A Platonist "precept"/"vow" of monastic poverty

 Given here is an explicit statement of philosophos conduct/practice that could be added to a list of such surviving explicit "regulations" compiled from the extant written Platonist texts, from the Dialogs to the end of Platonism in antiquity, though so much appears to be lost or never committed to writing, though the Phaedo also enjoins voluntary monastic poverty, I think, pretty explicitly, and it is also at least implied, if not outright stated, in the Politea:

 

"O both dear Pan and how many other gods (are) here, give to me to become/be beautiful/noble inside: but how much I have outside to be friendly with the things inside for me.  And may I consider the wise person rich: and may the quantity of gold for me be how much no one other than the one having control over sensual desires, the sane person, would be able to bear or manage/observe."  (Phaedrus, 279 b9-c3)

 

The above is my own rendering, which may differ noticeably from other translations of the Phaedrus.

 

Here are a few other explicit  statements for a list for a philosophos’ “rule” from some surviving fragments (all in my own quick, rough draft, off the cuff translations):

From Olympiodorus' commentary on the Phaedo:

" "The philosopher, as far as is not absolutely necessary, looks down upon/disdains the care of the body"...The are three (kinds of) activities:  either natural and necessary, as taking nourishment and sleeping; or natural, but not necessary, as sexual intercourse; or neither natural nor necessary, as finery and how many things there are of variegated clothing--there being these three (kinds of) activities, therefore, the philosopher will have nothing at all to do with the natural but not necessary and the neither natural nor necessary, but will thrust them away from himself/reject/despise them (for nocturnal emissions will suffice for him in regard to secretion of semen), but he will make use of the first (i.e., the natural and necessary) a little bit perfunctorily/pro forma, as not to take his fill/make much of them.  "If, then, these things are thus, the philosopher, as far as is not absolutely necessary, disdains the body; such a one is willing to die; the philosopher therefore practices death."..."

This is a clear and explicit statement that the Platonist philosophos is a celibate ascetic. 

From Damascius' commentary on the Phaedo:

"...the contemplative philosopher is one wanting as his goal having been made one with the (hypostases) above himself and to be theirs rather than of himself:  on which account (Plato) says "(it is not lawful) for the not pure to touch the pure".

It is necessary for the one being purified and hastening to be made like the Pure first to reject pleasures and pains as far as he is able; second, he must nourish himself with plain, simple food without luxury, but also food that is righteous and temperate (but this is untainted with blood and spotless) and that is holy and in accord with ancestral practice (for the food that is unholy and harming animals and coarsening the spirit makes the body intractable to the soul and unfit for contact with God); third, he must cut off the unharmonious wrong motion of the appetitive irrationality (for what would one standing aloof from all external things desire and with what would he be angry?), but if ever such a sort of thing would be moved either awake or asleep, it is most quickly put down by the reason; fourth, he must keep away from all sense-perceptions and imaginations, as far as it is not necessary to use them; fifth, the one wanting to be released from the multiplicity of becoming is to be separated from the opinions of all various sorts; the sixth precept out of all of them, is to escape the variegated complexity of thought and pursue the simpler expositions and distinctions with a view to becoming accustomed to the undivided intelligence."

This is an injunction to vegetarianism. 

The Timaeus is explicitly vegan, as is the Epinomis.

Of course, Porphyry tells us in the "Life" that Plotinus "didn't abide to take medicines made from wild animals, saying that neither did he allow foods from the bodies of domesticated animals" and Porphyry, of course, wrote his whole book on the necessity of vegetarianism, and with it philosophical asceticism.

Though it is not directly from Platonism, but from Neo-Pythagoreanism, which is likely more derived from Platonism, in Philostratus' LIfe of Apollonius of Tyana, Apollonius is given as explicitly and in detail setting forth as necessary 'precepts' 'the big three':  celibacy in all respects,  vegetarianism and probably veganism (including not wearing leather, etc.), and teetotalling:

“For if someone has come to my standards of conduct, he would choose to get rid of all food (lit., how much of a table) of (i.e., coming from) animals; and he would utterly forget wine and not make turbid the vessel of wisdom that stands in the souls of those abstaining from wine; neither a cloak will warm him, nor wool, that has been shorn from an animal, and I give to him shoes of papyrus, and to lie down to sleep as it chances; and if I perceive him giving way to sexual desire and love, I have pits of perdition down into which Righteousness, the attendant of Wisdom, bears such people and thrusts them (into them)...”

