The Platonic Philosophers’ Creed - Thomas Taylor 2/2

Thomas Taylor's Platonic Philosopher's Creed: points 1 to 8 deal with first principles. Points 9-10 deal with the world of Ideas. Points 11-12 deal with the universe. Points 13 to 17 deal with the world of the Gods. Points 18 to 25 cover the human world and the journey of the soul.  From Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse (1805).

 14. I believe that a divine nature is not indigent of any thing. But the honours which are paid to the Gods are performed for the sake of the advantage of those who pay them.  Hence, since the providence of the Gods is extended every where, a certain habitude or fitness is all that is requisite for the reception of their beneficent communications. But all habitude is produced through imitation and similitude. On this account temples imitate the heavens, but altars the earth. Statues resemble life, and on this account they are similar to animals. Herbs and stones resemble matter; and animals which are sacrificed, the irrational life of our souls. From all these, however, nothing happens to the Gods beyond what they already possess; for what accession can be made to a divine nature?  But a conjunction of our souls with the gods is by these means effected. 

15. I believe that as the world considered as one great comprehending whole is a divine animal, so likewise every whole which it contains is a world, possessing in the first place a self-perfect unity proceeding from the ineffable, by which it becomes a God; in the second place, a divine intellect; in the third place, a divine soul; and in the last place a deified body. That each of these wholes is the producing cause of all the multitude which it contains, and on this account is said to be a whole prior to parts; because considered as possessing an eternal form which holds all its parts together, and gives to the whole perpetuity of subsistence, it is not indigent of such parts to the perfection of its being. And it follows by a geometrical necessity, that these wholes which rank thus high in the universe must be animated. 

16. Hence I believe that after the immense principle of principles in which all things  causally subsist absorbed in superessential light, and involved in unfathomable depths, a  beautiful series of principles proceeds, all largely partaking of the ineffable, all stamped with the occult characters of deity, all possessing an overflowing fullness of good. From these dazzling summits, these ineffable blossoms, these divine propagations -being, life, intellect, soul, nature and body depend; monads suspended from unities , deified natures  proceeding from deities. That each of these monads is the leader of a series which extends to the last of things, and which, while it proceeds from, at the same time abides in, and returns to its leader Thus all beings proceed from, and are comprehended in the first being; all intellects emanate from one first intellect; all souls from one first soul; all natures blossom from one first nature; and all bodies proceed from the vital and  luminous body of the world. That all these great monads are comprehended in the first one, from which both they and all their de pending series are unfolded into light. And  hence this first one is truly the unity of unities, the monad of monads, the principle of  principles, the God of gods, one and all things, and yet one prior to all. 

17. I also believe, that of the Gods some are mundane, but others super-mundane; and  that the mundane are those who fabricate the world.  But of the super-mundane, some  produce essences, others intellect, and others soul; and on this account, they are distinguished into three orders. Of the mundane Gods also, some are the causes of the existence of the world; others animate it; others again harmonise it, thus composed of different natures; and lastly, others guard  and preserve it when harmonically arranged.  Since these orders are four, and each consists of things first, middle, and last, it is necessary that the governors of these should be twelve. Hence Zeus, Poseidon, and Hephaestus, fabricate the world; Demeter , Hera, and Artemis, animate it; Hermes,  Aphrodite, and Apollo, harmonise it; and lastly, Hestia, Athena, and Ares, preside over it  with a guardian power. But the truth of this, may be seen in statues, as in enigmas. For Apollo harmonises the lyre; Pallas Athena is invested with arms; and Aphrodite is naked; since harmony produces beauty, and beauty is not concealed in subjects of sensible inspection. I likewise believe that as these Gods primarily possess the world, it is necessary to consider the other mundane Gods as subsisting in them; as Dionysius in Zeus, Aesculapius in Apollo, and the Graces in Aphrodite. We may also behold the spheres with which they are connected, viz. Hestia with the earth, Poseidon with water, Hera with air, and Hephaestus with fire. But Apollo and Artemis are assumed for the sun and moon; the sphere of Kronos is attributed to Demeter; Æther to Pallas; and heaven is common to them all. 

18. I also believe that man is a microcosm, comprehending in himself partially every thing which the world contains divinely and totally. That hence he is endued with an intellect subsisting in energy, and a rational soul proceeding from the same causes as those from which the intellect and soul of the universe proceed. And that he has likewise an ethereal vehicle analogous to the heavens, and a terrestrial body composed from the four elements, and with which also it is co-ordinate. 

19. I believe that the rational part of man, in which his essence consists, is of a self-motive nature, and that it subsists between intellect, which is immovable both in essence and energy, and nature, which both moves and is moved. 

