Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 85

16 February 2026

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 85

1.  Another Youtube

I recently saw a youtube presentation about Platonic Theurgy.  The presenter was very enthusiastic about the topic and examined Theurgy as a type of magic and an  occult tradition.  What interested me, and I have posted about this before, is that he never mentions that Theurgy was designed to give a philosophical foundation for animal sacrifice, what is sometimes referred to as blood sacrifice.  I have found that this is common, though not universal.  There are a small number of books about theurgy that do refer to the way theurgy supports, and advocates for, blood sacrifice; but the large majority do not do so.

This is not just a theoretical issue.  Theurgy was used as the foundation for Julian’s very frequent and very numerous animal sacrifices.  This should be a painful heritage for contemporary theurgists but for the most part they simply dodge the issue.

From a Platonic perspective I tend to see theurgy as targeting, and undermining, Platonic ethics; in particular theurgy undermines the Platonic system of ethical restraints, or asceses.  I know I’ve talked about this before, but seeing yet another presentation on the topic led me to making another post about it.

2.  The Door to Dharma Traditions

One of the things that Indian Dharma traditions share is a process whereby someone becomes a member of that tradition by ceremonially affirming their commitment to the basic ethical commitments, or ethical restraints, of that tradition.  You find this in Buddhism, Jainism, Classical Yoga, Hinduism, and some forms of Shaivism.  The ceremony is simple; the individual(s) vocally affirm that they will live in accordance with these (often five) ethical principles.  Sometimes in large ceremonies those participating will collectively affirm their commitments; in small ceremonies it may be individuals who affirm their commitments one after another.

What I think this means is that taking a vow to maintain ethical restraints is the door to becoming a member of a particular Dharma tradition.  It is a visual and public affirmation of one’s commitments.

Platonism does not have such a ceremony.  But it does have ethical restraints that are referred to in various Dialogues of Plato.  I have adopted affirming my commitment to these Platonist ethical restraints as a part of my morning practice and ritual.  I simply affirm that I will follow these restraints as I live my life.  I’m the kind of person who needs a daily reminder of such commitments because my mind has a strong tendency to become distracted by other ‘interesting’ things (though that is diminishing with age).  I’ve known this about myself for a long time and that is the primary reason I do this ceremony on a daily basis.  In Indian Dharma traditions reaffirming commitment to basic ethical commitments is very rarely done on a daily basis after the initial ‘taking of the precepts’ ceremony.  However, the basic precepts are often included in other ceremonial contexts and celebrations; so there are regular reminders.

I think for Platonism the situation is that not very many people view Platonism as having basic ethical restraints that a practitioner of Platonism commits themselves to.  There is not a communal context where Platonists are regularly reminded of this and that is another reason why I find a daily reenactment of those commitments to be of assistance.

I think that these ethical restraints found in Platonist works are the door to an engagement with the Platonic tradition that goes beyond reading the primary texts of Platonism which are the Dialogues of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus, as well as some secondary works.  These ethical commitments function in Platonism the same way that they function in Indian Dharma traditions by focusing the life of the Platonist on living in a way that aligns with the tradition as a whole (even before Platonism) and nourishes the Platonic tradition for the future. 

3.  Spacious

One of the aspects of Plato that has grown in my awareness is how ‘spacious’ his writing is.  I mean ‘spacious’ in the sense that Plato uses myth, allegory, metaphor, simile, and symbol in his works.  In addition, there are dialogues that do not come to a conclusion; instead they end ambiguously.  All of these contexts draw the reader into the dialogue(s); they invite the reader to participate and unpack the meaning of the dialogue.  Plato does not seem to be concerned with crafting a fully systematic presentation in the way that, for example, Spinoza does.  Plato is more concerned, I think, with the broad strokes of metaphysics and metaphysical cosmology because they assist people in aligning with the spiritual quest.

Over the centuries there was a tendency in the Platonic tradition to become more systematic and to fill in what some might consider to be ‘gaps’ in Plato’s presentations.  This really took off in the Late Classical Period (roughly Iamblichus through Proclus).  There is a definite shift in tone in the sense that the Late Classical Platonists are not inviting us to participate in unpacking the meaning of what they have written.  Instead, they are talking down to the reader and insisting, sometimes very adamantly, that their interpretation is correct even when they know that lots of Platonists thought otherwise.  The writing is more tense.

There are exceptions, the most important ones I know of are Olympiodorus and Boethius.  Writers like these seem to want the reader to be a participant in what the author is offering.  But it is interesting to observe that both of these writers were not rooted in the Athenian tradition of Platonism and I suspect that there is a connection. 

