The Prisoners in the Cave

 @SemprePhi drew my attention to the following book review on the 23^rd November:

Phillip Sidney Horky, Plato and Pythagoreanism 2013. Reviewed by Simon Trépanier bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2014/2014-05-1… #brynmawr #philosophy

I responded in four short posts, which I’ve now augmented with further discussion.

@SemprePhi Hi. Thanks for the pointer to Horky's book and the review. Where to start! You cannot rely on Aristotle for accurate information about the Pythagoreans. Huffman has been occupying academic space for thirty years, and won't cross the boundaries. 1/

Note the whole argument is based on the idea that philosophy in Greece is an autocthonous development. Not invented elsewhere. I've shown that Pythagoras derived many of his ideas from Mesopotamia. And that these influences are reflected in Plato. They just don't want to see. 2/

Or they fear to step outside the accepted paradigm for fear of committing heresy, and having to pay for their sin. There is much information about what Pythagoras brought back from the east in Greek writing. But scholars don't know what it is, and why [it] is important. 3/

In order to stay within the acceptable paradigm, or 'episteme', they don't read the full range of sources which are available. Consequently it is difficult to make sense of the sources that they do read. If you read the full range of sources, it is an eye-opener. 4/

Philosophers and Historians are nervous about crossing the boundaries of their subjects, not just because of the risk to their reputations. They are happiest when sense can be made of what they are looking at. That sense isn’t always the sense that things made in antiquity. Modern scholars make fictions, and sit upon the pile they have made.

The philosopher Adrian Moore wrote a history of the infinite in 1990, and presented a series on BBC radio in 2016 on the same subject. Both discuss the problems and issues around the human response to the idea of the infinite. However Moore’s idea of the history of man’s relationship is strangely structured. Writing about the broadcast series I pointed out that:

We  get many clues about the Greek understanding of the infinite and the unlimited from a number of Plato’s dialogues, including The Timaeus, The Sophist, The Republic, The Theaetetus, The Laws, and The Parmenides. In skipping Plato, the first reference to Parmenides and his notion of the universe as simply one and one alone, is as an introduction in the first episode to his pupil Zeno of Elea, and his response to paradox. There is no discussion of Plato’s demolition of Parmenides arguments, no discussion of the Platonic forms, no discussion of the relationship of the forms to the form of the Good, which is another way of talking about what is infinite, and no discussion of what amounts to a different logical modality in the pages of Plato (where he discusses things passing into one another by means of their similitude), which is a way of understanding the relationship of finite things to the infinite.  

What Moore has constructed is a Catholic perspective on the idea of the infinite, since it is viewed from the perspective of Thomas Aquinas and Bishop Anselm. What made sense to those scholars, makes sense to Moore. Plato was largely unavailable to any scholars  of that period (with the exception of some sections of the Timaeus). But to write now about the infinite as if the writings of Plato are unknown to us, or of no importance to our understanding of the human response to the infinite, is difficult to fathom. I summarised part of this first episode of the series as follows:

Essentially Aristotle’s rapprochement, which Moore characterises as an attempt to make the concept of the infinite more palatable to the Greeks, involved dividing the idea of the infinite into two. As already mentioned, one of these was the potential infinite, and the second was the actual infinite. As outlined in the first episode, Zeno’s paradoxes depended on the idea of an infinite divisibility, which seemed to make the idea of any kind of movement impossible, since that would require a universe of infinite complexity. Zeno therefore regarded all forms of movement as illusion. Since in order to travel a certain distance, you would have to travel half the distance to your destination, and then half of the distance remaining, and then half of that, and half of what still remained, and so on. Which would result in an infinite number of steps. Which would be impossible. 

Aristotle’s response was that though the various stages of the journey could be understood in such a way, the stages were not marked, and did not have to be considered in making a journey. The idea of limit is however a crucial point. What Aristotle was saying is that there are two ways of looking at the idea of what a limit is.  Essentially there is limitation which is defined by what a thing is, and there is limitation which is not. In the first case the limit of a thing cannot be transcended without the nature of that thing turning into something else.

The essence of this argument is that there are forms of limit which can be ignored. One of which is the actual infinite: instead we should deal with the potential infinite. The actual infinite, by its nature, is always there. But we cannot deal with it. The potential infinite we can work with, since it is not always there, and spread infinitely through reality. So we can count numbers without ever arriving at infinity, or ever being in danger of arriving there. Moore mentioned that this conception of infinity more or less became an orthodoxy after Aristotle, though not everyone accepted that his argument against actual infinity was solid. Which is something of an understatement. Aristotle’s distinction between the potential infinite and the actual infinite is between what is, in practical terms, something we can treat as finite, and what is actually infinite. 

 

Moore has defined himself as an Aristotelian finitist, meaning that, since (he argues), man cannot deal with the actual infinite, only the potential infinite can make any sense to us. And so, much ancient discussion is swept away, as of very little interest or importance. This is why we cannot easily understand much of the intellectual world of antiquity. Instead we choose to write unflattering fictions about it.

I said that we cannot rely on Aristotle for accurate information on the Pythagoreans. This is not because I regard him as a poor scholar. Both Plato and Aristotle taught in the Academy in Athens. They were both dealing with a body of traditional doctrine (there are many passages where a comparison shows this – their discussion of the importance of the liver, for example). But they had quite different ways of discussing doctrine. Plato gives the reader real information about the subject, but hedges it about with other arguments, and sometimes talks in terms of images and myth (the account of the prisoners in the cave, in the Republic, for example). So his work makes sense to those who already know the doctrine, and intrigues those who don’t. Aristotle on the other hand, seems to have had the job of sifting through students to find those who might have the intelligence to  be able to grasp the essence of the doctrine (when properly instructed). He did this sometimes by constructing complex sophistical arguments which actually contradicted doctrine, and sometimes even rational sense.

Two examples: The first is Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, originally a series of lectures, ends up concluding the gods cannot act in the world, but only contemplate. Imagine the response to that argument in the ancient world! Why did Aristotle argue like this? He was looking for students who could provide critical rational responses to the argument, and who could  see that it did not make any sense in a reality which was (at the time) populated by divinities expected to play a constructive role in the world. The second example is Aristotle’s comments on logical modality (mostly in the Metaphysics), which I’ve discussed elsewhere (in ‘Logical Modality in Classical Athens’). This also contradicts traditional doctrine which underpinned the human relationship with the divine. And not just in Greece. Plato discusses the logical modality which enables contact and engagement with the divine, and other authors do too. We ignore all of this information concerning doctrine, because we prefer the unfathomable shadows on the wall.

However, despite the occasional tricksiness of Aristotle, he tells us something important, which, if we are familiar with relevant texts by other authors, we can figure out. I quote again from my critical review of Adrian Moore’s broadcast History of the Infinite, concerning the arguments of Zeno:.

The idea of limit is however a crucial point. What Aristotle was saying is that there are two ways of looking at the idea of what a limit is.  Essentially there is limitation which is defined by what a thing is, and there is limitation which is not. In the first case the limit of a thing cannot be transcended without the nature of that thing turning into something else.

Aristotle’s discussion references the doctrinal view which is also discussed by Plato. Which is that there is an important connection between the idea of limit and the infinite. The infinite is just another way of specifying what is unlimited, and beyond the physical world. Paradoxically, it is the actual limit of what is, and what can be. This does not represent a retreat from commerce with the actual infinite, but actually tells us how that commerce was supposed to work.

However the physical and finite world is also full of limits. These sometimes function as boundaries, and serve to close off access. Some limits you can choose to pass beyond, and there are others which you cannot pass. And in some cases, because of the nature of the limit, it is the nature of the limit itself which allows commerce with the ultimate limit of everything, which is where the Gods were once understood to have their existence.

This is the most important thing to understand about antiquity, both east and west. For Moore, the actual infinite is simply something which defies our understanding. In antiquity, the actual infinite was something of vital importance, and which we could have commerce with through its earthlly analogues (totalities, completions, limits. etc). Aristotle, in talking about Zeno’s paradox, is referencing the key doctrinal point, which is that reality has a double nature. And that we have (if we are properly informed), a choice about how we respond to that double nature.

In modern times, we no longer have this choice, since the doctrine concerning actual infinity has been mostly lost, and in fact entirely lost to those who function in the modern successors of Plato’s Academy. We are stuck in a world that imagines it must deal with everything in terms of calculable finitudes. Effectively we are, to quote the Mesopotamian king Esarhaddon, “blind and deaf ” for the whole of our lives.

It was not always so.

Heidegger and Barbarism (Writing to @SemprePhi)

This passage is from Heidegger’s lecture series on Parmenides, section 4. I was taught that the use of the term barbaroi by the Greeks originally designated those who were not speakers of Greek, and that the term did not necessarily have negative connotations. It referred to how other languages sounded to Greek ears. I don’t mean to suggest that the Greeks did not have an exceptionalist sense of themselves (they clearly did), but barbaroi was not initially conceived of as some kind of quasi-structuralist contrast with the characteristics of other cultural groups. Persians, Medes, Babylonians and Egyptians were barbaroi because they were not Greek, and often did not speak Greek (Those Egyptian priests who spoke with Solon during his visit to Egypt clearly spoke Greek).

Later of course the term barbaroi did come to have negative connotations particularly as a term used by the Romans), but not generally in Greece in the period between Parmenides and Plato (6^th and 5^th centuries BCE.)

So what is going on with the passage by Heidegger? He says that for the Greeks, the opposite to ‘barbarism’ is ‘’dwelling within mythos and logos’. This is hard to understand, since mythos and logos indicate quite different ways of thinking. Mythos concerns things which are unascertainable, and usually belong to the world of the gods and of the ancestors, all of which are necessarily wrapped up in a great deal of conjecture. Logos (i.e., ‘reason’) is more associated with things which can be ascertained by rational inquiry, such as investigations into historical, political and societal events.

Did the Greeks blur together their interest in mythos and logos as part of their definition of themselves in the sixth and fifth centuries? Or did they distinguish them as opposites? Or is this just a construct manufactured by Heidegger’s imagination? Where does Heidegger get this from?

The obvious place to look is in the pages of Herodotus. He talks about things which are mythical and difficult to establish as true or false, and also of things which can be ascertained, to an acceptable degree, by careful inquiry into the available information. Though Herodotus sometimes went adrift when he was describing cultures with which he had very little familiarity (Egypt and Babylon in particular). Herodotus spoke of the gods, and their supposed genealogies, but he did not use the term mythos in connection with matters of the gods. Concerning the gods, it is just so much more difficult to establish what is true, and what is merely a matter of conjecture. Plato likewise, left questions about the gods and their genealogies to those who had a better claim to know the truth than he did (those who claimed to be their descendants). The Greeks always imagined themselves as rational creatures, but knew the difference between speculation, and truths which could be established to a reasonable degree.