I think that probably the above examples could be expanded and multiplied many times through searching the fragmentary surviving texts and probably there were many more such explicit prescriptions in the likely much greater bulk of Platonist literature that is lost to us (for example, because of the Muslims burning the great ancient library of Alexandria and the Christians burning whatever may have escaped the Muslims!), but just the above, with, of course, the Phaedo, Republic, and Timaeus and others, may perhaps be enough to obviate concern about any lack of structure or definite prescriptions in Platonism.  It seems that the ascetic Path of Platonism is pretty clear, it's just that it is left to the individual, who is one of the few not the many and is presumed to have some spiritual discernment himself, to work out the exact details in each particular circumstance, without, for instance, the sort of long lists of silly, absurd, and neurotic details given in, for example, the Buddhist Vinayas and the sort of attempts criticized in the Republic to endlessly create detailed rules for every particular circumstance to try to make up for a lack of actual righteousness, renunciation, asceticism, and spiritual discernment and informed-ness and intelligence enabling the ascetic to decide more correctly what to do in each case in accordance with the actual principles of the contemplative ascetic life and practice and the single-minded striving for release and the telos without worldly concerns and desires. 

 

I might make another suggestion of a resolution to feeling a want of a set of formal precepts or regulations for Platonist contemplative ascetics/philosophoi in the extant texts--in fact, a more really Platonist, perhaps, and ultimately more satisfactory and definitive solution.  It is, though, one that is not necessarily easy to implement and hardly anyone now could do it or even try to do it.  If one can manage to clearly and fully "see" or "touch" or "know" or come in contact with in contemplation, having ascended to the noetic realm, to the level of Nous, and entering into it, the actual Form/Idea of "contemplative-ascetic-in itself" or "contemplative-asceticism-in-itself" or "philosophos-in-itself" or "Platonist-renunciant/yogi-in-itself" or etc.--however, one might choose to label it just as a means of focussing on that one particular Form as it truly and really and paradigmatically exists in Nous--one will find that it contains in itself, is the higher source of, (in unity and interpenetration with the separate Forms of the individual virtues, etc.) all the practices/"precepts"/necessary prescriptions/standards of conduct/"regulations”, etc. that we talk about--celibacy, veganism, teetotaling, monastic poverty, abstaining from worldly entertainments, simplicity of food, drink, and clothing, world-renunciation, solitude, sitting in contemplation practice, etc., etc.  All are there, though, of course, not in a series or list of statements in English(!) at the level of discursive thought, but as the actual really existing aspects of the complex level Form.  After thoroughly contemplating this Form at the level of Nous, when the soul is not even really, in a sense, itself but has entered into a degree of unity with Nous, when the soul returns to this level the logoi corresponding to or emanating from the Form will appear clearly in the soul as the statements of necessary practice or conduct at the discursive verbal level.  Hard for me to put the matter into words and a hard thing to do, but I think this is a much more ultimately satisfactory source of and point of reliance for, the real thing, what constitutes ascetic practice and conduct than feeling dependent on karmically appearing sensory experience, which is, after all, really what any text we have is.  As Platonist contemplative ascetics, we have a great advantage and freedom in that our "regulations" of renunciant/ascetic conduct are eternally there and always accessible and real and unerring and not a matter of opinion in the realm of being, in the noetic realm, and we don't have to depend on karmically chancing to encounter teachings of such in the uncertain, always changing, impermanent, only the object of opinion not actual knowledge, sensory realm of becoming like practitioners of other systems.  (And, ultimately, even further, our askesis comes from the source of all knowledge, the Good Itself, and direct contact and union with the Good will also, even more, upon the return, lead to all the logoi of contemplative ascetic practice being present at the discursive level in the soul.)  All the prescriptions and ideas of ascetic practice that we read about in Platonist texts and/or in the texts of other systems can then serve as reminders to help the soul recollect the real ascetic standards that it once knew in itself and now recontacts or remembers or learns in contemplation.  (The Platonist teaching of learning being recollection solves a multitude of difficulties!)