20. I believe that the human as well as every mundane soul, uses periods and restitutions of its proper life. For in consequence of being measured by time, it energizes transitively, and possesses a proper motion. But every thing which is moved perpetually, and participates of time, revolves periodically, and proceeds from the same to the same. 

21. I also believe that as the human  soul ranks among the number of those souls that  sometimes follow the mundane divinities, in consequence of subsisting immediately after  angels, dæmons and heroes the  perpetual attendants of the Gods, it possesses a power of  descending infinitely into the sublunary region, and of ascending from thence to real  5 being. That in consequence of this, the soul, while an inhabitant of earth, is in a fallen condition, an apostate from deity, an exile from the orb of light. That she can only be  restored, while on earth, to the divine likeness, and  be able after death to re - ascend to the  intelligible world, by the exercise of the  cathartic , and  theoretic virtues; the former purifying  her from the defilements of a mortal nature, and the latter elevating her to the vision of  true being. And that such a soul returns after death to her kindred star from which she fell, and enjoys a blessed life. 

22. I believe that the human soul essentially contains all knowledge, and that whatever knowledge she acquires in the present life, is nothing more than a recovery of what she once possessed; and which discipline evocates from its dormant retreats. 

23. I also believe that the soul is punished in a future for the crimes she has committed in the present life; but that this punishment is proportioned to the crimes, and is not perpetual; divinity punishing, not from anger or revenge, but in order to purify the guilty soul, and restore her to the proper perfection of her nature. 

24. I also believe that the human soul on its departure from the present life, will, if not  properly purified, pass into other terrene bodies; and that if it passes into a human body,  it becomes the soul of that body; but if into the body of a brute, it does not become the  soul of the brute, but is externally connected with the brutal soul in the same manner as presiding dæmons are connected, in their beneficent operations, with mankind; for the  rational part  never becomes the soul of the irrational nature. 

25. Lastly, I believe that souls that live according to virtue, shall in other respects be happy; and when separated from the irrational nature, and purified from all body, shall be conjoined with the Gods, and govern the whole world, together with the deities by whom it was produced. 

image thanks to https://study.com/academy/lesson/greek-god-apollo-facts-lesson-for-kids.html 

Part 1 

The Platonic Philosopher's Creed - Thomas Taylor 1/2

Thomas Taylor's Philosopher's Creed, in 25 points, in a conceptually descending order from the abstract to the concrete, is, I think, besides being a good general summary of Neoplatonism, a profoundly holistic, deeply conceived and contains a spiritual philosophy of life that can lead any adherent thereof to a happy, full and successful existence. The first 12 points are more conceptual, outlining the metaphysical worldview, which is inherently linked to a practical, concrete understanding, which will be covered in the points of part two. From Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse (1805).

1. I believe that there is one first cause of all things, whose nature is so immensely  transcendent, that it is even superessential; and that in consequence of this it cannot  properly either be  named or spoken of, or conceived by opinion, or be known, or  perceived by any being. 

2. I believe, however, that if it be lawful to give a name to that which is truly ineffable, the appellations of The One and The Good are of all others the most adapted to it; the former of these names indicating that it is the principle of all things, and the latter that it is the ultimate object of desire to all things.

3. I believe that this immense principle produced such things as are first and proximate to itself, most similar to itself; just as the heat immediately proceeding from fire is most similar to the heat in the fire; and the light immediately emanating from the sun, to that which the sun essentially contains. Hence, this principle produces many principles proximately from itself. 

4. I likewise believe that since all things differ from each other, and are multiplied with their proper differences, each of these multitudes is suspended from its one proper principle. That, in consequence of this, all beautiful things, whether in souls or in bodies, are suspended from one fountain of beauty. That whatever possesses symmetry, and whatever is true, and all principles are in a certain respect connate with the first principle, so far as they are principles, with an appropriate subjection and analogy. That all other principles are comprehended in this first principle, not with interval and multitude, but as parts in the whole, and number in the monad. That it is not a certain principle like each of the rest; for of these, one is the principle of beauty, another of truth, and another of something else, but it is simply principle. Nor is it simply the principle of beings but it is the principle of principles: it being necessary that the characteristic property of principle after the same manner as other things, should not begin from multitude, but should be collected into one monad as a summit, and which is the principle of principles. 

5. I believe, therefore, that such things as are produced by the first good in consequence of being connascent with it, do not recede from essential goodness, since they are immovable and unchanged, and are eternally established in the same blessedness. All other natures, however, being produced by the one good, and many goodnesses, since they fall off from essential goodness, and are not immovably established in the nature of divine goodness, possess on this account the good according to participation. 

