The Lumphini Zodiac

Modern sculptor for public spaces is, as everyone knows, almost uniformly hideous. It is said the modern architecture is the best argument there is against modernity, but in fact modern sculpture surpasses it in inanity and ugliness. Sadly, sculpture as an art form is debased beyond repair and has been so for over a century. Sculpture in the XXth century was completely undistinguished. Readers of these pages may have noticed that although the author has sometimes devoted space to examples of modern painting or other products of modernity that he has found worthy, in all his travels through perhaps twenty or more cities in India and Asia not a single item of modern sculpture has caught his attention. Every city has its parks and squares and malls and plazas, and all are adorned with commissioned works of modernist sculpture. Almost all of it - without exaggeration - is rubbish. 

It was with considerable surprise, therefore, that the author was ambling through the great green pleasantness of Lumphini Park in central Bangkok - of all places - recently, when he encountered an intriguing piece of modern sculpture that is certainly worthy of note. This is not because it is especially beautiful or elegant, but rather because it is on an arcane and esoteric theme and is of strikingly unusual but traditional conception. Most modern sculpture is abstract - where it is not just an assembly of junk - and lacks any coherent content. This work is an exception. The sculptor is a Siamese gentleman, Mr Thana Lauhakaikul, and the work was commissioned by the Thai-Japanese Association in 2007 on the auspicious occasion of His Majesty the King's eightieth birthday. It is officially entitled 'Sagittarius'.

 

The inspiration for the work came to Mr Lauhakaikul from the fact that the King, as also the Emperor of Japan, Akihito, are, according to the modes of Western astrology, born under the sign of the far-sighted archer centaur Sagittarius. Beloved King Bhumibol was born on the fifth day of December in 1927 and Emperor Akihito on December 23rd, 1933. The sculptor therefore decided upon an astrological theme to underline both the King's birthday and, at the same time, the one hundred and twenty years of Japanese-Thai diplomatic relations. The sculptor decided upon a depiction of the twelve signs of the Western zodiac in the form of a round, or rather oblong, table, to be constructed of metal and to be set in the lawns of Lumphini Park. 

The choice of the Western zodiac is interesting in context, because in Siam, as throughout the Orient, the Chinese zodiac, or some variation upon it, is widely preferred and the Western zodiac is rarely used. In this case, though - and this is what makes this work especially remarkable - the artist has seen fit to reinterpret the Western zodiac in an entirely oriental manner. Drawing upon symbolism and motifs that are entirely Sino-Asian he has decided to show the twelve signs of the zodiac as twelve turtle eggs arranged around a turtle shell which itself is inscribed with the spangled heavens. This is a deeply traditional and ancient symbolism. The curved, hemispherical turtle shell is a microcosmic representation of the upturned bowl of the sky and the cracks and markings and divisions of the shell are representative of the stars and constellations. Actually, we do find this exact symbolism in western sources - the Homeric Hymn to Hermes being the conspicuous instance - but it remains intact in oriental symbolism but is now gone from the common store of symbols in occidental cosmology. Happily, Mr Lauhakaikul has chosen to restore it, blending or rather re-uniting east and west. This is to say that his vision is not, in fact, syncretic, although it appears so. 

Please find the author's photographs of this intriguing sculpture, the Lumphini Zodiac, below:

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Plato's Tripartite Commonwealth

We often see Plato through the lens of either Neoplatonism or what might be loosely described as ‘Christian Platonism’, or an admixture of both, or else through some other lens that serves the same purpose, namely to deflect our attention from the original and primitive Plato, Platonica prima. The main effect of this deflection is always to install a mystical, otherworldly Plato and to obscure or even deny altogether the plain reality of the political Plato. For Plato was – let us reiterate an historical fact - first and foremost a political philosopher, and his Academy was, first and foremost, a school of statecraft. Not a school of Mysteries. Not a temple of religion. A school of statecraft. It is remarkable that over the last 2000 years Plato the political philosopher has rarely been studied as such, even by his most ardent followers. This is a testament to both his breadth and depth, certainly: he makes extraordinarily profound contributions to a full range of human undertakings from sociology to psychology to cosmology to literature to metaphysics. But Plato the political philosopher is often not given his due weight, or else – especially in these democratic times – he is subject to gross misrepresentations whether by conservatives like Leo Strauss or liberals like Karl Popper. Very often we hear sentiments to the effect that “I like Plato, but I ignore his fascist politics…” or similar, which is again an effort to sidestep the fact that his politics is central to who and what he was. People want Plato, but not the political Plato. In truth, though, you cannot have it that way. If one wants to fully engage with Plato, with the Platonica prima, one must grapple with Plato as political philosopher. These days, this is territory fraught with more misunderstanding than almost any other.

