiritual practice will be transmitted, or handed down, at least for the near future.  As someone who is attracted to monasticism I used to think of this situation as a negative.  But I’ve grown to think of the Way of the Solitary Practitioner as having its advantages.  

2.1  The truth is, most monastic institutions are corrupt and it is difficult for a genuine practitioner to actualize their practice in a structured monastic setting (though there are exceptions.)  This is not a new problem; Peter Abelard wrote about corrupt monastic institutions in his Historia Calamitatum, written in 1132.  And my Buddhist teacher, who was a monk, once told me that 80% of Buddhist monks were monks because they are lazy, 15% of the monks become monks because of a great sorrow in their lives, and about 5% become monks because they want to practice the Way.  He laughed when he said this but he was at the same time serious.  I think that was the primary reason why my teacher set up obstacles to practicing in a monastery, so many that it became impossible.

2.2  Without naming the Way of the Solitary Practitioner explicitly, Platonic literature seems to offer that approach by example.  I’m thinking of the Platonic teachers who presented the teachings in the context of their lives without creating an institutional setting; this includes people like Plotinus, Maximus, Hypatia, Ficino, and on down to the present day.

2.3  There are lots of human activities that model the Way of the Solitary Practitioner.  I’m thinking of activities like gardening, making pottery, baking, painting, and so forth.  In a way you could look at Platonism as an art like these activities, as a way of life.

3.  Plato demonstrated the effectiveness of the dialogue form for philosophy.  And this has had a big impact on Western Philosophy over the centuries.  Lots of philosophers have presented their views through the dialogue form and I think that is because of the precedent set by Plato.  Examples include some works of Cicero, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, on down to the modern period with writers like Berkeley, into the contemporary setting with authors like Peter Kreeft.

But I had not been aware until this year that some of these dialogues are spin-offs of actual Platonic dialogues.  In Plato’s dialogues it sometimes happens that a question will be raised, or an issue touched on, that is not further explored except in that passing mention.  Or there might be something in the setting that is noted but not explored or unpacked.  This provides an opening for a philosophically inclined author to write a dialogue that takes that lacuna as a starting point for a dialogue of their own.

I see this as similar to chapters that have been added to The Tale of Genji where a situation is not brought to a conclusion, or a character briefly appears in the novel but then disappears, and similar kinds of things.  The Tale of Genji is a huge work with a large number of characters, so it makes sense that some characters, and their stories, are not given a complete treatment.  The result is that at times in Japanese literary history an author will add a chapter to the Tale to fill in what they consider to be an absence or gap.  In a similar way, the authors I am referring to have filled in ‘gaps’ in the dialogues of Plato; these are not philosophical gaps.  They are what we might call ‘literary gaps.’

The examples I became aware of are very recent.  They are a specific subcategory of philosophical dialogue, emerging directly from the Platonic dialogues themselves.  I can see why this might be attractive to some writers as the characters in Plato’s dialogues are interesting; they have well articulated personalities and in some cases biographies.

I don’t know if there are earlier examples of dialogues that take the characters and situations found in Plato’s dialogues as the basis for their own philosophical writing.  I don’t have any objection to this approach; I find it kind of intriguing and see potential in it for the future.

4.  After rereading the dialogue Parmenides this year it occurred to me that the view that Plato had a ‘secret teaching’ or ‘doctrine’ that was reserved for a select few, a kind of esoteric teaching, is a misreading of the Parmenides.  In Parmenides, in the section I recently posted about, it is argued that the One does not participate in time and that because of this there is no past, present, or future from the perspective of the One.  The argument continues, asserting that this implies that the One transcends being and that the One has no name.

What I’m suggesting is that this teaching of the One transcending being and inherently not having any name (because it is non-conceptual) is the source for the idea that there was a secret doctrine in Platonism (this view is often called the ‘Tubingen School.’) I’m suggesting that this so-called secret doctrine is simply the experience of the fully transcendental One through contemplation.  It is ‘secret’ in the sense that it is beyond mind, intellect, and concept and therefore beyond affirmation and negation.  It would be difficult for those who see philosophy strictly in conceptual terms to integrate such a teaching into their view of philosophy and this leads to the idea that the teaching is esoteric, hidden, or secret.