I think this is helpful to understand because sometimes Late Classical Athenian Platonism (L-CAP for short?) is sometimes presented as the final and most profound unfolding of Classical Platonism.  I think that is doubtful.  Why do I say this? Well, I just don’t think it is necessary for someone to have absorbed the intricacies of their approach in order to understand and practice the Platonist tradition.  In a similar way, I don’t think it is necessary for a Mahayana Buddhist to comprehend the intricacies of Madhyamika, and its various tenets, in order to understand and practice that tradition.  (There are many similar comparisons like this one can make.)  We can look at it this way: if all the works of the L-CAP tradition had never been written, would that have any impact on how deeply we can comprehend Platonism?  Personally, I don’t think it would.  I realize that those who are dedicated to L-CAP will disagree; fair enough.  I’m simply presenting some conclusions I have come to that are based on my own reading and study.  Readers, of course, will come to their own conclusions.

I’m not opposed to someone studying the Late Classical Athenian Platonist tradition; there is a certain kind of person for whom that will be rewarding (just as there is a certain kind of person for whom studying the intricacies of Madhyamika will feel rewarding).  But I am skeptical that this L-CAP tradition has left us something essential that we must understand if we want to understand Platonism at all.  I think that is mistaken and leads at least some people astray.

 

Brief Notes on Various Topics -- 55

14 July 2025

Brief Notes on Various Topics – 55

1.  I’ve started reading the Enneads at night.  This is new for me.  Most of my reading is done in the early morning hours.  I was looking for a way to settle down before sleep, to sort of bring my mind to a place that prepared it for rest, and I thought that the Enneads might be a good vehicle for that.  I don’t think this would work for someone who is reading the Enneads for the first time because the Enneads can be complex and dense.  But after years of reading the Enneads I have become familiar with its language and the modes of expression that Plotinus uses.  The result is that I am more relaxed and at ease with the writing.  I also think that the ease I am feeling is due to many years of practice in contemplation bearing fruit.  I think that some of Plotinus can be difficult to understand if the reader has no experience with contemplation and the mystical, which is to say transcendental, experience.  Passages that directly refer to this kind of experience are hard to access without the reader having some experiential base.  I’m not saying that readers have to have attained full union with the Good and the One in order to understand these passages; but some kind of brief encounter with the transcendental is very helpful.

I any case, I am finding reading the Enneads right before sleep very relaxing and seems to have a positive impact on the quality of my sleep.

2.  Metaphors matter.  And the specific metaphor chosen to make a point also matters.  I started thinking along these lines because of the various metaphors that I have run across for the spiritual journey and ascent; not only in the Platonic tradition but in other spiritual traditions as well.  (As an aside, it might be a fruitful project to gather the metaphors for walking the spiritual path that are found in the Dialogues.)

One metaphor for spiritual work is cultivation; I mean things like gardening.  You cultivate the garden of the soul so that the soul can blossom.

This kind of metaphor contrasts with metaphors of athletic training where spirituality is compared to rigorous training involved in gaining facility in various sports.  This is in some ways similar to the metaphor of the spiritual warrior because warriors also undergo intense physical training in order to be ready for combat.  The comparison leads to an understanding of ‘doing combat’ with temptations in order to subdue them.  There are entire books, both ancient and new, that base their view of spirituality on the archetype of the warrior; it has a broad appeal.

But I think we should be careful with our metaphors in the context of spirituality because the metaphors have a tendency to be taken literally; in the case of the warrior metaphor, it has happened that a spiritual tradition that uses this type of metaphor begins to laud real life warriors with little discrimination or understanding of the mayhem that is the warrior’s purpose.

The Buddha liked to use the metaphor of crossing a river and that spiritual training is designed to take practitioners to ‘the other shore.’  The Platonist tradition appears to like using metaphors involving an image of ascent such as climbing a ladder or a mountain path.  These are very useful metaphors and are unlikely to slip into supporting questionable behavior.

3.  One of the most difficult tasks for a Platonist practitioner is learning how to negotiate the chaos of the human realm.  I mean that human institutions, particularly political institutions, do not have the welfare of spiritual practitioners in mind, nor are they concerned that what they are doing may not be helpful for a spiritual practitioner.

Economic, political, and military dislocations are very frequent in human affairs and all of them can be disruptive for those on a spiritual path.  There seems to be a tendency in the history of philosophy for some philosophers to want to place themselves in the midst of such chaos as guides, or teachers, who understand how to stabilize such situations.  This rarely works (in fact I can’t think of a single situation in which it did work). 

