This is a discussion of the ontology and theology of the Greeks, in the context of the 1st Millennium B.C.E. It is essentially an overview of where I was, written between 26 July and the 3rd of August 2003. I have revised some of the English, and excised a couple of short passages, but the argument remains as it was. It is quite a long read (around six thousand words), but some readers will find the discussion rewarding and worth the effort. It has a number of themes, but essentially it is a discursive account of Plato as a theological writer.
It is divided into six sections, which I list here:
Abstract and Introduction
Where is the Theology of the Greeks?
Discovering Greek Theology
The Intellectual basis of Greek Theology
Magic and Ontology in Ancient Greece
Beyond Motion and Change
Abstract
This essay proposes a substantial
revision to the current cultural model for the Greeks. It argues that we need
to modify our picture of the ontological model available to the Greeks in this
period, and consequently to adjust the corresponding ontological model we
use to interpret the cultural significance of their religious thought and
practice. It also attempts to rearrange some of the fractured pieces of the
Greek cultural continuum into a more appropriate set of relationships.
Introduction
This essay is, in contemporary
parlance, ‘left field’, in that it does not develop a current line of argument
about Greek civilisation, but instead proposes a very radical re-interpretation
of the Greek cultural phenomenon. It does this, not because the author wishes
to wilfully and contrarily reorder the phenomenon, but because the author has
been pushed toward a radical re-interpretation by the evidence itself for the
understanding of ancient Greece over a period of twenty years: this evidence
suggests that the ontology available to the Greeks themselves in the 1st
Millennium B.C.E. was much more sophisticated than we have hitherto allowed
ourselves to imagine. As a whole, the phenomenon of philosophy (and its sudden
appearance) in Greece is problematic in its broad relationship to a number of
aspects of the Greek cultural matrix (with which it has a number of clear
connections), and there has been no recent serious attempt to address these
issues. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine in what circumstances within the
academic world of classics such radical re-interpretation would be possible.
Plus there is the question of who has the responsibility and expertise to start
playing around with the ontology of the Greeks – the philosophers or the
classicists?
So this is a radical little text,
dealing with a cultural no-man’s land, which is unlikely to find an
orthodox home in a journal such as JCS or JHS, or any of the others. Too bad!
It is nonetheless a serious piece of work which I think deserves at least a
little attention, in that its radical re-ordering of the Greek cultural
matrix offers the possibility of
understanding the theological background to the development of, for example,
participatory democracy in Greece – the sort of background scholars have suspected for some considerable
time - but have been unable to explore. The reason it has not been possible to
explore it (it is argued in this essay) is because the ontological model we
attribute to the Greeks is not the one they had.
The essay also proposes a new way of understanding the role
of sacrifice among the Greeks,
and has a few new words to say on Greek conceptions of participation and magic.
Where is the Theology of the Greeks?
Much of it is in the pages of Plato.
Plato is a religious writer. His writings do not tell us, as the current
orthodoxy generally holds, about a secular programme of philosophical
investigation. Instead his writings tell us about the theology of the Greeks.
This has not been recognised much in practice and in detail by scholarship –
however the later commentators all the way up to Proclus wrote their
commentaries on the basis that he was writing about theology. In the
renaissance they read Plato very much the same way. However we do not ourselves
currently have a conception of theology or of its history which comfortably
allows us to see the ideas expressed in the dialogues as evidence of theology.
The
later commentators have been dismissed as insignificant to the interpretation
of Plato because much of what they wrote betrays ideas of eastern origin. In
other words, their theological interpretation of Plato depends on ideas which
are clearly drawn from eastern sources, and on that account their interpretations are illegitimate as a
means of understanding and interpreting Plato. On this account the later
Platonists are designated by us as ‘Neoplatonists’. A distinction they would
not have understood.
The
presumption here behind the orthodox position is that both Greek religious and
theological ideas and the ideas contained in Plato are autochthonous – i.e.,
they don’t belong within a common cultural matrix whose boundaries across
Europe and the Middle East are difficult to define. Greek ideas are Greek, and
Plato’s dialogues represent an expressly Greek (and essentially philosophical) interpretation of reality.
