:ok: Matter constrained by form. Makes a lot of sense to me.

This was not Strauss’ own opinion. From Bloom’s encomium to him: “He was able to do without most abstractions .... — Leghorn

So, you want me to read what Strauss says or what Bloom says that Strauss says??? :grin:

Of course Strauss says that Plato’s Theory of Forms is “a fantastic doctrine” and “an absolutely absurd doctrine”. It is in “Plato’s Political Philosophy” and other writings!

As Bloom himself says:

If there are no permanent entities, if everything is in flux, there can be no knowledge. Knowledge, or science, requires universals of which the particulars are imperfect examples; as knowing beings we care only for the universals. The ideas give reality to the universals and hence make it possible to explain the fact that man possesses knowledge. The ideas give reality to the universals and hence make it possible to explain the fact that man possesses knowledge. The ideas are the being of things. They constitute an account of the first causes of things which also does justice to the observed heterogeneity of the visible universe … And it is in the quest for the universal principle that the theoretical man first meets the opposition of the unphilosophic men

- A. Bloom, The Republic of Plato, p. 94

IMO by ridiculing and rejecting Plato’s Forms, Strauss places himself in the camp of the unphilosophic men whom Gerson identifies as anti-Platonists and antiphilosophers ....

See also:

Scott Olsen,The Indefinite Dyad and the Golden Section: Uncovering Plato’s Second Principle – ResearchGate

The general tendency of modern thought has been the deprecation of the idea of universals. In the conflict between nominalism and scholastic realism, nominalism carried the day, and nominalists - such as Bacon and Ockham - were the forerunners of today's empiricism. It is now so embedded in our way of thinking such that the alternative is not even comprehended most of the time.

Thomists and other critics of Ockham (i.e. nominalism) have tended to present traditional realism, with its forms or natures, as the solution to the modern problem of knowledge. It seems to me that it does not quite get to the heart of the matter. A genuine realist should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired. Characterized by forms, reality had an intrinsic intelligibility, not just in each of its parts but as a whole. With forms as causes, there are interconnections between different parts of an intelligible world, indeed there are overlapping matrices of intelligibility in the world, making possible an ascent from the more particular, posterior, and mundane to the more universal, primary, and noble.

In short, the appeal to forms or natures does not just help account for the possibility of trustworthy access to facts, it makes possible a notion of wisdom, traditionally conceived as an ordering grasp of reality. Preoccupied with overcoming Cartesian skepticism, it often seems as if philosophy’s highest aspiration is merely to secure some veridical cognitive events. Rarely sought is a more robust goal: an authoritative and life-altering wisdom. Notice: even if contemporary philosophers came to a consensus about how to overcome Cartesian doubt and secure certainty, it is not clear that this would do anything to repair the fragmentation and democratization of the disciplines, or to make it more plausible that there could be an ordered hierarchy of sciences, with a highest science, acknowledged as queen of the rest—whether we call it first philosophy, or metaphysics, or wisdom. — Joshua Hothschild, What's Wrong with Ockham

A recent analysis I have read is De-fragmenting Modernity, Paul Tyson.

We live in a strangely fragmented lifeworld. On the one hand, abstract constructions of our own imagination--such as money, "mere" facts, and mathematical models--are treated by us as important objective facts. On the other hand, our understanding of the concrete realities of meaning and value in which our daily lives are actually embedded--love, significance, purpose, wonder--are treated as arbitrary and optional subjective beliefs. This is because, to us, only quantitative and instrumentally useful things are considered to be accessible to the domain of knowledge. Our lifeworld is designed to dis-integrate knowledge from belief, facts from meanings, immanence from transcendence, quality from quantity, and "mere" reality from the mystery of being. This book explores two questions: why should we, and how can we, reintegrate being, knowing, and believing?

The general tendency of modern thought has been the deprecation of the idea of universals. In the conflict between nominalism and scholastic realism, nominalism carried the day, and nominalists - such as Bacon and Ockham - were the forerunners of today's empiricism. It is now so embedded in our way of thinking such that the alternative is not even comprehended most of the time. — Wayfarer

This is a very apt observation. Personally, I was fortunate enough to be able to read Plato before being exposed to the materialist indoctrination of the anti-Platonist education system.

But I believe that some reflection will enable all readers of Plato to see through the spurious claims of self-styled "experts on Plato".

The ineptitude of some “scholarly analyses” of Plato’s dialogues is all too obvious from statements like the following:

The subject matter is very difficult and presupposes an understanding of the doctrine of ideas as a whole … Let us assume for one moment that the ideas are noetic atoms, i.e., they cannot be divided anymore. You cannot divide the idea of man without destroying the essential meaning. As atoms these noetic ideas are infinite in number. Since the infinite cannot be comprehended we may say that the ideas are not susceptible of being comprehended or understood … If the idea of the good is not truly knowable, then we cannot transcend opinion. I think this is what Plato really means

- L. Strauss, Seminar on Plato’s Republic, April 30 1957, p. 6.