 

Plotinus regularly attained the unio mystica, not just "four times"

 Q. We had a conversation about the experiences that Plotinus had of ultimacy.  There is a passage in Porphyry's biography that suggests that Plotinus had such complete experiences four times, or roughly four times, in Plotinus's life.  As I recall you argued against that kind of reading and suggested a more steady and complete realization.  I hope I remember your views correctly.

 

Apropos this discussion, Ennead 4.8 begins with a rare autobiographical comment by Plotinus on just this topic (Gerson translation, page 512):

 

"Often, after waking up to myself from the body, that is, externalizing myself in relation to all other things, while entering into myself, I behold a beauty of wondrous quality, and believe then that I am most to be identified with my better part, that I enjoy the best quality of life, and have become united with the divine and situated within it, actualizing myself at that level, and situating myself above all else in the intelligible world.  Following on this repose within the divine, and descending from Intellect into acts of calculative reasoning, I ask myself in bewilderment, how on earth did I ever come down here, and how ever did my soul come to be enclosed in a body, being such as it has revealed itself to be, even while in a body?"

 

I looked up the MacKenna translation (page 410) and I think it brings out some points with different emphases:

 

"Many times it has happened: lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentred; beholding a marvelous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine; stationing within It by having attained that activity; poised above whatsoever within the Intellectual is less than the Supreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did the soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which, even within the body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be."

 

I think this passage gives definitive evidence that, at the very least, Plotinus entered into supreme union 'many times' or 'often'.  And the implication is that Plotinus did this regularly, not haphazardly.  I would infer that contemplation was likely a daily practice for Plotinus.

 

The differences between MacKenna and Gerson are intriguing; particularly in the opening passage.  MacKenna speaks of a process of 'lifting up' 'out of the body', and this seems consistent with the path of 'ascent' to the divine.  In contrast, Gerson's translation speaks of 'externalizing myself' and 'waking up to myself'.  Gerson's translation is, I think, a little more opaque; but I would be interested in your own understanding of this opening passage -- perhaps it is difficult to interpret though the general gist seems clear.

 

 

A. Yes, I mentioned that the usual and oft repeated interpretation of Porphyry's statement in the Life is absurd from a practitioner's standpoint and simply reflects the ignorance of the usual translators and scholars.  I also cited that very opening passage of Ennead 4.8 as direct contrary evidence that the more common interpretation is incorrect.  I did also say that I had no doubt that Plotinus entered into union with the One, into the Good/One samadhi, so to speak, regularly and daily each time he sat down to his regular contemplation practice.

 

First of all, Porphyry's statement simply says (in my own rough, quick, off the cuff rendering):  "But he attained four times, I suppose, when I was with him, this goal in unspeakable actuality and not in potentiality."  There is nothing at all in it to suggest that Plotinus only attained it four times in his life--I don't know where the silly interpreters got that idea from.  Further, while it is possible to take the Greek as meaning 'with him' in the sense of the years in which Porphyry was with Plotinus in Rome, it certainly doesn't have to be, and can just mean while he was literally 'with him', i.e., happened to be in the same room with him when he was or went into contemplation.  So really all it tells us is that Porphyry observed his union four times--nothing more about Plotinus' number of times or frequency of union or his regular contemplation practice.  Besides, how would the unaccomplished and relatively unperceptive Porphyry know if Plotinus was in union or not?  It is hardly likely or even proper that Plotinus would tell him every time he entered into the divine union!

 

As regards the Ennead 4.8 passage itself, I'm afraid that neither the Gerson et al. nor the MacKenna translations that you cite are very good or faithful.  (Armstrong's is a bit better.)  I would give, again, a quick, rough, off the cuff rendering as follows:

"Often (/many times) waking to myself from the body and becoming outside of the other things, but inside of myself, seeing a beauty marvelous how great, and trusting then especially (myself) to be of the better part, and effecting the best life and having become the same thing with the Divine and being seated in it coming to that actuality beyond all the other noetical seating myself (therein), after this state in the Divine coming down to discursive reasoning from Nous, I am at a loss how I ever even came down now, and how ever for me the soul has become within the body being this, of such a sort as it has appeared in itself, even though being in a body."  I have rendered it as it is in the Greek, as one long sentence with lots of participles and clauses, and pretty literally, but hopefully it is clear enough.  I don't think the differences in the translations reflect difficulty in interpreting and rendering the Greek, but rather just the lack of skill of the translators and the usual refusal to literally and faithfully render what the original actually says.  In any case, I think it is completely clear, especially in the original, that Plotinus is stating clearly that he frequently and regularly attained the contemplative union with the One, and that this was his regular contemplation practice.  In fact, I would tend to read it as indicating that his attainment of the unio mystica, as it were, in contemplation was such a regular daily occurrence that he didn't even need to mention or specify it per se, but just say that often afterwards he would wonder what he was doing here having fallen into individuated sensate existence in space-time in the first place.  In other words, the "often/many times" might refer to the wondering, rather than to the contemplative union that was so regular and invariable an occurrence in his practice as to be taken for granted, that happened every day, every time he sat in contemplation, it just being that often he would later wonder or think about it, but not always, just practicing it and assuming it the other times.  Further, a statement of Porphyry's in the Life just before the "four times"sentence supports and, in fact, makes obvious my interpretation of the latter, contra the professors and as confirmed by the beginning of 4.8.  (I don’t know why this statement is usually ignored in the interpretation of the “four times” sentence.)  Here is a quick, rough, off the cuff rendering of my own:  

"And thus most of all to this godlike man many times/often bringing himself to the first and transcendent God in reflection and according to the ways having been expounded in the Symposium by Plato, that God appeared who has neither shape nor any aspect, but is seated above nous and all the noetical."

This seems to me at least to clearly say that Porphyry himself thought that Plotinus regularly realized the One/Good in contemplation and that this was a regular practice of his, not just something attained only "four times", and supports my interpretation of the Greek of the "four times" statement that Porphyry is only saying there that he happened to be physically in the same room, for whatever reason, with Plotinus four time when this happened, not at all that it was restricted to just those four times and was not a regular occurence and practice for Plotinus.  Presumably, Plotinus did his daily contemplation alone by himself, as is only to be expected and is only proper, but Porphyry happened to barge in on him in contemplation those four times.

 

Why do people think they are Buddhists, Platonists, etc. when they don't do anything or change their behavior?

 Q. I wanted to bring something up; a few calls ago we talked about 'Buddhists' who don't follow a vegetarian regime and you commented that you would say 'they aren't really Buddhists'.  This is a sentiment I concur with, but I was wondering why most people don't see this kind of connection?  The question arises because if someone says they are a piano player one infers that they regularly play the piano.  If someone says they play poker, we assume that means that they sit down with others and play poker.  If someone says they are a gardener, again we assume that they spend time planting, trimming, and cultivating plants.  

 

So why do people not assume that there is a specific behavioral component when it comes to following a spiritual tradition?  When it comes to spirituality people do not infer that there are specific behavioral commitments that they follow.  Your view that unless someone is a vegetarian they are not really a Buddhist is similar to saying that unless someone actually plays a piano they are not a piano player.  

 

In the realm of spirituality it seems that people consider spirituality to mean only dealing with the realm of ideas; it would be like someone saying that they are a baseball player because they like to watch baseball games.  Such a person is a baseball fan, but not a baseball player.  Similarly, someone who does not enter into the behavioral component of Buddhism might be a 'fan' of Buddhism, but they are not a Buddhist.  

 

In Platonism, almost all Platonists today are what I would consider to be 'fans' of Platonism, but not Platonists.  They might accept the view of actually existing ideas, but unless they instantiate behavioral components I would not consider that to be sufficient.  I base that on the necessity of purification for experiencing higher hypostases.

 

I'm not sure why this kind of separation exists in religion, philosophy, and spirituality and I wonder if others have observed this dichotomy.  Perhaps it is a feature of modernity.  I'm not sure.

