An extract from the book J.G. Frazer and the Platonic Theory of Being, which was published as an eBook on April 4, 2016. Available from Itunes, Barnes & Noble, Blio, Kobo, Inktera etc. Not currently available from Amazon. The extract is presented here without the footnotes:
Section Eleven
11.1. We now turn to examine what can be inferred of the
nature of the ultimate reality (Being) as conceived by Plato, given the
limitations of our intellectual tools.
11.2. 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.
11.3. 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 in Not-being as well as Being,
and are all around us: the division between the realm of intelligibles and
sensible form has broken down.
11.4. Is this a problem of epistemology only? Thus far the
major distinction between the realms is that whereas we can conceive of a form
of the Bad, such a notion is not given a formal reality by Plato since it is
regarded as an absence of Good. Yet when it is shown that the intelligibles
must be subject to change and to participate in Not-being, it cannot be argued
that there is a clear distinction between the epistemological and ontological
realms. Are we then to say that, after all, Plato confused epistemological and
ontological categories? This however would be to presume that it is reasonable
to make an absolute distinction between the epistemological and ontological
worlds: to presume that they are not inextricably bound up with one another.
Naturally if both the Forms and sensible objects possessed of souls and reason
owe their "existence" to a single substrate of reality (whatever that
might be), at some point they must be in contact with each other and to show
formal resemblance. However, although in practice things said about the Real
are drawn from the categories of our knowledge, we can only say that Plato
projected one into the other if his final definition of the Real is
apprehensible within the categories of knowledge. Since the Real is
apparently beyond our capacity to know, though the argument is carried out with
epistemological weapons, using subjective categories, Plato's ontology ought to
be beyond a mere projection of the categories of knowledge.
11.5. 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*[76].
11.6. In the Phaedrus *[77] 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*[78], and intangible truly existing essence, with which all true knowledge is concerned, holds this region and is visible only to the mind...*[79].
11.7. At Cratylus 424 we find that shape is
not to be admitted. Frazer's remark that "it is impossible for us to
accept the Platonic theory of causation, because it depends on Plato's
fundamental error, the bestowal of objective existence on subjective
abstractions"*[80] is thus virtually unfathomable. Whatever the
nature of Plato's theory of causation might be, it is increasingly clear that
his notion of reality bears no resemblance to that implicit in Frazer's
critique. A reality which apparently admits of no qualities and quantities
which might be apprehended through sense and known by intelligence, has no
point of contact with a theory of knowledge except at the point where that
theory breaks down: That is to say, it is a reality arrived at as
the result of a theory of knowledge being extended to the point of the collapse
of its integrity. It is not a reality established by an epistemology whose
explanatory power is refined to the ultimate degree: the
Platonic reality is known through the bankruptcy of the theory
of knowledge*[81].
11.8. The implication of an ultimate reality beyond any
human categorization except identity with itself*[82], 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 of which both change and the
unchanging are illusory substrates.
11.9. 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*[83]
11.10. 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 closely resemble chaos
- at the extreme of its nature it is forever beyond ordered interpretation.