The modest purpose of this posting, therefore, is to clarify certain aspects of Plato’s political philosophy, especially as revealed to us in his masterwork the Republic. As in all other fields, of course, we encounter a rich and varied range of views in the Platonic dialogues, and it would be fatally wrong to suppose that there is a systematic Platonic programme. Much of what we find in the Republic is contradicted in the Laws, and vice versa, or in other dialogues. All the dialogues are political in one way or another, although Plato himself speaks in none of them. Yet the Academy was a school of statecraft and in this it had an objective and purpose beyond just exposing students to a range of disparate views. We can take it that there is a definite Platonic politics, but it is rich and deep rather than narrow and sectarian. We can be sure, for instance, that Platonic politics is anti-democratic (it was the Athenian democracy that put Socrates to death, after all), and yet it is also within the range of the Platonic political tradition that there are times and circumstances in which democracy is to be the preferred form of governance. Indeed, all modern political positions have found succor in Plato: there are elements in Platonic politics that are compatible with conservatism, liberalism, communism, fascism, anarchism, monarchism, technocracy, the full range. This is part of the difficulty for modern readers. To be sure, Plato was an aristocrat, and his politics is aristocratic - rule of the best - not democratic - rule of the most - but at the same time his dialogues are replete with craft analogies and allusions showing a deep sympathy for every aspect of manual labour and the labouring class. To appreciate and engage with Platonic politics one must step outside of all the usual political categories, Left and Right, and come at the problem of politics from a completely fresh beginning.

One further point: it is also necessary – and a difficult thing for any modern reader of Plato, whether they are aware of it or not – to put Aristotle aside and not to give in to the ever-present temptation to read the political Plato through any form of Aristotelean filter. Modern man is much more Aristotelean than Platonic in all his habits of mind. If we want the Platonica prima we must stop being modern, step outside of all the political assumptions that have prevailed throughout the modern era, but also stop being Aristotelean and stop reading Plato as being in any way connected to Aristotle. Aristotle’s politics, that is, tells us nothing about Plato’s politics. We can only arrive at the Platonica prima by careful, meticulous and repeated reading of the Platonic corpus in and of itself. We should adopt this as an ironclad desideratum of study. Any study of Plato’s politics that begins with the cliche that Aristotle said that man is a political animal is off on the wrong foot.

* * *

The fundamental premise of Platonic politics is that it is possible to eliminate structural violence in a state. The elimination of violence – which is to say conflict – is the prime objective of all Platonic politics. In this it is diametrically opposed to Marxism, for example, which is built upon a foundational theory of class conflict. For the Marxist self-interested conflict is the very bedrock of politics, and it is impossible to escape. Democratic theory is built on this premise as well. It supposes that there are a range of conflicting interests always vying for control and that the best that can ever be achieved is a sort of equilibrium of interests with “checks and balances” that convert the conflict into orderly electoral battles rather than outright civil war. A democracy, that is, is civil war without blood. Every election leaves 49% of the population vanquished and unhappy. Parliament is warfare by proxy.

Plato rejects this view and supposes, as a matter of principle, that it is possible to harmonize rival interests into a coherent state. He proposes that the best, most rational and most righteous order results in a polis that is an harmonious, organic unity in which all conflicting interests are reconciled. Plato’s view of the polis is organic. He thinks of all parts constituting a single organism. His greatest dread is civil war (real or symbolic) since it represents the organism that is at war with itself and therefore weakened internally Plato’s political values are organic: harmony, unity, cohesion. Peace and harmony, furthermore, are, in the Platonic reckoning, what people desire most of all. This should not be mistaken for a *pacifist* position – we are talking only of structural violence, the violence of one class or one caste against another. For the Marxist, or other radicals – agitators and troublemakers all - peace is a soporific and deluded condition that only ever suits the privileged rulers. Platonic politics seeks a real peace through the restoration of political coherence, the state of good government, eunomia.

From Laws 628c:

The best is neither war nor faction - they are things from which we should pray to be spared - but rather peace and mutual good will.

Importantly, this harmony is possible, in the Platonic view, without it being at the expense of any particular part of society. All sections and classes can flourish in an organic harmony without the prosperity and happiness of one group being to the detriment of another. This is the principle argument of the Republic. The sophist, Thrasymachus – and then others who take up his case – argues that justice is the same as ‘might is right’. The core arguments of the Republic are dedicated to refuting this age-old claim. It is a dispute that continues to this day. It is not only at the heart of the Republic but an issue at the heart of Western civilization. One can, of course, establish organic unity in a polis by brute force – this is the strategy of the fascist. In that case, the powerful reign, and are justified in doing so because they are the strong. The weak must suffer to be ruled because they are weak. Strength and power are the criteria. (The Thrasymachus argument has resurfaced in the syphilitic nihilism of Nietzche and his ‘Will to Power’.) But, Plato wants to say, this is not justice. It is the advantage of the strong at the expense of the weak. The political unity that Plato envisages, on the other hand, is above all just. Justice is the great theme of the Republic. And the principle of justice that is offered there – against the doctrine of ‘might is right’ – is: justice is rendering to each what befits him, or, as it is put at Republic 433a:

Justice is doing one’s own work and not meddling with what isn’t one’s own. 