 

A.  I have certainly also observed the same peculiar phenomena that you wonder about.  I believe that the observation you refer to was actually made in the context of discussion of people who profess to be Buddhists but don’t abstain from alcohol, but, of course, it applies equally well to vegetarianism and other required behaviors.  (Somewhat related, you will recall that just recently  I wrote that I couldn't understand how people could profess to adopt the weltanschauung of one or more of these systems and read all the time about it, but not establish a meditation or sadhana practice--not to mention making the necessary behavioral changes.)  I don't really know if it is worse or more common in modernity than in traditional times (though it wouldn't surprise me--everything being worse and more adverse in modernity), nor can I necessarily off hand identify any particular circumstantial factors.  Really, though, whether proximal environmental factors can be identified or not, I think it is the nature of samsara and the cause is ultimately the deluded souls of most people, the obscuration of their knowing, wisdom, and vision by being sunk in the body and "matter" (hule or, as the Greek is more often incorrectly transliterated, hyle), and their heavy karma.  Your analogies are quite good, and I have used similar ones myself in the past in trying, futilely, to remonstrate with silly pseudo-Buddhists and the like, but perhaps it is not surprising or is only to be expected that people, deluded beings/souls, would have more clarity regarding such worldly activities and things that are only the pursuit of worldly desires--after all, their darkened, twisted souls are already turned entirely in that direction, towards the darkness of the sensory world and worldliness--than they do about spiritual matters and what it means to understand and embrace and practice them.  To understand and implement these latter requires turning their souls at least a little towards the light and reality, which is just the opposite of how they are turned now, and requires resisting and loosening from their heavy deluded karma and the bodily and material obscuration of their souls.  The dim eyes of their soul can better see the darkness of worldly desires and activities, but are quite blind when trying to look at the light of spiritual matters in the direction of actual being and reality.  Such, again, is the nature of samsara.  To understand what it means to be a piano or baseball player doesn't require much more than looking at and guessing about the shadows on the cave wall.  To understand what it means to be a Buddhist or Platonist--let alone to do it--requires at least a little start to loosening of the bonds and turning the head towards the light.  To understand about worldly matters and activities only requires deluded base worldly cleverness.  To understand about spiritual matters requires lightening of karma, depends on the closeness or distance of the soul from the Good, regardless of mundane logic or reasoning, even though it seems so clear to us.  Since, in general, most souls are more deluded and have heavier karma now in modernity, which is essentially for most people a rebirth in one of the lower sub-human type realms, it may be then that perhaps this weird phenomenon is more common now than in the past.

 

I hope this helps at least somewhat with your wondering about the issue.  Alas, as I always lament, for me at least, our circumstances being alone or so few among all these crazy deluded vulgar worldly souls is really scary, like the human being fallen in among wild beasts in the analogy in Book 6 of the Politiea.

 

A Q. and A. on the Dialectic and Analogical Reasoning

 Q.  To better understand how Plato thought, I want to learn more about how the Greeks in general thought about metaphor and analogy.  Plato's philosophical style I characterize as heavily analogical. The way the dialectic in general unfolds is never linear or logical.  What are your thoughts?  Are there any texts on analogical reasoning that can help me get a better grasp on the dialectic?

 

 

A.  I’m afraid that this is one that I can't help much with.  I don't know of any texts on analogical reasoning, and have never looked for any such, nor any works on the way the Greeks in general used metaphor and analogy since, again, I have never looked for or been interested in such.  I don't know how many of my works you have read or watched on my internet venues, but you will see that I view Platonism and Plato's own teaching as spiritual teaching for the contemplative ascetic practice and ascent, not as 'thinking' or 'thought' in the modern sense or the modern idea of 'philosophy'.  The dialectic is not a matter of discursive thinking or reasoning based on sense data, but rather is the contemplative ascetic practice of placing the soul in direct contact with Nous and the Forms therein in meditation/contemplation.  The purpose of the 'dialectic' in the dialogs and the 'reasoning' in the Enneads is to facilitate this and help prepare the mind and soul for being able, after long great effort both in asceticism and contemplation/meditation, to make the ascent and enter this condition of contact with and assimilation to Nous, the Divine Mind-Thought--to enter the 'dialectical samadhi', as it were, to borrow a Sanskrit word from the Indian and derivative systems.  (In general, by far, I think, the closest analogies or systems most useful for the Platonic practitioner for comparison are the Indian origin systems of certain schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, rather than Aristotelianism or the later modern Western systems of 'philosophy' based solely on thinking about things without yogic practice.)  I have, if it is of any help, translated, quite literally, Plotinus' (short) Ennead 1.3, On Dialectic at my internet venues and in my book.  I don't know if you have a translation of Plotinus/the Enneads, but some of the more accessible Enneads, such as 5.1, 1.6, and 6.9 might be helpful to you in general, along with the Phaedo, as I have mentioned, and the core books of the Republic, which add more explicitly about the Good/One to the teaching of the Phaedo.  Today, I was rereading Ennead 1.6, On Beauty, in Greek, as I have many times, and was particularly struck by the statement, "But wisdom is the mental act in turning away from the things below and bringing the soul towards the things above."  That is, it is principally and authentically attained in contemplation turning the soul away from the senses and their objects and towards the higher hypostases.  And to do this requires renunciant and ascetic practice and this is as necessary as thinking to understand how things are and Plato's teaching.  Just as an example, as incomprehensible as it may be to most moderns and particularly professor types, being a vegetarian/vegan is as essential to being able to understand Plato as any degree of knowledge of later 'philosophical' systems or historical knowledge!

