The Neoplatonic Wisdom Literature using the example of Plato s The Republic with emphasis on the soul

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1 The Neoplatonic Wisdom Literature using the example of Plato s The Republic with emphasis on the soul By Timo Schmitz, Philosopher Part 21 of the series Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion Plato was an Ancient Greek philosopher, to be precisely he was not just any philosopher, but the student of Socrates and since Socrates did not write down a single word (compare Part 16), Plato is one of the first who paved the way for Western Philosophy. Plato wrote many works in which his standpoints and the standpoints of his master gained a clear voice, although most scenes he described are rather fictional and were just set to show the message. Plato s Meno (Μένων) is a dialogue between Socrates and Meno in which virtue is defined and explained. Crito (Κρίτων) is another dialogue that just like Meno can be assumed to be fictional. The work turns around justice and injustice and covers the famous Socratic idea that any injustice is answered with injustice. The work sets around Socrates imprisonment, where his wealthy friend Crito offers to get him out of prison, while Socrates refuses this offer. Plato s Apology (Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους) more commonly known by the Latin name Apologia Socratis deals with the speech held by Socrates in court to defend himself. Plato s Euthyphro (Εὐθύφρων) is probably written just after Socrates death and thus one of Plato s early works. It deals with religious matters and tries to define piety. Religious matters are also the main topic of Plato s Phaedo (Φαίδων) another dialogue featuring Socrates, and again the other correspondent is the one who gives the book its name in which Socrates argument is given that the fate of the soul after death is in causation with the deeds done in life. Of course, Socrates advocates his own kind of living to be the best. Despite that, Socrates tries to explain that the soul is immortal. According to him, the soul moves the whole body and thus lives in it and thus after death the soul splits off the body and reincarnates (for the importance of the soul in Socratic thinking, see Part 16). Plato s Symposium (Συµπόσιον) is dedicated to the nature of love. In this work, several

2 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) -2- speeches are given on love at a symposium. Again, this work is mastering dialogues, which was probably Plato s favorite style. Plato s most famous work however probably is The Republic in Greek Politeia (Πολιτεία) in which Plato explains the nature of the city state, making him a political philosopher reasoning on state reasons. However, this book was not meant to be a dry book on politics, but has a deep spiritual background. While many just see the dry substance of how to govern, Plato probably put a whole concept of soul inside. This nature of soul shall be the main focus of this article. Especially worth to mention are the works that Pierre Grimes did on this matter. He is an expert on The Republic and showed many aspects in his speeches that are often forgotten or put aside by most who are looking at Plato s work. Therefore, I think it is especially important to take up Grimes ideas to get an overview, before discussing Platonism. According to Grimes, the city state is parallel to the soul of man 1. As introduced in Part 16, Plato suggested three levels of the soul. I want to put them up once again and describe them in short, although for further interest one should take a look into Part 16. The first part is the epithymetikon (ἐπιθυµητικόν) which is known as the appetites 2 in English c est le principe de l âme orienté exclusivement vers les plaisirs charnels, sensibles, du corps 3 4. The second one is the logistikon (λογιστικόν) or nous, which is translated as mind 5 and has the following quality: Il a son siège dans la tête. C est le principe rationnel ou hégémonique 6 7. The third part is the thymoeides (θυµοειδές), which is translated as spirited 8 and equals the heart 9. These three parts make up Plato s tripartite soul theory. As the soul equals the city state, it is no wonder that not only the soul, but also the city state has three layers, while each layer of the city state has a corresponding part of the soul. The three parts of the city state are the ruler, the guardians, and the vast majority of people, such as farmers and merchants 10. The ruler represents reason, the guardians are the high spirited, and the farmers and merchants represent the desires and needs 11. Thus, I interprete that the ruler is the logistikon (the head ), the guardians are the thymoeides ( the heart ) and the vast majority are the epithymetikon ( the desirous ). We should keep in mind one important point of Plato s division as he splits the mind and heart, so we can use this scheme to explain heartmind-dissociations in a Platonian discourse. Grimes implies such an example in Lecture 61, however, I think we shall go deeper in this matter by chance. Plato s Republic however is more than just the city state, it turns around the question what is justice? 12. The challenge is the just man as everything he does is just. However, it is just an appearance to the outside, while inside he is unjust. While the first appears to be the most just,