What Heidegger has to say about the idea of culture is partly correct, but also largely nonsense. Culture was not a concept in the Greek lexicon, for the simple reason that it was so much part of the warp and weft of life that it was hard to separate out as a concept. It was about observance, about ritual, literature and poetry.  They had no word for their religion. Why should they?

But Heidegger characterises culture as the product of the ‘willful power of man’, and compares it to technology, suggesting that the Greeks would have regarded both culture and technology as barbarism, because they were ‘unmythical’. This is ludicrous. The best and most successful technology the Greeks created was the fleet that won the battle of Salamis against the Persians. The Greeks did not have a problem with that, and didn’t regard their victory as an instance of barbarism. This is technology, not culture.

‘Heidegger’s lecture series on Parmenides was delivered at the University of Freiburg in 1942-3. He does not provide a translation of Parmenides poem, or provide a thorough and informed commentary on it. Instead, his subject is the starting point for extensive riffing on ideas about Greece and culture in his head which are without evidential support.

The period in which Heidegger gave these lectures is important if we are to understand what is going on. Heidegger was a supporter of the Nazi party in Germany, and declared that the nature of reality was determined by that party. That makes it possible to say such things as: ‘what you are seeing and hearing is not what is happening’, and other remarks which effectively represent the abdication of reason. When reason and the evidential base have been left behind, it is possible to say all sorts of things, including remarks about the importance of reason which have no reason.

So the assertion that the Greeks understood the opposite to barbarism to be living within both mythos and logos, which is a contradictory pairing, as well as an opposition of concepts based on no evidence at all, needs to be explained. You quoted a scholar who has said that ‘Heidegger's readings of the ancients are heavily determined by the modern polemics in which he is involved… He also lacks a sense for the breadth and diversity of "Greek" thought’. That is correct on both counts, I think. Heidegger cannot be lifted out of the context in which he thought and wrote, but he can be understood, or rather what he thought can be explained, within that context.

The poet Robert Graves rued the fact that Greek mythology was a mess, and that it was often hard to make sense of it. The reason for this is that what survives exists without any documentation of how the various versions of myths (and associated genealogies, which often exist in conflicting versions), came to be constructed. The reason for the mess is fairly simple however – the stories and the genealogies were the work of poets and praise singers, who wrote to support the self-perceptions of their tribal patrons and war lords. Everything was in flux, and imagined genealogies could change as a consequence of defeat in war.

Myth serves many purposes, but often could be repurposed for political and dynastic interests. Sometimes a myth serves as a charter for political change. It doesn’t often serve truth, at least not when it forms part of politics. The writer Alfred Rosenberg, one of the architects of the development of Nazi ideology, wrote The Myth of the 20^th Century which contains much of the spurious and evidence-free thought which became the basis of the party and its intentions. His Wikipedia entry tells you what you need to know:

The author of a seminal work of Nazi ideology, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930), Rosenberg is considered one of the main authors of key National Socialist ideological creeds, including its racial theory, persecution of the Jews, Lebensraum, abrogation of the Treaty of Versailles, and opposition to what was considered "degenerate" modern art. He is known [also] for his rejection of and hatred for Christianity.

All of this fantasy was forged from WW1 (even before) up to the outbreak of WW2. The party acted on the fantasy as if it was real, and behaved as if what they were doing was entirely rational. In which case both mythos and logos co-existed at the same time in Nazi Germany.

Essentially Heidegger is, by reading back from his own present, attempting to understand ancient Greece in terms of contemporary thought in Nazi Germany. Germany had long thought of itself as the natural successor to Greek civilisation. The fusion of mythos and logos he saw around him was what gave Germany its power, as he imagined an earlier fusion of these gave rise to the power and influence of Greek civilization.

Thomas Yeager, February 10, 2020.

Further reading:

Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’ Karsten Harries, (2014) https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/8/1250/files/2016/01/Heidegger-Being-and-Time-1qtvjcq.pdf

Mythos and Logos Robert L. Fowler (2011) http://see-articles.ceon.rs/data/pdf/0075-4269/2011/0075-42691131045F.pdf

Parmenides Martin Heidegger https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0253212146

Quick reference guide to the English translations of Heidegger

http://think.hyperjeff.net/Heidegger/

Cosmotheism, Totality, and the Transcendental (Complete)

[This text originally appeared on my blog in four parts, as: 'Philosophical Thought in Greece and Babylonia' I-IV, during the winter of 2018-9. The parts are now stitched together. A fifth part has been added (December 2019), which brings  the essay to a conclusion]  

There were many more subjects dealt with in my first book (The Sacred History of Being) than the chapter listing suggested. It was designed to be worth reading, but it isn’t constructed as a through narrative. It can be read like that, but the structure is actually fugal: echoes of the same ideas come up throughout the text in different guises.

One of these ideas is the significance of what is ’whole’ in ancient thought, and the role it seems to have played in the development of ancient religion (the connection between physical and transcendent reality, a matter of great importance to the ancients, was understood to be made possible through the nature of wholes and totalities). Another is the idea that the nature of reality can only be one, otherwise the integrity of reality would be fatally compromised. A third idea which plays a part in this fugue is the irrational nature of the ur-reality. We see this fundamental irrationality expressed in physical reality through the irrational nature of mathematical constants. The closer we look at the building blocks of physical reality – geometry, mathematics and physics – The more we understand that these actually point back to an ur-reality which is deeply irrational. However large parts of physical reality can be described and modelled in terms of geometry and mathematics. A fourth question is discussed – if reality is necessarily one, otherwise the fundamental nature and integrity of that reality is rendered impossible, how is it that the universe in which we live is full of multiplicities and things which are different from each other? How can this be if reality is one?

The fourth question is closely allied to one of the most profound questions which can be asked, which is ‘how is it that there is something rather than nothing?’ This question was asked in antiquity, as it is still sometimes asked. But the answer to that question received a more intelligent response in antiquity than it does now. We know about its importance not so much from direct references, but from the fact that that ancient writers become very coy when discussing matters of creation, and often do not give satisfactory answers. Most historians simply assume that this is a reticence surrounding the particular doctrine of particular cults, and that the phenomenon does not point to a way of thinking about the generation of the physical world which is rooted in philosophical questions about what reality is. Instead they dismiss the importance of reasoning in connection with the creation of the physical world as having nothing to do with universals, because (‘as any fule know’) that kind of abstract thought was absent from the human race until the advent of the Greeks.

One of the ways to test this assumption is to assume, for the purposes of argument, that the opposite might be true: that bodies of thought before the Greeks are actually built on abstract and universal propositions derived in the course of philosophical inquiry. And mostly on a basis of logical thought. The results which emerge from this approach are often quite startling: a great deal of thought from before the time of the Greeks starts to make sense. And strong parallels emerge (another one of the themes of The Sacred History of Being) in the Babylonian liturgy of the New Year Festival (the Enuma Elish), between early Greek and Babylonian/Assyrian thought.

Another thing which historians of ancient thought do is to assume the simplest interpretation of the details of ancient religion is likely to be the correct one. So, the gods have a variety of origins – deified individuals, local totemic deities, and the personification of the powers of the natural world. Storm gods and Sun gods are a gift for this kind of interpretation. But again, the assumption can be tested by assuming the opposite: that there is some kind of philosophical basis to ancient gods within particular cultural groupings. The parallels across several cultural groups in the ancient world are often striking. Close examination of the rituals for installing gods (where we have them) are particularly revealing. Are these rituals designed to install gods on the earth, or in some transcendental realm, such as Heaven itself? Very few specialists deal with these materials, because the answer to that question is quite clearly the latter.  Yes, there is a carefully crafted image of the god on earth, in his temple, but it was understood by the Mesopotamians to be a particular image of the god on earth, who has his essential reality in Heaven.

 So what is going on here? The difficulty is compounded by the fact that the craftsmen undertaking the work are granted a temporary divinity, without which they could not create a god. And afterwards, their divine status is removed through another part of the ritual, and they make public denial of their involvement in the creation of the god. Historians (with one or two exceptions) have no idea of what the basis of such a notion of granting temporary divinity might be. And so these rituals are generally passed over in any discussion of Babylonian and Assyrian civilization, in favour of the more conventional view that the gods are personifications of natural powers, and so on.

Nothing is explained by avoiding the uncomfortable nature of the evidence. Addressing the evidence is the only way to understand what is involved. There are several clues, such as the description of Marduk as the totality of the gods, in the Enuma Elish (in the section known as ‘The Fifty Names of Marduk’). Each of the descriptions of the fifty gods is a humanly crafted definition of what they represent, and their importance for the good order of the world. As the totality of the fifty, Marduk is the head of the pantheon of gods. He represents the whole of Mesopotamian divinity.

Is Marduk therefore reality itself? The answer is both yes and no. The Enuma Elish contains descriptions of two creations – the second rational, the first irrational. And Marduk is not present during this first creation. The first creation is described as a hail of composite creatures, with the bodies of animals and the heads of men. It is destroyed because it is irrational. Marduk then creates good order in the world so that man may live, stretching out the surface of the earth and creating the places of refuge (implying that he was responsible for the creation of ordered space and the physical dimensions as we know them).

So, as in other ancient descriptions of creation, there is a stage in the process which is difficult to fathom, and which participated in irrationality, and in chaos.

The Greeks were cautious in their discussions of the arche, at least in public, probably for this very reason. They sometimes passed over this stage altogether in silence, in their divine genealogies. But this evasion tells us that their conception of reality was that reality was a plenum, and that it was not, in itself, good. A well ordered world emerged from that initial state of reality, through the presence and action of the gods. In Mesopotamia, the gods had the power to secure the good order of the world through the ‘fixing of the destinies’. The Greeks had a similar concept, in the three fates.

The Sacred History of Being contains an extract from a discussion of the complexity of our understanding of the One by the Platonist Thomas Taylor, who was a contemporary of Shelley and William Blake. Taylor's text outlines the difficulty which surrounded the discussion of this subject in antiquity. After quoting the text, I wrote that Taylor’s comments show:

…how far Platonic argument about Being and the One can be pushed, and also [shows] how far Plato understood the limitations of argument about Being, and knowledge itself. This is a thousand miles beyond the level of sophistication of discussion of the nature of reality by Anselm and by Descartes. In practice their discussions of the subject lack clarity, and actually never proceed beyond ideas and notions associated with Being. So the ideas of 'Greatness' and 'Perfection', which figure in Plato's dialogues as attributes of Being, are the core of their arguments, and the limits of their conception of the Divine.

Another reason for including this text is that it shows just how dangerous this doctrine is, and that its dangerousness was fully understood in antiquity. If an ultimate ineffability is wrapped around the idea of Being, and it cannot be fathomed or known, it is easy for the 'idiotical ears' to assume that their religion is a pious fraud based on a doctrine which has at its core no divinity at all. 