6. I believe that as all things considered as subsisting  causally in this immense principle,  are transcendently more excellent than they are when considered as effects proceeding  from him; this principle is very properly said to be all things,  prior to all;  priority denoting  exempt transcendency. Just as number may be considered as subsisting occultly in the monad, and the circle in the centre; this occult being the same in each with causal subsistence. 

7. I believe that the most proper mode of venerating this great principle of principles is  to extend in silence the ineffable parturitions of the soul to its ineffable co - sensation; and  that if it be at all lawful to celebrate it, it is to be celebrated as a thrice unknown darkness,  as the God of all Gods , and the unity of all unities, as more ineffable than all silence, and  more occult than all essence, as holy among the holies, and concealed in its first progeny,  the intelligible Gods. 

8. I believe that self - subsistent natures are the immediate offspring of this principle, if it be lawful thus to denominate things which ought rather to be called ineffable unfoldings into light from the ineffable. 

9. I believe that incorporeal forms or ideas resident in a divine intellect, are the paradigms or models of every thing which has a perpetual subsistence according to nature. That these ideas subsist primarily in the highest intellects, secondarily in souls, and ultimately in sensible natures; and that they subsist in each, characterised by the essential properties of the beings in which they are contained. That they possess a paternal, producing, guardian, connecting, perfective and uniting power. That in divine beings they possess a power fabricative and gnostic; in nature a power fabricative but not gnostic: and in human souls in their present condition through a degradation of intellect, a power gnostic, but not fabricative. 

10. I believe that this world, depending on its divine artificer, who is himself an intelligible world, replete with the archetypal ideas of all things, is perpetually flowing, and perpetually advancing to being, and, compared with its paradigm, has  no stability, or reality of being. That considered, however, as animated by a divine soul, and as being the receptacle of divinities from whom bodies are suspended, it is justly called by Plato, a blessed God. 

11. I believe that the great body of this world, which subsists in a perpetual dispersion of  temporal extension, may be properly called a whole, with a total subsistence , or a  whole of wholes, on account of the perpetuity of its duration, though this is nothing more than a flowing  eternity. That the other wholes which it contains are the celestial spheres, the sphere of æther, the whole of air considered as one great orb, the whole earth, and the whole sea.  That these spheres are parts with a total subsistence, and through this subsistence are perpetual. 

12. I believe that all the parts of the universe, are unable to participate of the providence of divinity in a similar manner, but some of its parts enjoy this eternally, and others temporally; some in a primary and others in a secondary degree; for the universe being a perfect whole, must have a first, a middle, and a last part. But its first parts, as having the most excellent subsistence, must always exist according to nature; and its last parts must sometimes exist according to, and sometimes contrary to nature. Hence the celestial  bodies, which are the first parts of the universe, perpetually subsist according to nature, both the whole spheres, and the multitude co-ordinate to these wholes; and the only alteration which they experience is a mutation of figure, and variation of light at different  periods; but in the sublunary region, while the spheres of the elements remain on account  of their subsistence, as wholes, always according to nature; the parts of the wholes have  sometimes a natural, and sometimes an unnatural subsistence: for thus alone can the  circle of generation unfold all the variety which it contains. The different periods therefore in which these mutations happen, are with great propriety called by Plato, periods of fertility and sterility : for in these periods a fertility or sterility of men, animals,  and plants, takes place; so that in fertile periods mankind will be both more numerous,  and upon the whole superior in mental and bodily endowments to the men of a barren  period. And a similar reasoning must be extended to irrational animals and plants. The most dreadful consequence, likewise, attending a barren period with respect to mankind is this, that in such a period they have no scientific theology, and deny the existence of the immediate progeny of the ineffable cause of all things. 

13. I believe that as the divinities are eternally good and profitable, but are never noxious, and ever subsist in the same uniform mode of being, we are conjoined with them through similitude when we are virtuous, but separated from them through dissimilitude when we are vicious. That while we live according to virtue we partake of the Gods, but cause them to be our enemies when we become evil: not that they are angry (for anger is a passion, and they are impassive,) but because guilt prevents us from receiving the illuminations of the Gods, and subjects us to the power of dæmons of fateful justice. Hence, I believe, that if we obtain pardon of our guilt through prayers and sacrifices, we neither appease the Gods, nor ca use any mutation to take place in them; but by methods of this kind, and by our conversion to a divine nature, we apply a remedy to our vices, and again become partakers of the goodness of the Gods. So that it is the same thing to assert, that divinity is turned from the evil, as to say that the sun is concealed from those who are deprived of sight. 

