On Prayer

29 June 2026

On Prayer

“The Athenian Stranger: . .  this is what I assert: it is dangerous for one who lacks intelligence to pray, and the opposite of what he wishes comes to pass.  If you want to take me seriously here, you may.”

(Plato, Laws, translated by Thomas Pangle, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980, page 72, 688b-688c, ISBN: 0226671100)

What the Athenian Stranger is referring to is petitionary prayer; that is to say making requests of the Gods for specific things.  This will become clearer with the additional quotes that follow.

“Socrates: . . .  you [Alcibiades] change about from this side to that without settling down for a moment, but as soon as you are firmly convinced of a thing you seem to slip out of it again and cease to hold the same view – well, if the god to whom you are going should even now appear to you and ask, before you uttered any prayer, whether you would be content to obtain one of those things which were mentioned at the beginning, or whether he should leave you to pray as you were, how do you suppose you would make the best of your chance – by accepting his offer, or by praying for something on your own account?

“Alcibiades:  Well, by the gods, I could not answer your question, Socrates, off hand.  Why, I take it to be a fatuous request, when it is really a case for great caution lest one pray unawares for what is evil while thinking it to be one’s good, and then after a little while, as you were saying, one change one’s tune and retract all one’s former prayers.”

(Plato, Alcibiades II, translated by W. R. M. Lamb, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1927, page 263, 147e-148b, ISBN: 9780674992214)

What Socrates is saying is that given the fickle character of Alcibiades it is likely that Alcibiades could easily change his mind about what he wanted from the gods to whom he was praying.  Alcibiades does not know how to respond to the point Socrates is making, but acknowledges that it is possible to pray for something that will prove harmful, both to oneself and to others; discovering that one has in fact made such a prayer will lead to wanting to pray to retract one’s former prayers.  Better to refrain from prayer until such time as one’s mind has stabilized.

The strongest critique of prayer from a Platonic perspective that I have run across is Oration 5 by Maximus of Tyre, simply titled ‘Prayer.’  Maximus begins by telling legends of how individuals were trapped by their prayer requests when the God that was prayed to granted the request in an unexpected way.  Some of these legends are famous such as the one about the Emperor who wanted to conquer a kingdom and asked an oracle about undertaking this conquest.  The Oracle responded by saying a great kingdom will be defeated if this project is undertaken.  The Emperor attacks and is defeated by the kingdom he attacks; the great kingdom that was defeated was his own.

It’s interesting to me that Maximus uses this as an example of why one should refrain from prayer because it shows that Maximus includes requests to Oracles as a type of prayer.  I find that interesting on a number of levels, not the least of which is that it differs from later Classical Platonists who tended to be more receptive to oracles.

Maximus also likes to emphasize that the gods are fickle and arbitrary in their granting of prayer requests, “When Priam offered prayers for his homeland, with daily sacrifices to Zeus of oxen and sheep, Zeus left them unfulfilled.”  And that’s just one example cited by Maximus.

(Maximus of Tyre, Oration 5: Prayer, translated by M. B. Trapp, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, page 43, ISBN: 0198149891)

Maximus undertakes an analysis of why things happen the way they do as an extended critique of why petitionary prayer is ineffective and unwise, “Of all the things which men pray to obtain, some are under the control of Providence, some are enforced by Destiny, some are at the mercy of fickle Fortune, and some are regulated by Science.  Providence is God’s work, Destiny the work of Necessity, Science the work of man, and Fortune the work of blind chance.  It is to the supervision of one or another of these four factors that the raw material of life is allocated.  What we pray for must therefore be attributed either to divine Providence, or to destined Necessity, or to human Science, or the vagaries of Fortune.

“If our objects are to be attributed to Providence, what place is there for prayer?”  Maximus makes a similar point with the other three factors of Destiny, Fortune, and Science.

(Ibid, pages 45-48)

Toward the conclusion Maximus does grant that philosophers such as Socrates and Pythagoras engaged in prayer.  But Maximus distinguishes between petitionary prayers and philosophical prayer, suggesting that philosophical prayer is a ‘conversation’ between the philosopher and the gods, “If you deprive life of philosophy, you have removed from it the living, breathing spark that alone knows how to pray.”