5.  “Whenever you want to indulge, recall that you prefer to ascend.”

(Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One, Sophia Perennis, San Rafael, California, 2009, page 104, ISBN: 9781597310949)

This is an excellent practice.  It transforms every situation into an occasion for the practice of the Platonic Way.  If I am tempted by material pleasures I am reminded to transcend them instead of indulge in them.  If I am confronted by negative situations, and I am tempted to anger, belligerence, retaliation, or arrogance, I am reminded that it is possible to transcend the situation, transforming it into an occasion for spiritual practice.  Seeing things in this way I align myself with the providential nature of the One, thus taking a step forward on the path that leads to the One.

An application of Anderson’s insight quoted above is to beauty.  If I want to indulge in beauty, to think of beauty as a sensory experience, I recall that I want to ascend; and I do this by understanding that beauty is a gate to the transcendental.  The beauty found in this world is not the beauty of this world.  But each occasion of beauty is an opportunity to access the transcendental source of beauty that is beyond material existence.

As the day draws to an end,

As the month comes to a close,

I turn to look at a vase,

Blue and gold with one white rose.

Best wishes to all for a nourishing and contemplative 2025.

 

Brief Notes on the Topic of Purification

2 June 2024

Brief Notes on the Topic of Purification

1.  I’ve been reading the essay “Purification” by Mark Anderson in his book Pure, published in 2009.  I find it very impressive.  It is the clearest presentation of the idea and process of purification in the Platonic tradition by a contemporary philosopher that I know of.  It is my feeling that you have to go back to Porphyry to find a Platonic philosopher who has a similar focus on purification.  (If anyone has another example of this kind of focus, please let me know.)

2.  Porphyry’s presentation of purification is embedded in the context of virtue ethics and the cultural concerns of his day.  Anderson’s essay on purification is directly concerned with the way modernity opposes the process; for example Anderson writes, “Modern modes of thought seem somehow to incline one toward vice, and thus toward a wretched existence.”

Porphyry spoke about purification using the issues of his day to communicate this process.  Anderson does the same thing for a modern audience.

3.  The practice of purification is found in a lot of spiritual traditions.  It is prominent in Theravada Buddhism.  The most highly revered commentary and manual of Theravada Buddhism is called The Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga).  It was written in the fifth century C.E. and has had, and continues to have, a central role in the way Theravada Buddhism understands the Buddhist path.

In a completely different tradition, that of Shinto, we also find purification practice as central to the tradition.  Collectively, purification rituals are used to cleanse away impurities.  A common ritual is known as ‘misogi’ and it involves cleansing through ritual ablutions, including standing under a waterfall for a given duration.

And, of course, purification is central to the Platonist tradition in multiple ways.  Purification defines Platonism as a way of life, and the specific behavioral demands on the Platonist practitioner.  And purification also is a philosophical response to the metaphysical situation in which humans find themselves as outlined in the system of metaphysical levels, or hypostases.  Purification explains how we can find a way to higher levels of reality and, eventually, how we can return to the One.

4.  Spiritual traditions that rely on, or emphasize, the process of purification see spirituality as a path that its practitioners are travelling on.  These traditions see spirituality as a long journey; for those traditions that accept the truth of rebirth it is typical that they think of the spiritual journey as encompassing many lifetimes.

5.  Purification traditions tend to use metaphors for spirituality that emphasize a gradual unfolding rather than a sudden or instantaneous realization.  For example, some Platonists compare the spiritual journey to a sculptor chipping away at a hunk of marble over time until only the inner reality of the soul remains. 

6.  Purification traditions are, as far as I am aware, not transgressive.  In the Platonic tradition this is illustrated by the emphasis on civic virtues found in Porphyry and other Classical Platonists, including Socrates.  This doesn’t always keep them out of trouble, but nevertheless civic virtues are considered valuable for the spiritual quest.

7.  A different view of spirituality from that of purification is transformation which is the model found in traditions such as Tantra (both Hindu and Buddhist), Zen, and various modern teachers such as Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti, and many Western Non-Dual teachers.

The two approaches have a different take on causality in a spiritual context.  The transformation view is, to borrow one of their teachings, to ‘turn poison into nectar.’  This means that anything can be an occasion for spiritual development and realization if understood correctly.