 

image thanks to https://www.thoughtco.com/plato-important-philosophers-120328 
https://www.uraniatrust.org/index.php/articles/philosophy/platonic-philosophy-1 

Part 2 

Divine Madness: Plato on Love and Beauty, part 2

For the sake of comparison, the speech of Diotima with the myth of Eros in Symposium (200-212) will be considered as a later stage in the redemptive process of love and beauty (after the soul’s initial incarnation). While the Phaedrus could be said to emphasize a primordial phase in ethical purification, the Symposium can be considered to elaborate a later, more intellectual process of salvation through love (a phase where the ascent occurs after many incarnations). Since the speech of Diotima has been amply summarized, commentary will be limited to certain comparative considerations.

In the ascent to the contemplation of absolute beauty, there are certain intellectual strategies that can be noticed:
1-An inductive movement from multiplicity to simplicity – observing many beautiful bodies before choosing a single representative example of beauty (210b).

2-A deductive movement from particular to general – the essential qualities of the ideal example of beauty are applied to all examples of beautiful bodies (210b).The first two phases apply to visible, concrete beauty. The next two phases are applied to a consideration of conceptual, abstract beauty.

3-A deductive process where the universal notions of concrete beauty are applied to concepts and values. The beauty of virtues, of ideas, sciences (210c).

4-An inductive process of contemplating various instances of conceptual beauty to arrive at an understanding of absolute, essential beauty, which is the source of the previous forms of beauty. (211a-b)

The notion of regeneration of wings in the Phaedrus corresponds to the notion of pregnancy in the Symposium: Growing wings can be related to giving birth to intellectual creations. Moreover the notion of ascension by growing wings corresponds with ascension via climbing a ladder in the Symposium The role of eros is related to the intermediary position of the soul; the daimon communicates between the divine and material worlds.

The emphasis on the cosmic role of beauty in the process of generation of the cosmos in the　Phaedrus is shifted to the role of beauty in human procreation and artistic and intellectual creativity. Plato makes an interesting connection between the sexual function and the artistic function; Artistic creation is related to physical procreation. The sensual role of beauty of the body is considered in a more positive light. In the Phaedrus (and the Phaedo), the body is considered as a prison and a serious impediment to intellectual activity, to be suppressed and overcome. In the Phaedrus, physical love is not considered redemptive; in the Symposium it is granted that coition represents a desire for immortality and the desire to create beauty. This desire for immortality seems to be a more attenuated form of his theory of recollection of the Phaedrus. (1)(2) In both dialogues, beauty plays a role of catalyst to salvation.(3)

Both dialogues portray the lover’s beauty as a basis for appreciating higher forms of beauty such as moral or intellectual beauty. The Symposium emphasizes a more active process of the role of beauty in a romantic relationship. Beauty inspires the philosopher to educate the lover to be more virtuous. Romantic love is considered to be part of a complex psychological process; the love a soul mate is not absolute; the love is not entirely for one's partner, the love is a desire for absolute goodness, or the desire to become one with the absolute good. Ultimately it is a love for one’s higher self; (4) a metaphysical self-centered love similar to Aristotle's notion of philia in book seven of the Nichomachean Ethics, in the sense that friendship is essentially achieved by becoming a good person.

Interestingly, Blavatsky's definition of the Sanskrit term Kama in the Theosophical Glossary (p. 171-72) has certain similarities with Plato's notions of a higher and lower Eros:

As the Eros of Hesiod, degraded into Cupid by exoteric law, and still more degraded by a later popular sense attributed to the term, so is Kama a most mysterious and metaphysical subject. The earlier Vedic description of Kama alone gives the key-note to what he emblematizes. Kama is the first conscious, all embracing desire for universal good, love, and for all that lives and feels, needs help and kindness, the first feeling of infinite tender compassion and mercy that arose in the consciousness of the creative ONE Force, as soon as it came into life and being as a ray from the ABSOLUTE. Says the Rig Veda, “Desire first arose in IT, which was the primal germ of mind, and which Sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered in their heart to be the bond which connects Entity with non-Entity”, or Manas with pure Atma-Buddhi. There is no idea of sexual love in the conception. Kama is pre-eminently the divine desire of creating happiness and love; and it is only ages later, as mankind began to materialize by anthropomorphization its grandest ideals into cut and dried dogmas, that Kama became the power that gratifies desire on the animal plane.

(1) According to Robin,"Recollection of essential reality is replaced with the notion of the innate desire of immortality"(181).

(2) Plotinus distinguishes two levels of inspiration from beauty, one which provokes recollection, and a lower, less conscious level: "There are souls to whom earthly beauty is a leading to the memory of that in the higher realm and these love the earthly as an image; those that have not attained to this memory do not understand what is happening within them, and take the image for the reality. Once there is perfect self-control, it is no fault to enjoy the beauty of earth; where appreciation degenerates into carnality, there is sin. (Plotinus, III, 5, 1)

(3) Plutarch calls it a refraction: "But the noble and self-controlled lover has a different bent. His regard is refracted to the other　world, to Beauty divine and intelligible" (Plutarch 409, Amatorius 766B).