(Ibid, page 50)

It would appear that Maximus has the view that only a philosopher is mature enough to engage in prayer without exposing himself to strongly negative consequences.

These passages I have quoted are highly skeptical regarding the efficacy of prayer.  One might even draw the conclusion from these quotes that it is best to not engage in prayer, especially petitionary prayer.  The following quote from Phaedrus modifies that conclusion:

“Socrates:  I think he [Isocrates] has a nature above the speeches of Lysias and possesses a nobler character; so that I should not be surprised if, as he grows older, he should so excel in his present studies that all who have ever treated of rhetoric shall seem less than children; and I suspect that these studies will not satisfy him, but a more divine impulse will lead him to greater things; for my friend, something of philosophy is inborn in his mind.  This is the message that I carry from these deities to my favourite Isocrates, and do you carry the other to Lysias, your favourite.

“Phaedrus:  It shall be done; but now let us go, since the heat has grown gentler.

“Socrates:  Is it not well to pray to the deities here before we do?

“Phaedrus:  Of course.

“Socrates:  O beloved Pan and all ye other gods of this place, grant to me that I be made beautiful in my soul within, and that all external possessions be in harmony with my inner man.  May I consider the wise man rich; and may I have such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure – Do we need anything more, Phaedrus?  For me that prayer is enough.

“Phaedrus:  Let me also share in this prayer; for friends have all things in common.

“Socrates:  Let us go.”

(Plato, Phaedrus, translated by Harold North Fowler, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1914, page 579, 279a-279c, ISBN: 0674990404)

Here we have a famous example of Socrates praying to Pan and the ‘gods of this place.’  We have an intriguing contrast between Socrates sharing a prayer with Phaedrus in the dialogue Phaedrus, and Socrates challenging Alcibiades about what will happen to him if he prays in Alcibiades II.  I think the resolution of this is that Phaedrus, in the dialogue that carries his name, is engaged in deep philosophical discussion with Socrates; one gets the impression that Phaedrus is a budding philosopher with a very developed and cultivated mind.  In addition, the grove, which is outside the city walls of Athens, is thick with deities of various sorts; even the cicadas are communing with the gods in the hot summer air.  I suggest that these conditions are ideal for entering into prayer (as an aside, the grove is in nature, it is not a temple, which suggests that efficacious prayer has a spontaneous aspect to it.)

In contrast, Alcibiades has not developed his mind or his character and under the questioning of Socrates it is clear to the reader that Alcibiades has not lived an ‘examined life.’  (This is true for both Alcibiades I and II.)  Nor does the location of the dialogue lend support to prayer done in a manner consistent with the philosophical vocation.

The conclusion, I think, is that Socrates regards prayer as something that only a philosophical mind can undertake without inviting considerable risk both material and spiritual.

Concluding Remarks

This Platonist perspective on prayer would distinguish the life of a philosopher from that of a participant in the civic religion of Athens.  Praying for things, petitionary prayer, was a very common practice both at home altars and at temples.  For a philosopher to suggest that petitionary prayer is not a good idea for an untrained mind would, I think, have been baffling, or even seen as foolish, by most people.

I studied Buddhism in Korea many decades ago.  And there I learned that for most lay Buddhists their relationship to the Dharma is to go to a Temple, make an offering, light incense and bow, and then pray to the Buddha, or a Bodhisattva, for specific things: a new car, to pass a test, easy childbirth, a good business contract, a new house, and so forth.  In my own imagination I think of the civic religion of Athens as similarly focused. 