The primal chaos at the heart of Being of course makes perfect sense within a model of the world in which the difference between the subjective and objective is ultimately an illusion. We participate in Being, and in creation. Reality is what we make of it. Without such an understanding of this model of reality, the description of Being and reality served and discussed in the ancient temple school could only mean to 'the idiotical ears' that the priesthood held that there is no god.

[TY, December 21, 2018]

The conventional wisdom, at least since the European enlightenment in the eighteenth century C.E., is that the phenomenon of monotheism is an idea which emerged from a preceding general inclination to polytheism among the human race. It is also conventional wisdom that we know of no instance of a monotheistic religion before the instances which are regularly cited to support this narrative. This emergence is short on evidence, and the evidence we have is less than clear in terms of context and implications, but is nevertheless a key assumption for historians of thought, and for theologians. It is assumed that the appearance of monotheism represents a negative and critical reaction to aspects of polytheism, and marks a great leap forward in human thought.

The evidence comes entirely from religious contexts, but this does not seem to matter. It is a great leap forward whether or not you are religiously minded, a professional theologian, a historian of cultural ideas, or even an outright atheist, because it marks the arrival of the ability to think in abstract rather than concrete terms. After this, it was possible for human beings to think in terms of universals rather than in assemblages of essentially unconnected particulars. It does not matter how the change is dressed: the human race was emancipated from an irrational concern for personification of natural forces, and the other ways in which a religious pantheon, or a sequence of genealogies, might have been built.

The two instances which are taken to show the emergence of monotheistic patterns of thought are:

 1):  the Hebrew insistence that Yahweh stands alone, and that ‘there is no other god beside me’. This insistence dates – in textual terms - back to the middle of the 1^st millennium B.C.E., since we know, largely from internal evidence,  that the text of the Old Testament was heavily redacted in the fifth century B.C.E., and reflects the views of what appears to be the victorious ‘Yahweh only’ faction in a long-running theological and political struggle concerning the nature of the Hebrew religion.

And:

2): The religious revolution which is supposed to have been wrought by the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten in the 14^th century B.C.E., in which the plethora of divinities and the religious cults attached to them were replaced with the worship of the god ‘Aten’ alone.

I wrote extensively about Hebrew monotheism in the chapter ‘The Idea of Being in Israel’, in The Sacred History of Being (2015), and the influence of Mesopotamian ideas of divinity (principally Babylonian) on Hebrew thought. There are many clear references to Babylonian concepts in the Old Testament, often in the form of parodies. The Hebrews certainly encountered Babylonian religious thought and practice during their exile in Babylon. The extent to which this was a significant influence on their thought and practice before the period of exile is hard to determine however, since there is very little evidence to illustrate the nature of Hebrew religious thought before that time, both in terms of datable textual references, and archaeological remains. We do not know whether polytheism was a Hebrew practice in the first half of the 1^st millennium BCE, because there is no unequivocal evidence remaining for that period.  Other individuated Hebrew gods are unknown to us in the textual and archaeological records, though there are references in Hebrew texts to the worship of both foreign and Canaanite gods (Baal being one of the most conspicuous). Yahweh is however sometimes referred to as ‘El’, and occasionally with the plural form ‘Elohim’. Which might be taken to imply a multiplicity of gods.

There is a great deal of evidence however which shows that argument about the nature of the divine took place, and some of that may have been prompted by the importation of foreign deities and foreign cult practices. These arguments, and their potential implications for the nature of Hebrew thought about the divine, were also discussed in ‘The Idea of Being in Israel’.

This argument about the nature of the divine is rarely read by scholars in terms of a philosophical debate. There is no connected discussion available to us relating to these conjectural debates, if that is what they were, and scholars are disinclined to address the detail which does exist in terms of a philosophical understanding of the divine.

As for Akhenaten’s religious revolution, some biblical scholars have argued (over many years) that Moses brought monotheism to the Levant at the time of the Exodus from Egypt, and that there is a lineal connection (of some sort) between the supposed monotheism of Akhenaten, and the Hebrew conception of Yahweh. We are told in the Pentateuch that Yahweh is the one true god, but, as already mentioned, these are texts which were redacted in the middle of the 1^st millennium B.C.E. These texts reflect the interests and beliefs of the victors – the ‘Yahweh only’ group.  The truth may be quite different. Since we have no reliable evidence for Hebrew conceptions of the divine in the first half of the 1^st millennium, what can be said of their conceptions of the divine in the second half of the second millennium B.C.E.?

In any case, are we clear about the difference between monotheism and polytheism? To adherents of the idea that the passage from polytheism to monotheism represents a cultural evolution, the answer is obvious: monotheism is a move away from local and tribal gods, and a move towards a grander and more abstract conception of the divine. However imperfectly understood. This eventually led to the development of articulate discussion of the philosophical nature of the divine among the Greeks.

But this narrative is entirely based on the two examples discussed above, and our understanding of what was going on in both cases is very thin. It is possible to impose the narrative of a cultural evolution on these examples, and this is what is done. But there is no conclusive evidence that this narrative represents the actual cultural dynamics at play in the second and first millennia  B.C.E. 

I’ve already shown in my essay ‘Polytheism, Monotheism, and The Cult of the Aten’ *1 that Akhenaten did not set out to obliterate the cults of the traditional gods of Egypt, and that there is no evidence that Akhenaten’s worship of the Aten attracted early hostility from the traditional cults. This does not mean that there was no tension between the new cult and the other priestly establishments. We do know that in the end, both Akhenaten’s supporters, and the priests of Amun, were enthusiastically hacking out references to their respective divinities from the monuments. But we have very little unambiguous information about how this situation came to pass.

In fact there is another narrative available concerning Akhenaten’s religion of the Aten which has not so far received much attention. Why is this? The existing narrative supports the simple idea of the development of monotheism as a form of reaction to what had become unacceptable aspects of polytheistic belief.  This narrative has a great hold on scholars, even if not all the available evidence provides clear support for it. The other narrative about Akhenaten’s religious revolution suggests something quite different – that the worship of the Aten was not just a newly minted preoccupation of Akhenaten, and to lesser extent his father, but that his revolution was an attempt to restore a very old body of thought in Egypt.*2

If that is the case, then the modern narrative we have constructed, on the basis of a very partial understanding of the evidence, will necessarily collapse. For one thing, monotheism will have been shown to be very old, and indeed be an Egyptian way of thinking about reality which stretches back to the earliest dynasties. For another, the idea of a cultural evolution from polytheism to monotheism will no longer be tenable, if monotheism is an idea which is thousands of years old. And in addition, if monotheism has an extensive history in Egypt, alongside an equally extensive history of polytheism, we would need to ask, ‘how could this be?’

1 Polytheism, Monotheism, and The Cult of the Aten

2 Discussed in 'The Horizon of the Aten' (forthcoming). 

[TY, December 26, 2018.]

We can never know exactly when the idea of Being, or, as we may characterise it, the most abstract possible conception of the nature of reality, first entered human consciousness. It may have been an idea which was conjectured as long ago as the Palaeolithic period, or as late as the early Neolithic. 

However, for those who accept the western convention that the abstract conception of Being as the foundation of reality itself was first broached by the Greeks in the middle of the 1^st millennium BCE., the very idea of its earlier presence in human consciousness is an absurdity. The Western convention explains very little, is not supported by the available evidence, but it serves the purpose of closing off from our consideration even the possibility of a much longer history of the idea of Being. And for the gigantic, sprawling edifices of Western philosophy and religion, this is, for the most part, a comfort.

Yet the evidence for a much earlier presence of the idea of Being in civilization is far from invisible, except to those for whom (prima facie) the idea of an earlier existence for the concept can have no reality. Historians are disabled in their critical understanding of antiquity by the fact that the contemporary episteme – the intellectual frame in which ideas can be thought and discussed - excludes the possibility that the idea of Being is truly ancient.

It was suggested in the late 19^th century that the idea of Being was of no importance, since it was not possible to say anything about the nature of Being with any certainty: it was beyond having anything predicated of it. That alone made it possible for scholars to ignore the question of Being, whatever role it might have had in ancient cultures. The modern west had reached the point where ancient ideas made so little sense in terms of a modern understanding, that the idea of Being was simply passed by.

In antiquity the conception of Being was understood to be coterminous with reality itself. Hence the suggestion in the Babylonian ‘Enuma Elish’ that the dimensions of physical reality were stretched out of this primal and transcendent reality. In such terms, it is impossible to dismiss Being as an idea which does not need to be addressed. However, the idea of a reality beyond physical and sensory reality was effectively dismissed in the 19^th century. What we could see, measure and weigh was the only reality we could engage with. What might lie beyond the scalar and vector values was not something which could be rationally addressed. In fact the conception of a transcendent reality disappeared altogether from the range of things which might be known and understood, at least in terms of real knowledge. If divines and mystics still wanted to talk about these things, they were free to do so. But their discussions were treated as so many varieties of nonsense, and were not worthy of consideration.

In antiquity, the infinite, or Being itself, was not seen as inaccessible. That is clear from the texts we have. But it does not mean that connection with the Infinite and Being was regarded as unproblematic. The difficulty was the result of a collision between the logic of the immanence of the divine, and earthly logic. According to the latter, it is impossible for the divine to intersect with physical reality, since something cannot be other than it is. At least according to Aristotelian logic. Plato can not be interpreted the same way.

As we cannot know the origins of monotheism, we cannot know the origins of polytheism. We have to accept that. It is too far in the past. And indeed, there may have been no single origin for polytheism; no identiable path by which the human mind and human experience shaped man’s encounter with a plurality of gods. Generally we imagine how polytheism came to be: as the result of political and social struggles in antiquity, with the creation of pantheons of gods, whose existence mirrors in large part, earthly experience of powers, exalted into entities who have their existences somewhere quite remote from human experience. They are in some way in notional control of all aspects of ancient life, and are often deeply unfathomable in both  their natures and in their behaviour. Therefore they give rise to a sense of awe and sometimes terror in the human mind.

This way of looking at the origins of polytheism assumes that there is no transcendental aspect to polytheism, and that polytheism is a phenomenon which precedes both the first discussions of the idea of Being, and the idea that there is a transcendental reality which was understood to stand behind the world of appearance.

These two propositions stand behind the modern interpretation of the meaning and function of the gods in antiquity, and both propositions were occasionally entertained in antiquity itself, particularly from Hellenistic times onwards. We assume that this way of seeing and understanding the gods, which is our modern understanding, was as correct then as it is now, even if other ideas were current about the gods, and how the human race might engage with them, as though they were truly real. For the anthropologist and classicist James Frazer, the idea of discussing Being, now as well as in antiquity, is nonsensical. It is an abstraction about which it is not possible to say anything. For Frazer, Being is an unattainable abstraction, and for all practical purposes, it does not profit us to discuss it in any way.