In addition, Strauss routinely employs weasel words like “difficulty,” “problem”, “very difficult”, “great difficulties”, “great problem”, “infinite problem”, etc.

He also makes frequent use of the phrase “I think” which indicates that it is just his opinion, i.e. Strauss’ teachings are his own personal (and often dogmatic) interpretation of Plato.

Moreover, he says:

We must now turn to what is the most difficult subject of today’s assignment, and I am by no means certain that I can be of real help here. This concerns the discussion of the idea of the good….

In other words, what Strauss is saying is not only that his statements are his personal opinion but that by his own admission “he is by no means certain that he can be of any real help” on a key Platonic subject like the Good!

This, of course, does not apply solely to Strauss, but to the whole anti-Platonist academic establishment that evidently aims to replace Platonism with anti-Platonism and philosophy with scientism especially of the political kind.

Unsurprisingly, we find Popper claiming that, as the "originators of totalitarianism", Plato and Aristotle are the original “enemies of open society”, i.e. of “freedom and reason”, and therefore, the enemies of mankind ....

Thanks for the link, but as soon as I read this "Plato, primarily as a proponent of Pythagorean philosophical doctrines,2 was very careful with what he did and did not reveal, being under an apparently severe oath of secrecy", I was really turned off.

Plato attempted to explain things in the most descriptive and explicit way possible. He has volumes of writings and founded his own Academy which did not charge admission. There is no oath to secrecy there. The idea that he was a member of some type of Pythagorean cult is nonsense

So, you want me to read what Strauss says or what Bloom says that Strauss says??? :grin: — Apollodorus

Do you read what Socrates says, or what Plato says that Socrates says?

‘Everyman’ is now the measure.

I’ve only ever encountered Leo Strauss through forums, however reading the SEP entry doesn’t lend a lot of support to your villification of him.

The headings 4 & 5 say Strauss was immersed in grappling with the inherent contradictions in modern - i.e. ‘enlightenment’ - philosophy. He is highly critical of the modem evaluation of the self-sufficiency of reason - he’s certainly no positivist. He said that the possible role revelation plays as the ground of normativity must always be considered.

On Strauss’s reading, the Enlightenment’s so-called critique of religion ultimately also brought with it, unbeknownst to its proponents, modern rationalism’s self-destruction. Strauss does not reject modern science, but he does object to the philosophical conclusion that “scientific knowledge is the highest form of knowledge” because this “implies a depreciation of pre-scientific knowledge.” As he put it, “Science is the successful part of modern philosophy or science, and philosophy is the unsuccessful part—the rump.”

What this reminds me of is Jurgen Habermas' late-in-life re-evaluation of religion, on similar grounds:

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments. “Postmetaphysical thinking,” Habermas contends, “cannot cope on its own with the defeatism concerning reason which we encounter today both in the postmodern radicalization of the ‘dialectic of the Enlightenment’ and in the naturalism founded on a naïve faith in science.”

I think what they don't see has to do with the fact that ‘the modern mind’ is itself a way-of-being, a 'station of consciousness'. However, unless you realize you’re in it, you can’t see it, because you're looking through it, not at it. (My questioning of that assumption comes out of the 60's counter-culture, not out of traditionalism or religious orthodoxy.) So the basic assumption of the modern state of being is the unquestioned reality of the natural world - naturalism. It can’t be questioned because the alternatives to naturalism were among the very things demolished in the transition to modernity. There is no longer a conceptual space corresponding to ‘universals’, and to question naturalism is to be deemed to be resorting to faith.

What has been lost in this is the vertical dimension, the domain of values, and the understanding that there are higher truths or higher ways of being. It is preserved in some religious philosophies but I think it tended to be eliminated within Christianity itself by philosophical developments in the middle ages.

By privatizing an unmediated relationship between more individualized Christians and a more transcendent God, Luther’s emphasis on salvation-by-faith-alone eliminated the intricate web of mediation – priests, sacraments, canon law, pilgrimages, public penances, etc. – that in effect had constituted the sacred dimension of this world. The religiously-saturated medieval continuity between the natural and the supernatural was sundered by internalizing faith and projecting the spiritual realm far above our struggles in this world.

The newly-liberated space between them generated something new: the secular (from the Latin saeculum, “generation, age,” thus the temporal world of birth and death). The inner freedom of conscience was distinguished from our outer bondage to secular authorities. “These realms, which contained respectively religion and the world, were hermetically sealed from each other as though constituting separate universes”. The sharp distinction between them was a radical break with the past, and it led to a new kind of person. The medieval understanding of our life as a cycle of sin and repentance was replaced by the more disciplined character-structure required in the modern world, sustained by a more internalized conscience that did not accept the need for external mediation or the validation of priests.