One
of the reasons for the popularity of the autochthonous nature of Greek ideas is
the easy identification of religion as the outward expression of an inward
theology. While it is true that aspects
of an outward religion may (and sometimes do) reflect details of an inward
theology, it is also the case that there is no necessary and obvious
connection between them at a formal level (this on account of the various
purposes, many of them pragmatic, which underpin the show of religion). In other words, it is not possible to guess
the nature of the theology underpinning a religious literature and its
iconography simply by analysis of those things.
It has (for example) been too easily assumed that Homer tells us what we
need to know about Greek religion (Plato’s view of Homer and
the other poets is well-known). But, constructing a picture of Greek theology
on the basis of the descriptions of the Gods and their actions in Homer results
in a morally unsatisfactory result and a source of embarrassment - to the
Greeks as well as ourselves. It is hard to imagine a people with the
intellectual curiousity and power of the Greeks being happy to consider the
Homeric epics as sufficient description and explanation
of the world for any length of time, and for any serious purpose.
However,
the contemporary view is that, since Plato is not writing about Homeric ideas
of divinity, he cannot be telling us about Greek theology: therefore he is
writing about a more or less secular programme of philosophical inquiry.
On
the contrary, I repeat that Plato is writing about Greek theology, and that
theology is part of a common body of philosophical theory and argumentation,
orally maintained for many generations. Naturally it isn’t the case that all
Greeks were familiar with the ideas which find expression in his pages, any
more than a straw poll in an English street would reveal a picture of the
central theological beliefs of the Church of England. But it is the case
that Plato is writing about the theology of his culture, in that it reflects
the body of doctrine shared by his peers.
What
are the reasons for arguing that Plato is not writing about theology? Firstly,
what Plato writes does not resemble closely what we now regard as theology. We
don’t expect to encounter theology in a dialogue format. He deals
with abstract arguments which, it seems, only occasionally admit of a
theological interpretation. Discussions of the relationship between the one and
the many are expressly conducted in terms of logic. And so these discussions
are treated in pedagogical terms. It might be that an argument by Plato might
be seen by a later writer as having a theological application, but that does
not mean that Plato was discussing theology.
Secondly, Plato is regarded as the apex of
philosophical speculation in the ancient world. He did not invent philosophy,
but to a significant extent invented the discipline which we now recognise as philosophy. It is often assumed – because there appears
to be no evidence to the contrary – that clear abstract thinking began with
Plato. And clear understanding of ideas of infinity and the boundless, the
currency of later theological speculations, also began with him (earlier
philosophers such as Anaximander and Parmenides may have concerned themselves with such
concepts and arguments, but they represent no more than the foreshadowings of
what Plato would do. It isn’t real philosophy as we understand it).
In
short, before Plato abstract speculation in the writings of the presocratics
does not really count as philosophy. Certainly not as these speculations
are represented to us in the historical
record. Before Plato, there is, it is assumed, no coherent logical
argument about intellectual abstractions. It has been argued in fact that,
before Plato, most speculation was carried out at the level of concrete images,
and that concrete ideas alone were the currency of earlier ages in Greece and
elsewhere.
During
the past 150 years or so, the civilisations of antiquity, in cultural and
intellectual terms, have been seen as a relatively new development, grown out
of an ‘urdummheit’, or initial stupidity. This is not a difficult view to
understand, if we do not separate out (as we now do not) the apparatus of
public religious expression and the theology which gave it a legitimate life,
since the credulity apparent in the ancient world, with its bizarre cults and
practices, its sacrifices to the gods, its Hades and Sheols, its divine
honours, suggests a degree of unreason. When read at face value, these practices do appear to indicate an intellectual
capacity not yet fully formed.
Not
only do we not separate the forms of religious expression from the theological
underpinnings, the same doctrine of ‘urdummheit’ (mercifully no longer an
axiomatic premise in the study of the ancient world) has left us with no
conception of an ancient theology, beyond whatever poor thing might be assumed
(usually something convenient to our own assumptions) to lurk inside the
outward show. It is not there, because it cannot be there - the intellectual capacity necessary for
philosophy and abstract theology was not developed until the middle of the
first millennium B.C.E.