And yet… Frazer himself noted that the idea of Being was clearly regarded as a proper subject for discussion by some of the earliest Greek philosophers – Anaximander, Hesiod, Heraclitus, and Pythagoras, for example, as well as for later figures, such as Parmenides and Plato. If the discussion of Being is a corollary of the emancipation of the human mind from irrational patterns of thought, normally imagined to be a major landmark in Greek civilization, the fact that there is a continuity of discussion around the idea of Being long before the development of the Athenian intellectual hegemony - via Plato’s Academy, and Aristotle’s Lyceum – is something which requires an explanation.

  

There is no such explanation available to be considered as long as we persist in the presumption that there is no conception of the ultimate abstraction of Being before the 5^th century BCE, which even the Greek evidence contradicts. Greek genius? I cannot write that without a sense of irony. It is an explanation which explains nothing, but draws attention to the fact that either we have nothing useful to say about the intellectual achievement of the Greeks, or that we choose to remain within our modern episteme.

We also need to escape the notion that the intellectual achievement of the Greeks owed nothing to contact with other cultures – again a view based on the presumption that there was no concept of the ultimate abstraction of Being anywhere else before the Greeks. Isocrates credited the Egyptians with the discipline of philosophy. Aristotle indirectly referenced the Egyptians by suggesting that philosophy may have begun with a professional class with time to think, by which he clearly had in mind the Egyptian priesthoods. And we know something of the cultural contacts (both intellectual and commercial) that the Greeks had with Egypt. Solon visited Egypt and talked with the priests. Pythagoras did the same, and also spent time in Babylon. The historian Herodotus wrote extensively (if often inaccurately) about Egypt, and went so far as to claim that the names of some of the Greek gods came from Egyptian sources.

We also know now of the cultural impact of the empire of Assyria on Greece, partly through the close proximity of Ionia with the kingdom of Lydia, a client state of the Assyrians, and through the direct capture of Athens by the Assyrian king Sennacherib, some time around 700 BCE. There was a temple to Assyrian gods built in Athens, according to the Greek writer Abydenus, and so there would have been Assyrian temple personnel present for a significant period of time, during which there was the possibility of a significant exchange of ideas. We have long known that many notions of the presocratic philosophers echo similar Mesopotamian ideas. 

[TY, January 10, 2019]

How can we have polytheistic and monotheistic ideas apparently existing side by side, within the same cultural contexts? This seems to have been the case in ancient Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, and perhaps also in ancient Greece. Plato often referred to ‘ho theos’ (God), rather than ‘the gods’, yet the cultural context was polytheistic. This is a mystery if we are yoked to the idea of a cultural transition from polytheism to monotheism within historical time.  That the evidence from these cultures, does not, on the face of things, provide support for this idea, suggests strongly that this modern and simplistic model of ancient cultural development is deficient in explanatory power, and is more than likely plain false.

It is far from straightforward to disentangle the elements of this issue, so that we might come to a practical resolution as to what is actually going on.  It is however useful to discuss some of the issues which stand between us and an understanding.

One of these of course is our modern preconception of what it was possible to think before Jaspers ‘Axial Age’. The very concept of an axial age speaks of a desire to close off detailed study of thought before classical Greece.

Why would we want to close off the analysis of earlier patterns of thought? The answer is that we consider that such patterns are irretrievably irrational in nature, and offer no rational insights into patterns of thought in antiquity. They may be intelligible in terms of the language of mythology, and in terms of the logic of poetry, but their literature is essentially pre-rational, and so is best approached in terms of disordered, and even pathological thought.

Another is the idea that it is only with the capacity to engage in rational thought, is it possible to  contemplate abstractions such as ‘Being’ and the ‘Infinite’. Before the classical period, we conceive that man did not contemplate Being or the Infinite, at least in rational terms, whatever inchoate inklings they may have had.

One of the issues with the scholarship which addresses thought from time before the Greek contributions, is that it is generally assumed, rather than evidentially determined, that there is no transcendentalist aspect present in ancient religions. What is missing is not defined in the context of ancient thought however, because there is nothing to be defined. Transcendentalist patterns of thought belong to later - and western - intellectual traditions.

It does not however take much effort to show that this is a false assumption, and that the interpretation does not account for the range of evidence which is available. For example, the Assyrian god Ashur was understood in a number of ways, including simply as the local god of the city of Ashur – recognised as powerful because his city was powerful.  However Ashur was also defined as the totality of the other gods. In which case he could be understood in terms of a grand aggregation of the properties and attributes associated with the other Assyrian divinities. This idea has been entertained, in this simple form, also for Egyptian polytheism, using the term ‘cosmotheism’ to mark out this species of thought concerning the ‘pre-axial gods’. In other words, the definition of the supreme deity in the official pantheon of gods is a plain summation of everything associated with the divine pantheon.

This also is how Marduk appears to be presented in the Babylonian New Year Festival – Marduk is the principal god in the Babylonian pantheon, and a section of the liturgy of the festival assigns him fifty names. These names are the other gods: they are listed for recitation, and the main characteristics are described and their principal functions are defined. Together, these gods, their descriptions and their functions delineate all the proper characteristics of divine kingship. As the supreme god, Marduk is also the perfect model for kingship in the Babylonian state.

This is how the literary and ritual texts can be, and are, read by the majority of scholars interested in the subject of ancient divinity. The starting point is that there is no transcendentalist aspect to the ancient understanding of the divinities in the pantheons of Assyria, Babylonia, or Egypt. If there is something approximating to a transcendentalist conception of the supreme deity, we cannot fathom it – and in any case, it will not be a wholly rational conception which would stand up to scrutiny. The idea will necessarily be vague, inchoate and imprecise, and will have no significant range of function associated with it. Such a loosely defined transcendentalism will perhaps signify only an exaltation of the status of the god, in the same way that in ancient Greece, divine status could be accorded to human individuals, without it being understood that the individuals had actually become divine.

However, we should look closely at what is being described in texts relating to the divine. In the case of the Enuma Elish, each of the gods in the pantheon which are embraced in the nature of Marduk, king of the Gods, represents an excellence, whether in the construction of quays and harbours, the detection and restoration of lost gods, the making of divine images, of farming and cultivation, of cattle husbandry, etc. Each of these gods represents the good things which are necessary for the good order and prosperity of the Babylonian state. And they are the most excellent exemplars of these necessary things.

[Final part added, December 29, 2019]

Excellence in Mesopotamia was understood to be a virtue, just as it was in ancient Greece. We can see this clearly in the autobiographical remarks made by the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, when he recounts his training as crown prince, in preparation for becoming the successor to his father, Esarhaddon. He tells us of his skill as a spear thrower, and of his skill at oil divination. He tells us of his skill in mathematics, and that he is able to read the obscure cuneiform of tablets ‘from before the flood’.

By demonstrating his excellence at these things, Ashurbanipal showed that he merited the status accorded to him by his father Esarhaddon, who was the representative of the god Ashur on earth.

In a sense Ashurbanipal’s collection of excellences mirror’s Marduk’s embodiment of the lesser gods, as described in the liturgy of the Enuma Elish, all of whom are exemplars of things essential for the good conduct of the state and the upholding of the universe by the king.

It is possible to look at this kind of listing of embodiments of excellence purely as a description of what is desirable in both the gods and in earthly kings. That is the essence of the cosmotheist argument – the various excellences are descriptive, and provide a reminder once a year (in the case of the performance of the liturgy of the Enuma Elish) of what the necessary excellences are.

However we need to remember that liturgy and ritual in antiquity were understood to be performative, rather than simply descriptive. In other words the performance of ritual served a function  In the case of the Enuma Elish, performing the text was understood to contribute to the upholding of the good order of both the earthly world, and the state of the cosmos. Modern scholars of course do not believe such a thing, and have difficulty fathoming the ancient understanding of the efficacy of ritual.  But it is clear that in antiquity, for the courtly and scholarly classes at least, they held that ritual was performative and effective. We are told by the Greeks (and not just by Aristotle), that the pursuit of excellence is something which should be done for its own sake. Meaning that such a pursuit was understood to serve an important function.

We get clues about this when Plato talks about the harmony of the soul, and relates the idea to the good order of the polis, and the structure of the state. All of which is achieved through the pursuit of excellence, even at the level of craft activity. The soul and the society reflect each other, and each is, if things are in order, an assemblage of excellences. By extension, both reflect the good order of the cosmos, and the perfection of the gods.

This is not a cosmotheistic assemblage. Cosmotheism essentially argues that the idea of assemblage which a divine pantheon contains, is a fiction, since the assemblage does nothing in itself, but merely serves the purpose of creating a superficial sense of totality and completeness in the divine world.

In fact the function of the assemblage of the divine excellences embodied in both the gods, and in society, serves the function of binding the divine and human worlds together, and establishes a continuity between them. In addition to that, the assemblage of excellences opens the possibility of commerce between the human and divine worlds. 

This issue was of fundamental importance in both ancient Greece and in Mesopotamia. Plato focussed on the importance of a commerce between worlds in the Sophist, because otherwise all of the rituals and observances, the creation of images of the gods and their installation in Heaven, the sacrifices to them, and the divination of divine will, would be both completely meaningless, and impossible, if the two worlds lacked a connection, and a commonality. 

In the Sophist, in the presence of the Eleatic Stranger, Plato did not provide the detail of the argument for the connection between the worlds, but merely said that they must agree with each other that it must be so. But the detail of the argument can be found elsewhere in the Sophist, particularly when Plato is discussing the battle of the Gods and Giants . That section repays close study.

Magic or Magia? Plato's Sophist II

I remember analysing the structure of Plato’s The Sophist in 1994, but over time, I forgot about the argument it contains, or even that I’d made one. I batch-scanned a lot of paper documents in 2003, and the analysis of The Sophist was one of those. But I didn’t read it again until recently.

The original document is squibbish, was written quickly, and was never properly completed or edited. But, knowing what I now know, I’d found the essential arguments for the ancient priestly understanding of reality, all collected together in one literary work, without being entirely aware of the implications of that. It is a little eerie to read this document now, since it looks far beyond what I was sure of at the time.

What Plato is doing in The Sophist is what he did in many other dialogues (not all), which was to include reminders to those who had been trained in theological doctrine what was important, and to wrap this information up with more or less irrelevant speculation for the merely curious and uninitiated.

The discussion of the four outlooks on the nature of reality which feature in The Sophist represent discussions which took place in the ancient equivalent of the seminary (it is odd that we don’t have information about the existence of these institutions in ancient Greece, unless the Academy was exactly that). The importance of the discussion is that it establishes that the Real is essentially and necessarily paradoxical. There is the idea of the One, and there is the experience of the many.  If there is only the One, there is no life, movement or thought. If the many are real, then it is difficult to understand how there can be something like the One, which retains its nature, and abides.

Not everyone who participated in these discussions would have become a priest, because not everyone would have settled for position b), which, to some casts of mind, would have seemed to be deeply unsatisfactory. But acceptance of position b) is the one the priestly establishments were looking for in their candidates.