As God slowly disappeared above the clouds, the secular became increasingly dynamic, accelerating into the creative destruction that today we must keep readjusting to. What we tend to forget in the process is that the distinction between sacred and secular was originally a religious distinction, devised to empower a new type of Protestant spirituality: that is, a more privatized way to address our sense of lack and fill up the God-shaped hole.

By allowing the sacred pole to fade away, however, we have lost the original religious raison d’etre for that distinction. That evaporation of the sacred has left us with the secular by itself, bereft of the spiritual resources originally designed to cope with it, because secular life is increasingly liberated from any religious perspective or supervision. — David Loy, Terror in the God-Shaped Hole

So, now, 'cosmos' - the physical cosmos, explored by science - 'is all there is'. Man is born out of chaos, a bio-chemical fluke in a meaningless universe, which is the predicament of modernity.

"The subject matter is very difficult and presupposes an understanding of the doctrine of ideas as a whole … Let us assume for one moment that the ideas are noetic atoms, i.e., they cannot be divided anymore...."

- L. Strauss, Seminar on Plato’s Republic, April 30 1957, p. 6. — Apollodorus

I think this is actually well intentioned, but that what this is missing is the insight that the vision of the ideas or forms is linked to the vision of the totality of the Cosmos, something which has been described in various contexts as 'the unitive vision'. I will assume that Parmenides, whom Plato describes as 'venerable and awesome', was one who attained such a vision (as Peter Kingsley says).



From The Greek Verb 'To Be' and the Problem of Being, Charles H. Kahn, University of Pennsylvania,

It is said that Plotinus also attained such a 'unitive vision', albeit briefly, and only twice in his whole life (which might convey some appreciation of the rarity of such states.)

But this kind of 'unitive understanding' is nowadays considered to be associated with religion or mysticism, and indeed it was one of the formative sources of later, Christian teachings of the 'beatific vision', although from time to time, you do find something comparable in the writings of scientists, as in some of Einstein's later musings.

//ps// Seeing if I could google a reference to Peter Kingsley and unitive vision, I found this essay, Is Philosophy Magic? The Roots of Reason in Parmenides, Samuel Loncar.

The idea that he was a member of some type of Pythagorean cult is nonsense — Metaphysician Undercover

It was not my suggestion that he was. I posted the link as an illustration of how the issue of the "Indefinite Dyad" is treated by some scholars.

Plato does mention a δυάς (dyas) or "dyad" that may lend itself to mathematical and philosophical interpretation and it has been discussed by Gerson and other scholars.

But the question has been mainly raised on the basis of Aristotle's comments.

Even if we were to say, for example, that the One (Monad) is something like "Pure Spirit" and the Dyad something like "Primordial Matter" that is given shape by the Forms, or that sensible objects derive from the One and the Indeterminate Dyad via the Forms or Numbers, this wouldn't change anything.

This is why, personally, I don't see the "Indeterminate Dyad" as a "problem" or "difficulty" at all. On the contrary, I see it as a diversionary tactic deployed by anti-Platonists who have run out of arguments against Plato and who insist on construing his teachings as somehow logically "incoherent" or "problematic".

I’ve only ever encountered Leo Strauss through forums, however reading the SEP entry doesn’t lend a lot of support to your villification of him. — Wayfarer

I don't think I am "vilifying" him though. In fact I tend to agree with Strauss on some points, e.g. on his view that Plato's plan for the ideal city must not be taken literally in all respects. Interpreting the Kallipolis Project as a reductio ad absurdum is one way of looking at it. Plato was probably serious about the theoretical creation of an ideal city ruled by wise men, but some of the details of it must be taken with a grain of salt.

However, I think we should be able to criticize the critics. I am not surprised that the SEP entry isn't particularly critical of Strauss. It is a well-known fact that Strauss shows his true colors in his lectures to students rather than in his published books where he is obviously more cautious and expresses himself more cryptically.

My personal view is that Strauss tends to offer over-complicated, esoteric interpretations of a subject-matter (expounded in less than coherent form) that borders on schizoaffective disorder.

That aside, how can someone who by his own admission finds Plato’s Theory of Forms “impossible to understand and absolutely absurd” be an authority on Plato?

And let’s not forget that he was making money from lecturing on Plato whilst at the same time ridiculing his teachings. Without Plato he would have remained unemployed!

Kahn, of course, is a different story. He shows that it is possible to read Plato without Strauss' Maimonidean esotericism.

At the end of the day, we need to bear in mind that for Socrates and Plato (as for other Ancient Greek philosophers) philosophy was a way of life built on moral principles, in the first place. Being good or righteous was the precondition of fruitful philosophical endeavor.

"Beatific visions" and similar experiences raise important questions about the nature of being or reality. Plato suggests that inquiry into the Forms leads to an apprehension of ultimate reality.

