A Platonic Pedigree

In the programmatic statements at the beginning of Plato's Timaeus, there is an implied configuration of connections that has become canonical in the Platonic tradition. For a start, the Timaeus is set upon the festival of the Panathenea - visitors from Magna Grecia are in Athens for the "festival of the goddess". This is the same narrative device around which the dialogue called 'Parmenides' is framed and so we are surely supposed to see a connection between the two works. Thus in the Platonic tradition these two works were seen as complementary, one concerning cosmology and the other metaphysics. But, as Socrates speaks, we are also told that the day before he had given an account of the Ideal City and he gives a summary of the first part of the dialogue called the Republic - now he wants to see the ideal state in action - and so we are surely to see a connection with that work as well. The Republic, of course, is regarded as Plato's masterpiece, and is central among Plato's writings. In this configuration it is linked with the Timaeus and the Parmenides such that the Platonic tradition has often seen these three works as a set, and as the core of the Platonic corpus.

 

Accordingly, we can distinguish three great streams of Platonism, and Platonists (a very broad category) are usually of one of these three complexions. There are those whose primary focus is metaphysics (Parmenides), those whose focus is the political/sociological/psychological and ethical Plato of the Republic, and then there are those whose Platonism is essentially cosmological (Timaeus). Needless to say, these areas overlap, and we are schematizing, but there are nonetheless three main directions in which Platonic thought is developed. It is a useful model.

Of the three, the path of the Republic is by far the most common. That is, most Platonism is a development of the doctrines and teachings of the Republic, which is also to say it is Socratic. We can distinguish between three wider traditions that extend out from Plato's key works: the Socratic, the Eleatic and the Pythagorean. Socrates is the hero of the Republic, but the Parmenides is - in a sense - anti-Socratic (since Father Parmenides puts young Socrates in his place) and the Timaeus is - in a sense - non-Socratic (it is a long uninterrupted monologue by Timaeus of Locri in which Socrates plays no part.) Socrates is the key figure in Platonic ethics, but the Platonic metaphysical tradition leads to Parmenides and the Eleatics and the cosmological tradition leads to the Pythagoreans. (Yes, we might say that Socrates - at least Plato's Socrates - was a Parmenidean and a Pythagorean, but the distinctions are still meaningful.)

Platonists tend to diverge along these lines and then pursue the Platonic tradition in one of these directions. This is testimony to the sheer fecundity of Plato: not only was his forehead broad (Platon), but his philosophy is of such extraordinary breadth that it is the starting point of great highways of thought. Or to use a different metaphor Plato is the great progenitor of many remarkably rich intellectual pedigrees. 

For example, Socratic ethics lies at the root of the later and largely Roman Stoic tradition. We can map it thus:

 

The reputed founder of Stoicism, Zeno, is said to have been inspired by Socrates, and Stoicism is built upon and develops several central themes of Socratic asceticism. But more generally Stoicism is the fruit of the Socratic revolution - documented in the Platonic dialogues - that shifted the emphasis of ancient philosophy to ethical questions - Socrates' question was 'How should one live?' - as opposed to the cosmological preoccupations (the search for the arche) of the Presocratics. Those who pursue the Socratic ethical tradition are very likely to embrace Stoicism as its natural, practical extension. Alternatively, they are drawn to Christian ethics which are themselves deeply influenced by the Stoicism of Epictitus, underpinned by parallels between Socrates of Athens and Jesus of Nazareth as moral heroes. In any case, this is a road to Rome: either the secular ethics of the Latin Stoics or the ethical soteriology of Christianity.

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Many roads from Plato, however, are diverted through Aristotle. Indeed, the discovery of the works of Aristotle by the Romans so changed the philosophical landscape that much of the Platonic heritage was subsumed by Aristoteleanism and the Peripetatics, and from that time on it became standard to read Plato through Aristotle and to blend the two together in various forms. This - Plato subsumed by Aristotle - became the major philosophical tradition of Western civilization. It was taken up by the Roman Church. Eastern Orthodoxy remained more properly Platonic - which is to say non-Aristotelean -, but in the West Aristotelean Platonism prevailed.  The following map illustrates one of the most illustrious intellectual pedigrees in Western history. Many friends and colleagues of the present author have taken this path.