3 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) -3- the second one is the most unjust. However, the unjust man who is not hiding is truely the just man 13. Just like the city state, justice is put into analogy to the soul 14 and In the Republic [...], we encounter Socrates developing a position on justice and its relation to eudaimonia (happiness). He provides a long and complicated, but unified argument, in defense of the just life and its necessary connection to the happy life 15. At this point I have to mention two theories that are put up when talking about happiness. One is the Hedonian introduced by Epicurus in which people should avoid unpleasant things, the second is Eudaimonia, which is a central concept in Aristotle s ideas. Eudaimonia describes a successful life as goal, while the Hedonian view centers more on the action itself, as I suppose. As we can take from the discussion part of Grime s Lecture 61, the Platonians want to avoid unpleasant things, too, but this is evident, since everyone wants to avoid unpleasant things as far as he can. So I suppose that the Eudaimonian view also focusses a lot on pleasure. The three parts however have to join together to become a oneness, but this can only happen if all three parts settle down their interior struggles especially the reasoning part and spirited part have to get together to oppose the desirous part (this process or practise is called temperance ) 16. Temperance is a precondition to reach this oneness 17. I think this oneness has a certain similarity with Taoism and Buddhism, but I want to go into it later. Its parallel to awareness however is essential to mention now as there is stated in The Republic: You are aware that dyers when they wish to dye wool so as to hold the purple hue begin by selecting from the many colors there be the one nature of the white and then give it a careful preparatory treatment so that it will take the hue in the best way, and after the treatment, then and then only, dip it in the dye 18. By knowing this process you must conceive what we too to the best of our ability were doing when we selected our soldiers and educated them in music 19. One can clearly see that being aware and conceive are very deep-rooted words, such as music which is of course not meant literally, but rather in harmony. Of course, as the rational part is to be found in the soul, this awareness also should be attributed to the soul thus everything you are doing is done through the soul. If the soul gets into conflict, we have a rather serious issue, haven t we? My issue that I have when covering Plato is the question whether Plato talks of one soul with three parts or whether he wants to indicate that we have three possibly conflicting souls that try to interact with each other to win over the other one, however these three souls should join together to make a one and thus one soul. I didn t read all works of Plato so one who might be a real expert on Plato and knows all his statements by heart might answer this question, but I have to admit that I can t give a clear answer. However, Plato finally found that there must

4 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) -4- be more than one soul if we can do two things at the same time, but as we cannot, the three parts of the soul must form one soul (something which I should have made more clear in Part 16, where I use the word soul very unmindful in regards to that it all is just part of a soul, while calling the three elements soul itself might imply that they could act independently from each other, which is seemingly not the case). I want to show the problem of the question through a one or a many, as Plato states that we have to make a one out of many to gain justice (compare it with Grimes explanation on justice in Lecture 61), and I think to see a point that there are a many that will then be one, so are there several independent things ( many ) that should form one part (the one ) or are they not independent at all and already belong to the one but we cannot see yet unless we realise? I am really not sure about it, I have to leave this question open. When we talk about the one, we can equal it with the good which is the nature of reality and thus god, while the exact opposite of it is the lie which is equal with having a false idea or being ignorant as the lie is everything which is not real 20. In a Platonian view, the nature of reality is consisting of everything that has a good cause, and thus god must be good. Despite the good (which describes pure consciousness ), there is also the idea of the good, which stands for the intellect 21. The meaning of the word idea in the ancient Greek sense and the development towards modernity was already pointed out in depth in Part 16, which came to the conclusion that the word itself originally meant form, but then was interpreted as a concept of God in the Middle Ages and the description of concept then changed into a mental image and later just represented thought, probably in the late 17 th century, which has its meaning today. In a Platonian sense, the word idea stands for a pure immaterial pattern 22. The individual objects can be seen as an imperfect copy 23 of the former, i.e. the pure immaterial pattern. To put it in an easy daily sense, when we cook something in the kitchen, we first have a thought of how to cook it and how it shall look like in the end, but we never have the same result in practise, as we had as mental image in our mind. However, we can take the same image in reverse. For instance, there might be a god who creates something. However, to create something, such as the universe, he must have had a plan in mind to be able to create it, and therefore, god acts in the same way when he is seen as creator, as the thing to be created first must arouse out of an idea 24. An important difference between both, according to Grimes lies in time, as the universe has a time span but god is eternal, which makes the good as of Grimes not an experience or a practise as such 25. However, I think there can be a direct link between the good and the idea of the good if we compare it to Shamanic traditions where the barrier is to be broken through the medium. In