As Gerson (Plato's Development and the Development of the Theory of Forms) points out, the Republic says:

The provider of truth to the things known and the giver of power to know to those who know is the Form of the Good. And though it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also an object of knowledge (508e)

In other words, Plato's philosophical inquiry starts from the premise that ultimate reality or the Good is knowable. This does not mean that it is knowable to everyone in practice or that it is knowable without practice. But it is unacceptable to insist that it is unknowable just because Strauss and others think so. This is what Gerson objects to and what he rejects as "anti-Platonism" and "antiphilosophy".

An interesting question is, if through contemplation of the Forms or by other means we managed to have a glimpse of this ultimate reality or Good, what would it be like? Would it bear any resemblance to the experience described by Plotinus and others?

On the contrary, I see it as a diversionary tactic deployed by anti-Platonists who have run out of arguments against Plato and who insist on construing his teachings as somehow logically "incoherent" or "problematic". — Apollodorus

Yes, I think this is similar to what I was getting at. Casting Plato as someone who has made a pledge of secrecy to some sort of Pythagorean cult, is such a diversionary tactic, meant to to cast a shadow of ill repute.

By privatizing an unmediated relationship between more individualized Christians and a more transcendent God, Luther’s emphasis on salvation-by-faith-alone eliminated the intricate web of mediation – priests, sacraments, canon law, pilgrimages, public penances, etc. – that in effect had constituted the sacred dimension of this world. The religiously-saturated medieval continuity between the natural and the supernatural was sundered by internalizing faith and projecting the spiritual realm far above our struggles in this world. — David Loy, Terror in the God-Shaped Hole

As a child of the Protestant tradition, I wish to point out some elements that do not fit into this picture.

Luther pointed to the Church selling tickets to Heaven (via indulgences) as the severance of the "unmediated" relationship between man and God. The complaint was that the Church had become too secular. From that point of view, preserving the distinction between the City of God and the City of Man required a reestablishment of the original news of the Gospel. In this rejection to the necessity for the orthodox institution, many very different forms of community were developed. Were these communities "projecting the spiritual realm far above our struggles in this world?" For many of them, they were joining together what had been severed.

I don't think I am "vilifying" him — Apollodorus

he was making money from lecturing on Plato whilst at the same time ridiculing his teachings. Without Plato he would have remained unemployed! — Apollodorus

:roll:

In other words, Plato's philosophical inquiry starts from the premise that ultimate reality or the Good is knowable. This does not mean that it is knowable to everyone in practice or that it is knowable without practice. — Apollodorus

From the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Pierre Hadot:

Plotinus, or the Simplicity of Vision (PSV) importantly anticipates many of Hadot’s later arguments on ancient philosophy. Hadot tells us in the autobiographical interviews of The Present Alone is Our Happiness that as a young man, he had undergone some kind of mystical experience (PAH 5-6). This was an experience that shaped Hadot’s own initial scholarly research, including several of the first French-language articles on Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and his continuing interest in “unitary experience.” It can, arguably, be seen to underlie Hadot’s repeated, central claim that the classical philosophies were rooted in certain paradigmatic experiences of existence (4b). In any case, Hadot argues in PSV that the famous Neoplatonic metaphysics of the One, the Ideas, and the world-psyche is not the abstract, purely theoretical, otherworldly construction it is often presented as being. Rather, Hadot claims, in Plotinus’ Enneads the language of metaphysics “is used to express an inner experience. All these levels of reality become levels of inner life, levels of the self” (PSV 27).

But later in the same section there's an important caveat:

For all of Hadot’s evident enthusiasm for Plotinus’ philosophy, however, PSV concludes with an assessment of the modern world’s inescapable distance from Plotinus’ thought and experience. Hadot distances himself from Plotinus’ negative assessment of bodily existence, and he also displays a caution in his support for mysticism, citing the skeptical claims of Marxism and psychoanalysis about professed mysticism, considering it a lived mystification or obfuscation of truth (PSV 112-113).

Even regardless of that caveat, Hadot's emphasis on the role of the 'unitive vision' is key. You still find that in Buddhist and Hindu teachings that are disseminated in the West - in fact I think that's why they found such a ready audience in the West, because they're providing something that had been lost in Western culture. The idea of spiritual practice as 'union' is the meaning of 'yoga' (in the philosophical sense, not the downward-facing-dog sense.) But it's almost entirely absent from philosophy as taught in the West, as Hadot says. There's a missing dimension. Like a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object. That's what I think underlies much of the misrepresentation.

Were these communities "projecting the spiritual realm far above our struggles in this world?" — Valentinus

I think so. Weber's Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism makes a similar point. Very similar points were also made by Emile Durkheim and his notion of 'anomie'.

Anyway, David Loy's essay is not a polemic against Protestantism. It is about how religions provided a grounding sense of identity, and that in secular cultures the absence of this sense is experienced as lack, anxiety or dread. He's arguing that this is one of the motivating factors of religious terrorism (the essay is a commentary on the 9/11 attacks. ) And I find his thumbnail sketch of how Protestantism contributed to the 'disenchantment of the world' quite convincing.