I think we often get a distorted impression of what religion is like in most circumstances, particularly regarding religions we don’t know much about.  Western Buddhists are inclined to read very sophisticated Buddhist analyses and philosophy; but these kinds of texts have almost no impact on an average Buddhist practitioner who goes to the Temple to pray.  Similarly, with regard to Platonism, those of us interested in Platonism may have developed sophisticated analyses as to the nature of the gods; a good example is the henads found in Proclus and other Late Classical Platonists’ writings.  Popular religion is, for the most part, practical; that is to say popular religion is looked at as a way to align with unseen forces so that one can better achieve material goals.  I understand that appeal and I am in some ways sympathetic to it.

But just as a philosopher cultivates a certain diet as a matter of purification, so also a philosopher cultivates a way of relating to gods, or unseen forces, that is also a matter of purification.  In this case the purification is meant to align one’s understanding with a larger context.

Personally, I pray every day as part of my morning practice.  I pray for those whom I have loved and who have passed away that they may rest in peace with the Good and the One.  I pray to embody the precepts of philosophy (ethical restraints).  And I repent for the negative things I have done in my past, that I may not repeat them.  I think this is consistent with the prayer that Socrates offers at the conclusion of Phaedrus.  My hope is that my practice of prayer may make me beautiful within, or uncover the beauty within, that I may return to the Good and the One and the Eternal.

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 76

8 December 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 76

1.  Embracing the Past

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

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

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

2.  Cruelty

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

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

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

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

3.  Those Who Oppose Transcendence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4.  Phaedo

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

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

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

5.  Middle Platonism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 42

14 April 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 42

1.  “. . . virtue and great wealth are quite incompatible . . . “

(Plato, Laws, Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, Laws is translated by Trevor J. Saunders, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1997, page 1423, 742e, ISBN: 9780872203495)

Plato has a consistently hostile attitude towards the accumulation of wealth, or ‘great wealth’.  Plato thinks that cultivating virtue is difficult in such a circumstance as a life of great wealth.  This is a common theme in many spiritual traditions.  Buddhist monastics live a life of voluntary poverty and few possessions.  Jesus famously said that a person cannot follow God and money.  

There are some spiritual traditions that do not have this attitude, so it’s not a universal that is found in all spiritual traditions.  But it is found in many of them and it is worthwhile pondering why this is so. 

My personal observation has been that money is an enormous temptation that can seduce people into abandoning their principles, or virtues, so that its pursuit often leads to deception and harming others, even many others.  For this reason I think it is best for the Platonist practitioner to live a life of at least modest means.

1.1  One of the interesting things about asceticism, something that is unexpected, at least it was by me, is how happy its practitioners often are.  I first ran into this when reading the Therigatha and Theragatha from the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism.  In particular the Theirgatha, which are poems of the earliest Buddhist Nuns (Theri) are often expressions of how happy they are to now live a life of renunciation when comparing it with the life they previously lived.  

We tend to think of such a life as grim and unfulfilling because we view such a life through a materialistic lens.

I think this is true of asceticism in general, and true of Platonist asceticism specifically.  The traces of Platonist asceticism are difficult to find and consist mostly of stories about such practitioners.  There are not a lot of such stories.  Still, they may be enough to demonstrate the great joy that an ascetic life brings to its practitioners.

2.  “But no race, Greek or foreign, seafaring or landsmen, nomadic or urban, can bring itself to dispense with establishing some kind of symbols for the honour they pay their gods.”

(Maximus of Tyre, Oration 2: Images of the Gods, translated by M. B. Trapp, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997, page 23, ISBN: 0198149891)

I think Maximus brings this up because it is a perennial problem for those spiritual traditions that point to an ineffable ultimate.  An ineffable ultimate is one that cannot be seen, heard, cannot be touched, and is beyond sensory experience or mental fabrication.  But this is difficult for human beings to understand, or to rest in, or to be satisfied with.  The result of this difficulty is for human beings to create symbols of various types as stand-ins for the ultimate.  These stand-ins are perceivable by one or more of the senses and thus more accessible.  It is not surprising, therefore, that it is often the case that people think of the symbolic reality as the end of their journey to the divine.  

