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 -- 61

25 August 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 61

1.  One aspect of ethical restraints, or commitments, in various spiritual traditions that has intrigued me is the place of vegetarianism within their systems of vows, or commitments, or purifications.  What I am getting at is that even in those traditions where vegetarianism occupies an important place, in the sense that members of the tradition are expected to adhere to vegetarianism, this practice seems to be an application of a more fundamental, or foundational, principle or vow or precept.

For example, the five foundational precepts of the Jain tradition, as well as the Classical Yoga tradition, do not contain a specific vow to restrain from eating, or killing, animals.  Instead, the first, and therefore most prominent, vow is non-harming (Ahimsa).  Vegetarianism is understood to be the application of non-harming to this particular aspect of human life; that is to say, what kind of food is acceptable to eat.

For example, in Edwin F. Bryant’s translation and commentary on The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Bryant writes, “. . . one can be very clear about the fact that eating meat, nourishing one’s body at the expense of the flesh of other living beings, is completely taboo for aspiring yogis.  One should avoid harming even trees, says Hariharananda.” (Page 243)

The same is true for the Jain tradition which imposes on its followers a vegetarian diet that also restricts eating certain root vegetables because someone pulling such vegetables from the soil might harm living beings dwelling there.  The vow that makes this a requirement of the tradition, following a vegetarian diet, is non-harming (Ahimsa).

I think the same applies to Platonism; I mean by this that a vegetarian diet is required by the tradition as a whole, even though there is no specific structure of vows in the Platonic tradition as one finds in Jainism (vratas) or Classical Yoga (yamas).  My reason for viewing vegetarianism within Platonism in this way is first the mythos presented regarding the life of Plato which includes that idea that Plato was raised in a vegetarian family (which may or may not be historically true).  This indicates, I think, the view that vegetarianism is a sign of spiritual inclination and maturity as well as the idea that vegetarianism is a view inherited from the past. 

Second, the ancient antecedents of Platonism (what are called ‘ancient teachings’ in Phaedo) are vegetarian traditions; I am thinking specifically of the teachings of Pythagoras and the Orphics and that Platonism is in many ways aligned with these teachings. 

Third, this view of vegetarianism, which regards vegetarianism as an essential practice, is thoughtfully presented by Porphyry in his treatise On Abstinence from Killing Animals.  The treatise opens as follows:

“I heard from visitors, Firmus, that you had condemned fleshless food and reverted to consuming flesh.  At first I did not believe it, judging by your temperance and by the respect we had shown for those men, at once ancient and godfearing, who pointed out the way.  Then others, following on the first, gave the same information and confirmed the report.  It seems crude, and remote from rational persuasion, to scold you because you have not, as the saying is, ‘found the better by flight from the bad’, or, as Empedocles put it, lamented your former life and turned to a better.  Instead, I thought it a proper return for our friendship with each other, and suitable for those who order their lives in accordance with truth, to reveal through reason the refutation of your errors, and to declare from what and to what you have descended.”

(Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, translated by Gillian Clark, Bloomsbury Academic, New York, 2000, page 31, ISBN: 9781780938899)

I read this as Porphyry saying that Firmus has fallen away from the way of Philosophy by ‘descending’ and returning, or reverting, to eating animal flesh.  I think this shows that for Porphyry, and the tradition that Porphyry inherited, being a vegetarian was essential for being a Philosopher; just as Bryant notes that being a vegetarian was essential for being a Yogi.

I believe that the centrality of vegetarianism in Platonism is, as in Jainism and Classical Yoga, an application of the principle of non-harming.  Porphyry will elaborate on this in the rest of his treatise.

2.  Every morning the sun rises and brings light to the world.  And every time I reconnect with the Platonic tradition, through reading, through contemplation, and so forth, I reconnect with the light of eternity.

3.  One aspect I had difficulty with in the Platonic tradition was the view that evil is a deprivation of, or metaphysical distance from, the Good.  My tendency was to think of evil as an active presence and force.  Many spiritual traditions view evil that way and it seemed to make sense to me.

Lately, though I have become more comfortable with the idea of evil as an absence of the Good rather than the presence of some kind of entity.  Metaphorical thinking is helpful in this context; cold is the deprivation of heat, darkness is the absence of light, starvation is the absence of food, and so forth.  Looked at through the lens of these kinds of comparisons evil as the absence of the Good makes sense.

But for me what really shifted my understanding was to comprehend ugliness as the absence of the beautiful. 