The criticism of this approach is that you can’t have a meal that consists of broken glass; it won’t nourish you and it will cause you great harm.  The purification model is embedded in accepting the reality of causality as it presents itself to us.  Just as a musician needs to train in certain techniques to become a musician, so also a spiritual practitioner needs to train in the techniques of purification to advance on the path.  The method of purification may be arduous and the journey long, but it is understood to be worthwhile.  As Anderson writes,

“The potential reward that awaits the purified soul – the intellectual insight and the existential state – is of the highest possible order, namely the realization of the human telos, which the Platonic tradition conceives as unification with the divine.” (Page 72)

8.  Though the path of purification is long, and sometimes arduous, it is also rewarding.  It is rewarding in the sense that one can perceive the progress one is making (Plutarch wrote a whole essay on how to recognize progress in cultivating the virtues.)  Just as a musician discovers that they can play a piece that previously they were unable to, so also those walking on the path of purification can observe that their equanimity has grown, and that their understanding has become deeper.  This is my own experience.  Yes, there are setbacks, but the overall movement is toward a greater expansiveness and detailed understanding.  At times these moments of increased understanding are amazing.  At other times they are small steps but they are steps forward.

9.  The path of the path of purification is itself beautiful.  That is because it is directly connected to the Good and the One.  As we journey forward we get closer and closer to the source of all things and the approach to that source becomes more radiant and sublime. 

 

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 16

22 March 2024

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 16

1.  “To some philosophy is primary, as to Porphyry and Plotinus and a great many other philosophers; to others hieratic practice, as to Iamblichus, Syrianus, Proclus, and the hieratic school generally.”

This is a quote from a commentary on Phaedo by Damascius, translated by L. G. Westerink (page 104).  Damascius was the last head of the Platonic Academy in Athens before it was closed by Justinian.  Damascius lived in the late 5^th and early 6^th centuries CE.

I take ‘hieratic’ to refer to theurgy.  Damascius is indicating that Platonism, at the time he was teaching, had split into two camps, depending on what they regarded as ‘primary.’  Porphyry, Plotinus, and a ‘great many other philosophers’ took philosophy to be primary.  I interpret this as meaning that this group practiced contemplation as the central practice of their tradition.  In contrast, Iamblichus, Syrianus, and Proclus considered theurgy, or the ‘hieratic practice,’ which refers to ritual sacrifice, including animal sacrifice, as primary.

This division remains today as a legacy of late Classical Platonism.  I am rooted in the contemplative tradition of Plotinus and Porphyry.  

2.  Porphyry wrote the longest, and most thorough, surviving work on the practice of vegetarianism/veganism in the Platonic tradition.  The translated title for the newest available translation is On Abstinence from Killing Animals; Gillian Clark is the translator.  It is an extended argument against either killing animals for food or killing them in other contexts such as ritual sacrifice, or in the context of theurgy.

Later, Porphyry wrote another work on the same topic called Letter to Anebo, which we no longer have except for quotations found in Iamblichus and Eusebius.  Iamblichus took issue with Porphyry and wrote a commentary attempting to refute Porphyry’s views contained in Letter to Anebo.  As far as we know, Porphyry did not respond to the critique by Iamblichus (called On the Mysteries). 

Thus the division between the contemplative, or philosophical, tradition of Platonism and the hieratic, or theurgic, tradition arose.  I am rooted in the tradition shaped by Porphyry’s views; meaning that I see vegetarianism and veganism as a central practice of the Platonic tradition.

3. One reason I admire Platonism is that Platonism recognizes and honors cause and effect.  Platonism is aware of the interior struggles of the soul with bodily desires and never minimizes just how difficult that struggle is. 

4.  It is possible to take ordinary activities and use them as an opportunity for purification.  For example, washing one’s hands, and bathing, are both opportunities for thinking about purification, for training the mind to use ordinary events as a means for purification.  The cleansing of the body becomes a symbol for the purification of the mind and with repetition helps incline our consciousness towards that goal.

5.  Mark Anderson wrote in his essay on Platonic purification, “Whenever you want to indulge, recall that you prefer to ascend.”  (Mark Anderson, Pure, page 104.)  I think this is a wonderful ‘pithy saying’ and I have found it helpful to internalize its message as I continue on the path to the Good and the One.