 

The intrusion of Aristotle also gives rise to that school of ancient thought that nineteenth century scholars dubbed 'Neoplatonism'. This was not merely a case of Plato Revisited as the prefix neo- suggests. Rather, this is a Platonism (via so-called 'Middle Platonism') that has absorbed - along with much else - Peripatetic thought. This was a particularly rich synthesis and was subsequently influential in the Christian and Islamic traditions as ancient philosophy gave way to the monotheisms. In general, the mystical Platonism of both the Christians and the Muslims was a development of (Aristotle-infused) Neoplatonic thought rather than directly from Plato himself. Thus:

 

The place of Aristotle in a man's Platonism is telling. For much of the Middle Ages Christians and Muslims were happy to conflate and confuse Plato and Aristotle, or else sought to reconcile them. Famously, in Raphael's School of Athens they are complementary. But there is always that mode of Platonism that resists Aristotelean revision. Aristotle is a major intersection, but not all roads from Plato go through it.

 

 

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A great many Platonists, especially those of the metaphysical bent (and we might say non-Aristotelean ones), have been inclined to align Plato not with the monotheisms but with the non-dualist Vedanta of India. In the modern era especially, an acute problem for Platonists of any stripe is to situate themselves within a living, functioning philosophical and spiritual tradition. Classical academic Platonism is an arid museum. Where can a living Platonism, as a living discipline, be found?

There are some profound parallels between Platonic thought and Advita Vedanta - the works of Shankara in particular - so many Platonists take the road to India. This has been a notable trend among the present author's contemporaries. His mentor, the Platonist Roger Sworder, in search of a jnana yoga, made himself the student of Swami Chinmayanada on this basis - orthodox Hindu Vedanta. Vedanta non-dualism and Platonic metaphysics are certainly compatible. Similarly, some readers of the Republic, more political and sociological than metaphysical, find parallels between the vocational order described in Plato's Ideal Polity and the traditional Hindu social system and attempt a Platonic-Hindu synthesis as well. Political Traditionalism often takes this form.

Not all roads lead to India, however. The Platonic cosmology leads naturally in a quite different direction and finds few resonances in Indian thought. The cosmological stream has roots that are signaled in the Timaeus itself. The dialogue is prefaced by an account of Solon's (supposed) journey to Egypt where he is schooled by the Egyptian High Priests who chide the Greeks for being mere children. There is an Egyptian Plato. Indeed, strong ancient traditions report that Plato spent time there during his years of exile following Socrates' execution. Elements of the Egyptian Plato are part of the Neoplatonic synthesis, but the full debt of Plato to the Egyptian tradition has only been explored in recent times such as in the pioneering studies of another colleague of the present author, the Lithuanian scholar Algis Uzdyvinas. This brings us to an altogether different intellectual landscape. The Timaeus, rather than the Republic or the Parmenides, becomes the pivotal text. There is a cosmological path, as distinct from the metaphysical or ethical.

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As it happens, this has been the path of the author of these pages, and he has been pursuing it - down many side alleys - since he was a teenager. This is a different Platonic journey, leading to neither India nor Rome. Instead, he has pursued a different road, following a different pedigree, across several cultures, with the Timaeus the central juncture and its connections to Egypt primary. The most important link is between the Platonic cosmology and alchemy. This followed from the author's doctoral dissertation which argued that the Platonic Demiurge is a philosophical reconfiguration of the blacksmith god, Hephaestus. The smith is the prototype of the alchemist. A cosmology in which the cosmos is crafted by a smith-deity is inherently alchemical. The 'golden thread' of Platonism can be pursued into the alchemical traditions, which are themselves broad and rich. It is worth noting, though, that there is no alchemy in the Indian tradition. The Islamic and the Chinese traditions are alchemical. It is conspicuous that the Hindu tradition does not have an alchemical cosmology. That, for the present author, is a major point of divergence. From Athens he travels to Egypt and the cognate school of thought he first finds there is Hermeticism.