A paragraph later Maximus writes:

“For God, Father and Creator of all that exists, is greater than the Sun and the heavens, mightier than time and eternity and the whole flux of Nature; legislators cannot name him, tongues cannot speak of him, and eyes cannot see him.  Unable to grasp his essence we seek the support of sounds and names and creatures, and shapes of gold and ivory and silver, and plants and rivers and peaks and streams; though desiring to understand him, we are forced by our own weakness to name merely terrestrial beauties after his divine nature.”

(As above, page 23)

4.  “If most men live and die without knowing what true happiness is, the reason is not that they do not desire it – at heart they never desire anything else – but that they look for it in the wrong place.  They confuse it with the round of pleasures, with health and long life, with worldly wealth, or with that irresponsible power which, by lifting its possessor above all law enables him always to ‘do as he likes.’”

(A. E. Taylor, Platonism and its Influence, Edicions Enoanda, Barcelona, 2018, page 48, ISBN: 9781977012975)

A. E. Taylor (1869-1945) was a British Idealist philosopher at a time when British Idealism was a pervasive movement in that country.  Platonism and its Influence was published in 1924.  He was a Christian Platonist but his Christianity seems to have been strongly shaped by the Church of England which has a different perspective than Catholic Platonism.  I first encountered A. E. Taylor as a young undergraduate where my professor recommended Taylor’s short work on Metaphysics.  I found it to be a masterpiece of conciseness and insight; I’ve reread it several times.

The quote elaborates on the idea that everyone is searching for the Good (the transcendental) but they cannot find it because they think of this in terms of a search for material happiness.  I think the source for this view are remarks in the Dialogues where Plato states that no one intentionally does evil, that people do evil things because they are ignorant of the true nature of the cosmos and therefore think that what they are doing will make them happy.

I often heard this kind of teaching when I was studying Buddhism.  The idea is that all living creatures are seeking peace, happiness, equanimity, and so forth, but because they do not know the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path they are unable to attain these goals.

I wonder if these kinds of teachings are true.  As I have grown older I have become more pessimistic about humanity.  I’m not sure that it is the case that everyone is seeking true happiness and transcendent peace.  In a sense this is an unanswerable question because our experience with others is very limited in number.  And my change of view doesn’t seem to have impinged on my practice; that is to say that my growing pessimism regarding humanity has not diminished my own commitments to study, practice, and contemplation.  My feeling is that the soul of many people is so deeply buried in negative habits and tendencies that it is unlikely that many souls will ever see the light outside the cave, or will join with that light.  In other words, I think we tend to underestimate the obstacles to spiritual growth and the tenacity of a materially focused life.  Again, though this is pessimistic, it does not deflect my own ongoing practice; in some ways I think it strengthens it.  Either way, Platonism offers the possibility of spiritual growth and realization.  And that is what really matters.

5.  One of the intriguing things about the contemporary Catholic Platonist, Peter Kreeft, is that he sometimes interprets Thomas Aquinas in Platonist terms.  This is unusual; at least it is unusual in the reading on Christian Platonism I have done.  It seems to be the case that Aquinas is thought of as an Aristotelian.  Of course there is an intimate relationship between Plato and Aristotle, and maybe Kreeft is relying on that historical connection. 

“The most recent and most radical philosophy called Deconstructionism centers on the denial that even words are signs, and reduces them to things that are either the causes or effects of power.  The Platonic tradition, exemplified by Aquinas’s hermeneutic, is the total opposite of this because it says that even things are words and signs as well as being things . . . A symbol is a kind of analogy in words, of course, but for Aquinas analogies are not just in words and language or just in thought and concept, but they are first of all in being.  Reality itself is analogical.”

(Kreeft, Peter, The Platonic Tradition, St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, Indiana, 2018, page 63, ISBN: 9781587316500)

I don’t know enough about Aquinas to comment on Kreeft’s emphasis on the Platonic tradition in this context.  But it’s intriguing to me that Kreeft feels very comfortable with the idea that Platonism plays a significant part in the thought of Aquinas.