Why position b)? It is suggested in the course of the dialogue that it has to be accepted, in order to account for both our intellectual understanding of the nature of reality, and our experience of the world of movement and change.

That however is not a philosophical argument. Something is being glossed over at this point, and we have to look outside The Sophist to understand that. The answer to this problem is Plato’s concept of The Good, articulated by Socrates in The Timaeus.

Socrates said that:

The ultimate reality, whether it be termed the form of the Good or given another necessarily inadequate name does not reside in space - in fact the notion that things have a place is described as "a kind of bastard reasoning":

we dimly dream and affirm that it is somehow necessary that all that exists should exist in some spot and occupying some place, and that which is neither on earth nor anywhere in the Heaven is nothing.

          In the Phaedrus Socrates speaks of the region above heaven,

“never worthily sung by any earthly poet". It is, however, as I shall tell; for I must dare to speak the truth... the colourless, formless, and intangible truly existing essence, with which all true knowledge is concerned, holds this region and is visible only to the mind...

Which means that Socrates is referring to the concept of the plenum: the reality we experience a partial representation, a slice, of what is contained in the totality of what is possible. If the plenum itself is possible, then the experience of change and motion is also possible. But as a perception.

The point of position b) is that it recognises the paradoxical nature of reality, and that what is represented to us is a subjective representation of Being itself. There is only Being, and the experience of physical and secular existence is a partial view of what is contained in the plenum. We see what we see, but it is not reality itself. It is what we can see and understand.

Is this a purely Greek understanding? I think it isn’t. Pythagoras (according to the Neoplatonists) spent around twenty years in Egypt imbibing their doctrines, as well as having  discussions with priesthoods in the Levant and Mesopotamia, while in the service of Cyrus. Some of that went into Plato’s work, according to the Neoplatonists, though there is also strong evidence (which I’ve discussed) that ideas familiar to Plato were already present in archaic Greece.

The blog page which points to the paper (‘Magic or Magia? Plato’s Sophist’) is at: http://shrineinthesea.blogspot.com/2019/06/magic-or-magia-platos-sophist.html The link to the file is at the foot of the page.  The article has its own DOI.

Thomas Yaeger, June 3, 2019.

Magic or Magia? Plato's Sophist I

A discussion of the arguments in Plato's Sophist concerning the nature of what is real, and of the implications of the apparent conclusion that the One, as well as being unchanging, is also subject to change.

This is a short paper dating from October 1994, with a new expository introduction (May 2019), suggesting the importance of its argument for our understanding of the context of the dialogue and the various propositions which appear in the course of the dialogue. The article also contains an overview of the sections of the dialogue.


The paper is available in PDF format from the Zenodo Open Access Repository at CERN. Downloadable without the need for a signup.


Yaeger, Thomas. (2019, June 2). Magic or Magia? Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3237026

The Frankforts on Parmenides (II)

Some facsimile pages from my notebooks, dating to August 1987, which review what Henri Frankfort and his colleagues had to say about Parmenides and the history of thought before the classical period in Greece. Click to enlarge the images. A page number followed by 'TN' indicates an internal notebook reference. The pages were scanned at 300 dpi, so they are easy to read if downloaded and opened in a viewer. Save the enlarged images for better resolution. The original pages are A4 format and size, so they are easy to print.

In Britain the Frankfort collaboration was published as Before Philosophy; in the US it had the title of The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man.

The Frankforts on Parmenides (I)

Some facsimile pages from my notebooks, dating to August 1987, which review what Henri Frankfort and his colleagues had to say about Parmenides and the history of thought before the classical period in Greece. Click to enlarge the images. A page number followed by 'TN' indicates an internal notebook reference. The pages were scanned at 300 dpi, so they are easy to read if downloaded and opened in a viewer. Save the enlarged images for better resolution. The original pages are A4 format and size, so they are easy to print.

In Britain the Frankfort collaboration was published as Before Philosophy; in the US it had the title of The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man.

It is obvious from these pages that I was heading in the direction of writing something like The Sacred History of Being in 1987, though the actual trip was a long one. There was a lot to learn, and a lot to study. 

The Platonic Theory of Being (full text)

This is the full text of the chapter 'The Platonic Theory of Being', first published in The Sacred History of Being, in 2015. The core argument of the book is contained in this chapter.

The argument here is that Plato is writing about Greek religion, and that philosophy and religion in his time are tightly intertwined. The modern consensus view is that philosophy is a discipline that supersedes religious thought. Yet there is a sentence in Plato's Sophist which makes it clear that his discussion of the Forms or Ideas is very precisely connected with the images of the gods, and consequently with religious ideas.

One of the most prestigious translators of Plato in the twentieth century was Francis Cornford. His single volume translation of Plato's Theaetetus and the Sophist is still a standard textbook for students. By the time I became a student at UCL I could read the text of the Sophist in Greek, and I knew Cornford had entirely omitted that sentence (discussed in this chapter).

I have no certain knowledge as to why Cornford would omit this sentence, but I know that he was committed to the idea that the discipline of philosophy was the successor to mythological thought. Which is likely to be the explanation, since everything he wrote beforehand about Greek thought would be exposed to criticism, if he translated this sentence. Modern students of Plato have no idea that something has been omitted.

He needn't have worried. I brought up this omission in a tutorial, but my objection was waved away, without the tutor bothering to ask me what the sentence was, and why it was important. I'd criticised a scholar, and I was just a student. That taught me a degree of circumspection.

Another theme of The Sacred History of Being is that ancient religion owes its origins to the discussion of what the Greeks termed 'aporia', which are puzzles and paradoxes thrown up by human experience and enquiry. We see this in the history of philosophy, but just ignore it in the context of ancient religion. But it is there too.

The third theme of the book is that polytheism is not, contrary to the prevailing consensus, the precursor of monotheism, but instead is part of the apparatus of a monotheistic interpretation of what reality itself is.

The fourth theme of the book is that ancient religion was about knowledge - principally knowledge of the divine - and not belief. Belief entered into religion when it became a tool for social and political cohesion. Before that there was the concept of the importance of cultic observance (cultus deorum, according to Cicero), rather than the necessity of a defined belief in doctrine. All that is modern. There is no word for religion in ancient Greek.

Thomas Yaeger, May 20, 2019.



***


As Cherniss has shown, [i] though scholars have often spoken of public lectures taking place at the Academy, we have evidence only of one lecture of any sort being given by Plato (a mathematical treatment of the Good).

We know only that matters of epistemology and ontology were discussed within the Academy. Note for example the curious passages in Aristotle's Metaphysics where he speaks as a Platonist: perhaps recalling arguments he used while a member of the Academy. Thus Metaph. 990b:

... not one of the arguments by which we try to prove that the Forms exist demonstrates our point: from some of them no necessary conclusion follows, and from others it follows that there are Forms of things of which we hold that there are no Forms.

The theory of the Forms was presented by Plato himself as having collapsed, in that the Forms, apparently so clearly distinguished as having no participation in each other, are shown to participate. [ii] And, in any case, if they do not participate because of their absolute nature, it would be impossible for us to have any knowledge of them. Thus again, if they participate, it would appear that they are not absolute.

This might be read as indicating the integrity of Plato, in that he faithfully recorded the demolition of everything he stood for. [iii] However at no point in the work of Plato is his enterprise presented as it is interpreted: it is not given to us as a chronological sequence of discussions, nor as a series of arguments which develop one out of the other.

We make a clear distinction between ethical issues and matters of ontology. A proper reading of Aristotles's Ethics however, shows quite clearly that ethical issues were not distinguished in this way by Plato's pupil. The anabasis of the soul described in that work implies at the least a metaphorical emulation of the condition of the divine. [iv] The whole universe is conceived by Aristotle as a moral hierarchy from insect to the Good, and we do well to recall the passage in the Timaeus where Plato speaks of a similar hierarchy, ascended and descended according to the moral worth of the individual in life:

... by virtue of necessity... their bodies are subject to influx and efflux, and these results would necessarily follow, -- firstly sensation that is innate and common to all proceeding from violent effections; secondly, desire mingled with pleasure and pain; and besides these, fear and anger and all such emotions as are naturally allied thereto, and all such as are of a different and opposite character. And if they shall master these they will live justly, but if they are mastered unjustly. And he that has lived his appointed time well shall return again to his abode in his native star, and shall gain a life that is blessed and congenial; but whoso has failed therein shall be changed into woman's nature at the second birth; and if, in that shape, he still does not refrain from wickedness he shall be changed every time, according to the nature of his wickedness, into some bestial form after the similitude of his own nature... [v]

The Timaeus contains a famous passage which discusses the manner in which the forms are conjoined with body:

...it is not possible that two things alone should be conjoined without a third; for there must needs be some intermediary bond to connect the two. And the fairest of bonds is that which most perfectly unites into one both itself and the things which it binds together; and to effect this in the fairest manner is the natural property of proportion. [vi]

The context of this passage is an attempt to explain water and air as intermediary between fire and earth, but what Plato is giving us is more general: a theory of participation which has been the root of the western tradition in art and architecture ever since:

For whenever the middle term of any three numbers, cubic or square, is such that as the first term is to it, so is it to the last term - and again, conversely, as the last term is to the middle, so is the middle to the first.

- then the middle term becomes in turn the first and the last, while the first and last become in turn middle terms, and the necessary consequence will be that all the terms are interchangeable, and being interchangeable they all form a unity. [vii]

Why is it a necessary consequence that all the terms are interchangeable? Each of the terms bears a relation to the others, a proportionate similitude, and each can become first, middle and last terms in an extended sequence, but they are not the same as each other. They are conjoined with one another, but in sequence. They bear likeness to each other in the proper sequential order but not otherwise. It depends on the arrangement. Given the proper arrangement, one may pass through the sequence and establish degrees of similitude between all the different terms. But they are still not the same. They participate in each other, but their proportionate similitude is not identity, and that is essentially what Plato is claiming here.

I think that there is no doubt that this is what Plato means, and it is up to us to explain it. Clearly it underpins the description of the activity of the philosopher in the Republic, where it is said that the process of argument:

...treats assumptions not as principles, but as assumptions in the true sense, that is, as starting points and steps in the ascent to something which involves no assumption and is the first principle of everything; when it has grasped that principle it can again descend, by keeping to the consequences that follow from it, to a conclusion. The whole procedure involves nothing in the sensible world but moves solely through forms to forms, and finishes with forms. [viii]

What Plato is arguing is that, by systematic dialectical enquiry, we can rise from the realms of likelihood and opinion, where we encounter only similitudes, to the realm in which certain knowledge is possible. This is to be achieved by passing through the similitudes, on account of their similitude, to their ultimate origin, the Form of the Good.