(4) "All that one sees as a spectacle is still external; one must bring the vision within and see no longer in that mode of separation but as we know ourselves; thus a man filled with a god – possessed by Apollo or by one of the Muses – need no longer look　outside for his vision of the divine being; it is but finding the strength to see the divinity within" (Plotinus, V, 8, 10).

References:

Besant, Annie, ed. Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, Vol. 2, 1925

Blavatsky, H. P. The Theosophical Glossary, 1893

Plato. The Banquet. Percy Byshe Shelley, transl. Provincetown : Pagan Press, 2001. Print.

- - -. Phaedrus. J. H. Nichols Jr., transl. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1998. Print.
Plotinus. Enneads V. A.H. Armstrong, transl. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Print.
Plutarch.  Moralia IX ‘’The Dialogue on Love’’ transl. W. C. Helmbold: Harvard University Press, 1967. 302-441. Print.

Robin, Léon. La Théorie Platonicienne de L’Amour . Paris : Presses Universitaires de France.1933. Print.

Sandford, Stella. "'Sexually Ambiguous. Eros and Sexuality in Plato and Freud' Journal of thetheoretical humanities 109 (2006) 11 3 43 — 59 28 Mar. 2011 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09697250601048507>.

 

Part 1

Divine Madness: Plato on Love and Beauty, part 1

Letter 19 from the Letters of the Masters of the Wisdom, second series, is quite intriguing:

Know, O Brother mine, that where a truly spiritual love seeks to consolidate itself doubly by a pure, permanent union of the two, in its earthly sense, it commits no sin, no crime in the eyes of the great Ain-Soph, for it is but the divine repetition of the Male and Female Principles-the microcosmal reflection of the first condition of Creation. On such a union angels may well smile! But they are rare, Brother mine, and can only be created under the wise and loving supervision of the Lodge, in order that the sons and daughters of clay might not be utterly degenerated, and the Divine Love of the Inhabitants of Higher Spheres (Angels) towards the daughters of Adam be repeated. But even such must suffer, before they are rewarded. Man's Atma may remain pure and as highly spiritual while it is united with its material body; why should not two souls in two bodies remain as pure and uncontaminated notwithstanding the earthly passing union of the latter two.

 

It sounds like an esoteric version of Platonic love, and so that will be the topic of today’s post:

In the Phaedrus, Plato describes a three-level cosmos composed of a supreme reality, a world of gods and a world of souls. The inferior levels look to the higher levels for sustenance. The gods look to Reality, the souls look to the gods and have a less direct view of reality. Redemption is ultimately based on judgement and atonement according the merit of one’s actions and behaviour. Plato considers that the philosophical life is the ideal path to redemption. He introduces the role of beauty along with the notion of divine madness. The beauty that one sees in the beloved creates an intense feeling of inspired frenzy. 

 

This divine madness of lovers is considered to be the fourth and greatest type of madness. It provokes a recollection of the original vision of essential truths of the soul in the heavens. He describes the original vision of divine beauty as one of the brightest visions in the celestial world in lyrical, mystical tones. He relates the process of recollection to the mother of the muses. Beauty is described as being the most vividly manifested of essential principles and is particularly striking because it appeals to our visual sense, considered to be the brightest and sharpest of our senses. Plato however observes that the sight of beauty is like a double-edged sword. If experienced with modesty and restraint, it is a deeply uplifting experience. Without those sanctifying virtues it can lead to a debased carnality and crude sensuality. It is this moral challenge of beauty that the speech is essentially concerned with.[1]

 

 The image of the charioteer and the two horses, a noble one and an unruly one, are introduced corresponding to the rational, spirited and sensual divisions of the soul in the Republic. In Freudian terms, the struggle to control the unruly horse in the sight of beauty could be described as a process of sublimating the energies of the libido (instincts and unconscious energies) through a proper repression in order to develop a socially functional adult behaviour.[2]

 

According to Sanford: “The debate on the Symposium concerning the status of eros in its ‘‘educated’’ forms can be (and sometimes explicitly is) presented precisely in relation to Freud’s concept of sublimation. Is it that a specifically sexual concept of eros is postulated as the driving force behind the higher sublimated aims of the philosopher – that eros as sexual passion is responsible for all desire, including the desire to philosophize, and that philosophy is thus a sexual-erotic discipline? (Sanford 53)

 

In summary, Plato uses the image of the charioteer and the two horses at a cosmic level for ontological purposes. The charioteer participating in the divine revolutions denotes the soul’s metaphysical nature. The fall of the soul deals with the problem of the origins of human incarnation and the origins of human consciousness. It serves to evoke why human beings have the capacity for reason and understanding, distinguishing them from animals, despite having an animal nature. When the soul suffers incarnation in a body, Plato pursues the charioteer image to develop on the epistemological, psychological and ethical aspects of the human condition.