Maybe some Protestant communities - the Bruderhof come to mind - do maintain a sense of religious community, but secular culture on the whole has mainly rejected it. I'm not necessarily advocating a return but at least an understanding of what has been lost, which is not nothing.

I didn't mean to say Loy was writing a polemic against Protestants. I wanted to point toward how what we know as the "secular" had a life before the Protestants.

Weber's reference to the "work ethic" is a religious one. Is he not in his way trying to find a way to talk about the "secular" as not something easily explained in either a political or religious register?

Loy's essay starts with this observation - 'The main problem with our usual understanding of secularity is that it is taken-for-granted, so we are not aware that it is a worldview. It is an ideology that pretends to be the everyday world we live in. Most of us assume that it is simply the way the world really is, once superstitious beliefs about it have been removed.' Something which I think is profoundly true, and one of the themes I have always been pursuing on forums.

He then goes on to analyse the historical causes and consequences:

By privatizing religious commitment and practice as something that occurs primarily “inside” us, modern Christianity encourages the public/private split and aggravates the alienation of subject from object. When religion is understood as an individual process of inner faith-commitment, we are more likely to accede to a diminished understanding of the objective world “outside” us, denuding the secular realm of any sacred dimension. With fewer and fewer spiritual identity-markers left outside our own psyches, we are supposed to find or construct an identity “inside,” a challenge not easy to meet:

“On the one hand, modern identity is open-ended, transitory, liable to ongoing change. On the other hand, a subjective realm of identity is the individual’s main foothold in reality. Something that is constantly changing is supposed to be the ens realissimum.” (1979, 74)

The basic problem with the sacred/secular bifurcation has become more evident as the sacred has evaporated. The sacral provided not only ritual and morality but a grounding identity that explained the meaning of our life-in-the-world.

(The reference is to The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch. He also mentions a book The Unintended Reformation, by Brad Gregory, which I have, but all this material is very dense reading!)

The reason I mentioned Loy's essay is in support of the idea that modern Western culture abandoned or rejected its metaphysical basis, which is the cause of the widespread acceptance of materialism, cultural, scientific and philosophical.

And let’s not forget that he was making money from lecturing on Plato whilst at the same time ridiculing his teachings. Without Plato he would have remained unemployed! — Apollodorus

I don’t remember hearing that Strauss ever became very wealthy. Bloom points out that the modern professorship is the free lunch that Socrates asked for in the Apology. What Socrates only ironically suggested, the moderns made actual and permanent. Bloom also pointed out that Socrates was not a professor, and that we must remember that fact even as we attempt to save the university.

As for your assertion that Strauss ridiculed Plato’s teachings—I would never believe it—unless it were argued persuasively by someone who doesn’t share your own obvious prejudicial animosity toward him, howevermuch you assert you agree with some of his ideas.

sacred dimension

What is the sacred dimension? Who or what marks it off? How does it differ from what is esteemed?

spiritual identity-markers

What are the spiritual identity-markers?

What is the sacred dimension? Who or what marks it off? How does it differ from what is esteemed? — Fooloso4

Those questions are too general to be meaningfully defined in a forum post. Suffice to note that for example there are references to the Greek pantheon and Orphic spirituality throughout Plato’s dialogues. And also to note that one of the ‘identity-markers’ of modernity is the loss of the sense of the sacred, the ‘disenchantment of the world’ that Max Weber wrote of, comprising the cultural rationalization and devaluation of the sacred by modern cultures.

I agree that Plato is unlikely to have belonged to a secret cult. If he uses elements of Pythagoreanism he does so for his own purposes.

But I think what the anti-Platonists here are trying to cover up is that their “noble lie” theory has been exposed as a lie, given that Plato does not use the phrase “a noble lie”. Hence their diversionary tactics.

Also, they got nowhere with their criticism of the Forms and have come up with the Dyad as a last resort. Needless to say, they aren't going to get very far .... :smile:

Even regardless of that caveat, Hadot's emphasis on the role of the 'unitive vision' is key. You still find that in Buddhist and Hindu teachings that are disseminated in the West - in fact I think that's why they found such a ready audience in the West, because they're providing something that had been lost in Western culture. The idea of spiritual practice as 'union' is the meaning of 'yoga' (in the philosophical sense, not the downward-facing-dog sense.) But it's almost entirely absent from philosophy as taught in the West, as Hadot says. There's a missing dimension. Like a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional object. That's what I think underlies much of the misrepresentation. — Wayfarer

The fact that the concept of unification or union (henosis) occurs across wide geographic and cultural areas suggests that there may be some universal truth in it. In any case, it seems to presuppose a relation of identity between the unified elements which makes sense if we take the individual mind to be a microcosm of the universal mind.