The Tradition of Virtue

20 December 2023

The Tradition of Virtue

“The eye, to see, must be adapted to the object of its vision.  So, too, with soul; only the good may know the Good; only the pure may know the All-Pure.  Ethical purification is the process through which we become virtuous, for the sake of virtue itself, but also, and ultimately, for the sake of our ascent to the divine.  We seek metaphysical insight, knowledge of Truth, unification with the One.  This is a daunting goal; perhaps we are presumptuous to aim so high.  Nevertheless, we are moved to make the attempt.  We have been told, after all, that this is the telos toward which our human nature inclines.  Therefore, it is not impossible.  Yet it is not easy, this we have also been told.  If, then, we would undertake the journey sincerely, we must follow the road tradition has laid down for us.  The road is under our feet, and its paving stones are inscribed with instructions on how to proceed.  We must talk, they say, with virtue.”

(Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One, Mark Anderson, Sophia Perennis, San Rafael, CA, 2009, page 84, ISBN: 9781597310949)

1.  The Platonic tradition is deeply rooted in virtue ethics.  Anderson views the cultivation of virtue as similar to the physical cultivation of the body.  I think Anderson means that people cultivate the strength, endurance, and beauty of the body in order to improve themselves in terms of their physical condition and appearance.  Similarly, cultivating virtue trains the soul and the soul’s characteristics, such as courage, wisdom, temperance, generosity, and so forth, so that they become second nature, they become features of a virtuous life.  This establishment of virtue allows for the soul to begin the process of philosophical ascent, ultimately culminating in uniting with the One.

The purpose of these two trainings differs.  The goal of physical training is worldly attention and acclaim.  The goal of training in the virtues is, as Anderson points out, for the sake of our ascent to the One. 

2.  Cultivating the virtues is a kind of purification.  In a Platonic context purification means to move in the direction of separating the soul from the body.  This is accomplished through the virtues by countering, or pulling away from, the natural tendency of the body to act on the basis of the body and its demands.  For example, a natural tendency of the body is anger and this is countered by the practice of temperance and wisdom.  Another natural tendency, based on the body, is to be admired for worldly attainments; it takes courage to live a life that is not based on acquiring worldly and material attainments; the virtue of courage in this kind of situation is something that every philosopher has to rely at some point in their life as demonstrated in the life of Socrates.

3.  “. . . we must follow the road tradition has laid down for us.”

This quote from Anderson brings to mind the passage towards the end of Phaedo where Socrates tells his students, who are at that moment distraught at their teacher’s imminent death, that if they follow his instructions ‘step by step’ they will be fine.  I see Socrates at that moment as not just pointing to his own teachings, but to the tradition that he inherited and upon which his own teachings are based, as are the Platonic teachings as a whole.  The origins of this tradition’s are still noticeable in the remnants of the Pythagorean and Orphic traditions.

In modernity this way of looking at spiritual practice, as a tradition that has been handed down to us, is difficult to access.  The tendency in modernity is to comprehend the past as deficient.  Viewed in this way there is an automatic suspicion that arises towards ancient teachings simply because they are ancient.  It takes the virtues of wisdom and courage to cut through our own culture’s unthinking rejection of the past and to then root ourselves in the ancient ecology of eternity that nourishes Platonic philosophy.

 

 

More on the Word 'Neoplatonism'

18 February 2023

More on the Word ‘Neoplatonism’

In mid-January of this year I posted “Why I Don’t Use the Word ‘Neoplatonism.”  It was my quick take on why I think the word ‘Neoplatonism’ inherently distorts the history of the Platonic tradition as well as the teachings of Plotinus and other late classical Platonists.  Recently, I was rereading Pure by Mark Anderson and came across a passage where Anderson makes the same point, but with different emphases.  Anderson is much more adamant than I was in my post and more strongly emphasizes the history behind the introduction of the word ‘Neoplatonism’ into the discourse of modernity.  Here it is:

“Of Longinus Plotinus said, ‘He is a scholar, but he is not at all a philosopher.’ [I believe this is from Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus.]  We might say the same of those intellectual historians who insist upon distinguishing Platonism from Neoplatonism.  Plotinus, the supposed founder of ‘Neoplatonism,’ knew nothing of this distinction; he considered himself a loyal Platonist.  He may have elaborated Plato’s central themes; no doubt he illuminated what was only dimly implicit in the master’s written works; but he consistently maintained that he derived his ideas from the tradition that descended from Plato.  He was taken at his word for nearly two thousand years.