 

Plato concludes the myth by discussing three paths that a loving relationship can take: one lived in chaste purity and virtue leads to salvation, regaining one’s wings; a life of virtue inspired by love, but with occasional lapses into physical passion, leads to a slower, partial redemption; a relationship characterized by seduction and calculation is not conducive to salvation. The loss and re-growth of wings deals with the intellectual faculties of the soul. The loss symbolizing forgetfulness and ignorance and the re-growth denoting progress in recollection and knowledge.

---

[1] “These, in sum, are innocent frequenters of beauty, not to be confused with the class to whom it becomes an occasion of fall into the ugly – for the aspiration towards a good degenerates into an evil often” (Plotinus, III, 5, 1).
[2]We have defined the concept of ‘‘libido’’ as a quantitatively variable force which could serve as a measure of processes and transformations occurring in the field of sexual excitation. We distinguish this libido in respect of its special origin from the energy which must be supposed to underlie mental processes in general, and we also thus attribute a qualitative character to it (Sanford 54); Socrates’ speech identifies (contra Halperin) a metaphysical desire for immortality shared by all animals,including the human. Even intellectual procreation in the more abstract forms of beauty is described in ecstatic terms. Eros, in all its manifestations, is neither somatic nor psychical, neither ‘‘sexual’’ nor ‘‘non-sexual,’’ but both"(Sanford 56).

Part 2

Plato's Four Arguments for the Immortality of the Soul from the Phaedo part 4

4- Argument from Causation through Forms (Form of Life) (102b-107b)

Objection: The soul pre-exists, but even if it continues after death, it might not be immortal; it might eventually wear out and perish.

A full response to this objection requires a full treatment of the causes of generation and destruction.

As previously discussed, we can assume the existence of such forms as absolute beauty, goodness, and magnitude (see Argument 2). A thing is beautiful because it take part in absolute beauty. It is by beauty that beautiful things are beautiful and the same goes for forms such as largeness and smallness.

From this perspective, it would  be better to say that a tall man is taller by virtue of tallness than being tall by a head because a person cannot be taller by the same thing that makes someone shorter (or by something that is short).

We can then infer that no object can come into being except by participation in the reality peculiar to its appropriate universal; therefore, one plus one equals two, not by virtue of addition, but by participation in duality.

For example, Simmias is bigger than Socrates due to his height, and Socrates has the attribute of shortness relative to the height of Simmias.

Additionally, Simmias is smaller than Phaedo because Phaedo has the attribute of tallness in comparison with the shortness of Simmias.

Therefore Simmias is both short and tall, because his shortness is surpassed by the tallness of Phaedo and his tallness is asserted over the shortness of Socrates.

We can further infer that a form (tallness) cannot be both tall and short; tallness will not admit shortness; if shortness approaches, it must either withdraw or cease to exist.

However, Socrates can receive both shortness and tallness, but tallness itself cannot receive shortness and remain what it is.

And as seen from the first argument, opposite things come from opposite things; but the form of opposite itself can never become opposite to itself.

Therefore snow can never admit heat and remain snow; fire cannot admit cold. Moreover, the attribute of the form is applicable to both the form and the object possessing the form. For example Three is both three and odd, though not identical with oddness.

A given form does not admit its opposite and everything that possesses that form also does not admit its opposite.

For example, three (which is odd) cannot admit anything that is even and remain three. Three is always accompanied by the opposite of even (odd), even though not odd itself. Two is always accompanied by the opposite of odd (even). Fire is always accompanied by the opposite of cold (hot).

Consequently, double will not admit the form of odd; one and a half will not admit the form of whole.

Therefore it takes fire to make a body hot, not heat. (It takes an object possessing the form of heat and not the form of heat itself). Hence it takes fever to make a body diseased, not the form of disease itself.

We can then infer that it takes the soul to make the body alive and not the form of Life; and the opposite of life is death; therefore soul cannot admit its opposite, which is death; and that which does not admit death is immortal. Therefore the soul is immortal.

What is immortal is imperishable. God and the form of Life are immortal.

And so when death comes, the mortal part dies, and the immortal part escapes unharmed and indestructible and so we can infer that our souls will exist in the next world.