Discovering Greek Theology
We
have to interpret the evidence of the past on the basis of what we already know
about the world. How we pass beyond what we know to an understanding of
something which, beforehand, we did not understand, is still a process which
involves a degree of mystery. In some way the categories of our understanding
have to be modified by the perplexing experience of evidence which takes us
beyond the structures already established in our minds (and in the academic
curriculum). Despite the best efforts of Francis Bacon to formalise the process
of intellectual invention, we still cannot mechanise this, and cannot prescribe
how it is that we go from one intellectual model of the subject in question, to
a better one. But a better model is what is required.
The
ancients (including Plato) have been accused of mistaking a subjective ontology
for an objective one (Both J.G. Frazer and Benjamin Jowett approached Plato
from this point of view). In other words, they were accused of making a
fundamental mistake in their understanding of the world, and that this is the
principal difference between us and them – by contrast we do not make this
particular ontological mistake. Consequently it is all too easy for us to treat
their conceptions as if they were struggling to deal with the kind of
epistemological and ontological questions which are of importance to us, and
which make sense within our own ontological model of reality – practical
questions of understanding physical issues
– how do we know what a thing is, and understand its relations with
other things in the world; how we understand and delineate ‘real’ (phenomenal)
things; how we deal with things on a rational basis; how we avoid thinking
about phenomena in faulty ways. And so on. When the Greeks address abstract
metaphysical questions, such as whether the Good is one or many, we behave as
if they failed to understand the limits of philosophical enquiry.
On
the contrary it is we who traduce their ontology. They were not talking about
the phenomenal world as an ontological structure (not until the advent of
Stoicism as a doctrine and a practical view of life from the 5th
century B.C.E. onwards, in both Greece and, it would seem, Egypt). They were
talking about what they regarded as reality itself, which (they
presumed) underpins the phenomenal world.
Though
we cannot formalise the process of changing ontological models, we can say
something about the process, and what it involves. A subjective ontology is one which is held
within the mind, and is assumed to describe to an accurate degree the reality
which is being apprehended. Which in this case is the material and textual evidence
from ancient Greece. Discovering the difference between a subjective and an
objective ontology depends on observation of the limits of the subjective
ontology in explaining what is observed.
Where there is a discrepancy, there is
likely to be a deficiency in (at the least) the ontological description. An obvious example of this phenomenon is the long-standing and highly successful
account of the planetary motions by the astronomer and geographer Ptolemy,
which provided a reasonably practical mathematical
description of what was observed from the earth, but did not come close to
describing the real motions of the planets. Even when the ontology is adjusted
to more accurately describe the observed reality, it may be that the revised
theoretical model only accounts satisfactorily for what is observed at the
level of mathematical description, without actually addressing the real nature
of the phenomena. Sometimes no amount of
revision of the description is adequate: sometimes the model has to be changed.
It
follows therefore, that if the ontology we give the Greeks, and the ancients in
general, is significantly faulty, then there ought to be evidence within both
the written record, the monumental record, and the archaeological record, which
is not easily (or at all) accommodated by the existing model. As a general
description, the existing model may be satisfactory for our contemporary
purposes, but it does not satisfactorily account for all the available detail,
and more importantly, account for the significance accorded to the detail in
the ancient world. For example, we often account for ancient religious
belief and practice in terms of ideology and propaganda, but this leaves out a
detailed accounting of the perceived intrinsic worth of these ideas in the
ancient world, and their contemporary context. The presumption appears to be
that it is simply uneccessary to address these details in such terms.
There
ought also to be deformations in the history of the apprehension of the Greeks (their reception),
as a result of the struggle to make sense of their civilization within the
categories we choose as a means to understand it. There
is of course such evidence. Martin Bernal has dealt with much of the history of
the revised scholarly model of Greece developed from the eighteen-forties onwards,
(and in an exemplary fashion) in the first volume of Black Athena, which was
received more warmly by the academic community than might have been expected.