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.

An Extremely Brief Introduction to Platonism

Platonism is a spiritual or religious or soteriological system that offers a path to release from the endless cycle of reincarnation and its concomitant misery. It belongs to a family of such systems, comprising Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism, that all accept the facts of reincarnation, the cycle of repeated birth and death, that this works by karma, that this state is wretched and painful and unsatisfactory and a fallen and mistaken condition, and that it is possible through great and correctly directed effort to be released permanently from this state. All these systems consider that the path to this release consists of renunciation, asceticism, detachment, celibacy, vegetarianism and non-harming, abstinence from alcohol and intoxicants, study, and meditation or spiritual exercises. Platonism differs from the others, as they do from each other, in its metaphysics, its description of reality and how it relates to the spiritual path, the nature of release or the condition of having attained the freedom of the goal of the path, the texts that it takes for study, its exact method of implementing the required behavioral and ascetic practices, and its methods of meditation and spiritual exercises. It also differs from the other systems in never having been or become an organized institutional religion or church for the many, in never having had an institutionalized monastic order, in not having devotional or ritual or magical practices to accommodate the non-philosophical many, in not having costumes or ceremonies or holidays and so forth, and in never allowing its ascetic practitioners to become priests/mediators for the populace. In other words, Platonism has never developed a popular religion in addition to or as its central message. It always has been, and remains, a narrow way limited to a philosophical, intellectual, and spiritual elite, for those few who are able and willing to follow its highly morally, spiritually, ascetically, contemplatively, and mentally demanding path and practice.

The texts that Platonism studies, that form the Platonist ‘scriptures’, so to speak, are the Dialogues of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus. It implements its most stringent moral and ascetic standards and practices purely, with discernment, and without legalism, extensive legal codes, extensive lists of rules devolving down to the level of manners and customs, and trying to exhaustively catalog specific regulations for every particular circumstance that could be encountered in a given relative environment, and, of course, without the extensive prescriptions for ritual and ceremonial practice that preoccupy many other systems. Its meditation and contemplation practices consist in coming to understand the workings of things at the level of soul, ascending to contemplation of the actual Platonic Forms and the Divine Mind, and finally ascending to contemplation of and union with the One or the Good, which is the final release and goal.

The Platonist system or description of reality consists of three existential or experiential levels or degrees of reality that are called the three hypostases. In descending order, from first to last, and from most real to least real, these are the One or the Good, the Divine Mind and the Platonic Forms, and Soul. The One or the Good is the Absolute, the utterly Transcendent, the Unity, the Source, the purest noumenon, “God”, the source and origin and fount of all things, from which all things come but which Itself comes from nothing else, and which remains always unchanged as all else emanates from It. The Divine Mind-Thought, Nous, emanates from the One and is the second most real and perfect thing. It is one unitary divine mind with its objects with which it is neither different nor identical. The objects or thoughts of the single divine mind are the Platonic Ideas or Forms or Archetypes or Things-in-themselves, which, again, are not different or outside the one Mind. This level is a one-many, not a pure unity like the One. Though dynamic and active, it is still unchanging and still transcends, is beyond, time and space. The third level of existence is that of soul, both the World Soul or Soul of the All and all the individual souls of individual sentient beings both human and non-human. This is the level of changing, impermanent, differentiated sensory experience, of space and time, of separate individuals, of cyclic individuated sensate spatio-temporal existence, of the cycle of reincarnation, and of karma. Though still divinely ordered by the World Soul, it is the level of suffering, misery, unsatisfactoriness, and endless rebirth in time and space and change for individual souls. This is the level at which we find ourselves now, and that we must transcend and escape from back to the higher hypostases from which we have fallen. To ordinary people and animals, this seems to be the only real and true level (especially now in the naturalist modern world where so many deny transcendence altogether or have never even heard or conceived of it and think that the sensory world is all that there is), but actually it is the least true and least real. It is the level of mere opinion, not of true knowledge, which is of the higher levels.