If the soul is immortal, then it demands care at all times. It takes nothing to the next world except the education and training it received in this life. Then it is of supreme importance in helping the newly deceased at the very beginning of their journey there.
Back to Part 1 

Plato's Four Arguments for the Immortality of the Soul from the Phaedo part 3

3- Argument from Affinity (Body / Soul duality) (78b-84b)

At this point, a question is raised: we are sure the soul exists before birth, but how can we be sure it continues after death?

In responding, we first need to ask what sort of thing would be naturally dispersed after death.

A composite or natural object will decompose, an incomposite one will not. Incomposite things are constant and invariable, and so these can thus be considered as absolute realities. Absolute Equality or Beauty are constant and invariable whereas concrete instances of beauty or equality are inconstant and variable. Concrete objects are sensual and perceivable whereas constant entities are only perceivable by thought, hence they are invisible.

One can therefore infer that invisible things are invariable and visible things are variable.

Now human beings are part body and part soul and the body is visible whereas the soul is invisible.

When the soul uses the body for inquiry (via the senses), it is drawn to the variable natures and gets confused; but when it investigates by itself, it passes into the pure, eternal, immortal,  immovable, and absolute nature which is constant and invariable; this latter process is then a kindred nature with the soul.

Therefore the body is variable and the soul invariable; and it would be good then, to assume that the divine part, the soul, should govern, and the mortal part, the body, should serve.

Conclusion:

Body	Soul
Human	Divine
Mortal	Immortal
Unintelligible	Intelligible
Multiform	Uniform
Dissoluble	Indissoluble
Never Self-Consistent	Always Self-Consistent
Variable	Invariable

The philosopher, following reason and shunning pleasure and passions, frees himself from the imprisonment of the body and does not fear death.

Part 4 

Plato's Four Arguments for the Immortality of the Soul from the Phaedo part 2

2- Argument from the Theory of recollection

Recollection (72e-76e)
Definition of recollection: If we question someone in a certain way so as that they are lead to give a correct answer to a problem that they previously did not understand, or a correct understanding of a diagram they did not understand, this would indicate that the person had prior knowledge but had forgotten it and required that there memory be stimulated (For a full development of this concept, see Plato’s Meno).

If someone is reminded of something, then they must have known it previously. Recollection is arriving at knowledge in a particular way. Ex. Lovers see an object belonging o loved one and remember lover. Objects not seen in a while, that we had forgotten. Recollection may be caused by similar or dissimilar objects (one can see an object of Simmias or a portrait of Simmias and be reminded of Simmias)

Forms or Ideas (Eidos)

Along with recollection, we need to understand the nature of knowledge, and to this end we need to introduce the notion of forms (or ideas, in Greek: eidos).

To understand that nature of a form, let us admit that there is such a thing as equality (absolute equality, not the relative equality of two sticks, for example).

We can then observe that from seeing two equal sticks we are reminded of the idea of equality which exists separate from the sticks.

Whether the two sticks are similar or dissimilar does not matter as long as they remind you of the idea of equality. They do not have to be perfectly equal to remind one of equality.

We can then infer that we must have had previous knowledge, a previous understanding of equality, to understand the nature of seeing equals things striving after equality and falling short.

Sensation and Cognitive Theory

Note that it is through the senses that we perceive equality in sensible objects; therefore we must have acquired knowledge before using our senses; and since we acquire the sense faculties at birth, then we must have acquired this knowledge prior to our birth.

We can therefore infer that we must have acquired knowledge of all absolute standards before and at our birth.

And so we are born knowing and continue to know all our lives; we retain the knowledge we possess; and forgetting is loss of knowledge.

Therefore if we had knowledge prior to birth and lose it at birth and recover it after birth by exercizing our senses on objects, then this process is recollection.

Furthermore, since it is possible to be reminded of something we had forgotten by seeing an object (through association), then seeing is a kind of recollection.

So if someone us unable to explain something, it means that they do not possess that knowledge, then they need to recollect it, having forgotten it. When had they known it? If not in this life, then it must have been prior to that.

Conclusion

Hence souls had a previous existence, independent of bodies, and were possessed of intelligence, so we can infer that they must have had knowledge that embodiment has caused them to forget, therefore freedom from body gives them greater knowledge.

In conclusion, if there are absolute realities such as Beauty and Goodness and it is to them we refer to recollect, as copies refer to original patterns, then all objects of sensible perception can stimulate recollection.

Moreover, if these absolute realities exist, then so do our souls before our birth; if one of the two notions is impossible, so is the other.