In a sense the Platonic dialogues can be understood in this way - as excursions from selected assumptions - and the Republic and the Timaeus illustrate this very well - both employ series of images, of likelihoods which are to be understood as metaphors or similitudes of the general notion which is to be grasped. We are to reject the accounts of the making of the universe in the Timaeus, on the grounds that these accounts possess merely likelihood, and no more. The general notion or the ultimate reality behind the accounts is not to be grasped by collation of the versions, but by an altogether more mysterious process of induction.

Other dialogues also can be understood as discussions of the same propositions from different points of view, though it is not necessary to invoke the notion of a programme of research. For example, the Theaetetus represents an attempt to determine whether or not knowledge can be attained through sensation, which of course it cannot - Plato defines sensation in such a way in the Timaeus that such a conclusion is impossible, i.e., it is a product of motion and therefore of flux, and not part of the intelligible realm. In this region there is nothing to know. Later however, as we shall see, Plato's argument that there is nothing to know in the sensible world breaks down in a highly significant way at Soph. 245-248.

It is not surprising that the conclusion of the Theaetetus is negative: it supports Plato's contention that knowledge is not attainable through sensibles or through the organs of sense themselves. This negative result does not invalidate the theory of the Forms but rather makes such a conjecture necessary, since other ways of accessing knowledge are made to seem implausible.

The Cratylus essentially rehearses the kind of argument later to emerge among the nominalists and realists, discussing the relationship between words and the things they represent, and whether or not the relationship is a necessary one. If the relationship is a necessary one, one would expect that study of the words themselves might be a useful way of investigating the ideas they represent. However, we have to reckon with the possibility of bad copies. Hence it is that we must study their essence, the Ideas themselves, for the relationship between words and the things they represent is conventional and arbitrary. The apparent corollary of this is that the ideas have some kind of absolute reality quite apart from the way in which they are manifest to us.

The view is expressed in the Phaedrus that of all the qualities of which there are Forms (such as Justice, Temperance, Knowledge, Beauty), only the idea of Beauty has a sensible counterpart upon earth. [ix] This is particularly significant in that it apparently makes clear that form in the mundane sense of "shape" is not of itself admitted to the intelligible world (yet shape necessarily participates in the intelligible world in so far as it is beautiful, according to the theory of proportion discussed in the Timaeus). If Plato meant this seriously it implies that the metaphors employed, say, in the myth of the Cave in the Republic are to be understood as metaphors alone: likewise the image of a qualitative hierarchy of images of the form of the Good is itself a metaphor. We are not to understand the shape of an intelligible object as its intelligible nature.

The theme of the Republic is apparently Justice, but, as always with Plato, the real subject is problematic. The theory of the Forms is here completed both on the subjective and objective sides. That is, while the capacity of human beings to make intelligent sense of information varies greatly, the world of things which may be perceived (let us be no more precise than that) is likewise, when below the world of intelligible forms, subject to change and error in its nature. Reality, as it manifests itself, does so in a way which is inconsistent and chaotic and has no fixed nature in itself, compounding the difficulties experienced by the mind with its similar incapacities.

The Republic is often understood as a utopia: as a description of a perfect arrangement of human society. That utopias are impossible is acknowledged by the Republic itself: it is admitted in the course of the dialogue that such a Republic has never existed on earth, nor is it likely to exist, though it might exist, sometime somewhere. It is thus a likely story drawing its worth from its likelihood. [x] Plato is peddling a fiction and tells us so.

It can be argued that the extensive mathematical component of the Timaeus is a Pythagorean import. This implies that, according to the chronological scheme of the dialogues which makes the Timaeus late (and it may be), Plato's philosophy was becoming eclectic, absorbing a philosophical outlook which did not naturally belong to his work in its earlier phase. Is this the case? Given the argument about beauty in the Phaedrus it seems that the mathematics underpinning the relations of things which belong together are logically implicit in the theory of the Forms. However, if Plato's work is understood as a programme of research, it follows that elements in the dialogues which bear a relation to what we know of Pythagoreanism are most likely importations to fill the vacuum left by the departure of the theory of the Forms. By the same token if the chronological sequence of the dialogues collapses or is shown to be irrelevant, the problem of Plato's "eclecticism" changes into another problem altogether.

A second striking feature of the Timaeus is Plato's "failure" to deal directly with the nature and function of God. This is allied to his insistence that he is speaking (through Socrates) in terms of likelihood and that it would be impossible to speak of the maker to the ordinary citizen. [xi] This theogony is thus unique for its period in two major respects: its author tells us that it is not a set of true accounts of the order and nature of things, and the actual accounts given, which are admitted to be no more than likely, apparently give the reason why a true account cannot be given.

Parmenides two-fold poem, "The Way of Truth" and "The Way of Opinion", is also subject to the same difficulty: "The Way of Truth" purports to argue the one true way of conceiving the nature of the universe - that it simply is, and therefore is not subject to becoming or passing-away - yet this assertion is admitted to be inadequate for it is in the form of words, and since all things are a name which mortals lay down and trust to be true - coming into being and perishing, being and not being, and changing place and altering bright colour, [xii it cannot be accounted true.

 The second part of the poem anticipates Plato's detachment from his likely accounts of the making of the universe, for he begins:

Here I cease the trustworthy account and thought concerning truth. From this point learn the opinions of mortals, listening to the deceitful pattern of my words. [xiii]

For Parmenides the ultimate reality is the changeless, the complete, the ungenerated and indestructible, the whole, the unwavering.

Remaining the same in the same place it rests by itself and so remaining firmly where it is. [xiv]

In the Sophist, the ideas, formerly aloof from the world of sensibles and incapable of interaction turn out to be entities capable of participation in each other. And thus, like objects apprehended by opinion, are compounded both of Being and Not-being.

At 244c the Eleatic stranger asks whether the Real is "the same thing as that to which you give the name one? Are you applying two names to the same thing...?" And continues: "it is surely absurd for him Parmenides to admit the existence of two names, when he has laid down that there is no more than one thing..." Thus in attempting to define the One Parmenides cannot state it at all "without recognising three real things." [xv]

At 244d the Stranger questions the notion of the reality as wholeness: is "whole" other than the one real thing or identical with it? For

... if it is a whole - as indeed Parmenides says [xvi] "Every way like the mass of a well-rounded sphere, evenly balanced from the midst in every direction; for there must not be something more nor something less here than there" - If the Real is like that, it has a middle and extremities, and consequently it must have parts, must it not? [xvii]

The Stranger observes that if a thing is divided into parts it may have the property of unity in terms of an aggregate of its parts, "being a sum or whole". However, "the thing which has these properties cannot be just Unity itself... Unity in the true sense and rightly defined must be altogether without parts." [xviii] Thus, how are we to define the Real - is it one and whole? The property of unity is not unity itself, and alternatively,

if the Real is not a whole by virtue of having this property of unity, while at the same time Wholeness itself is real, it follows that the Real falls short of itself... and further... all things will be more than one since Reality on the one side and Wholeness on the other have now each a distinct nature. [xix]

The Real cannot come to be if wholeness does not exist, for "whenever a thing comes into being, at that moment it has come to be as a whole; accordingly, if you do not reckon unity or wholeness amongst real things, you have no right to speak of either Being or coming into being as having any existence." [xx] The Eleatic stranger (probably representing Plato himself) concludes by observing that "countless other difficulties, each involved in measureless perplexity, will arise, if you say that the Real is either two things or only one." [xxi]

In the Timaeus the fully knowable is defined as the eternal and the unchanging, i.e., that which fully "is". However the discussion at Sophist 248-249d seems to jettison this definition. The Eleatic stranger observes that the Idealists (the "Friends of Forms," 248a) distinguish between "Becoming" and "Real being": the definition of the former involving the sensible world, and the latter communing via the soul through reflection. And whereas Real being is defined as unchanging, Becoming is subject to change (the word used is koinonein: "to be in touch with". The same word is used of our communion or participation with both change and the changeless). The Eleatic stranger recalls an earlier proposition that the "sufficient mark of real things is the presence in a thing of the power of being acted upon or of acting in relation to however insignificant a thing." [xxii] The Friends of Forms do not accept this argument and reply that: "a power of acting and being acted upon belongs to Becoming, but neither of these powers is compatible with Real being." [xxiii]

Thus apparently is distinguished the material world subject to causal relations from the world of Forms and those objects which participate in them, clearly by acausal means; the division would seem to be absolute.

The Friends of Forms acknowledge that the soul knows, and that Real being is known, it is agreed; and then the stranger asks if it is agreed that

knowing or being known is an action, or is it experiencing an effect, or both? Or is one of them experiencing an effect, the other an action? Or does neither of them come under either of these heads at all? [xxiv]

It can of course be neither action or effect, as the text makes clear, [xxv] if the Friends of Forms are to avoid contradicting their earlier remarks, for: if knowing is to be acting upon something, it follows that what is known must be acted on by it; and so, on this showing, Reality when it is being known by the act of knowledge must, in so far as it is known, be changed owing to being so acted upon; and that, we say, cannot happen to the changeless. [xxvi]

Cornford's translation of the remainder of 248e is unsatisfactory, since it obscures one of the most interesting allusions in Plato. It may be translated thus:

Before God - that we might be easily persuaded that truly motion, life, soul and wisdom are not completely real - neither life itself nor thought, but revered and sacred, it has no mind, if it put on existence unmoved. [xxvii]

The allusion, semnon kai hagion, is, as Campbell noted in his edition of the Sophist, to the statues of the gods. This phrase might be written off as of no great moment, but I think it unwise to do so. Reality has been spoken of as revered and sacred, using a phrase of specific application to the images of the gods. We catch here (I think) a glimpse of the true scope of this argument and its consequences: it concerns the logic underpinning the patterns of understanding among the Greeks. [xxviii]

It would seem to be in the mind of the speaker that the matter of devotion to the gods hangs or falls by this philosophical argument about whether or not the Real is changeless or changing; and whether or not any form of contact with the gods is at all possible. [xxix] If this is the correct interpretation, then there is a great deal more at stake here than a mere philosophical disputation (and for ourselves, the notion that philosophical argument is a refinement, a clarification of thought processes which first stumbled into the light of day in the context of religion might repay re-examination).

In response to the Eleatic stranger's positing of the impossible dilemma, that change, life, soul and understanding are unreal, or that the Real has no life and is unchanging, and is devoid of intelligence, Theaetetus responds saying that it "would be a strange doctrine to accept." [xxx] They agree that reality cannot have intelligence without life, and that it must possess soul in which both reside. [xxxi] But then, possessing intelligence, life and soul, it cannot be said that a living thing remains at rest and is unchanging. The conclusion must be, if reality has intelligence, life and soul, both things that change and change itself are real. [xxxii]

The conclusion is drawn by the Stranger: without change there can be no intelligence, but if all things change and nothing abides, intelligence equally could not exist or be discovered. He concludes:

On these grounds, then, it seems that only one course is open to the philosopher who values knowledge and the rest above all else. He must refuse to accept from the champions either of the One or of the many Forms the doctrine that all Reality is changeless; and he must turn a deaf ear to the other party who represent Reality as everywhere changing... he must declare that Reality or the sum of things is both at once - all that is unchangeable and all that is in change. [xxxiii]

Ultimately there must be a point of contact between the formal cause and the maker of the universe: this however, as is well known, is not an easy matter to disentangle in Plato. As he says at Tim 28c, "... to discover the Maker and Father of this Universe were a task indeed..." Elsewhere the ultimate root of reality is spoken of as the form of the Good. It is spoken of as fully knowable, capable of apprehension by the reason alone. The difficulty of knowing it appears to be a matter of intelligence, of discerning it as the universal among the particulars of the sensible world. It is the eternal and unchanging.