Marx steals a version of this idea in his celebrated formula: from each according to his means, to each according to his needs.

This, though, we must hasten to add, is not the same as “equality”. There is nothing just about making the unequal equal, and the modern cult of equality – a cult that plagues all democracies and about which Marxists obsess - violates the Platonic principle of justice (each according to his own) at every turn. Equality is precisely the doctrine of busy-bodies and the meddlesome who are always anxious that someone might have something more than someone else. People are naturally unequal and justice allows them to be so, but without, at the same time, the temptation of ‘might is right’ and one party oppressing another. It is important not to fall into false dichotomies here. In a key statement in the Republic 351d we are told:

Injustice causes civil war, hatred, and fighting, while justice brings friendship and a sense of common purpose.

So, to recap: the good polity is (1) unified, harmonious and organic and (2) founded upon justice, not power (or spurious notions of equality.) 

A third feature of Platonic politics follows: politics must be rooted in reality. A state must be grounded in the psychological realities of man and, further than that, the cosmological realities of the world, and even further still, the metaphysical realities of eternity. This last is important because it is a psychological reality that man is a spiritual being and not merely an animal. It is to the great credit of the Platonic political outlook that it includes the spiritual within its purview. Modern atheistic doctrines such as Marxism, or nihilistic ones such as Nietzcheanism, and even more so the shallow consumerism of capitalism offer grotesque underestimations of the human reach. Not so Plato. There is no breach between the political and the mystical. Platonic politics is a spiritual and mystical discipline. It is a conspicuous feature of Platonic philosophy that it is every bit as concerned with the eternal verities of Heaven as with the practical governance of a polity. This is because it acknowledges the real extent of the human spirit and it is inhuman not to do so.

In any case, Plato is a realist. Politics must adhere to the real. The organicism of the state must conform to the realities of man, cosmos and Heaven. For practical purposes, in the context of the Republic, this means observing the fundamentally tripartite nature of human beings in their incarnate predicament. In particular, in human psychology Plato identifies three distinct natures: the intellectual nature, the ‘spirited’ (emotive) nature, and the appetitive nature. These are based, respectively, in the three regions of the human frame: the head, the chest, the lower organs. All people are made up of these three parts and three powers. In reality, though, some are more given to one than to another. So, for instance, some people are more given to intellection than to sports and physical contest, because the intellectual nature predominates in them over the spirited (thumos) nature. And others are slothful and given to physical passions and gormandizing and give no time to intellect or to acts of courage. Some people are thinkers, some are makers, some are given to feats of courage. In some people - craftsmen - their intelligence is in their fingers. There is, we might say, the trinity: head, heart and hand. These three types are explained in the Republic in great detail, and conform to ideas set out in other Platonic dialogues at length. We cannot rehearse or explore all the expositions of them here, but this is the reality of which Plato speaks. People are not all the same. There are different temperaments, different types, different dispositions. Justice consists in acknowledging that this is so – in careful conformity with both human and cosmic reality and always avoiding the abyss of subjectivity - and allowing each type to be as they are. Government must be adapted to people as they truly are at every level.

Plato is often dismissed as an idealist. Nothing could be further from the truth. He carefully describes human psychological realities and insists that government must be based upon them. He is for government with deep roots in the Real. It is, in fact, the modern political philosophies that are based on nothing more than wishful thinking or perverse miscalculations of the human estate. The Marxist cult of equality is the most catastrophic example of this in our times, but the empty materialism of capitalism is just as grotesque. The crudely naturalistic libertarian premise that life is a jungle is perverse as well. It is in our own era that we have witnessed unprecedented chaos, disruption, upheaval and carnage from attempts to impose fantasized ideologies upon an uncooperative reality.

* * *

Since politics is based in the reality of man, Plato proclaims the crucial parallel: “Man and city are alike,” Republic, 577d. The three temperaments of man give rise to three basic castes: the intellectuals, the guardians (army) and the producers/consumers. A just state allows each of these groups to go about their proper work receiving what is due to them in terms of benefits and burdens and without any of them interfering in the proper work of the others. The Platonic vision, that is to say, is essentially vocational. In the Republic Plato outlines a vision of a society that is based on integral vocations. In a spiritualized form, this exact same doctrine appears in the Bhagavad Gita and other traditional texts as a karma yoga – the notion that a man finds fulfillment through doing the work to which he is born. Nothing could be further from the industrialized degradations of work. The nature and quality of work – and not merely the quantity of “employment” – is at the very heart of Platonic politics. Justice is where a man can do his proper work, the work which conforms to his temperament and nature and for which he has the greatest aptitude. An economic order in which an artist must drive taxis all day instead of making art is, by Platonic values, an abomination. And so too is a political order in which a businessman or a plumber – acting as meddlesome people - displace those who have real aptitude for leadership. In a just polity, businessman stick to business, plumbers stick to plumbing and leaders lead. This is not a matter of chance: Plato’s fabled republic, his hypothetical ‘Ideal State’ is structured exactly to this end.