However Bernal’s work was intended to open up the territory, not to close the
book on a bad period for the study of antiquity in Europe. At the moment we are
in an interesting place, in that the former model of antiquity created by
scholars no longer holds sway, but most of its parts are still in place to
stave off undesirable vacuum. Many questions need to be answered still about
the development of the scholars model, and about the traduction of the
intellectual world of antiquity which resulted. The evidence remains, but is now
no longer securely framed by the labours of 150 years of scholarship which
produced a collusive and fictional tale of ‘how it was’. The anomalies in the
evidence are still a legitimate subject for academic enquiry. But now they
should be apprehended as far as possible as they are., as they present
themselves, and explained as far as possible in terms of the culture which
gave rise to them.
Systematic
study of this anomalous evidence ought to lead us to a more precisely tailored
ontology for the Greeks and the ancients, by suggesting an alternative
hypothesis upon which (all) the evidence might rest. In the course of such a study we should
remember that the anomalous nature of some of the evidence from ancient Greece
arises from the curious way it sits within our own models of the past – not
because this evidence is intrinsically intrusive, violating the cultural context in which it is found.
Some
of the anomalies are within particular bodies of evidence. For instance, the
Platonic dialogues, read as philosophy, contains many pieces of information
which are not easily integrated within modern analyses of his work which see
that work within the frame of a research or teaching programme, for which there
is no evidence. There must have been teaching of some sort in the Academy, but
we have no idea about the nature of that teaching, and all current models depend
on retrojections of later notions about philosophical pedagogy in Greece.
The
work of other ancient writers is similarly unhappy at being interpreted in
terms of a model of philosophical activity which depends ultimately on later
conceptions of what it is to do philosophy, and in which, through long
practice, scholars have become comfortable with sidelining the context and much
of the detail of the texts. Not to mention the now dubious practice of
emendation which has gone on since the recovery of classical texts in the
renaissance (cf Scaliger’s commitment to ‘extreme scholarship’ in the
‘reconstruction’ of Aristotle’s Greek from an Arabic translation).
Other anomalies arise in details of description and practice. Some of these seem to be satisfactorily explained in terms of the ‘urdummheit’ model, in that they are explained in terms of the failure to be something like ourselves. Examples might be the use of oracles, the consultation of entrails, the notice given to omens and the practice of divination, the honour and worship directed at statues and images, as well as the worship of ancestors and the dead, the importance of liturgy and ritual, the emphasis on completion and perfection, the ubiquitous practice of animal sacrifice, the attribution of the sacred to inanimate things, and the prevalence of the view that the detail of the world is almost entirely conditioned by ends.
These
things, which seem like a disparate array of ancient peculiarities (and are so
treated by and large by modern scholars), are in fact tied together as a set of
practices and phenomena by an underlying body of ideas. Within that body of
ideas they make sense. The varieties of practice and phenomena are intelligible
as the development of an intellectual apprehension of reality, in a
manner paralleled by the development of ideas and practices in our own
intellectual world.
This
intellectual apprehension of reality is in fact what ancient theology is.
Much
of this theology can be obtained through a careful reading of Plato’s Timaeus
and the Parmenides. However there are other texts which contain rich
information about the same body of ideas. Plato’s the Sophist and the Theatetus,
and the Republic are others. Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption
is another one of these works. The Enneads of Plotinus, despite their
relatively late date, give perhaps the clearest picture of the theology shorn
of the context of disputation found in the Platonic Dialogues.
The
essence of Greek theology is an intellectual apprehension of the ground of
reality, of the ultimate reality, as being beyond all categorisation and
apprehension. This ultimate reality, though one, is also twofold, in that while
it gives rise to all subsequent manifestations and shadows of its nature, it
also remains as itself, abiding and unseen; above all participation in the
world it generated.
This
is the both the ultimate reality and the ultimate target of intelligence. It is
both unformed and the repository of all possible forms. It is chaos in a sense,
in that it is beyond all human reduction to order, but it embraces all reality
in potential.
It
is also the ultimate ground of power: the source to which all things must look
for renewal. All intermediary sources which can renew the power of an entity,
practice, phenomenon or idea, also draw power ultimately from the principal
source.