Regarding the idea that the things of this world are inherently analogical (I would probably say metaphorical), I think this is beautifully stated.  I think this is affirmed in the Dialogues by the use of analogy, and other structures of comparison, as modes of reasoning.  The quoted passage highlights one of the failings of contemporary philosophy, particularly in the analytic tradition and traditions derived from the analytic tradition.  And that is that the analytic tradition does not seem to understand how words work, that words are not numbers, and that words are, as Kreeft implies, inherently analogical.

I think we can understand what Kreeft is saying by noting how in Platonism certain experiences are symbols, or analogies, of transcendental realities.  The experience of beauty is such an experience.  So is the experience of numbers.  So is the experience of justice,  And so is the experience of equanimity and peace.  All of the manifestations in the material world that exhibit these realities, no matter how dimly, act as messengers from the divine, letting us know that in comparison to the dim and distorted experience of these realities here, these realities are only analogies, or emanations, or instantiations, of the the pure presence of these realities there.

Our soul responds to these realities because our soul is also such a reality.  Our soul is at the same time a symbol, and an analogy, of the divine, and the actual presence of the divine in our life and lives.  The soul is inherently present in the One, the transcendental, and the individual because of its everywhere and everything nature.  If we follow that which resonates with the soul we will walk the way to the Good and the One with patient assurance.

Platonism on Non-Harming: 4

 28 October 2024

Platonism on Non-Harming: 4

I switched from “Plato on Non-Harming” to “Platonism on Non-Harming” because this post refers to Oration 12 written by Maximus of Tyre who was a second century Platonist.  The title of Oration 12 is “Revenge.”  It refers directly, or paraphrases, Plato’s Dialogues Crito, which I have previously referred to, and The Apology.  

The Oration opens with a reference to a poem by Pindar, as well as to events in the Odyssey that I think most readers are not familiar with (I don’t recall them off hand.)  Maximus also takes time to assert his view that virtue is ‘inalienable’ which is a disputed position in the history of Platonism.  

At paragraph 4 the Oration examines the impact of intention in cases of wrongdoing, and starting with paragraph 5 it focuses on the issues surrounding non-retaliation and continues this discussion to the conclusion.  I will start my quotation with paragraph 4:

“4.  We might suggest therefore that wrongdoing is to be defined not by reference to the removal of anything from the victim, but by reference to the intentions of the perpetrator.  A bad man could then be wronged by another bad man, even if he does not possess the good; a good man could be wronged by a bad man even if the good he has is inalienable.  I accept this account that connects wrongdoing with the moral defect shown in the intention, rather than with the success of the actual attempt; the law certainly punishes not only the man who does the deed by also the man who intends to do it: the housebreaker who attempts a burglary, even if he is discovered; the intending traitor, even if he does not act.  This whole line of argument, taken together, will bring us to the required conclusion.  The good man neither commits nor suffers wrong: he does not commit wrong because he lacks the desire to; he does not suffer wrong because his virtue is inalienable.  The bad man, on the other hand, commits wrong but does not suffer it: he commits wrong because he is bad; <he does not suffer wrong because he is innocent> of good.  Moreover, if Virtue alone and nothing else is good, the bad man’s lack of Virtue means that he has nothing to be wronged in.  But if other things in addition to Virtue are also good – physical attributes and one’s external fortunes and surroundings – then in the absence of Virtue it is better for these things to be absent than for them to be present – with the result that not even thus would the bad man suffer wrong, by being deprived of any of these things he makes such ill use of.  Therefore if we define wrongdoing by reference to intention, the bad man commits wrong but does not suffer it * . . . . *

“5.  * . . . . * the bad man wishes to commit wrong, he is in fact not able to.  His desire sets him either against a man like himself or against his better.  But what is his better to do?  Is he to inflict a wrong on the bad man in return?  Yet the bad man has nothing to be wronged in, since it is precisely the absence of the good that makes him bad.  In that case the sensible man will refrain from committing a reciprocal wrong against the bad man both in deed (the other has nothing to be wronged in), and in intention (being good, he has no more desire to do wrong than a pipe-player does to play out of tune.)  And in general, if doing wrong is bad, then so too is doing wrong in return.  The man who does wrong incurs no extra charge of wickedness in virtue of having acted first; instead, the man who returns the wrong puts himself on the same level of baseness by hitting back.  If the man who does wrong acts badly, then the man who returns the wrong acts no less badly, even if he is taking revenge for a prior offence.  Just as someone who returns a favour to his beneficiary acts no less well for the fact that he was benefited first, so the person who ensures a similar reciprocity in the sphere of harmful action acts no less badly for the fact that he was harmed first.