I think the nous poietikos or “creative intelligence” is the key to understanding henosis. If we think of consciousness as a form of subjective light that “shines on” and thereby “sees”, projects, or brings into being its own objects such as universal Forms that in turn give shape and being to particulars, then we can see how cognition may come about in a Platonic sense.

That the mind is creative can be seen from dreams, especially lucid dreams. The only difference is that in this case the creative subject is not the individual or personal mind but a form of universal mind that creates the universe by seeing, or projecting it into existence. This is why the Forms or Ideas are not separate from the universal consciousness but their instantiations are perceived as separate objects by the individual mind, and why the Forms themselves can be grasped only when the individual mind elevates itself as far as possible to the level of the universal mind.

Given that what separates the individual mind from the universal mind is the experience based on identification with the physical body and the thoughts etc. associated with it, we can see why Socrates (or Plato) advises philosophers to intellectually and emotionally detach themselves from the physical body and appurtenances, and inquire into the Forms with the pure unalloyed reason alone, when the soul is undisturbed, “itself by itself” and in the company of realities like itself (Phaedo 65c ff.).

It will be worth remembering that in the Greek tradition the cultivation of virtues is a preparation for philosophy proper and that the Republic is about goodness and justice.

There are obvious ethical reasons why one should be good and just and not commit crimes, etc. But there is another reason that is just as important to Platonic philosophy. Being good creates a frame of mind that is conducive to a vision of the Good: the Good is seen by the good, only.

Otherwise said, if we compare the mind with the water of a lake that reflects the light of the Sun, we can see that the more agitated the mind is, the more it will reflect a higher reality in a distorted and fragmented way, and that the more calm it is, the more it will reflect that reality as it is.

Being an inseparable part of the soul, the mind is in the first place the mirror of the soul. This is why calm and focused meditative states of consciousness (as opposed to mental agitation) are conducive to knowledge of the self and of higher realities. We can only assume that this is what Socrates is doing when he remains motionless and “absorbed in thought” for long periods of time as related in the Symposium.

This is why we should not be distracted by the tale of the ideal city (that merely symbolizes the inner harmony of the soul) but pay attention to the dialogue as a whole that, in the manner of an Orphic mystery play, begins with Socrates’ descent to Piraeus and the vision of the Thracian Goddess, proceeds through several key allegories (of the Sun, the Divided Line, and the Cave), and ends with the uplifting vision of the column of light at the center of the world (616b).

Could the column of light symbolize the light of consciousness and could this be related to the experience of Plotinus and other mystics?

In other words, if ultimate reality is indeed the Good, which is light, goodness, beauty, etc. then reported beatific visions like that of Plotinus may well represent a glimpse of that reality, in which case Platonists could be right, after all.

In any case, it seems to presuppose a relation of identity between the unified elements which makes sense if we take the individual mind to be a microcosm of the universal mind. — Apollodorus

I'm sure. 'Man as microcosm' is found in many ancient texts.

Could the column of light symbolize the light of consciousness and could this be related to the experience of Plotinus and other mystics? — Apollodorus

At funerals that are held by my wife's family, who are members of small Christian sect, a traditional hymn is sung, Cwm Rhondda. I've been struck by this particular verse, which always seemed somewhat esoteric for a hymn.

Open thou the crystal fountain
Whence the healing stream shall flow;
Let the fiery, cloudy pillar
Lead me all my journey through

I'm sure the resemblance is not co-incidental.

I think I understand the "the public/private split" Loy is presenting. What I question is the value of seeing that development as a religious and psychological change outside of the political and cultural process in which the development occurred.

One important component of what we know as the secular came from centuries of people killing each other as a way to discuss what is sacred. The agreement to stop doing that was built upon toleration of different beliefs in the space of some established common space. The truce that was the beginning of ending religious wars in Europe was based upon the principle of cuius regio, eius religio. With the religion of a place being determined by the rulers of it, the political dimension was introduced that spelled the demise of the medieval system. The principle of toleration has had its own logic in the role of the "individual" becoming increasingly important.

Needless to say, they aren't going to get very far .... :smile: — Apollodorus

That though, is debatable. All that is required to dispel the nonsense is an extensive reading of Plato's material. However, this is not an effortless task, and the majority of people in our society approach with a prejudice that ancient writings are outdated, unscientific, irrelevant and unimportant. So, there is no inclination to make that effort, and these people (the majority of people in our society) will simply accept what others say as an appropriate representation. And those who say things which are consistent with that prejudice, which frees one from making the effort, will be the ones who are listened to.