The Platonist practitioner and ascetic works to transcend this lowest level of individual soul and escape from it and the cycle of reincarnation dictated by karma and return to and re-become the higher hypostases. Since the soul is imprisoned in the body and sensory existence and takes these things as real, he or she renounces all sensory things and things and activities of this world as much as possible and devotes him- or herself solely to transcendent and divine things alone, to things of the soul, not things of the body and its desires and emotions. Thus, he is celibate and teetotaling (not deliberately dulling his divine soul with intoxicants) and abstains from worldly pleasures as much as possible, is a true ascetic and renunciant. He aims at conforming to the true paradigmatic virtues in the noetic realm (the second hypostasis) and so cultivates all moral virtue and non-harming. He is vegan, completely honest, doesn’t obtain the necessities of life in a way that harms any beings, is kind and gentle, etc. Through study of the Dialogues of Plato and the Enneads of Plotinus, and ancillary works, and reflection, he gains an understanding of the nature of things here at the level of soul and how they work, an idea of what the higher hypostases must be like and of their utter transcendence, of how to live virtuously and ascetically, and of the nature of the Path and what it entails and how to practice it. Then, with all this as a base, he devotes himself to contemplation practice to attain direct noetic apprehension of the Platonic Forms and transfer his soul to the level of and unity with the second hypostasis, the Divine Mind-Thought. Finally, established here at the second level, he devotes himself even further and vigorously to contemplation practice to directly touch and apprehend the One, the Good, and eventually attain complete and permanent re-union with and re-identification with It. This is the release from the cycle of birth and death and the final goal. All this is most difficult and is likely to take many lifetimes and rebirths, with many years of hard work to make some progress in any given birth.

Given the non-institutional, individual, transcendent, and transhistorical nature of the Platonist system and practice, and its lack of dependence on particular worldly structures, the Platonist ascetics, the philosophoi, are rather less likely to leave traces in the historical record. We are most fortunate that the Dialogues and Enneads have been preserved, but if many other Platonist ascetics left any written records, many things were lost or destroyed when Christianity and Islam came to power with their intolerance of anything else and their attempt to destroy all other writings. There has never been a time when the Dialogues and Enneads were not being read, even in the original Greek, from antiquity, through Byzantium, into the Renaissance and modernity, and there couldn’t have been actual Platonist contemplatives, but once Christianity and Islam took over, any such would have had to remain hidden at the cost of their lives. Nonetheless, Platonism has greatly influenced the Abrahamic systems, and the Jewish, Islamic, and, especially, Christian mystical systems owe a great deal to and and in some cases are even largely based on Platonism. After Plotinus, but before the final suppression of all non-Abrahamic practices, some teachers and people, such as Iamblichus and Proclus, who considered themselves Platonists, but departed thoroughly from the actual Platonic system, attempted to incorporate polytheistic, ritual, theurgic, and magical practices and thought into Platonism and make it more like the other popular religions. Unfortunately, most of the few modern people who have attempted to revive some sort of Platonist practice have fallen in with and follow these later ideas or those of the conscious incorporation of into or blending with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.



Ⓒ 2020 Eric S. Fallick

Q. and A. on the Relation of the Lower and Higher Virtues

Q. I have a question about Ennead I.2, On Virtues. Plotinus argues that the higher virtues are not the same as the civic virtues; though he considers the civic virtues important to establish for the spiritual quest. And Plotinus further states that the ultimate is unlike its emanations (I'm paraphrasing). To understand this I use metaphors like a blueprint for a house. The actual blueprint is not like the house: you can sleep in the house or eat in it, etc. The two, in that sense, are not alike. And absent an intelligence that can interpret the blueprint the house would not come into existence. It is, then, the intelligence as such that transforms the higher virtues (and the forms?) into material actualities. There is a relationship between higher, purificatory, virtues and civic virtues; but not one of likeness. You could say there is a causal relationship, as long as one is not talking about causation in a physical sense.