“6.  What limits will there then be to the harm done?  If the victims of wrongdoing take their revenge, the harm will for ever be transferred from one to the other and perpetuate itself, and one act of wrongdoing will follow another.  The same justification by which you allow the victim to take his revenge is equally effective in allowing the right of retaliation to pass back from him to the original offender; the justification is open to both of them equally.  For God’s sake, look at what you have brought about!  Where will it come to rest?  Don’t you realize that this is an inexhaustible source of wickedness that you are opening up, that you are laying down a law that will lead the whole earth into harm?  It was just this principle that brought men the great misfortunes of days gone by, armed expeditions of foreigners and Greeks crossing to attack each other, robbing and warring and plundering, and making the preceding wrong their excuse for each new one.  The Phoenicians kidnap a royal princess from Argos; the Greeks kidnap a foreign girl from Colchis; then the Phrygians strike again, taking a Spartan woman from the Peloponnese.  It is obvious how ill succeeds ill, how pretexts for war arise, how wrongs multiply.  This same process brought Greece into destructive conflict with herself too – self-styled victims of wrongs attacking their neighbours, in inexhaustible rage and undying anger and lust for revenge and moral ignorance.

“7.  But if the victims of wrong could only understand that their own wrongdoing is the greatest of ills for the perpetrators themselves – worse than war and the razing of their fortifications and the ravaging of their territory and the imposition of tyranny - then Greece would not have been overwhelmed with such crushing misfortunes.  The Athenians are laying siege to Potidaea.  Leave them be, Spartan; they will repent of it soon enough!  Don’t imitate them in their evil-doing, don’t lay yourself open to the same reproach!  If you seize the pretext and advance against Plataea, the island of Melos, your neighbour, is done for; the island of Aegina, your friend, is done for; the city Scione, your ally, is done for.  By capturing one city you will only bring about the sack of many.  Just as, when people risk their lives at sea on business, they pay exorbitant interest on the money they have borrowed, so when people take revenge in anger they pay an exorbitant interest on the disasters they inflict.  And to the Athenian I say: ‘You have captured Sphacteria; give Sparta back her men!  See sense while your fortunes are good!  If you do not you will have the men, but you won’t have your triremes.’  Lysander may score successes in the Hellespont and Sparta may wax mighty.  But keep away from Thebes!  If you do not, you will have a catastrophe at Leuctra and a disaster at Mantinea to weep over.

“8. What a murky and misguided style of Justice!  It was for this reason that Socrates refused to grown angry with Aristophanes, or resent Meletus, or take revenge on Lycon, but instead cried out, ‘Anytus and Meletus can kill me but they cannot harm me; it is not permitted for a good man to be harmed by a villain.’  This is the true voice of Justice; if all spoke in it there would be no tragedies, no dramas on the stage, none of those many varieties of disaster.  Just as in the case of bodily diseases it is the creeping varieties that are the recalcitrant ones, demanding a cure capable of halting their advance in its tracks and so saving the rest of the body; so when a first act of injustice afflicts a house or a city, the canker must be stopped if the remainder is to be saved.  This is what destroyed the Pelopidae, this is what annihilated the Heracleidae and the house of Cadmus; this is what brought down Persiand, and Macedonians, and Greeks.  What an unremitting disease it is, afflicting the earth in cycle after cycle down the ages.