“Then came historicism.

“In the nineteenth century, certain German scholars claiming to have detected previously unperceived fissures separating Plotinus’ ideas from pure Platonism, declared Plotinus the unwitting founder of a new school of thought, inspired by but diverging from Platonism sufficiently to merit the prefix ‘Neo.’  Thus died a tradition that had sustained the greatest of Western minds, from Plotinus himself to Michelangelo.  It was not a natural death.  Platonism as a unified, living, inspirational tradition was assassinated by pedantry, drowned in an inkwell. . .

“The inferences one draws from this event depend upon whether one aspires to be a scholar or a philosopher.  From the perspective of the intellectual historian, the segregating of Plato from Plotinus is fecund, endlessly productive of the most minute research projects.  The philosopher seeks a different sort of fecundity.

“The labor of identifying and categorizing the varieties of Platonism and Neoplatonism – in a word, taxonomy – satisfied the instincts of the scholar.  The unity of Platonism nourishes the spirits of those who love wisdom.  If you long for what counts today as historical accuracy, accept the scholar’s distinction between Platonism and Neoplatonism.  If you long for wisdom, live the unity of Platonism.”

(Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One, Sophia Perennis, San Rafael, CA, 2009, pages 30 & 31.)

 

1.  I think the difference between the scholar and the philosopher that Anderson refers to is that the philosopher is, from the Platonist perspective, a mystic whereas the scholar is not.  (It’s possible to be a scholar and a mystic, just like it’s possible for someone to be a cook and a mystic; but being a mystic is not part of the essence of scholarship whereas, from the Platonist perspective, it is the essence of being a philosopher.) 

2.  I would like to know when ‘German scholars’ introduced the word ‘Neoplatonism’ and the specific paper where the introduction occurred and who the author was.  I’m like that; I’m the kind of reader who will track down footnotes.  So far, I haven’t come across the specifics of this shift in terminology.  I suspect the specifics would be illuminating.

3.  Anderson refers to the truth that Platonism was considered a single tradition for a very long time.  I made the same point in my mid-January post.  There is a disturbing hubris inherent in the term ‘Neoplatonism’; it implies that many centuries of scholars got it wrong, but that we moderns all of a sudden got it right.  I refer to this way of thinking as ‘chronocentrism’, a word I made up to name the view that modernity has of itself, namely that modernity is more wise, more insightful, and better informed, as well as ethically superior, to those ancients.

I first experienced the hubris of modernist chronocentrism when I was deeply involved in Western Buddhism.  For example, modernist Western Buddhists do not hesitate to refer to the idea of rebirth as a ‘superstition’ that the progressive, materialist, and scientific West does not need and has every right to eject from the Buddhadharma.  Every single tradition of Buddhism, from Abhidhamma to Zen, has accepted the truth of rebirth, but that means nothing to ‘Secular Buddhism’ (trademarked).  Chronocentrism is the way modernity disposes of sources of possible alternatives to its basic world view; and it has done so successfully.

What I find helpful is that Anderson points out that long before there was Western Buddhism, the Chronocentrism of modernity was used to reconfigure Platonism in a manner that divested Platonism of its mystical foundation, so that it would become acceptable to materialist  modernity.  So when Buddhism arrived in the West, the West was already experienced at how to handle ideas alien to its current modernist beliefs.

4.  Anderson mentions that the ‘scholar’ and the ‘philosopher’ are searching for different kinds of fecundity.  For the scholar the analysis of things into different types, what Anderson calls ‘taxonomy’, produces many essays, conferences, and understandings compatible with their materialist assumptions.  The fecundity of the philosopher is the fecundity of The One, the primal source that gives rise to all things.  By nourishing our experience of The One we align ourselves with creation as such, as well as the unity which allows things to be things as opposed to jumbled heaps of random assemblages.  But this kind of unity is only accessible through the contemplation of the mystic.