Given that what separates the individual mind from the universal mind is the experience based on identification with the physical body and the thoughts etc. associated with it, we can see why Socrates (or Plato) advises philosophers to intellectually and emotionally detach themselves from the physical body and appurtenances, and inquire into the Forms with the pure unalloyed reason alone, when the soul is undisturbed, “itself by itself” and in the company of realities like itself (Phaedo 65c ff.). — Apollodorus

There is a distinct difference between the hierarchical priority described by you, and the one accepted by modern western culture. In western culture, we see material existence as first, prior, and from this, emerges a living body, and finally a human mind. The Neo-Platonist metaphysics places the universal Soul as first, prior, then the individual living soul, then the material body. So the modern western culture has completely reversed the hierarchy. The difference is that the Neo-Platonist metaphysics is based in solid principles, the metaphysics of modern western culture, by which the hierarchy is reversed, is not.

One important component of what we know as the secular came from centuries of people killing each over as a way to discuss what is sacred. — Valentinus

Ain't that the truth. I think it's lead to a kind of shadow, a tacit agreement of things that ought not to be said or considered. I noticed as an undergraduate, where I was interested in studying spirituality, that there is in western culture, an undercurrent. The secular city walls off anything regarded as religious as being essentially an individual matter. That is of course preferable to any form of religious government, but it also leads to an impoverished culture which is technologically advanced but spiritually empty. Something has been forgotten so thoroughly that we've forgotten that it's been forgotten.

Years ago, there was a web page with excerpts from the Charter of the Royal Society, the world's first real scientific organisation. It explicitly excludes consideration of anything 'of concern to churchmen', or something along those lines. You can see why, in the circumstances. But this is the kind of thing that lead to the 19th century 'conflict thesis' which is still part of the aforementioned undercurrent.

Years ago, there was a web page with excerpts from the Charter of the Royal Society, the world's first real scientific organisation. It explicitly excludes consideration of anything 'of concern to churchmen', or something along those lines. — Wayfarer

That seems an unlikely statement coming from the King of England.

You can see the text of the Royal Society original charters here:

First Charter – Granted 1662

Second Charter – Granted 1663

Third Charter – Granted 1669

Yet, modern day man seems comfortable inside the cave. — Shawn

Since you talk about "comfortability", the people in the cave most probably felt "comfortable" too, since they didn't know another world, neither was anyone to tell them that the world they were seeing was naccurate or something lik that. In fact, with this rationale, we can say that man always felt comfortable "inside the cave".

However, I don't find the word "comfortable" correct, since people, as a general principle, don't feel comfortable with the world and their lives. Anxiety, fear, grief and all sort of negative emotions are the main dish of the day for a lot of people. Most people feel that life is not fair. They feel that something is not OK at all. Very few, relatively, feel happy or really feel comfortable on a more or less stable basis, independently of conditions.

Indeed, nowadays man has a tendency to resolve one's issues in the cave, conversing with a psychologist about the shadows ... — Shawn

If they have to go to a shrink to resolve their problems, why then you say the people seem to be comfortable inside the cave? That's a contradiction, isn't it? But iby inverting the comfort into discomfort, the visits to shrinks can then make more sense! :smile:

Why is this so? Why can't the prisoner unshackle and free himself? — Shawn

I suppose that the first question by now refers to the discomfort. Otherwise, why would he need to unshackle and free himself, right?
The primary factor why people are in that state is conflicts. Their reality, i.e. what they think and believe as true and fact, is in conflict with what actually happens to them and the world, in general. "Life is unfair" to them and to all people in general. They have and keep feeding an illusion about life and the world. This produces anxiety, stress, fear, grief and apathy (giving up), in short all kind of negative emotions. Negative emotions are produced by conflicts. Like every problem. A problem consist of an action and a counter-action. Effort and counter-effort. Intention and counter-intention. Purpose and counter-purpose. And the problem gets worse when the opposed things come from ourselves: We create thoughts and counter-thoughts, i.e., thoughts that are against other thoughts of ours. The mildest case is simple indecision: not neing able to select among two actions. But this indecision can develop into a conflict that tears us apart. It can result to suicide. The tendency to suicide is produced by unresolved problems that exist for too long or are too hard to handle, the burden is too heavy to carry.

So, the reason why the prisoner cannot "unshackle and free himself" is that he just doesn’t know how to resolve these conflicts.

Why is philosophy still associated with no inherent value, or even more practically, valued so little? — Shawn

I assume that you mean that philosophy doesn't seem to be able to solve these problems and that is why it is considered of little value. And of course, you are talking wbout the Western philosophy

Unfortunately, it is true that our (Western) philosophy, not only today but in that past too, was consumed mainly in talking about and analyzing concepts, sometimes following too complicated paths to be even understood by most people. People cannot handle their conflicts by just reading or hearing words, as logical and useful these may be. If experience (direct experiencing) the ideas and messages these words are conveying, little substantial improvement can be achieved. For example, analyzing the "self" in order to discover one's nature ends up either in confusion or an illusion. One must experience the "self". One must get aware of being aware. In that moment all words and concepts disappear and what remains is the realization, the reality of one's nature. This is the way Eastern philosophy works. Eastern philosophy has little talk and more practice, training, experiencing, realization. This is why people in the West started to turn to Eastern philosophies, esp. Buddhism: they were either disappointed or just couldn't find solutions to their problems with the Western philosophy. Indeed, the need to turn to East for help has grown enormously in the last century and continues to grow. The Eastern philosophies show people their true self, the spiritual part of the human being, whereas the Western philosophy is stuck obstinately to its materialistic foundations. So the more you promote the idea that human beings are just bodies with brains and ignore their spiritual side, the more confusion and conflicts you create in them. This is "why can't the prisoner unshackle and free himself" and neither (Western) philosophy nor psychology can do anything about it! This is really sad and very stupid.