Plato therefore posits three castes with three distinct functions, this arrangement corresponding to the psychology of man. There are the intellectuals, or the philosophers, who direct the laws and leadership of society – this because they are the wisest and the most objective in their judgments. There are the guardians, or the soldiers, who protect the state but who are too given to emotion to be wise rulers. And there is the producer class who are concerned with the appetites, the provision of goods, but who are too greedy to rule. Each of these groups are separate and look after their own functions without unwarranted meddling from the other groups. The three castes engage in mutually beneficial enterprise and together serve the common good.

Concerning the philosophers of the Ideal Polity, let us state this loud and clear – in fact, it ought to be emblazoned in huge lettering across the surface of the Moon for everyone on earth to see: Plato is in no way proposing that the characters who make up the philosophy department at Oxford and their ilk ought to be handed the reins of power! His “philosopher-kings” are not in any way those tiresome pedants who go by the name “philosopher” in modern times. Instead, he proposes a class of born contemplatives who are trained in rigorous objectivity (through maths, geometry, music etc) and who are imbued with an abiding, lifelong and transcendent love of wisdom. Plato is concerned to find a class of people who are above the squabbles of self-interest. This is the only way to rise above the state of conflict and to bring structural violence to an end. In any society at any time there is a small elite of such individuals. Plato wants to find them, nurture them and entrust them with ultimate power.

To ensure the philosopher-kings are free of self-interest and are fixed upon the common good, however, Plato proposes heavy strictures upon them. They are deprived of personal wealth and they are removed from family life. These are quite infamous provisions in the Republic, but critics – such as Popper – fail to mention that they only apply to the philosophic class and not to the population as a whole. In a notorious misrepresentation of this Aristotle says that Plato proposed a general communism, and Plato-haters have been happy to accept it. The provisions of the Republic are clear, however. And the reason for the provisions is also clear. The rulers – and only the rulers – are to be deprived of wealth and family life to keep them absolutely free of corruption and nepotism. Plato is perfectly aware that power corrupts. He goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his philosopher-kings are kept as pristine and as unsullied as possible. An enemy of freedom and an open society? Not at all. But power is a burden. The philosopher-kings – the intellectual caste – have their freedoms curtailed precisely because they are invested with power over the state. Plato’s philosopher-kings live like austere monks. Need we compare this ideal with the corruption and nepotistic abuses of almost any modern leader – in democracies as much as in tyrannies – that one cares to mention? The problem the Republic confronts is: how do we find a wise ruling elite that will govern with absolute impartiality for the common good of all citizens above and beyond the squabbles of class conflict?

The whole of modern politics according to Platonic analysis, let us note, concerns the incessant warfare of two sub-classes. They are described in the Republic. They are the “hoarders” and the “spendthrifts” – two sub-classes of the appetitive (productive/consumer) caste, or, as we know them today, “capital” and “labour”. These sub-groups, who emerged as rivals in modernity, are always at each other’s throats and are always seeking power in order to promote their own interests. Plato is not sympathetic to either of them. He wants to set a higher elite (the intellectual caste) – along with the army (the spirited caste) – over each of them in order to safeguard the common good. Such is the practical stance of Platonic politics: the Platonist seeks ways to promote the common good against the self-interested depravity of both the businessmen and the workers. In this sense he is outside of the main game altogether. He supports neither the Tories nor Labour, neither Republican nor Democrat. He is more interested in those institutions that rise above the affray. In British politics, for instance, he is perhaps more interested in the impartiality of the Crown, and in American politics the inviolability of the Constitution. In the political contest, he cheers for the umpire. The umpire represents the objective good of all, not one side or the other in a destructive battle of self-concern. In contemporary practice, Platonic politics is often reactionary, since it looks to the restoration of those traditional institutions - such as monarchy and aristocracy - which were displaced by the modern tussle of capital and labour. Monarchy is not the best form of government, but from a Platonic point of view it has many of its features; it is vocational and potentially objective. A king can sometimes be bought, as someone once said, but a democracy is always for sale.

* * * 

The full arrangement of the tripartite commonwealth in the Republic is as follows:

1. The caste of Philosopher-Kings. The smallest caste. The elite. They have leisure for philosophical contemplation and power but not wealth and not family life. Note well that members of this caste are drawn from throughout society: children of philosophical aptitude are recruited from the lower castes.

2. The caste of Guardians. They enjoy military honours but not leisure.

3. The caste of Producers and Consumers. The largest group by number. The “masses”. They have family life, free enterprise and wealth but not power or honors.

In each case, each group undertakes the task to which they are naturally suited according to their innate propensities or, in other words, their vocation. Philosophers are philosophers and can live accordingly. Soldiers are soldiers, traders are traders and carpenters are carpenters. They perform the tasks they are suited to do and in this are united in a single organic community of mutual interest. In a healthy organism every organ plays its proper role and contributes to the health of the whole. In a single man intellect, spiritedness (thumos) and the appetites all contribute to his functional well-being. A properly constituted state is no different. 