Yet it turns out that it cannot be fully known: reality is always beyond any description, any categorization we employ to define it. As we rise through the Forms it remains as far distant as ever, eluding any attempt to know it: when it turns out that the Real necessarily participates in the world of change, it is necessary to postulate that reality embraces both the changing and the changeless at the same time. It is thus a paradoxical matrix, for the Forms participate and are all around us: the division between the realm of intelligibles and sensible form has broken down.

The ultimate reality, whether it be termed the form of the Good or given another necessarily inadequate name does not reside in space - in fact the notion that things have a place is described as "a kind of bastard reasoning":

we dimly dream and affirm that it is somehow necessary that all that exists should exist in some spot and occupying some place, and that which is neither on earth nor anywhere in the Heaven is nothing. [xxxiv]

In the Phaedrus [xxxv] Socrates speaks of the region above heaven,

never worthily sung by any earthly poet". It is, however, as I shall tell; for I must dare to speak the truth... the colourless, formless, [xxxvi] and intangible truly existing essence, with which all true knowledge is concerned, holds this region and is visible only to the mind... [xxxvii]

The implication of an ultimate reality beyond any human categorization except identity with itself, [xxxviii] which nevertheless cannot be spoken of as unchanging is that, for analytical and practical purposes, all the possible categories of knowing are contingent and relative; and likewise, all attempted descriptions of the nature of its Being. The nature of reality is forever beyond our capacity to know on the one hand, and on the other, it is itself beyond any possible self-definition, not because it does or does not change, but because it embraces the all which contains both change and the unchanging.

Reality, in short, if it is to be described at all, must be conceived of as an absolute collapse of all possible categories, both of knowing and of Being. All space, all time, all possibility resides here, in no place, at no time, beyond all conception, all manifestation. It is simply whatever it is. If we knew it fully the knowledge would be meaningless to us. And what we can say we know of its nature isn't really knowledge. [xxxix]

The idea of the Form of the Good therefore, is necessarily simply another device in Plato's armoury of likelihoods. Reality, as the ultimate categorical collapse (we have to give it some useful description), if it resembles anything at all within our experience, anything which supplies a concrete image to the conception, must be indistinguishable from chaos - at the extreme of its nature it is forever beyond ordered interpretation.

Immediately following the passage concerning the discovery of the Maker and Father of this Universe, Socrates says that "to declare Him to all men were a thing impossible." [xl] This can be understood in a number of ways. It might be the case that the matter is too complex to be explained to the ordinary mortal in that it breaches the rules of common sense (and also for us the Aristotelian Laws of Thought); that it is impossible to accurately describe the indescribable, except via metaphor (which is a constant Platonic refrain); and thirdly, that it is simply socially impossible to talk about this conception of reality within the society in which the discussions take place. [xli] That Socrates says at Phaedrus 247c that he dares to speak the truth concerning the nature of the region above heaven implies strongly that it is dangerous to do so - and after all, one of the charges against him was that he made theological innovations. Xenophon suggests that, though he was not formally charged with disbelief in the gods per se, Socrates was suspected of a form of atheism. [xlii] To hold the ultimate reality to be virtually indistinguishable at root from chaos, a place devoid of justice, beauty, order, etc., (and without location in time or space) except in potential, would be indistinguishable to the ordinary citizen from atheism. No wonder therefore that Plato writes the ironical words at Tim 40d:

Concerning the other divinities, to discover and declare their origin is too great a task for us, and we must trust to those who have declared it aforetime, they being, as they affirmed, descendants of gods and knowing well, no doubt, their own forefathers.

And at Tim 29a, concerning the model after which the universe was patterned, Timaeus asks:

Was it after that which is self-identical and uniform, or after that which had come into existence?

The latter implies change and disorder; therefore

if so be that this Cosmos is beautiful and its Constructor good, it is plain that he fixed his gaze on the Eternal, but if otherwise (which is an impious supposition), his gaze was on that which has come into existence.

Which is no more than an appeal to common sense. The nature of the arguments which might be adduced in antiquity to explain the world of appearance are, as the Sophist shows, much more complex.

Conditioned therefore both by the difficulty of the subject matter, and the social impracticability of the doctrine, we are forced to work out the doctrine for ourselves. That the method employed to convey the doctrine sometimes created unnecessary difficulties for the understanding, quite apart from its inherent difficulty is shown by the remark at 48c where some matters are not explained

solely for this reason, that it is difficult for us to explain our views while keeping to our present method of exposition.

Nevertheless, the description of the Receptacle at Tim 50-51 is possibly the clearest exposition in Plato of the Real:

... it is right that the substance which is to receive within itself all the kinds should be void of all forms... that the substance which is to be fitted to receive frequently over its whole extent the copies of all things intelligible and eternal should itself, of its own nature, be void of all the forms... a Kind invisible and unshaped, all--receptive, and in some most perplexing and most baffling way partaking of the intelligible...

If then, Plato's unwritten doctrine (agrapha) placed chaos at the heart of Being, his conclusion would not be out of place among Greek speculations in general as to the nature of the arche: the difference is simply that he underpinned this conclusion with powerful philosophical arguments. [xliii] These we do not have for the earlier speculations, and therefore it is easy to conclude that they did not in fact exist; that the early speculations were not supported by cogent argument, and that the idea of chaos as the root or beginning of things never was any more than a concrete image of disorder. That we find the chaos at the beginning of more or less mythical narratives, at the start of apparently causal chains of creation, is taken to suggest no abstract idea, but simply the metaphorical transfer of image from context to context. But Plato himself, putting the argument into the mouth of Timaeus [xliv] uses such a concrete image, saying that God

took over all that was visible, seeing that it was not in a state of rest but in a state of discordant and disorderly motion, He brought it into order out of disorder...

We have virtually the whole of the Platonic corpus: of the earlier philosophers we have fragments like the one above. We should be cautious in presuming the absence of clear reasoning behind images simply because we have no direct access to such reasoning: that we do read concrete conceptions into the concrete images of the presocratics is partly due to the fact that this was often the practice among the ancients themselves, and partly because, building upon this fragmentary and distorted evidence, we can frame a scheme in which there is a beginning, middle and notional end to the history of ideas, starting with concrete images and working up to pure abstraction.

Commentators have always had a great deal of difficulty in accommodating the Parmenides. H.N. Fowler, translator of the Loeb edition of the text says (probably echoing Jowett's judgement) that the dialogue seems to be

a reductio ad absurdum of the Eleatic doctrines and methods, put into the mouth of the chief of the Eleatic school. Yet this is the school of thought for which Plato appears to have had the greatest respect... it is hardly to be supposed that the whole purpose of this dialogue is to show the difficulties inherent in the doctrine of Ideas and in the Eleatic doctrine of being, since these are the doctrines which Plato elsewhere advocates... yet this negative result is all that appears with any clearness. [xlv]

Miller notes in his Plato's Parmenides, as does Cornford in less technical language at Soph. 248d, & note 3, Plato's Theory of Knowledge, p240, that: "in implicitly attributing sameness and difference to the One as the object of specifically discursive knowledge, leaves open the possibility of a non-discursive knowledge. As non-discursive, such knowledge would transcend the analytic framework of sameness and difference; it would be such insight alone, if any at all, that could reach to the form as such, the form in its innermost being." [xlvi]

To be disclosed for what it truly is by collection and division, the form must not only stand as the stable subject of a series of predicates in order, finally, to be spelled out as the whole of these, but it must also be present in a way that precedes discourse and composite structure, present therefore, as a simple nature for a pre-analytic insight or intuition. [xlvii]

Miller also observes that in the Sophist "Plato neither explicitly drops nor explicitly affirms the simplicity of the form" and suggests that to understand these concepts we require to be "open to the possibility of subsurface meaning." [xlviii]

Miller's analysis illustrates that the default position adopted by the speakers in the Sophist, that Reality must embrace contradictory categories of knowledge and being, is in fact the goal of the dialectic of collection and division, and thus confirms us in the conclusion reached earlier, that, at the heart of Being, all the categories are collapsed together, and that the innermost being of the Forms is this condition of categorical collapse. The similar collapse of epistemological categories, far from making impossible access to the Forms, represents what he describes as "pre-analytic insight" or "intuition". This, more likely than any of the reconstructions made on the basis of the reports of Aristotle, represents the core of the "unwritten doctrine" of Plato. In other words, rephrasing the Parmenidean insight, all visible manifestations of Reality are misleading as to the essential nature of that Reality until marshalled to show the paradoxical nature of their evidence; likewise with the analytical tools of epistemology: the truly Real is only known at the point of collapse.

If Reality is held to be essentially potential, it must also be considered to be potent in the extreme. That it is no thing in particular, but potentially what may be made of it, may lie beneath the sense of liberation from darkness which we already associate with both the Classical and Renaissance epochs. Bruno's "infinity of worlds" owes much to it; his world view was steeped to a degree hard to imagine in such a theory of Being. [xlix] For example:

The light contains the first life, intelligence, unity, all species, perfect truths, numbers, grades of things. Thus what in nature is different, contrary, diverse, is there the same, congruent, One.

And, despite this acknowledgement of categorical collapse at the heart of Being, we find the theory of the Forms still alive and well, apparently, for Bruno, not invalidated by its supposed dialectical demolition in the Sophist and the Parmenides:

The formation of things in the lower world is inferior to true form, a degradation and vestige of it. Ascend, then, to where the species are pure, and formed with true form.

The theory of Being, the theory of Forms, and interestingly, also the logic and practice of magical processes, were connected in the mind of Bruno:

Of all the forms of the world, the pre-eminent are the celestial forms. Through them you will arrive from the confused plurality of things at the unity. Parts of the body are better understood together than when taken separately. Thus when the parts of the universal species are not considered separately but in relation to their underlying order, what is there that we may not... understand, and do? [l]

Is this collocation of theurgic magic and philosophy implicit also in the writings of Plato, or is this the enthusiastic invention of the Renaissance neoplatonists? It is well known that theurgy was a major interest of the original neoplatonists, including Proclus, a major commentator on Plato and the last head of the Academy. The answer is that Plato too understood there to be an important connection between the ontology discussed in his dialogues, and the arts of men who practice forms of magic. This is clear from the passage at Laws XI, 933, where he clearly distinguishes between two levels of magic:

now it is not easy to know the nature of all these things; nor if a man do know can he readily persuade others to believe him. And when men are disturbed in their minds at the sight of waxen images fixed either at their doors, or in a place where three ways meet, or upon the sepulchres of parents, there is no use trying to persuade them that they should despise all such things because they have no certain knowledge about them... he who attempts to... enchant others knows not what he is doing... unless he happens to be a prophet or diviner.