It
is also the place where the same and the different meet. All distance is
collapsed in the ultimate ground of reality. Opposites are one, and the most
distant objects are in the most intimate contact. The beginning and end of time
are conjoined and inseparable.
This
is the essence of the ideas enshrined in Greek theology.
Initiation
into the theology was by the method illustrated by Plato in his dialogues –
through the insufficiency of logic and argument to pin down the ultimate
reality as other than something which utterly transcends the categories of
human description and understanding, and which is in fact beyond all
description and all understanding.
This
is the core of an ancient practice of dialectic. In itself there is little
about it which can be said to be exclusively Greek, except insofar as we have
great evidential detail through Plato. However, traces of the idea echo through
the religious beliefs and iconography of the Greeks, once you know what to look
for. It is the common occult substratum which binds together some of the most
important aspects of Greek civilization.
Greek
civilization, its key literature, its art, its ritual, its religious beliefs,
is underpinned by a range of ways of thinking, ways of interpreting, ways of
conceiving, ways of operating, and consequential ends, which all owe their
validity to the common occult substratum of theology. The occult substratum did
not give rise to these modes of thinking and operating (it appears to be
- at least to an extent - ‘hard-wired’ into our conceptual apparatus), but
informs them with meaning which they would scarcely have without it (French
classical anthropologists have done excellent work in unpicking Greek cultural
practice without any conception that, at some very deep level, a sophisticated philosophical model
underpinned the details of festivals and rituals).
Initiation into the
substratum, or even slight knowledge of its existence and content, would, for
the Greeks, inform life, art and belief in an extraordinary way: it would be
amplified and vivified in proportion to the degree of understanding of the
ideas involved in the cultural apparatus. Most Greeks were however uninformed
about the real nature of their culture’s theological background, but they
nevertheless had a grasp of some of the consequential details, without
understanding their origin in the depths of a complex and (in certain
senses) unified body of discursive ideas about the divine.
The intellectual basis of Greek Theology
If
the ultimate ground of reality is as revealed (essentially negatively) in
Plato’s dialogues, and in the Enneads of Plotinus, then a number of fairly obvious logical inferences will be
made.
Firstly,
this ultimate ground of reality is the principal subject of religious awe,
honour and worship. Other entities may have a claim on priestly worship, but
only in so far as they participate in the ultimate ground of reality. However,
much of the imagery, conception and narrative in religion is accidental rather
than essential, in that it arises in response to human credulity, vanity, and political requirements. Religious establishments pay a price for their
existence in the world, and paying honour to accidental divinities is part of
that price. Creating them (even setting them up in heaven, which a skill of the
theurgists) is another part of that
price.
Secondly,
the nature of the model in which the ultimate ground of reality is the complete
collapse of not only the categories of perception, but also the ultimate
ontological collapse of the categories of reality and existence, means that the
ground of reality is, despite appearances, immanent to all things, whether
abstract or concrete.The ultimate ground of reality can be emulated and invoked; can be summoned, and made near.
Thirdly,
it follows that contact with the ultimate ground of reality is a matter of
apprehension and understanding – a matter of ontological models and ontological
nous: of knowing, and knowing what you are doing.
Fourthly,
for the foregoing reasons, it is immensely important that the ultimate ground
of reality be recalled and invoked to the greatest degree by the wise, and be
made proximate in the world to the utmost. Not as a merely pious observance,
but as a vital part of religious activity. The arguments leading up to the insight
that the ultimate reality is a place which transcends the logic and order of
the physical world, where things which happen seem to be impossible within the
logic of that physical world as explored within the Platonic dialogues (motion
and change), mean that the ultimate ground of reality makes difficult or even impossible things possible. Contact and transaction with that
ground of reality is therefore imperative if temporal power of any kind is desired.
Magic and Ontology in Ancient Greece
Numerous
theories of magic have been given some kind of life since the late nineteenth
century. The one which has had the most influence is of course Frazer’s theory
of sympathetic and contagious magic. It is not clear from The Golden Bough
in which the theory is described that other possibilities have been discarded.