* * * 

This is a brief exposition of the politics of the Republic. Justice, then, is not the right of the strong and the advantage of the strongest as Thrasymachus and others would have it. It is the right of the best to the advantage of all. The vision of the ideal polity offered in the Republic, all the same, is admittedly hypothetical. Too many readers of Plato have taken the prescriptions in that work to be a firm programme of activism. There are enough signals in the text to let us know that it was never intended in that way. Socrates’ city is ‘writ in Heaven.’ Plato was no fool. The Republic must be understood as a book of instruction for contemplative use in the Academy, the school of statecraft, not as a manifesto for action. In the later dialogue Laws, Plato – probably looking to the wise example of his forebear, Solon - replaces the reign of the Philosopher-Kings with the rule of the best laws as delivered by a wise legislator. This is less than ideal, but shows us a more practical set of proposals and principles.

Platonic political analysis is concerned to expose and map self-interest, to promote the common good above self-interest, and to understand the proper role of various interests in a state as well as all the ways in which that proper role is infringed upon by others. At the core of Platonic social doctrine is a concern for the integrity of work. The Republic charts the disintegration of the whole, unified tripartite commonwealth into successively more chaotic and debauched forms of government with democracy – the triumph of subjectivity and relativism – the lowest of them and a prelude for tyrrany.

* * * 

Post-script

The tripartite commonwealth of Plato found a strange champion in early XXth century Germany in the person of the mystic theosopher Rudolf Steiner. For a brief period after World War I Steiner promoted the idea of a "threefold state" in which three departments of the state are all kept independent of each other but all work for the common good. Steiner's version, though, is a modernist rendering heavily infected with his theosophical (or as he had it 'anthroposophical') concessions to "spiritual evolution" and the like. He equates the three parts of his proposed state to the three mottos of the French Revolution: equality, fraternity, liberty. This is certainly not Plato, but it cannot be denied that Steiner was borrowing from the Republic wholesale.

It is curious to note that a certain follower of Steiner, the American architect Walter Burley Griffin, won the contest for the design of the new capital city of Australia with a threefold plan that embodies the idea of the tripartite commonwealth. The city of Canberra is thus designed. Alas, there is nothing Platonic in the actual form of Australian governance.

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Sino-Portuguese Style

One of the great and enduring sociological mysteries is how the Jews and the Chinese are able to establish small minority communities in hostile countries throughout the world, endure oppression and indignity, and yet thrive in and often out-compete the societies that oppress them. The Jews and the Chinese have an unusual gift for adaptation. They prosper wherever they go, even in the most unfavorable circumstances. For this they are subject to resentment, suspicion and conspiracy theories, because it is devilishly difficult to give any reasonable account of exactly how they manage it. What is it in these communities that allows them to adapt and thrive against all odds? What, moreover, enables them both to adapt to the societies in which they live as minorities and yet maintain a strikingly robust sense of their own identity and traditions with remarkable endurance and continuity?

In regards to the Chinese, it is a question that has occupied this present writer since arriving in South-East Asia many months ago and travelling through the historical centres of the Straits Chinese, that being the Chinese (mainly from the southern regions of China) who, centuries ago, migrated to various parts of the Malacca Straits. The prosperous state of Singapore is the most outstanding instance of their success, but in other places too – Penang, Phuket, southern Thailand – they have been remarkably successful. In Malaysia, more than a few people the author encountered told him candidly that “The Chinese are the brains of the outfit.” They are a minority in Malaysia, and increasingly uncomfortable in the face of creeping Islamization in that country, yet, despite the odds, their history has been illustrious and they are more successful in business, arts, law – every field – than the native Malays. The Malays resent this, but the fact of the matter is that without the straits Chinese Malaysia would, very likely, become a second-rate affair. 

In Siam, further up the peninsula, it is a similar story. The Chinese element constitutes some 40% of the population – this element, and not the ethnic Thais alone, constitutes the real genius of the place. The Chinese came for trade and tin mining. They stayed and, somehow, have become disproportionately prosperous. Wherever they go, the Chinese make a profound contribution. Those places from which they have been chased away, as the author has also seen – Calcutta and Cochin in India, for example, both of which once boasted thriving Chinese populations which are now departed – are that much poorer without a Chinese dynamic.

No doubt, much depends upon a capacity for hard work. The Chinese work like dogs. But there are other factors, surely, as well. One of them seems to be a great capacity for the creative appropriation of elements from other cultures; this, and an unfailing sense of what is and is not essential in their own. The author has been witness to examples of this throughout his travels among the Straits communities in the form of so-called Sino-Portuguese architecture. This is the style of architecture that the Straits Chinese created in their new home and in which they built monuments to their industry, success and prosperity. Shop-houses – also called “link houses” – are the most common example of Sino-Portuguese architecture to be seen, but the Chinese magnates and tycoons who grew fabulously rich on trade in the Malacca Straits built mansions and palaces in this style as well. Many of them are still intact and ,happily, many private residences are now open for public viewing.