Part 3 

Introduction to the Epistemology of Proclus

The divided line, which forms the foundation of Platonic dialectic, is an important aspect of Proclean epistemology. For example, he uses this passage as a basis for his introduction to his Commentary of Euclid’s Elements and it therefore serves as a good introduction to his philosophy in general. To give a brief background of his rather complex form of Neoplatonism, one can characterize as an eminently holistic philosophy based on what could be termed a dynamic multi-modal hierarchical structure of reality. His opening to his Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides can serve as a brief overview of this philosophy:

I pray to all the gods and goddesses to guide my mind in this study that I have undertaken-to kindle in me a shining light of truth and enlarge my understanding for the genuine science of being; to open the gates of my soul to receive the inspired guidance of Plato; and in anchoring my thought in the full splendour of reality to hold me back from too much conceit of wisdom and from the paths of error by keeping me in intellectual converse with those realities from which alone the eye of the soul is refreshed and nourished, as Plato says in the Phaedrus. I ask from the intelligible gods, fullness and wisdom, from the intellectual gods, the power to rise aloft, from the supercelestial gods guiding the universe, activity free and unconcerned with material inquiries, from the gods to whom the cosmos is assigned, a winged life, from the angelic choruses, a true revelation of the divine, from the good daemons an abundant filling of divine inspiration, and from the heroes, a generous, solemn, and  lofty disposition. (618, 19)

Perhaps more than any other Neoplatonist, Proclus was interested in developing the educational program, often referred to as the quadrivium and trivium, which Plato introduced in the Republic. Therefore he was very much concerned with mathematics, geometry and astronomy. For example, he presents the following paraphrase of Plato’s divided line in his presentation of a general theory of science:

 

In the Republic he sets on one side the objects of knowledge and over against them the forms of knowing, and pairs the forms of knowing with the types of knowable things. Some things he posits as intelligibles (noeta) others as perceptibles (aistheta); and then makes a further distinction among intelligbles between intelligibles and understandables (dianoeta) and among perceptibles and likenesses (eikasta). To the intelligibles, the highest of the classes, he assigns intellection (noesis) as its mode of knowing, to understandables understanding (dianoia), to perceptibles belief (pistis), and to likenesses conjecture (eikasia). He shows that conjecture has the relation to perception that understanding has to intellection; for conjecture apprehends the images of sense objects in water or other reflecting surfaces, which, as they are really only images of images, occupy almost the lowest rank in the scale of kinds, while understanding studies the likenesses of intelligibles that have descended from their primary simple and indivisible forms into plurality and division. For this reason the knowledge that understanding has is dependent on other and prior hypotheses, whereas intellection attains to the unhypothetical principle itself. (11, 9)\

Moreover, in the two prologues to his Commentary on Euclid’s Elements, Proclus outlines a full epistemological program centered around the central books of Plato’s Republic in an eclectic synthesis of elements from Pythagorean, Platonic, Aristotelian, and  Stoic sources. Influenced by Pythagoreanism, he outlines a metaphysical system based on mathematical and geometric-based concepts, presented as binary and ternary concepts, the highest being the notions of the limit and unlimited (peiras, apeiron) (based on Plato’s Philebus 16cff and 23cff.): ‘’To find the principles of mathematical being as a whole, we must ascend to those all-pervading principles that generate everything from themselves: namely, the Limit and the Unlimited. For these, the two highest principles after the indescribable and utterly incomprehensible causation of the One, give rise to everything else, including mathematical beings’’(6). These principles determine the aspects of the divisible and indivisible, establishing a limit/indivisible, unlimited/divisible correspondence:

For this reason both in Nous and in the intermediate orders of souls-that is, those natures that directly breathe life into bodies- the limiting factors have an essential priority over the things that are limited, as being less divisible, more uniform, and more sovereign; for among immaterial forms unity is more perfect than plurality, the partless more perfect than what proceeds in and away from it, and what bounds more perfect that what gets its limit from something other than itself. (86)

The images of the straight line and the circle are further related to cosmological functions, the line being related to the soul and the circle to the intellect and are also related to the fundamental ontological Neo-platonic dynamic of procession, related to the line, and reversion, related to the circle: ‘‘the straight line makes clear the procession [πρόοδος] of psychical life from superior things, and the bending-back [κατάκαμψις] into a circle makes clear its intellectual turning [στροϕή]’.] (InTimaeum  [2.248,11–23; cp. 2.244,15–17]).

This leads to his theory of  the ontological status of mathematicals, which are situated at an intermediary between  the indivisible and the divisible, containing aspects of both. This theory forms the basis of his theory of projection. It is through the imagination that mathematical concepts rooted in the soul become articulated in human understanding, through a process of collection and division. The imagination transforms archetypal forms into concrete images. It is considered an intermediary faculty between understanding and sensation: ‘’To this difficulty we reply that the imagination in its activity is not divisible only, neither is it indivisible. Rather it moves from the undivided to the divided, from the unformed, to what is formed’’ (In Euclid 95).