5.  Anderson makes the point that if you are attracted to Platonism out of a love of wisdom, because you are seeking wisdom, meaning transcendental wisdom, then you will perceive the Platonist tradition as a unity.  One way of looking at this is that a lover of wisdom will tend to see all the dialogues of Plato and all the Enneads of Plotinus, as a single book, focused on a single project; that project being mystical union with The Good and The One.  In contrast, the ‘scholar’ will find multiplicity in the form of divergences, contrasts, and incompatibilities.  How does that happen?

Think of a musical form like the classical symphony.  One way of listening to symphonies from that period is to hear the common formal foundations that each composer uses.  Another way of listening to these symphonies is to hear the divergences of one composer from another.  But in the context of the classical symphony, these divergences are not considered to be separate schools; that is to say Mozart is not a ‘Neo-symphonist’ to Haydn the symphonist.

In a similar way, the Platonic Sages are presenting the symphony of the eternal using their own orchestration to do so.  But the later Platonists, such as Plotinus, Maximus, Porphyry, et al, are presenting the same truth, and pointing to the same mystical ascent to the transcendental source of all things.  And that is why the Platonic tradition is a singular tradition with a single teaching, the teaching of the eternal in the midst of this ephemeral and gossamer world.

12 November 2022

“At the center of the Phaedo beats an anti-modern, or rather a premodern heart, whose rhythm radiates the following lesson: to attain metaphysical truth one must resist the intellectual assumptions of modernity (i.e., empiricism, materialism, and misology); to resist modernity one’s soul must be healthy; a healthy soul is a pure soul; purity results from purification, which is the practice of philosophy as a disciplined way of life that everywhere yields to the authority of the natural hierarchy of being and value.”

(Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One, Sophia Perennis, San Rafael, CA, 2009, ISBN: 9781597310949, pages 98 and 99.)

 

A few comments stimulated by this quote:

1. ‘Empiricism’ is the view that everything that is real is that which the senses can experience.  It is the view that everything can be quantitatively assessed.  'Materialism' is the view that only material things exist.  From the perspective of materialism abstract entities are derived from material experience.  In Platonism material things are understood to be instantiations of abstract entities such as forms and other hypostases.  ‘Misology’ is a distrust, or even a hatred for, reason, reasoning, dialectic, and philosophical inquiry.  In Platonism such approaches are tools used to help with the ascent to higher realities and, ultimately, The One.

2. I like the way that Anderson links Phaedo to both an ‘anti-modern’ and a ‘premodern’ stance.  In a sense, being a contemporary Platonist means returning to a way of comprehending the cosmos, and a way of life consistent with that comprehension, that existed widely in the premodern world.  However, such a way of life will not look exactly the same as it did in the premodern world.  There will be differences as to how it manifests; my suspicion is that we are not at a point where we can know exactly what it will look like in the future.  But a sense of continuity with Platonism’s premodern presence will be observable.

3. Anderson refers to a healthy soul and that highlights one of the difficulties of being a Platonist in the midst of modernity.  For in modernity the existence of the soul is questioned, whereas in the premodern world it is taken for granted.  It’s not that no one in modernity believes in the existence of the soul, or in its immortality.  It’s that the dominant cultural institutions and what they teach do not.

4. This quote brings back to me my great fondness for Phaedo.  This is evidently shared by Anderson as his long essay ‘Pure’ is kind of a paean to Phaedo.  For a long time, I have thought of spending a year just on this single dialogue.  Perhaps 2023 is the year for doing this.

3 November 2022

An Observation on Purification

“The church officials who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope were guilty of willful ignorance.  The phenomena he claimed to have discovered can only be experienced by way of this procedure.  To reject his claims without employing the proper method is to violate all the canons of intelligent inquiry.  Similarly, to dismiss metaphysical propositions before employing our only means of understanding and evaluating them is to be obstinately ignorant.

“The greatest of the ancient and medieval metaphysicians taught that metaphysical knowledge is accessible only to those who practice purification.  Their conceptions of the process and the state of purification differ, but the variations are minimal.  Most descend from Plato’s Phaedo and emphasize the life of virtue.  According to this tradition, the virtues are purificatory acts.  The soul that has been purified through habituation to the intellectual and moral virtues is a soul prepared to receive metaphysical truth.  There is no other way: if you want to see distant physical objects up close, you must employ a telescope.  If you long to acquire metaphysical knowledge, your soul must be pure.”

(Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One, Sophia Perennis, San Rafael, CA, 2009, page 71.)

1. I wonder if Anderson, when he writes ‘to dismiss metaphysical propositions before employing our only means of understanding and evaluating them’ is referring to the emergence of analytic philosophy in England in the early twentieth century.  I’m thinking specifically of people like A. J. Ayer who argued that metaphysical statements were ‘meaningless’ and that, therefore, analytic philosophers did not have to consider them.  It was a daring strategy and one that I still find frequently used among contemporary atheists in the anglosphere.

2. Anderson’s point is, I think, fairly easy to understand.  Suppose that a young man is learning how to play the piano and is studying with a good teacher.  The teacher notices that the young man has become more distracted, looks more unkempt, and that the young man’s skills are either not improving or maybe even declining.  After careful observation the piano teacher concludes that the young man is consuming too much alcohol and also, perhaps, is using recreational drugs.  The teacher takes the time to inform the young man that it is necessary to have a healthy diet and that drug use interferes with concentration and diminishes physical capacities as well.  This kind of advice is based on the idea of purification.  In a similar way, Anderson is putting forth the idea that the metaphysical ascent requires purification in order for such assent to be efficacious.

3. There are types of purification.  I tend to see them as focused either on body, speech, heart, or mind.  That’s not a specifically Platonic way of looking at them, but it is a tool I have used to understand these practices.  In Platonism purification is also an aspect of what are called ‘civic virtues’, and therefore has a social dimension as well.  In our hyper-individualistic culture that aspect is easily missed; I missed it for a long time and still grapple with how the civic virtues should be a part of spiritual life.  It’s not a minor issue; for example Socrates argued against an attempt to free him from jail in part because Socrates had consistently taught that members of a polis, in this case Athens, should follow the rules, customs, and laws of that polis.  If Socrates abandoned that teaching at the end of his life that would be seen as hypocritical by many.  This kind of argument is difficult for moderns to comprehend; we tend to be much more highly critical and much more unwilling to go along with civic institutions. 

4. The bodily practices of purification are types of asceticism.  The civic purification is to be a good citizen.  The purification of speech is something I brought in from my Buddhist practice of right speech; that it is not sufficient to say something simply because it is true, it must also be helpful.  Purification of the heart is the cultivation of empathy, sympathy, compassion, and love, as well as practices like prayer and the experience of wonder.  The purification of mind and soul is to cultivate an awareness of higher hypostases and, ultimately, to return to The One, The Good, The Beautiful, to that which is eternal.

 1 October 2022

The Silence of Xenocrates 

“He [Xenocrates} was the least puffed up of men; he would often, in the course of a day, withdraw into himself, and it is said that he used to assign an entire hour to silence.”

(Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius, translated by Pamela Mensch, edited by James Miller, Oxford University Press, 2018, page 184)

There are frequent references to contemplation in Platonism.  By contemplation I mean practices that cultivate interior states of mind, or an interior focus, a turning away from sensory stimulation in order to awaken to the interior light and wisdom that flows from The Good, The Beautiful, The One, and The Eternal.

The contemporary philosopher Mark Anderson refers to this passage about Xenocrates in Anderson’s book Pure:

“According to reports recorded by Diogenes Laertius, Xenocrates ‘practiced an internal care and devoted an hour every day to silence’ . . .  “

(Pure, Mark Anderson, Sophia Perennis, San Rafael, CA, 2009, page 102)

Anderson connects this practice of interior silence to Xenocrates’s commitment to vegetarianism, viewing both practices as forms of purification.  From this perspective, the practice of vegetarianism and the practice of interior silence are seen as having equal importance in the Platonic tradition.

For those of us wanting to practice Platonism today this understanding offers us a way of living a life that is conducive to the Return to the One that is at the heart of Platonism.  The two practices of vegetarianism and interior silence balance each other and mutually re-enforce each other.  Vegetarianism is a transformation of one’s relationship to the mundane world.  Interior silence is a transformation of one’s relationship with the soul. 

By adopting these two practices we open the gate to the Platonic Way of Life.