A Q. and A. on the Cause of Historical Decline

Q. I have been wanting to ask you a question about the long history of philosophy. Mainly my question is about the loss of the transcendental dimension in modernity, and more specifically, the loss of the transcendental in philosophy. This question is taken up by some traditionalists, but I am not satisfied with their approach; I think they ask good questions but I don't find their responses well thought out. Heidegger is famous for his view that early philosophy was the discovery of fundamental being and that the history of philosophy is a long, slow clouding of this discovery, culminating in nihilism of the 20th century. I am not a fan of Heidegger; I believe he is hugely overrated. I only bring up his view because it has some traction today among those who take issue with modernity. My own tendency is to view the loss of the transcendental in modernity as part of a natural process, a cyclic process. We are in the winter season of a cultural cycle where it is very difficult to do anything outside of material concerns. You have mentioned that modernity is actually the darkest period of recorded human history, and I think that's true; but I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about how that has come about? Do you see it as a result of specifically human activity? or perhaps more along a natural cycle of awareness and understanding, like the seasonal nature I suggested. I tend to think that human beings like to think that they are in charge of long-term cultural trends, but I doubt that this is true.

 A. It is often necessary to speak in historical terms and to have knowledge of history in dealing with getting along in our present sense world and relative reality in this birth until we can get free, and I certainly do think that this is the darkest time in at least the last 25 or 30 centuries, as you mention, but ultimately I don't think history, like everything in becoming, has any true reality. All at this lowest level of individuated sensate existence in space-time is simply the experience of fallen souls according to their karma as mediated through the Soul of the All. If you think about it, all that we call history is just inference based on sense data--written/verbal and material records, etc.--that has no ultimate reality and is just sense fields manifesting according to our karma and that of others in this our present particular relative reality system. True, real, and certain knowledge is only of Nous, the real beings, and the One/Good, and how to approach them ascetically and contemplatively through their relation to this world and our condition. Ultimately, the cause of the dark condition of modernity and the loss of the transcendental in culture and thought is just the heavy deluded poor karma of most of the souls inhabiting it. This is the real reason, however useful it may be at times to consider the 'historical' manner in which these times seem to have come about, such as you have researched so thoroughly and insightfully and we have discussed. Right now, so to speak, souls with different karma may be experiencing different relative reality systems where there is a more traditional appreciation and understanding of the transcendent and renunciation. In terms of the askesis, I think there is value in just viewing the cause in terms of individual karma this way--cf., the method of referring all causation to participation in the Forms and lack thereof in the last logos in the Phaedo. I don't really find it meaningful to think either in terms of a linear or human caused historical process or the cyclic view of the different Yugas or the like or any other overall or overarching scheme of history. I think it is more meaningful just to think of relative circumstances and realities in terms of the individual soul's movement towards or away from the Good over countless births and lifetimes. This leaves us in the peculiar position of having such good karma to be wholly concerned with the Transcendent and the askesis, but with such strange karma as to be doing it in this most dark and unsupportive and deluded environment, surrounded mostly just by souls with very poor deluded karma! No doubt, though, there is a reason for it in terms of our own karma, and is presumably in the long term for the best, or at least necessary.

A Note Regarding the 'Historical Socrates'

I personally have little interest in a supposed 'historical' Socrates, whatever meaning such an idea may even really have. The Socrates of the dialogs is just, to my mind, an allegorical symbol, in accordance with the overall nature of the dialogs as a whole. You will note that in the Enneads, although Plotinus quotes Plato a number of times, the only times he ever refers to Socrates is when he uses the name 'Socrates' as a generic example name for an arbitrary person, i.e., as "John Smith" or "John Doe"! I know that most people look to the dialogs as historical documents or records to whatever extent and, in accordance with their (exclusive) preoccupation with the sense world try to understand them as realist historical documents, but I take them just as spiritual documents. The purpose of great true spiritual texts like the dialogs and Enneads is not to provide sensory/sense world information relating to alleged past occurrences in some supposed realist past physical world, but to remind our souls of the spiritual truths they have forgotten (the Platonist teaching of learning as recollection solves a multitude of difficulties) and to practice them and leave and renounce this least real sense world and return to their true home. They are teaching us how to get out of the cave and reminding us what things look like in the light, not giving us information about shadows on the cave wall that are the exclusive concern of worldlings. Ultimately, all spiritual texts that we perceive are, like everything else, just experiences according to our karma with no philosophically realist referent--in this case, experiences of our karma lightening up so that the Absolute is beginning to shine through the sense world and leading us to remember and helping us to practice to get free. All that is real is the higher hypostases, their darkened trace manifesting as this world and the world soul, the underlying spiritual structure of Reality, and the movement of individual souls closer to or farther from the One in their long journey and revolution through countless births in samsara/genesis. Though we must, in our circumstances, of course, deal extensively and honestly with 'history', ultimately all so-called historical records and artifacts are just present manifestations and appearances and experiences in our sense fields with no actually realistic existing physical past referents. Almost no one seems to understand what I am talking about when I say such things, but perhaps even a little glimpse of the One Itself and regular contemplative experience of Nous may show one that this whole sense world of becoming is just a shadow or projection of the higher hypostases, with the least reality, and that all manner of possible combinations of projections or traces of the Forms form all sorts of different relative realities of experience of souls according to their karma.