The penalties for the crime of witchcraft in the Laws are therefore different in the case of the witch and the prophet or diviner, for the prophet knows what he is doing. [li] Plato here distinguishes quite distinctly the phenomenon of magic as association of ideas, as a problem of knowledge, and magic as hinging upon certain knowledge, as dependent upon ontology.

The implications of this passage in the Laws are unequivocal: magic is an art associated with those who are capable of apprehending the world of Forms, and consequently it must be intimately bound up with Plato's view of reality. His ontology, epistemology, the practice of dialectic, etc, have to be understood as operating within this cultural context if we are to understand them at all, both historically and philosophically, and not, as has been the case since the Renaissance, understood to be free of the taint of things too foolish to be connected with the Dialogues - or even with philosophy at all.

This is an appropriate point at which to look at a Greek description of ultimate reality. This is expressed in terms of an image of this ultimate reality, rather than the reality itself. As Plato said, we need to look at a reflection of the Good (or God), in a darkened pool before we can safely apprehend the Good directly. In his account of the world which has been brought into existence (in the Timaeus) he speaks of it as a creature, as a living animal. This creature has no eyes because there is nothing beyond itself to see, no ears because there is nothing to hear; no limbs, since there is nothing to grasp, and nowhere for it to go.

This seems at first sight to be a very curious way of designating something which is alive, since it might be considered to be devoid of most of the characteristics which we associate with the living, but what we are reading involves a notion of living which we have lost:

And on the outside round about, it was made smooth with great exactness, and that for many reasons. For of eyes it had no need, since outside of it there was nothing visible left over; nor yet of hearing, since neither was there anything audible; nor yet was there any air surrounding it which called for respiration; nor, again, did it need any organ whereby it might receive the food that entered and evacuate what remained undigested. For nothing went out from it or came into it from any side, since nothing existed; for it was so designed as to supply its own wastage as food for itself, and to experience by its own agency and within itself all actions and passions, since He that had constructed it deemed that it would be better if it were self-sufficing rather than in need of other things. Hands, too, He thought He ought not to attach unto it uselessly, seeing they were not required either for grasping or for repelling anyone; nor yet feet, nor any instruments of locomotion whatsoever. [lii]

We might scratch our heads to understand why this should be a living creature at all: it does not move, does not see, hear, breathe, eat, and it exists where nothing exists. Yet Plato says that the creature possesses attributes which belong only to living creatures. Thus:

For movement he assigned unto it that which is proper to its body, namely, that one of the seven motions which specially belongs to reason and intelligence; wherefore He spun it round uniformly in the same spot and within itself and made it move revolving in a circle. [liii]

In some technical sense therefore, the living animal has reason and intelligence, and also ‘soul’:

And in the midst thereof He set Soul, which He stretched throughout the whole of it, and therewith He enveloped also the exterior of its body. [liv]

This is clearly an image of the heavens, with the seven rotating motions being represented by the seven Greek planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Sun and Moon). This identification is confirmed elsewhere in the Timaeus through an indication that in this image there is an angle of inclination between the path of the Sun and the celestial equator. The suggestion contained in this image is that it is a representation of divinity itself, and is a close copy.

The paradox of soul and reason putting on existence without physical animation is discussed in a famous passage in the Sophist, which tells us that Plato understood something of our problem with the notion of a ‘living animal’ rotating in solitary and unregarded splendour. [lv]

The living animal is alive because it has motion, proper to itself. It reasons because there is change represented in the motions of the planets. These planets, from the point of view of the earthbound observer, do not move in simple linear motion around the heavens, but sometimes perform retrograde motions before once again moving in a forward direction. The designation ‘planet’ is derived from the Greek ‘planetes’, meaning ‘wanderer’. Thus the image suggests that decision making is taking place within the Living Animal. The creature possesses Soul, since the idea of the soul refers to the participation of the Living Animal in the nature of the divine. Thus its nature and attributes are shaped by the ground of Being, which is God, and it in a sense is tethered to it. Soul is all through it, since God is perfect in all respects. Thus a copy of the divine must have many things in common with the perfection, the completeness of the divine, though it is different from it, and not the same in all respects. The paradoxical nature of reality, the unfathomableness of the divine, must also be present in the copy.


[i] Cherniss, Harold The Riddle of the Early Academy, 1945.
[ii] Sophist 256e for example, in connection with motion; Soph. 249b-d; see also the Parmenides 133b-134c.
[iii] Jowett, in his introduction to the Parmenides argues that the Platonic Ideas were in constant process of growth and transmutation; sometimes veiled in poetry and mythology, then again emerging as fixed Ideas, in some passages regarded as absolute and eternal, and in others as relative to the human mind, existing in and derived from external objects as well as transcending them... Their transcendental existence is not asserted, and is therefore implicitly denied in the Philebus: different forms are ascribed to them in the Republic, and they are mentioned in the Theaetetus, the Sophist, the Politicus, and the Laws, much as universals would be spoken of in modern books... the perplexities which surround the one and many in the sphere of the Ideas are... attended to in the Philebus, and no answer is given to them... To suppose that Plato, at a later period of his life, reached a point of view from which he was able to answer them, is a groundless assumption. Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, vol. IV, p 6-7.
[iv] Interestingly, in defining the action of the gods as passive contemplation, Aristotle reproduces the extreme Parmenidean form of Plato's Ideal theory, in which the Form of the Good is unchanging and unchangeable. In Bk. X of the Ethics Aristotle characterizes the activity of the divine as contemplation. The gods are living beings from whom all forms of activity have been removed. "...if a being lives, and action cannot be ascribed to him,... what remains but contemplation? It follows, then, that the divine life, which surpasses all others in blessedness, consists of contemplation". (Nic. Eth. X. 8. 7., F. H. Peters trans.)
[v] Tim. 42a.
[vi] Tim 31b-c
[vii] Tim 31c-32a
[viii] Rep. 511b-c
[ix] Accordingly beauty is important in awakening the soul to the reality of the world of the Forms through recollection.
[x] Rep. 592b; 499a.
[xi] Tim 28c
[xii] Barnes, Jonathan Early Greek Philosophy, "Parmenides", p135 (Frag. 8.38), drawn from Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics 144.25-146.27
[xiii] Guthrie, W.K.C. A History of Greek Philosophy, vol.II, p50 Frag. 8.50.
[xiv] Guthrie, W.K.C. Op Cit, vol.II, p34. Frag. 8.29
[xv] Cornford, F.M. Plato's Theory of Knowledge, p221.
[xvi] Frag. 8.43
[xvii] 244d-e
[xviii] 245a
[xix]245c
[xx] 245d
[xxi] 245e
[xxii] Soph.248c.
[xxiii] Soph. 248c
[xxiv] 248d
[xxv] There is a minor textual problem concerning the identity of the speaker at this point in the dialogue which does not affect the sense of the argument - see L. Campbell, Sophistes, p128
[xxvi] 248e.
[xxvii] Soph. 248e-249a. Lewis Campbell comments, in addition to noting the allusion to the statues of the gods, that there is a striking passage in the Laws (967 a-e) ‘where it is said that the deepest study of astronomy, instead of encouraging the notion of a blind necessity, leads directly to the supposition of a celestial mind or minds.’ Sophistes and Politicus, Oxford, 1867, p129. Reprinted by the Arno Press, New York, 1973.
[xxviii] We are not generally accustomed to imagine that belief is something for which sound arguments can be supplied, though christian religious history provides numerous examples of the use of philosophy to support the foundation of these.
[xxix] Note also frag. 26.1 of Xenophanes (Guthrie, op. cit., vol. II, p37., n2.) Guthrie comments on this earlier example, where Parmenides "deliberately called up in our minds the image of Xenophanes' pantheistic god, who 'always remains in the same place, not moving at all' (in connection with Parmenides frag. 8.29sqq., quoted earlier).
[xxx]249a
[xxxi]249a
[xxxii]249b
[xxxiii] 249c-d
[xxxiv] Tim 52b
[xxxv] 247c
[xxxvi] aschematismos
[xxxvii] 247c-d
[xxxviii] Tim 52a
[xxxix] That the divine was understood to be beyond our comprehension at least as early as the 6th century we have only to look at the reply of the oracle at Delphi to Croesus as to whether or not he should make war against the Persians (Hdt. Bk. 1.49): "I know the number of the sands, and the measure of the sea; I understand the dumb, and hear him that does not speak..." These things are impossible, and are concrete images of the impossible. The gods have powers beyond our capacity to understand, to the point where they transcend the categories of knowing. The corollary of this is that the Being of the gods is likewise beyond all mortal definition.
[xl] Tim 28c
[xli] See Phaedrus 275c-d, where Socrates says: "He who thinks... anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person... if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him who knows the matter about which they are written". And at 277e-278b: "...in the written word there is necessarily much that is playful, and... no written discourse deserves to be treated very seriously... the best of them really serve only to remind us of what we know...."
[xlii] "And how could he, who trusted the Gods, think that there were no Gods?" Memorabilia Bk 1 ch.1.5
[xliii] Compare for example lines 116-128 of Hesiod's Theogony.
[xliv] Tim 30a.
[xlv] Plato vol. IV, trans. H.N. Fowler, London and Harvard 1920, p196-7.
[xlvi] op. cit.,"Epilogue", p181.
[xlvii] op. cit. p182-3; compare for example Husserl's concept of Transcendental Intersubjectivity, in his Cartesian Meditations; compare also Tim. 31b-32a.
[xlviii] op. cit. p183
[xlix] His first book, the De Umbris Idearum, draws from Ficino's De Vita Coelitus Comparanda, the latter being the first to undertake the systematic translation of Plato into Latin. Both Ficino and Bruno drew also upon the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius, which they imagined to be pre-Platonic, but which in fact date from the time of the Roman empire. See Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 1964, Ch. XI p195.
[l] Yates, Frances. A. The Art of Memory, p222-3. These quotations come from Giordano Bruno's De Umbris Idearum, 1582.
[li] Trans. Jowett, Dial. Plat. vol. V. p322-3
[lii] Plato, Timaeus, 33b-34a. Loeb edition.
[liii] Plato, Timaeus, 34a. Loeb edition.
[liv] Plato, op. cit. 34a. The seven motions are also referenced at 43b, and the ‘rotatory’ motion of reason is referenced at Laws 898a. Compare also Tim. 37a, 42c, 47d, 77b.
[lv] Plato, Sophist, 248e.