The term “Sino-Portuguese” is not entirely appropriate, or at least the “Portuguese” part of it is not. Sure enough, the Portuguese were among the first Europeans to arrive and establish a presence in South-East Asia, but in fact they had little direct impact upon the hybrid architectural styles of the area. The Dutch, French and even more so the English make a greater contribution. All the same, the word “Portuguese” became attached to this particular architectural hybridization, and in this sense it merely means “European” inasmuch as Europeans in general were referred to as “Portuguese”. Thus, “Sino-Portuguese” actually means no more than “Chinese slash European”, being a style created by the Chinese by combining elements of traditional Chinese domestic architecture with what they came to learn of various European styles, borrowing and adapting those features they saw fit. The maturity of the synthesis, moreover, did not come about until the late XIXth century – long, long after the Portuguese had disappeared from Asia, and in fact under the fullest expansion of the British Empire. Actually, the heyday of the style was the 1920s, and the fine examples still to be seen in such places as George Town and Phuket Old Town are from that illustrious period. 

So-called 'link houses' - or what are in Australia called 'terrace houses'. Single-fronted, two storey buildings. The ground floor was usually used as a shop or workshop with the upstairs for bedrooms and living space. They are narrow but deep and feature an interior air well. 

This page, below, offers a short folio of examples of the Sino-Portuguese style. The style is a particularly charming synthesis and illustrates the creative powers of adaptation typical of the Straits Chinese. This is an architecture that documents exactly how the Chinese of the Malacca Straits were able to establish themselves as such extraordinarily succesful communities. One characteristic deserves comment. Despite their minority status, and despite a history of oppression and discrimination, resentment does not figure prominently in the Chinese psychology. They are not a people burdened, for instance, with post-colonial angst. Unlike others, they looked upon Europeans with admiration and a determination to acquire those things worth acquiring. In this, as noted above, they were unshakeably secure in their own cultural and religious identity. They did not feel that acquiring the benefits brought by Europeans in any way threatened or compromised their own traditions and identity. This same unshakeable security is typical of the Jews as well. Regardless of how much they acquire of non-Jewish societal norms, their own religious and ethnic identity remains unthreatened.  This sense of security is a prerequisite to creative appropriations. 

We see the fruits of such self-security in the Chinese in the Sino-Portuguese style. It is confidently Chinese and regardless of how much it acquires from European styles it never compromises on this. Compare this to those peoples who have spent decades whining and moaning about "colonial oppression" without achieving much of anything. The Chinese know that the best way to defeat your oppressors is to be succesful. Nothing succeeds like success. This architecture is a testament to that strategy, above all. 

The Sino-Portuguese architecture of the Staits Chinese communities is unquestionably some of the most charming and elegant architecture in Asia. It is no accident that it is the product of a happy blend of oriental and occidental styles. As elsewhere, much of it is now surrounded by modernist cement monstrosities underlining the sad fact that little architecture of any consequence has been built since before the Second World War. 

* * * 

The link houses in Soi Romani (Love Lane) in Phuket Town. Previously brothels, now boutique guesthouses and coffee shops. 

The interior air well for light and ventilation is a characteristic feature of the style. 

The typical hemispherical window of the Sino-Portuguese style. 

* * *

A RESTORATION

The photographs below are of an old Sino-Portuguese home being restored in George Town, Prince of Wales Island. 

* * * 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The Circle of the Same - A Platonic Practice

Therefore, at all times remember Me with your mind and intellect fixed on Me. In this way, you shall surely come to Me...

Bhagavad Gita

The Platonic dialogues are not systematic and in this are so rich that they provide essential material for a range of philosophical – or, as we might say, spiritual – paths. Socratic dialectic offers an intellectual path of realisation whereby the very nature of thinking becomes a path back to the font of thought itself. The theory of Forms leads to the Vision of the One and the Good. To live as a philosopher for three incarnations in a row, we are told, leads to liberation from birth and death – a Platonic Nirvana. Then there is also a path of Love – Divine Eros – as described in several dialogues, and elsewhere a path of imagination and the metaphor of “growing spiritual wings” and the textual foundations of the Plotinian path of “becoming one’s Guardian Angel”, which is to say realizing the Form of one's Self. Plato offers many paths. Arguably, they all amount to the same thing, but they are suited to people of various temperaments and dispositions.