5 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) -5- many shamanic traditions, to put in Platonian terms, people try to get in touch with the good or try to call the good (probably to avoid evil or disharmony as the good is always in harmony), and thus the medium shall make the effort that the good has a direct cause to the person in need. However, we could argue in a Platonian sense that the need to go to the good itself is just another idea of the good, as people have the concept or plan to get in touch with someone, which they hold as mental image. Thus, they hold up a certain belief in persuit of the nature of reality as it is taught in their religious tradition. The same question appears in Buddhism when we ask who creates whom? Remember my Constructivist discourse in Part 20, as in Yogacara, everything is a creation that is conducted in mind and nothing is real. Here, too, we have to be aware that the environment around us is the result of a plan that we have, thus an idea or mental image with whom we perceive the world. The environment around us is created, because of our sensory perception being subjective and thus we can not see the objective truth, which would be reality. However, we believe in our mind that the things we perceive are really the reality (which in fact it is not the case)! In a Buddhist discourse, we might have to ask now, can we perceive the nature of reality?, but I have to leave this open at this point, because this goes too far for a Platonian discourse. However, we can reject the nature of reality as a practise, I think, but we can strive for the nature of reality, because we are always in search for the good and we want to be perfect, excellent, beautiful and go for the good cause, while we detest ignorance, arrogance and lies, don t we? So we might strive for the nature of reality, but we cannot reach the good. Luckily, there is more than just the nature of reality, but also Being which equals the Real. So our goal is to realise the nature of Being rather than reaching God, although many people strive for god-like perfection. The reason why we can never reach this god-like state is evident, if following Grimes Lecture 62 carefully, not just because human-beings don t have eternity, but also because the universe is just a copy of a god s plan. Therefore, we just have the immaterial copy of something present, and that s why it has the name idea. We can see it through language. When we talk of an idea, as described before, we have an immaterial pattern, and the universe is an imperfect copy. It is an imperfect copy of what? Of god s plan! What is god? God is good. Thus God is the good. Therefore it s the plan of the good. As the mental image comes from the good, it must be the idea of the good. Sometimes, one encounters the word, the Form of the Good instead of idea, and we can try to put it into the same sense again to show the synonymous meaning. If there is the good, it also has a form (probably even if it is empty, as it then has the form of emptiness), and therefore it can be manifestated in the world. We can differentiate these forms, however, we might see the

6 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) -6- highest form of the good as the sun, as the sun is most important to shed light on the forms below. Anyways, we have to be aware of two frames: one is the intelligible in which understanding and knowledge has its place and which equals the good, and the other is the place where images and beliefs appear which equals the idea of the good and therefore is the visible 26. While the visible world is seen through the eyes, the intelligible is seen through the soul. The good or the one is in the intelligible realm, however we have to be aware that we are in a Neoplatonian discourse, thus in a modern discourse, based upon Plotin, or latinized Plotinus. For Plotinus there was a basic principle, we can say a highest principle of absolute simplicity. It is so simple that we don t have a real name for it, as we even don t know whether it is either existent or being and therefore beyond being. Here comes Plato s point that the good or the one is beyond being. However, Plotinus just borrowed Plato s view in this case. Even further, the soul in Neoplatonist views are a moving essence, I would call it simply a medium between the good and the idea of the good. When we talk about essence, we should go back to Grimes. As a ground we have Divine Luminosity and Brilliant Radiance that encounters. As a result Being, vitality and intellect are recognized in a process, where intellect represents a certain insight, vitality is the liveliness which is into it and Being is the eminent being as such. However, it is an experience encountered by soul 27. I would conclude therefore that essence is a process or an experience rather than something that stands for its own. That s the point of essence! Even further the essence is a copy of the form, and thus the idea as form and idea are more or less synonymous in this discourse, as was shown above. As the idea in mind is perfect, but the doing-so is always imperfect according to the perfect idea in mind, the manifestation has not the quality as the idea in mind. We can hence say the good is perfect, but the idea of the good is not. However, in the Platonian Theory of Forms, the forms or ideas are representing reality more accurately, although they are non-physical, just by the way. When understanding the essence, the good, the idea of the good, and Being we can understand Plato s idea of the soul and its relation. Anyways, the soul just as the city state is a hypothetical phenomena which is very abstract. Grimes even pointed out that the city state mentioned by Plato is just meant to be an analogy to the soul and that Plato did not intend to present it as a state theory which has to be realised 28. During the introduction of the one, several ideas on Buddhism and Daoism were mentioned and finally I want to go back to the point comparing Neoplatonism with these two religions, and later grasp Neoplatonian ideas on heart and mind and compare it to other schools of thought.