4.  Continuing with the Sentences of Porphyry; here is Sentence 7:

The soul is bound to the body by a conversion to the corporeal passions; and again liberated by becoming impassive to the body.  (Thomas Taylor)

The soul is bound down to the body by adverting to the passions arising from it, and it is loosed again by impassivity to it.  (Thomas Davidson)

The soul binds herself to the body by a conversion toward the affections experienced by the body.  She detaches herself from the body by “apathy” [turning away from the body’s affections – translator’s emendation].  (Kenneth Guthrie)

The soul is attached to the body through giving in to the passions that arise from it, and is freed from it through the renunciation of these passions.  (Isaak Samarskyi)

4.1  A few notes on English usage: When Taylor uses ‘conversion’ he means a turning to the passions, becoming attached to the passions.  I don’t think Taylor is using ‘conversion’ in a religious sense. 

When Davidson uses the word ‘adverting’ he means something like ‘paying attention to’.  I think what Davidson means is that the soul becomes attentive to and fixated on the passions; this contrasts with ‘impassivity’ which is a kind of indifference to the passions.

4.2  This is a refreshingly straightforward sentence. 

4.3  What this sentence is referring to is the cultivation of apatheia as one of the means whereby a spiritual practitioner frees himself from bondage to the senses.  The Greek word ‘apatheia’ means spiritual freedom and equanimity.  The freedom here is freedom from the constant need to stimulate the bodily senses.

We can all see how easy it is for human beings to be imprisoned by the need to stimulate the senses.  Attachments to food, alcohol, to excitement, and so forth, often lead to negative consequences for individuals who find it impossible to free themselves from these attachments.  The cultivation of ‘apatheia’ is the antidote to this kind of attachment.

4.4  It is because we think that material reality is the only reality that we find attachment to sensory stimulation so seductive.  This casts a spell that keeps us from accessing our ensorcelled soul, not even knowing that there is such a thing as soul.

4.5  But it is possible to break the spell.  I think that breaking the spell cast by the senses happens when we recognize that the senses do not actually bring any relief from the difficulties of the material realm.  Out of this realization apatheia can arise.  And it is possible to cultivate apatheia, once we realize that apatheia opens the gate to more stable and more nourishing realities.

4.6  I know that the Greek word ‘apatheia’ differs in meaning from the English world ‘apathy’, but I would like to suggest that there is some overlap in meaning.  If by apathy we mean indifference, then I think we can acknowledge how indifference towards sensory stimulation is a way of finding the more subtle teachings of apatheia.

5.  The body falls away.  The mind falls away.  The Gods fall away.  Eternity does not fall away.

6.  Long ago I was studying how different Dharma traditions understand karma.  It’s complicated, and the following may be oversimplified, but roughly speaking, I see traditional Hinduism, meaning Vedic Hinduism, as understanding karma as ritual efficacy.  I mean by ‘ritual efficacy’ that by performing certain rituals correctly, using the correct materials, using the correct timing, using correct gestures and verbal formula, and so forth, one’s spiritual goal will be reached.  Usually that goal was depicted as getting to some kind of celestial realm, or heaven.

The Jain tradition equates karma with matter, which is understood as clinging to, or covering, the soul.  Asceses are understood to burn away matter from the immaterial soul, resulting in spiritual liberation.

For Buddhists, I think that karma is primarily the result of intention; that is to say, that if an activity or action was done for good reasons, such as compassion or out of love, then the result will be a good rebirth.

In Platonist traditions I think in the contemplative tradition karma is understood to be determined by wisdom.  Wisdom in this context means distinguishing between what is ephemeral from what is eternal, and then acting on that wisdom.

In a theurgic context, we return to the view of Vedic Hinduism; I mean that theurgy is centered on ritual efficacy.  If a theurgic ritual is done correctly the result is good karma and possibly a celestial rebirth as an (ephemeral) God (see Aristotle’s Metaphysics Book 3).

7.  There has been some rain, not very much, here in the desert the last few days.  It is predicted this will continue for a few more days.  Even a little bit of rain is precious in the desert and an occasion for appreciation.

Reading and studying and contemplating the writings of Platonism, primarily the Dialogues and the Enneads, resembles being nourished by a gentle rain.  It is a rain of wisdom nourishing the garden of the soul which has become parched due to neglect.  Even a few drops of wisdom from these sources can transform a parched garden into a garden of blossoming wisdom.