However other possibilities have been discarded. Wittgenstein objected
to Frazer’s general picture of ancient society on the grounds that it made
ancient man stupid; unable to make distinctions between fallacious notions and
plausible ones, which are (as we think)
relatively easy for us to make.
In Frazer’s prize-winning late
nineteenth-century essay on the development of Plato’s theory of Ideas, it is
clear why other possibilities are not considered: for Frazer Plato’s ontology
is merely a projection of subjective categories, and not in any way a proper
apprehension of reality. The reason for this judgement is that Plato is not
concerned with the same realities as Frazer – i.e, epistemological questions
about the physical reality which is the concern of the scientific and technical enterprise of the late nineteenth century (he makes this view explicit). Plato’s ontology is about what Plato considered
(subjectively) important, and is not subject to falsification. Frazer as a
consequence did not consider the Parmenides to be an important dialogue
from the point of view of understanding Plato’s philosophy, and considered that
many of the questions discussed in that dialogue (and elsewhere), were merely ‘popular questions
of the day’.
There
is some truth in the proposition that Plato’s ontology is not subject to
falsification. If Plato’s ontology is erected on the basis of an earthbound
logic applied to abstract questions, rather than observation and experiment,
then it cannot be subject to falsifcation in any strictly scientific
sense. But we are not concerned here with a scientifc sense of falsification,
but rather a logical one. The ontology
(essentially a theory of Being) which emerges from the dialogues of
Plato is expressly an ontology which is apart from any human and earthbound
interest – it may be about ‘the Good’, but that ‘Good’ is not necessarily good
in any terms a human being can easily understand. This ontology does not feed
any human, subjective and pre-existing model of reality – instead (to the
consternation of scholars looking for a purely pedagogical purpose to the Platonic
dialogues) it violates it to the maximum degree. The arguments explored in the
course of the dialogues often destroy the validity of views and opinions which seem to be plain common sense. The logic used to reach these
positions necessarily invalidates itself in the course of argument, and the nature of the
ultimate reality 'established' as a result of these arguments expressly violates
any subjective and pre-existing ontology
in the mind of the inquirer. Therefore the charge that Plato confounded a
subjective ontology with an objective one is unfounded.
As
for the Frazerian theory of magic, which he seemed to think was applicable to
the ancient world as well as to the ’savages’ who peopled nineteenth century
anthropology, it is expressly based on Locke’s seventeenth century theory of
the association of ideas (Frazer’s world view was thoroughly enlightenment and
Lockean) – it presumes the absence
of a model of reality based on an
ontology which has a theory of Being as its core. It is an appropriate theory
therefore if the the notion that Plato was dealing in theology is
imaginary. However if the Platonic
theology is not imaginary, then the Frazerian theory of sympathetic and
contagious magic is not appropriate for an analysis of the world of ideas in
Greek antiquity.
Magic
outside the world of the credulous depends for its possibility and efficacy on
an ontology which makes participation possible. We do not have to accept this
logic, but it is important to understand that magical relationships between
things were considered to be a consequence of the ontology which supports
participation between things which are separate at the level of physicality.
Magic may be practiced by those who know little or nothing of the ontology
which gives the practice plausibility and its logic. However those who know of
the basis of the logic in the ontology have greater power because they know
what they are doing (cf Plato’s remarks on magic performed by prophets and
diviners in the Laws).
In
the Renaissance those who were enthused by the writings of Plato understood
there to be an ontological basis to the principles of association between
objects, and presumed that this was understood by the Greeks. This has been seen
to be implicit in the texts of the dialogues at various times in the history of
their critical interpretation. Almost none of the contemporary academic discussions of
the ancient world depends on the existence of an ancient ontology which
is based on a sophisticated theory of Being.
The study of the thought of the ancient world requires that our understanding of
ancient theology and ontology is clarified, so that we understand that,
whatever Plato or other authors may say, we should not presume that they are
making the kind of mistake which Frazer and his successors suggested that they
made. The ancient ontology may be faulty, but whatever might be wrong with it,
plain stupidity is not the souce of the fault.