In the cosmological dialogue Timaeus a further path is outlined. We are told that man is the microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmic order, but that this parallel is disturbed or ruptured at birth. In the greater cosmos are the circles of Sameness and Difference – the great cosmic motions obeyed by the planets and the stars. These same motions, we are then told, prevail in the spherical cosmic form of the human cranium, and thus in the mind, and distinctions of sameness and difference form the very bedrock of mental activity. The travail of childbirth, however, knocks the internal circles of Sameness and Difference from their pre-natal alignment with the cosmic order. The inner cosmos is knocked out of its alignment with the outer cosmos – and such is the nature of mortal life. The objective of man in his life, therefore, is to mend this misalignment and to bring the inner circles of Sameness and Difference back into orbits aligned with the circles of the heavens making micro- and macrocosms unison and whole again.

This schema is the rationale for all conceptions of Platonic astrology. It is through the study of the stars, we are told, that we come to learn of the inner cycles of the mind. On this basis astrology is a philosophical path of self-knowledge and self-realisation. But there is also another method at least implicit in this dialogue of Plato’s, and implicit elsewhere in Plato as well. The mind, we are told, has become unruly and disordered. The challenge that the philosopher faces is to bring the mind back into order. This is the same task as being able to discern the Forms – the ordering of all intellectual structures then reveals the Form of the One and the Good, the Thought of Thoughts. In terms of the cosmological system given in the Timaeus, as already noted, this entails restoring the proper relation between the Circles of Sameness and Difference. The disordered mortal mind, in particular, is overcome by the erratic motions of the Circle of Difference. Cosmologically, this is the motion of the ever-wandering planets and their chaotic alternations of progression and regression. Beyond them lies the steady reliability of the fixed stars. In the heavens, the Circle of the Same counters the chaotic diversity of the Circle of the Different. It is from the steady, eternal motions of the Circle of the Same that the mortal microcosm has become dislodged. In life we are thrown around this way and that as our thoughts become dragged around in the Circle of the Different. 

Many, or perhaps most, spiritual methods make the same diagnosis, albeit in different terms. The human problem, it will be said, is the so-called “monkey mind” and its incessant chattering. In Plato’s terms, this is the product of the primal misalignment between inner and outer cosmos. We are carried along with the erratic motions of the Circle of the Different. Our thoughts move back and forwards in time, never able to fix upon the eternal present. The cure, then, is to still the chatter of this “monkey mind”, to learn to concentrate, to be in the present and no longer a victim of our own errant thoughts. Nearly all systems of meditation have this as their objective. Typically, for example, the meditator will fix their their hearing upon the ever-same rhythm of their breath. Then they are instructed to let all wandering thoughts wash past without participating in them. The objective is to eventually still the mind, to stop the inner chatter, to bring the mind back to clarity. In Platonic terms, the meditator finds a stillpoint – the steady rhythm of the breath – which then represents the Circle of the Same. By fixing upon such a stillpoint, in its sameness, it is possible to calm the raging inconstancies and vagarious meanderings of the Circle of the Different and to restore the cosmic order. The mortal condition is fitful and in flux. Meditation cures us of this “monkey mind” condition.

Exactly the same process is used in the so-called “perpetual prayer” found in various religious traditions. Its most ancient form is the “japa yoga” of the Hindoos. This consists of fixing the mind upon one of the Divine Names and repeating it, silently or aloud, over and over and over. The most famous case is the divine syllable OM which practitioners of japa chant or intone, within or without, unceasingly. Once again, in Platonic terms, this is to be understood as fixing upon a Circle of the Same in order to bring order back to the rambling irregularities of the Circle of the Different. The Divine Name is installed as an enduring foundation of sameness in the mind. Throughout the day our thoughts wander back and forward. We are sitting on the bus – our thoughts rove from snippets of old conversations, to anxieties about future events, to bits and pieces of advertising jingles, images from TV, our desire for new shoes, the argument with our neighbour... We have no control over this endless stream of mental junk. This, various traditions assure us, is the cause of all our miseries. We are rudderless in a raging river of rubbish. In this, we are divorced from the reality of the present. To steady the Circle of the Different we need to bring ourselves back into alignment with the Circle of the Same.

We can do this through japa – the deliberate fixation upon an appropriate mantra. It is, therefore, a Platonic method. The Mohammedans call it “dhikr”, meaning rememberance, a strikingly Platonic title. Rememberance, ἀνάμνησις, anemnesis, is the Platonic path par excellence. We live submerged in a state of forgetfulness, removed from the One and the Good. The Mohammedan dhikr consists of remembering God – the One and the Good – through the deliberate recital of His revealed Names. The very same method is also found among the Christians – the rosary and the hesychasm - and in other traditions besides. Typically, though, religious traditions construe this method as a ‘prayer of the heart’, a dedicated devotion, a mode of bhakti. In the Platonic understanding it is an essentially intellectual method. It is the means by which the structures of the mind are rehabilitated to the innate structures of the cosmos. Other metaphors, though, lend themselves to the Platonic presentation. The cosmology of the Timaeus has presiding over it the Demiurge, a figure modelled upon the mythological figure of the blacksmith god Vulcan. The dhikr of the Musselmans, the japa of the Hindoo, the hesychasm of the Christian, the anamnesis, is sometimes described as beating upon metal or else polishing a bronze mirror, metallurgic metaphors that invoke the notion of alchemical transformation. The method has a more noble and arcane philosophical heritage than what is commonly found in the sentimental presentations of religious devotionalism. 