The following illustration shows the author's Platonic pedigree:

 

Despite appearances, this is a pursuit of a single, coherent line of Platonic thinking. There is a single configuration of philosophical ideas and mythological motifs nascent in Plato's cosmology that can be found across diverse traditions. It is (largely) non-Aristotelean; indeed, the present author has been happy to remove Aristotle from his reckonings altogether. Plato, in the Timaeus (and other works) participates in a very deep, ancient and widespread doctrine that has its ultimate roots in early metallurgical traditions: an alchymie primordiale. We find its reiterations across many ancient civilizations, albeit often as a 'secret' or a 'hidden' body of knowledge. For all his 'natural science' there is not the slightest sign that Aristotle had any acquaintance with this strand of Plato at all. In this sense, Aristotle is profane.

Again: the cosmological Plato cannot be neatly separated from Platonic metaphysics or psychology or ethics, but there are certain themes in Plato for which the Timaeus is the central text.

Some notes:

HERMETICISM

Note that Plato shows his familiarity with the Egyptian Hermes - Thoth - in the Phaedrus.

THE SOLOMONIC TRADITION

The Divine Craftsman of the Timaeus leads naturally to the Divine Architect and to the analogy of temple and cosmos. In the Judaic monotheisms this strand of doctrine and symbolism is associated with Solomon. Note too that this tradition includes the Platonic Eros, eg. the Song of Solomon.

SUFISM

Mevlevi (Turkish) Sufism specifically. The Mevlevi debt to Plato is signalled in traditions that place Plato's tomb at Konya (Conium). Mevlevi spirituality combines the Platonic cosmology - in the form of an astro-cosmological dance - with the Platonic Eros (Rumi's Path of Love), absorbed within an Islamic framework.

ISLAM

Traditional Islam as a whole is a deeply Platonic spirituality and even more so on its esoteric layers. There is, specifically, an emphasis on The One, and the mode of knowing The One is through recollection (dhikr).

GOETHE

Although usually unacknowledged, Plato's threefold anthropology is developed in the Goethean sciences, most prominently in the works of Rudolf Steiner (who, regrettably, wedded it to Theosophy.)


PERSIA

At every point, Persia is in the background. The Greeks defeated the Persians, but the Greek tradition (Plato is an example) was transformed by the contact. Ultimately, it is Persia that is the great seed bed of these traditions. Moreover, the deeper connections between Plato and Islam are found in the Shia schools more than the Sunni, as Henry Corbin exposed.

CHINA

From Persia, the silk road to China. Certain schools of Taoist alchemy and Neo-Confucian thought are strongly Platonic. The mythological background of Plato's Timaeus has deep parallels in early Chinese mythology. On the face of it, Chinese thought would seem to have little in common with Plato, but this is deceptive. The cosmological or alchemical Plato has echoes throughout Chinese esotericism.

Readers of these pages might observe that the apparently eclectic interests of the author do (roughly) find a place in this schema. For a start, these are journeys eastwards. Whether they lead to India, Persia or China, these are adventures in orientalism. Once you cut Aristotle adrift, you are no longer heading to Rome and so the east beckons. The alchemical cosmology also embraces the traditional arts and crafts: art, craft, representation and the theory of work are all natural interests under the provenance of the Divine Craftsman. So too traditional medicine, astrology and related symbolisms.

As far as oriental thought is concerned, one must reckon with the intrusion of Buddhism which - strange to relate - is like an eastern Epicurianism run amok. The extent to which Buddhism was formed under Greek (Hellenic) influence is widely underappreciated, yet every statue of the Buddha from Ceylon to Japan is Greek. This is a matter for another post.