In
attempting to understand the subtle distinctions between the varieties of
religious ritual, craft and art, and understand where an action, statement,
formula or construction is shaped by an ontology and its understanding rather
than some other cause, we might follow Aristotle in looking at the cultural
production of the past in terms of four separable causes – the ontological (or
final cause), the efficient, the formal and the material. Cultural productions
which depend on a theory of Being are productions which are those produced in
the context of an ontological theory, and an understanding of that theory. It matters little whether that understanding is accurate and well-informed or not – what we are
looking for is the tell-tale signs in the production which mark these items as
evidence of a contextual theory of Being.
It is however quite common for these
tell-tale signs to appear in periods where there may be no understanding of
ontology at all – in which case the physical evidence tells only something about the
intellectual history of its origins. For the understanding of the intellectual
stature of those times, other evidence is necessary.
Beyond Motion and Change
The
theology which makes participation a vital part of the universe (since the One
gave rise to the Many) also in some of its arguments suggests participation
(and motion and change) to be impossible (cf. the argument in the Sophist
about whether or not forms may participate if they are unchanging). At a
certain point in the development of theological ideas, therefore, a premium would be placed on the
devising and isolation of methods in which participation with the ultimate
ground of reality would be maximised without motion and change. In other words, importance would be placed on the development of
techniques to make participation efficacious which did not depend on motion and
change - two things which appeared to be illusory. Hence the ideas of completion
and perfection became central to religious practice.
The ideas of completion, perfection, limit, and end were
closely associated. They were however not the same, though they could,
according to standard practice in ancient Greece as elsewhere in the ancient
world, stand in for each other metonomously, or metaphorically. Participation
was made emphatic by achievement of these states. As Aristotle wrote, each end
is the thing for which its component parts exist. There are many ends for which
things exist, but there is one ultimate end for which all exists (Plato made
this idea explicit by saying that ‘you exist for the end, and not the end for
you’). By extension, it is clear that the lesser ends exist for the final end
of all things (the Good, or the ultimate ground of reality). Each end has
characteristics in common with the ultimate ground of reality, and this is a
mode of participation with that ground.
Thus, the limit of a thing, or the reaching of its end, or the
completion of an action, or the achievement of a perfect excellence in anything
is in effect, within the ontological model which depends on a theory of Being,
the opening of a high-road to the ultimate ground of reality.
This is suggestive of a deep-seated unity behind a number of disparate phenomena.
Excellence, declared by Aristotle to be something performed for its own sake,
now has a clearer rationale (one which was always implicit in the Ethics
where he makes clear that the highest virtue is contemplation, which makes men
like the gods – at least according to the argument of his book). An excellence
performed is implicitly performed for the most perfect excellence, and can be
seen as an act significant in the context of a theory of Being. A property of
the transcendent end is emulated by the performance of the excellence, and a
bond is thereby established. Excellence has an explicit theological context to
Aristotle, and is not confined to the secular world.
This
leads us to the idea of ‘binding’ as it was understood at the time of Ficino’s
revival of Platonism. Several concepts cluster around this idea, which is closely
related to the ideas of participation and joining, and ‘harmonia’. Binding is
the act of opening a connection with the
ultimate ground of reality through the establishment of a mode of
participation, and by so doing, the agent of the action enters territory where
possibility of thought and action are magnified. This can be achieved in a
number of ways, including the precise performance of an appropriate ritual, the
performance of an appropriate sacrifice - at the appropriate time, for the
appropriate reason, and to the appropriate divinity (amplified by multiplicity
of sacrifice, or by a more acceptable victim), the correct and complete recital
of a liturgy, the consultation of an oracle, the honouring and worship of a
god according to the proper styling (the god having a special kind of
completion as a an attribute). The correct and appropriate distribution of the
shares in the sacrificial animals among the community is also the performance
of a special (as opposed to the ultimate) excellence.
The
act of sacrifice itself represents the act of ‘binding’ within the ontological
model. That is, whereas it has been presumed that the act of sacrifice is to be
interpreted as an act of giving to the god, and receiving in terms of the
distribution of the parts of the body of the sacrificial animal (as it must
have been interpreted by those not privy to the ontological justification in
antiquity), in fact it can be understood as a form of completion given to the
animal at the crucial moment of slaughter.