Historically, its simplicity has recommended it to simple people, but in fact it is a method especially adapted to the intellectual temperament. The man of intellectual disposition, more than anyone else, is likely to fall in love with his own thoughts and with thinking and ruminating. The intellectual, the mentalist, loves the parade of errant thoughts that drift through the mind. This is exactly why such a person should pursue an intellectual (jnana) path, rather than a path of devotion, and why the anemnesis (dhikr/japa) is an ideal element of such a path. No one needs a Circle of Sameness as much as the head-bound and scatter-brained intellectual! But it is just for this reason that he will find it difficult. He resents being drawn away from his own thoughts. He hates the interruption. He likes ruminating, not meditating – and they are precisely opposite things. Intellectuals make bad meditators. Methods that ask them to stop thinking, though, are, in this, unreasonable. Many methods of oriental meditation are actively anti-intellectual. It is unreasonable, and finally futile, or even dangerous, to ask a person of intellectual and philosophical temperament – a thinker by nature – to stop thinking and to “surrender to the Void.” The better strategy is to ask them to think on one thought alone. Relevant to this, the present author recalls a conversation with a psychologist friend who reported to him that she often encounters occidental people who are driven to madness – actually damaged - by many forms of Boodhist meditation. The Boodhist emphasis on Emptiness, she said, can drive intellectualized Western people insane. There are hazards in japa too – bringing one’s inner cosmos back into alignment with the greater cosmos, rectifying the very rupture of one’s nativity, is no casual feat. When one challenges the mind’s addiction to its own wobbling, reckless, self-indulgent Circles of Difference the mind will, at length, resist. But it is still a more concrete and structured method than embracing Nothingness, and safer in that respect. 

For the Platonist, in any case, this mode of anemnesis – within or without a religious context - can be recommended. It is a matter of redefining the Circle of the Same in the mind and thereby bringing it back into alignment with the Circle of the Same in the great cosmos as a whole. This is the same, as it happens, as finding an axis, a centre, for the Circle of the Same defines the cosmic axis whereas the Circle of the Different wobbles and shifts here and there in a never-repeated dance of difference. For the Platonist, this mode of anemnesis entails fixing upon the thought of the One and the Good in the form of some suitable Name or formulae. The method consists, as explained above, of repeating this Name or formula over and over and over and over as a mantra at all times and in all circumstances. (We will call it the anamnesis, the ‘remembrance’.) It is not always easy – the very nature of man is to forget – but eventually it can be installed as a fixture of the mind, the very best of habits. Strictly speaking it does not matter what the Name or formula might be, but in a Platonic context it should represent the One and the Good. Usually, some form of Divine Name from an appropriate religious tradition is in order, although let us recall that the philosopher is not, after all, a religionist. His motives in regard to this may have more in common with the astrologer than with the religious devotee. For the philosopher, there is truth in religion – Socrates is meticulous in respecting popular religious observations - but it is very often like a pearl buried in a pile of dung. In this case, the pearl is a Name that acts as an auditory icon encapsulating the Form of Forms.

The effect of this practice of amenesis is to recontextualize all thinking. The Circle of the Same in the human microcosm is strengthened and reinforced, and this brings stability to the Circle of the Different. The objective is not to crush the "monkey mind" but to tame it. The method, therefore, is not anti-intellectual but rather it aims to bring a coherent order to the disturbed pertubations of the common mind. It is, superficially at least, a remarkably easy practice and can be done anywhere at anytime, and better yet it can be done in secret, quietly, as silent as a thought. It is, all the same, transforming. No one should underestimate its potency. Over time, it transforms the entire psychology. We cannot know if Plato himself knew exactly such a method - it is very ancient, as we know from its use among the Hindoos, and it is found in virtually all spiritual climates - and yet we can be sure that he was acquainted with its impact, for many of his dialogues are nothing less than an exploration of the mental processes that unfold in the course of diligent application to this method. In some later religious traditions, moreover, - most notably the cosmological whirling dance of the Soofis of Konya - exactly this method is directly linked to the name of Plato. There can be no doubt that the strength of the tradition of hesychasm in Greek Orthodox Christianity is built on Platonic foundations. Let us also mention that the beads often used as a prop to assist in this method - so-called japa mala - typically consist of one hundred and eight beads strung on a string, and this number, one hundred and eight, is not chosen at random but is in fact a key figure in the calculation of Plato's Nuptial Number, for 108 x 120,000 = 12,960,000. This should suggest to us that what we have here, in Plato's dialogues and in various religious traditions, are remaining elements of what was once a universal understanding. 

The japa-mala, or string of 108 beads, is typically used to assist in the practice of anamnesis (remembrance) in many religious traditions. 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black