It is my view that at some point in the philosopher’s journey the philosopher comes to a realization that they must leave such situations behind as best they can; that is to say the philosopher needs to withdraw from the fields of politics, economics, and military strife as much as is possible in the context of their particular situation. 

This is not an original observation.  A classic example is Lao Tzu abandoning his job as an archivist for a Chinese state during the Warring States Period and vanishing in the mountains to the West, never to be seen again.  Surprisingly, this kind of withdrawal is also found in Confucian history when the Mongols took over China in the withdrawal of some Confucian Sages from participation in what they regarded as a corrupt State.

In the West we have models such as the Desert Fathers who withdrew into the desert of Egypt to practice as hermits.  And in Platonism we have a few precious stories about Platonist practitioners who gave up positions of wealth and influence to practice the Platonic Dharma.

I have not been able to discover a formula for how to negotiate the chaos of the human realm.  It is helpful to know that others have found a way to step away from human involvements.  But inevitably our specific situation will differ from what others lived in and so there will always, I think, be an element of discovery as we find our way in this difficult and dangerous world.

4.  Porphyry wrote a work that is sometimes called ‘Sentences’ and has also been given the title ‘Launching Points to the Realm of Mind’ by Kenneth Guthrie who translated the work.  I think Guthrie’s title is a good one because it points to the purpose of the short work which is to highlight features of the ‘realm of mind’, meaning Nous, or the realm of forms.  ‘Mind’ in Guthrie’s title refers to noetic mind, one of the three primary aspects of the Noetic Realm: mind, being, and life. 

Guthrie has the view that the sentences found in Porphyry’s work are based on certain passages in the Enneads of Plotinus.  This makes sense since Porphyry was a student of Plotinus, but the sentences may also refer to other Platonic writings.

It appears to be the case that Guthrie’s translation is a kind of update of the translation of the same work by Thomas Taylor, who published his translation as part of a collection of some of Porphyry’s work.   

The title ‘Sentences’ is a little misleading since some items consist of more than one sentence and some are a paragraph long.  I wonder if the title ‘Topics’ might be more accurate.

Here is the first sentence:

Every body is in place; but nothing essentially incorporeal, or any thing of this kind, has any locality.  (Thomas Taylor) 

Every body is in place; the incorporeal in itself is not in a place, any more than the things which have the same nature as it.  (Kenneth Guthrie)

Every material body is in a spatial dimension with its own place, while none of the non-material beings have such a spatial dimension.  (Isaac Samarskyi)

4.1  The Isaac Samarskyi translation was published in 2024.  There is also a fourth translation published in a scholarly journal that I can’t figure out how to access yet.

4.2  This opening sentence gives the reader the basic difference between noetic realities and material realities.  Noetic realities are not placed in space, they have no coordinates or mappable locations.  This point is made by pointing to the ‘incorporeal’ nature of nous itself and noetic realities residing in nous.

4.3  The overall focus of ‘Sentences’ is to illuminate the nature of the incorporeal for the student of philosophy which is why this sentence opens the work.

4.4  I think this work might have been used by Porphyry as an outline for instruction, as prompts for when he would give a talk about nous, and as a way of distilling the topic to its essentials which the student could use to recall the points that were made by Porphyry in such a talk.

4.5  I think ‘Sentences’ or ‘Launching Points to the Realm of Mind’ can be used today by students of Platonism as a tool for contemplating the incorporeal and as a guide to the noetic.

5.  Two weeks ago I posted some thoughts about a Platonist Canon; that was item 53.3.  I think I would add the works of Olympiodorus to such an imagined canon.  I think his works fit in with the contemplative and ascetic understanding of Platonism which I find in the Dialogues and the Enneads. 

I want to clarify that I am not opposed to people reading and studying what I call hyphenated Platonism.  I have learned a lot from various Christian Platonists, particularly about the specific nature of Platonic Grace.  And though I am at variance with Theurgic Platonism, I have benefitted from reading their works because even when I disagreed with what they are saying encountering their different views helped me to clarify my own understanding and has allowed me to articulate what I refer to as Contemplative Platonism with a greater assurance.

The purpose of thinking about a Platonic Canon is to sift through the vast library of Platonism to uncover the jewels of the contemplative and ascetic teachings found therein. 