Another metaphor I think of is music on a page. The page with its notes and additional apparatus are not the music when it is performed. The music is sonic, the music on the page is a visual and material object. Yet the music generates, is the occasion for, the sonic display. And it can be the occasion for numerous such displays and these displays may differ (different singers, different instruments, etc.).

Does this kind of metaphorical understanding fit with your own?

Thanks



A. I have some reservations, frankly, about the metaphors that you ask about for the relationship between the paradigmatic virtues in the noetic realm and the constitutional or civic virtues in this world, and between the Forms and the things here participating in them. I'm afraid that the metaphors of the blueprint and the music score make it sound like the paradigmatic forms are less actual and less fully developed than the sensory manifestations and are static in the sense of not being alive and needing something else to make them alive and real and actualized. Actually, just the opposite is the case. The Forms, be they those of the virtues or any other, are incomparably more real, alive, vivid, actual, dynamic--though in another sense eternal and never changing--than the phantom manifestations participating in or manifesting them to a degree in this world. They live their own eternal life, so to speak, unchanging yet dynamic, in mutual self-definition with the Divine Mind and the other Forms, in a luminous noetic realm sufficient to itself depending only on the higher hypostasis of the Good, independent of and not needing and unconcerned with the lower emanation level of soul and the sensory spatio-temporal world. The phantom reflections of them here are really more dead and dependent and parasitic on the noetic Forms for such half-existence as they have. They only seem so real and usable and actualized to us because we are stuck here and are really only phantoms ourselves as long as we remain in this state as souls stuck transmigrating in individuated sensate existence in space-time. Perhaps, a more effective metaphor or analogy along the lines of those you have suggested would be that of a movie being projected out on a screen. The whole movie is always there in concentrated form all at once and is really there. The projected pictures, illuminated through the light of the Good behind, are unfolded seeming to have a more actualized but fleeting and very impermanent existence to the deceived viewers and at any moment present some but not all of the features possessed in constant and compressed form all the time in the movie reel itself.

Another metaphor might be that of someone seeing actual real objects while awake and seeing them more or less as they actually are, and then going to sleep and dreaming where impressions derived from the waking vision appear in various more or less distorted form in the dreams where they are taken now as real things.

Specifically regarding the virtues, the paradigmatic noetic virtues in nous indeed aren't in the same way as the practical virtues here. It is hard for me to put into words, but they exist there as like self-sufficient, independent yet mutually dependent and reflecting in the architecture of the noetic realm, concentrated, luminous jewel-Ideas of each virtue. Then, when souls at this lower level are practicing the practical virtues here, they are sort of organizing and ordering themselves and things and actions here so that states of soul and actions will occur that in unfolding in space-time will try in a way to reconstruct or reproduce over space and time as best as they can a reflection and approximation of what the actual paradigmatic virtue is in itself in the noetic realm, and these are what are called the constitutional/civic/practical virtues. Of course, most people, almost all, are only groping in the dark and guessing at the real virtues, approximating from other approximations and imperfect reflections in this world to arrive at the approximation of the virtue. The rare (to say the least!) philosophos/Platonist contemplative ascetic will view the actual paradigmatic virtue/Form in the noetic realm in contemplation and try to remember or look to that directly in practicing the practical virtues here and trying to conform them to the Idea itself. Everyone, of course, needs to try their best to practice and know how to practice the practical/civic virtues, including contemplative ascetics, but then the contemplative ascetics further practice the 'purificatory' virtues that involve turning away from this world and renouncing it entirely as best they can and are practices better modeled after their divine noetic paradigms that not only order the soul and actions to try to reflect those paradigms while remaining entirely of and in this world like the civic virtues and those of ordinary people, but order them to turn them from this world back to the noetic realm. Finally, they can, at least in contemplation practice, try to just rest in the contemplation of and union with the divine noetic paradigms themselves. (I like this quote I recently saw from a late 11th/early 12th c. Latin Christian monk Guibert of Nogent who apparently defined vices as "motions of the mind toward earthly things".)

Anyway, I hope this answers your question at least somewhat.