 

  

Brief Observations on Non-Harming in the Platonic Tradition

4 November 2024

Brief Observations on Non-Harming in the Platonic Tradition

1.  From the brief look I have taken of the teachings on non-harming in the Platonic tradition, I get the impression that Plato received these teachings from previous sources.  ‘Previous sources’ means, I think, the usual candidates such as Pythagoreanism, Orphism, and likely some mystery traditions.  These observations on non-harming and non-retaliation are referenced here and there in Plato in a way that leads me to think that they are an accepted part of that inherited tradition.  Perhaps that can be verified by research into earlier philosophers and spiritual traditions.

2.  As regular readers know, I am of the view that Platonism more closely resembles Dharmic traditions found in India than it resembles contemporary philosophy.  The teachings on non-harming reinforce that view for me because non-harming, ahimsa, is foundational for a number of Dharmic traditions.  Is it possible that these teachings arrived in the West from India centuries before Socrates and Plato?  I think it is possible, but in order to think of this as more than just a possibility it would be necessary to compare the teachings of ahimsa in Dharmic traditions to the teachings on non-harming in Platonism.  Are they structured in the same way?  Do both of them use similar examples to illustrate what they mean by non-harming?  And so forth.

3.  It is also possible that the teachings on non-harming in India and in the West come from a shared common source that is very ancient.  Looked at in this way the teachings on non-harming in Dharmic and Platonic contexts would be branches of these teachings.  It would be difficult to make a case for this, but perhaps it might not be impossible.

4.  In the context of Platonism, I wonder how Platonists placed non-harming in their overall teachings.  I mean is non-harming a virtue and therefore a part of its ethical teaching?  I have not run into non-harming in my reading on the virtues, but my reading on this is not very wide.

Or is non-harming a purification practice like vegetarianism, to which non-harming is strongly tied?  

Or perhaps non-harming is more metaphysical in the sense of non-harming being an expression of the One and the Good?

Or perhaps non-harming is an alignment with the transcendental in the way that contemplation is that kind of alignment?

5.  How does non-harming fit in with ethical teachings found in Platonism?  Particularly, how does non-harming impact what most people consider to be the political teachings of Platonism?  

I am thinking in particular of how Platonism understands war which is the greatest of human harms.  In The Laws it states that all adults of the city should train for war at least once a month.  Is this consistent with the understanding of non-harming?  Or is there a friction between these two perspectives?

6.  In Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Killing Animals, Porphyry writes that refraining from killing, eating, sacrificing, or harming animals is specifically a practice for philosophers rather than a practice Porphyry recommends for society as a whole.  I wonder if that is true also for non-harming?

7.  Is non-harming a Form; that is to say is the source of non-harming found in the noetic?  If non-harming is a Form then non-harming emanates the presence of non-harming into the material realm.

It is my understanding of the noetic realm that it is a realm in which differentiation does not lead to strife.  That is to say that noetic realities, such as being, numbers, life, and so forth, are transparent to each other and mutually co-existent.  If that is true, then non-harming is the manner in which noetic realities relate to each other rather than a distinct form itself.

8.  In a number of dialogues Plato depicts the philosopher as someone who is a bit clumsy in their interactions with normal society.  For this reason the philosopher is sometimes the butt of jokes and can be, at times, pitied by ordinary people.  I think that non-harming is one of the aspects of the life of a philosopher that can bring ordinary people to this negative conclusion about philosophers.  The norm in society is to harm those who have harmed us; in fact someone who does not return harm for harm is often viewed as weak or even cowardly.  

But it is more than that.  Initiating harm is a very common feature of human society.  War is the starkest example as wars are initiated most often for phony reasons.  The truth is most people do not think there is anything wrong with war and that war is, in some way, profound.  From this perspective war is not something to overcome or do away with.  But non-harming and non-retaliation would, if widely practiced, lead to the cessation of war and other forms of organized violence.  I think it would transform human beings both at the individual level and at the sociological level as well into something that is almost unrecognizable.

9.  In Phaedo Socrates, when talking about separating the soul from the body, will sometimes suggest that we need to do this to the degree it is possible for a human being with a body to do.  Similarly, I think it is impossible to practice non-harming completely as long as we are living in the material world.  But that doesn’t mean that non-harming should not be practiced and cultivated as part of our Platonic practice.  

10.  Thinking about non-harming has shifted my understanding of Platonism.  This shift has been subtle but significant; more like a spring breeze than a hurricane.  It has reinforced my view that Platonism is a spiritual tradition that is meant to guide people to the transcendent, to that which is beyond the material and sensory world.  And I suspect that these teachings on non-harming make the path to the transcendent clearer and more accessible.  

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)