So, the more you get stuck with the belief that you are a body, the less chances you have to free yourself. Because it's a trap. It's a lie. It creates a huge conflict between what you believe you are and what your real nature is!

These are the reasons I think why philosophy in the West has failed. But if we want to evaluate the imporance and impact of the philosophy in general, we have to look at all parts in the world. Because philosophy has no borders.

Something has been forgotten so thoroughly that we've forgotten that it's been forgotten. — Wayfarer

Hahaha. Once you forget it, there is no such thing as forgetting that you forgot it, because that would require remembering it, to remember that you forgot it, which is impossible if you've forgotten it. Talking about forgetting that you forgot it, is even sillier than talking about knowing that you know it, which is pretty silly in itself.

The secular city walls off anything regarded as religious as being essentially an individual matter. That is of course preferable to any form of religious government, but it also leads to an impoverished culture which is technologically advanced but spiritually empty. — Wayfarer

So how is it then preferable? Because when regimes are founded on their separate gods it leads to war? Would the world be a better place to live if there were no wars and no spirituality?

Or can spirituality exist on an individual basis? Or does it rather require the support and participation of the community? If the latter is true, we must either be satisfied with secularism without religion, or accept war along with religion.

Point taken. What I was trying to get at is that passage I quoted above from the essay on Ockham and nominalism: ' A genuine realist (about forms, not modern realism) should see “forms” not merely as a solution to a distinctly modern problem of knowledge, but as part of an alternative conception of knowledge, a conception that is not so much desired and awaiting defense, as forgotten and so no longer desired.'

This is the way Eastern philosophy works. Eastern philosophy has little talk and more practice, training, experiencing, realization. This is why people in the West started to turn to Eastern philosophies, esp. Buddhism: they were either disappointed or just couldn't find solutions to their problems with the Western philosophy. Indeed, the need to turn to East for help has grown enormously in the last century and continues to grow. The Eastern philosophies show people their true self, the spiritual part of the human being, whereas the Western philosophy is stuck obstinately to its materialistic foundations. — Alkis Piskas

:clap:

Or can spirituality exist on an individual basis? Or does it rather require the support and participation of the community? — Leghorn

Good question! In Buddhism, the 'three jewels' are Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, the latter being originally the monastic order, but in a broader sense, the 'community of the wise'.

Would the world be a better place...? — Leghorn

I'm not that interested in political philosophy. What I'm concerned with is an understanding.

A lot of the problem is the way 'religion' has been defined in the West, since the formation of the Christian Church. Because of the intense emphasis on 'correct belief' (orthodoxy) and the terrible consequences of having opinions deemed to be false (heresy), the secular west has deemed it preferable to walk away from the whole sorry story. But this is based on a very particular intellectual history. There are other ways of framing the issue, which is why nowadays global culture is such a mixing-pot of ideas, traditions and practice. A good popular article I often refer to is Dharma and religion:

In modern day language, dharma is equated, quite unfairly, with religion. Organized religion demands adherence of the followers to the Book and the Prophet. Anything outside the boundaries of a faith is considered irreligious, if not downright sinful. It is believed that salvation lies only through the body of the Prophet or His words. History of mankind is often a gory testament of destruction wrought by the zealots in pursuit of faith. It is a testament of dividing people and converting them, of persecution, intolerance and subjugation, or of burning at the stake: of the contest between the ecclesiastical and the temporal, the doctrine of two swords and of intrigues. Religion has been one of the most potent divisive forces in all history.

Why Dharma is Different?

Dharma, however, is different. It is different because it unites. There can never be divisions in dharma. Every interpretation is valid and welcome. No authority is too great to be questioned, too sacred to be touched. Unlimited interpretative freedom through free will is the quintessence of Dharma, for Dharma is as limitless as truth itself. No one can ever be its sole mouthpiece.

I think that the second paragraph overstates the case, but nevertheless there is a point there. Up until the Mughal invasions of India (which resulted in absolutely horrific bloodshed and wholesale mass murder, particularly of Buddhists) there had been a long history of peaceful co-existence between different schools of Dharma in ancient Bharat (which is the Indian name for India).

I think in tomorrow's world, society is going to have to recognise the value of the cultivation of higher states of being. We're running out of material goods, it's going to be practically the only thing that can be accumulated.