“9.  I would make so bold as to say that if it is possible for one kind of wrongdoing to surpass another, then the person who takes revenge is a worse wrongdoer than the original offender.  The latter commits his wrong through ignorance and has his punishment in the censure that follows; but the retaliator, by taking an equal share of guilt, actually frees him from his liability to censure.  Just as a man who becomes entangled with someone covered in soot cannot avoid staining his own body too, so anyone who sees fit to wrestle and take a fall with an unjust man cannot avoid sharing in his wickedness and becoming defiled by the same soot.  When two athletes with the same training and the same ambition compete together, I am entirely happy, since I can see that their natural endowments are comparable, their exercises similar, and the desire for victory equivalent in both cases.  But if a good man falls in with a villain, when the two don’t come from the same gymnasium, and haven’t been trained by the same trainer, or learned the same arts, or been taught the same throws, and don’t long for the same wreath and the same victory-proclamation, then their combat moves me to pity; it is an unequal contest.  It is inevitable that the bad man will win when he is competing in a stadium where the spectators are criminals and the organizers rogues.  In such a situation the good man is a layman and an ignoramus, innocent of suspicion and knavery and all the other tricks of the trade with which villainy fortifies and reinforces itself.  The man who has no endowment for it in natural aptitude, in acquired skill, or in habit merely makes himself ridiculous by trying to return wrong for wrong.

“10.  But, someone may say, it is because of this that the just man is slandered and brought to court and prosecuted and has his wealth confiscated and is thrown into prison and driven into exile and stripped of his citizenship and executed.  What then if children, making their own laws for themselves and convening their own court, were to arraign a grown man under their legislation, and then, if he was found guilty, were to vote that he should lose his rights in the commonwealth of children and were to   confiscate his childish effects, his knuckle-bones, and his toys: what is it reasonable to suppose a man would do <when condemned> by such a court?  <Would he not laugh them to scorn,> votes, condemnations, and all?  So Socrates laughed the Athenians to scorn, like children their votes and ordering the execution of a man who was in any case condemned to mortality.  So too any good and just man will laugh with free and honest laughter as he sees wrongdoers eagerly attacking him, convinced that they are achieving something noteworthy but in reality achieving nothing.  As they strip him of his rights he will cry the cry of Achilles:

‘I know that I am honoured in Zeus’ ordinance.’

“When they confiscate his wealth he will let it go as if it were his toys and knuckle-bones, and he will die as if from fever or the stone, with no resentment towards his murderers.”

(Maximus of Tyre, The Philosophical Orations, translated by M. B. Trapp, Clarendon Press, Oxford University, 1997, pages 110-115, ISBN: 0198149891)

1.  Maximus lived in the second century CE and Plato died in 348 BCE so there is a gap of many centuries between the two.  This means that the topic of non-harming, and particularly non-retaliation, was persistently discussed over a long period of time.  In some of the quotes from Plato, Socrates indicates that this teaching existed prior to his own teaching, meaning that it was a teaching Socrates learned from his predecessors.

2.  Paragraph 4 begins with a discussion of intention which adds a significant element to the quotes I have posted thus far.  Maximus considers harm to be dependent upon the intention of the person doing the harm.  This shifts the focus away from the act itself to the mental, or psychological state, of the one doing the harm.

Years ago when I was studying ancient Jain Sutras, there was a section in one of the Sutras (I don’t remember which one at the moment; it might have been the Akaranga Sutra) where a group of Jain Sages mock Buddhists for thinking that intention determines karma.  For Jains, karma and its consequences are the result of the actions done by the doer; the act itself determines the karmic consequences and psychological states, such as intention, are not considered.  The example the Jains use is that if a Buddhist picks up a gourd, not knowing there is a baby lying asleep in it, and tosses the gourd into the fire, then it follows from the Buddhist analysis of intention that the person who threw the gourd into the fire did nothing wrong; Jains find this completely unacceptable and for that reason mock Buddhist analysis.

Maximus shares the Buddhist interpretation, meaning that Maximus thinks that intention is determinative as to whether harm has happened.

3.  “The good man neither commits nor suffers wrong: he does not commit wrong because he lacks the desire to; he does not suffer wrong because his virtue is inalienable.”