 

 

Notes and Comments on Phaedo -- 10

26 June 2023

Notes and Comments on Phaedo – 10

This post continues with quotations from the Classical commentaries on Phaedo.  This post will quote from the commentary of Olympiodorus; he lived from about 500 – 570 C.E.  Olympiodorus was the last person to hold the chair at the Alexandrian Academy of Platonic philosophy.  As with Damascius in Athens, Olympiodorus directly felt the impact of the final closing of centers of Classical learning and study.  Olympiodorus wrote commentaries on Plato’s Dialogues such as First Alcibiades, Gorgias, and Phaedo.  He also wrote a Life of Plato.  The difficulties of teaching in an increasingly hostile environment are perhaps reflected in this quote from his commentary on Gorgias:

“So too if they accuse me, asking why I am teaching the youth, will they ever be persuaded that I do this in their interests, in order that they may become men of true quality?  So under such a constitution, one must create a fortress for oneself, and live quietly within it all the time.”

(Olympiodorus, Life of Plato and On Plato First Alcibiades 1-9, translated by Michael Griffin, Bloomsbury, New York, 2015, page 1, ISBN: 9781472588302)

Here is a quote from Olympiodorus’s commentary on Phaedo that pertains to the topic of purification:

“’The philosopher, apart from the absolutely necessary, disdains the care of the body’; and he establishes this premise . . . in this way.  There are three kinds of activities, (1) those natural and necessary, such as feeding and sleeping, (2) those natural but not necessary, such as copulation, (3) those neither natural nor necessary, as the concern for elegance and colorful clothing etc. (that these are neither natural nor necessary is seen from the fact that other animals do not have them); those that are natural but not necessary and those that are neither natural nor necessary, he will even resist them forcibly (for secretion of semen the natural emission during sleep will suffice), while with the first kind he will deal briefly and perfunctorily, not to the point of repletion.  ‘If this is true, the philosopher, apart from the absolutely necessary, disdains the body; he who does this will be ready to die; therefore the philosopher prepares himself for death’.

(Olympiodorus, Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo, translated by L. G. Westerink, The Prometheus Trust, Wiltshire, UK, 1976, page 72, ISBN: 9781898910466)

1.  Olympiodorus uses the same structure to analyze different kinds of bodily activities as Damascius; but Damascius divides bodily activities into four kinds and Olympiodorus into three kinds.  I think this indicates that this way of commenting on this part of Phaedo preceded both of them, but I am not aware of when this kind of analysis first took hold.  I assume it arose in a teaching context and as a way of categorizing different ascetic practices.  My feeling is that it was a good way of framing class discussions on asceticism and its specific techniques.

2.  A phrase like ‘disdain for the body’ is a difficult one for those of us living in modernity to approach.  Yet there are many ordinary instances in life when people reject the demands of the body in order to achieve some purpose.  Anyone who has been on a diet knows how demanding the body can be; but people overcome this demand for the sensory pleasure of eating because they want to lose weight either for health reasons, or to look better, or a combination of both.  Similarly, in sport athletes often push themselves beyond what the body is comfortable with; sometimes suffering numerous aches and pains after an exercise session.  They do this because they want to achieve athletic goals and/or prominence.  In order to achieve these the athlete ‘disdains’ the body’s natural desire for relaxation and leisure.  Examples like this are very numerous; the alcoholic who overcomes the bodily desire for alcohol, the drug addict who does the same in his context, the student who pushes aside sleep in order to study, etc.

The difference with the philosopher is that the philosopher seeks to overcome bodily desires and demands, to ‘disdain’ the body, in order to separate the body from the soul.  This is a different kind of goal.  In modernity it is not even clear to many people that there is such a thing as a soul.  If you think the soul does not exist, then it makes no sense to overcome bodily desires to separate the body from the soul.

The ascetic ideal appears when we have a realization of the existence of the soul.  I refer to this as a realization of the presence of eternity.  The soul is the presence of eternity in the ephemeral individual.  The body and its desires are ephemeral and cannot lead us to that which is eternal.  But the eternal is not absent from the body because eternity is omnipresent/everywhere.  Being present everywhere, it is present in all things, including the body of the individual.  But as long as we are distracted by that which is ephemeral, the body and its desires, that which is eternal remains hidden and difficult to access.  It is difficult to access because it is non-sensory; sensory objects are all ephemeral.  Ascetic practice is the steady whittling away of, and withdrawing from, the fascination with sensation so that access to that which is eternal is opened.

3.  The philosopher is ‘ready to die’ because the philosopher has had the experience of the eternal, is at rest in the eternal.  All things pass away in this third hypostasis of becoming and begoning.  But we have the possibility of transcending becoming and begoning as such by following the teachings of the ascetic ideal and stepping into the deathless and unborn, that which lies beyond becoming and begoning, the Good and the One.