This is a good summation.  The good man is, by definition, one who lacks the desire to harm, or do wrong to, others.  The good man does not suffer wrong because of the cultivation of virtue.  The cultivation of virtue leads to a sense of equanimity and acceptance.  The practice of contemplation also provides the practitioner with a sense of spaciousness in the midst of the constant shifts and changes in this world.  The harm directed at the good man is perceived by the good man as no different than a storm on a day which he thought would be mild.  “It is what it is” is a popular saying today that I think sums up this kind of feeling.

As an aside, the opening sections of The Consolation of Philosophy deal forcefully with the erratic nature of fortune and that the virtuous man is also subject to these ups and downs.

3.1  At times Maximus offers us only two possibilities; either someone is a good man or he is a bad man.  But most of us are somewhere between these two; that is to say we are a mixture of good and bad tendencies.  I don’t think this damages the analysis of Maximus, but the analysis might have been more ‘realistic’ if it had explicitly included these kinds of mixed-tendency types.

4.  It’s not clear to me why Maximus thinks that the bad man does not suffer from wrongdoing, or harm, directed at him.  The good man does not suffer from harm directed at him because he has cultivated virtue.  But the bad man has not cultivated virtue: doesn’t that imply that the bad man suffers, or feels, the harm done to him?  

Another way of looking at this is that the good man who suffers harm will not use that as a justification for doing harm to others; but the bad man will do exactly that.

Perhaps I am missing something from the argument Maximus presents.  In addition the text is corrupt indicated by the ellipses in brackets; it’s possible that something crucial is simply absent from the texts we have at this time.

5.  “And in general, if doing wrong is bad, then so too is doing wrong in return.”  This is completely in keeping with the teachings Socrates offers to Crito.

6.  “The same justification by which you allow the victim to take his revenge is equally effective in allowing the right of retaliation to pass back from him to the original offender; the justification is open to both of them equally. . . Don’t you realize this is an inexhaustible source of wickedness . . . “

This is the samsaric nature of the world in which we live.  This is why there is no end to the cycles of retaliation.  This is why the material realm is a sea of sorrow.  Only by cutting through the becoming and beginning of all things can this be brought to an end.

7.  “. . . the person who takes revenge is a worse wrongdoer than the original offender.”  The one who takes revenge is worse because he is setting up the conditions for the generation of endless back and forth retaliation.

8.  In paragraph 10 Maximus, using a section of Gorgias as his starting point (521e), compares being wronged to a good man being dragged into a court set up by children who then find the good man guilty.  The good man is punished by the children, but simply laughs at the situation rather than falling into despair.

“When they confiscate his [the good man’s] wealth he will let it go as if it were his toys and knuckle-bones, and he will die as if from fever or the stone, with no resentment towards his murderers.”

This is a result of cultivating apatheia.  It is also likely based on knowledge of one’s own past lives; I mean that when negative things happen to a good man it can be seen as the karmic result of negative things he has done in the past coming to fruition.  But the good man does not have to continue the karmic cycle.  The good man can break the cycle and by doing so come closer to that which transcends becoming and begoning, the Good, the One, and the Beautiful.

9.  The passage from Gorgias that Maximus relies on is as follows:

“Socrates: ‘. . . I’ll be judged the way a doctor would be judged by a jury of children if a pastry chef were to bring accusations against him.  Think about what a man like that, taken captive among these people, could say, “Children, this man has worked many great evils on you, yes, on you.  He destroys the youngest among you by cutting and burning them, and by slimming them down and choking and forces hunger and thirst on them.  He doesn’t feast you on a great variety of sweets the way I do!”  What do you think a doctor, caught in such an evil predicament, could say?  Or if he should tell them the truth and say, “Yes, children, I was doing all those things in the interest of health,” how big an uproar do you think such “judges” would make?  Wouldn’t it be a loud one?’”

(Plato, Gorgias, translated by Donald J. Zeyl, Plato: Complete Works, edited by John M. Cooper, Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1997, page 864, 521e-522a, ISBN: 9780872203495)