7 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) -7- At first I want to point out the similarity between the one and the Dao. Same as the Dao is the highest principle which is more to be found in the intelligible realm through knowing and understanding it manifestates as a kind of idea in the immanent world, although the idea of the good exists not as such, but can be created through analogy when we say that everything is a manifestation of the Dao, and thus a form of it. While the Dao is like a supersoul or a paramatma in Hinduism, interestingly there is a lot of discussion whether atman equals the ancient Greek idea of psyche (ψυχή), meaning soul. However, while in Daoism everything manifestates in one soul (same as in Hinduism), in the traditional Chinese worldview, there are several souls, making up two categories, the hun and po, where the hun is the celestial soul and thus leaves the body after death and the po is the one belonging to the person itself and thus staying in the body, as it is part of the body in a far sense 29. Therefore, it is such interesting for me to see, whether the soul in a Platonian discourse always had been one and was tripartite from the beginning, or whether Plato first designed three soul concepts and then realised that they join together. As I said before, I don t really know the naswer, but at any point, it should be clear that it is not self-evident that there is always a one soul concept, as there exist cultures where people traditionally have more souls. Interestingly, Plato had more concepts on the soul than just that one. He has one more concept that comes even closer to Daoism. In Daoism, every phenomena has a soul. Plato made up the same thing called world soul which is introduced in Plato s work Timaeus (Τίµαιος), where he made clear that the world is a living being that has its own soul. Thus, everything in the world carries a soul which includes all other souls within. The world soul concept is not only closely shared in Daoism, but also in Buddhism in the concept of buddhadhatu, or often simply called buddha nature. According to Buddhist belief, all living beings have this Buddha nature inside. However, there is not a single view on buddhadhatu in Buddhism. For instance, the Yogacara advocate the Five Categories on Beings and the famous Yogacara scholar Ci en even mentioned two natures (but both are related to foxing, the Chinese term for buddha-nature, so we can regard the two natures as sub-group of the one nature). In one of the most important sutras of Yogacara, the Lankavatara-Sutra, the buddha-nature is more or less identical with the storehouse conscious 30. One of the most popular views on buddhanature is stated in the Lotus Sutra, in which it is said that everyone can liberate oneself through the Buddha-nature. However, deeper explanations would go beyond the scope of this article.

8 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) -8- As mentioned before, we can describe heart-mind dissociations through the Platonic concept. I want to compare this concept with Eastern Thought once again, since it is interesting to see that Plato mentions both, the heart and the mind. Only if both work together one is in harmony, otherwise there are internal squarrels between the parts of the soul and the rational decision can be conducted if the heart and mind go together against the desirous. In traditional Chinese thought, the thoughts are done by heart and therefore the heart plays a special role. Therefore, the words for heart and mind have always been the same, and sometimes are still used synonymously 31. In Chinese Buddhism, the two-mind-theory was introduced with the Shurangama Sutra which is not that important in the West, but often discussed together with the Lankavatara- Sutra in China and East Asia in general when refering to the nature of mind. Unlike traditional beliefs in China such as Daoism, Confucianism, Chinese folk religion and local religions of minorities which have ideas on souls and mostly affirm the idea that a soul or souls exist, Buddhism rejects the existence of a soul as such 32. The processes of thinking and feeling were analysed in Buddhism, and eventually a problem showed up when converting Indian belief of Buddhism into Chinese Buddhism. Therefore, I assume that the two-mindtheory was introduced to solve the contradiction, whether the mind is in the heart or elsewhere by stating that there are two minds 33. If we accept the idea that there are two minds, such as in our head and our heart, we have an exact parallel with Neoplatonism that has one part of the soul in the head and the other one in the heart. The idea of heart-mind-dissociation thus is in common, but probably manifestated through different historical backgrounds. However, the heart as a symbol for feeling is present everywhere in the world, and is a world-wide accepted symbol for love. In the end I want to go to the background and emphasize a problem when we say that Socrates stated something, witnessed by Plato. As Socrates never wrote anything down and as Plato s dialogues about Socrates can be assumed to be totally fictional, we cannot know many Socratic ideas as such, but only see the Platonian point, because Socrates teaching is only delivered through secondary sources 34 and as writing fictional works including real people was very normal in antiquity, it was intended to be an art (in which one tries to report something of the viewpoint of the particular person), but we cannot really say Socrates said... (and I refer to the real Socrates, not to the literary figure). One reason why we have to be careful with statements about Socrates is the fact that writing is subjective and writers can use their own standpoint or only show a small part of the standpoint of the person which is depicted. Thus, we can assume that Plato tried to show his own views in the Socratic

9 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) -9- dialogues, whether it was intended or not, rather than Socratic philosophy. One reason why we can assume that it rather depicts Plato s than Socrates is the fact that the human memory is very, very bad and we forget a lot, remember things wrong and mix facts up unintendedly. Second, Socrates is put into Plato s views as Plato wants to show his own points, that s why we call it Platonism. We can say, Plato made Socrates to what he wanted to, but we don t really know anything about Socrates real views. Our view of Socrates is rather constructed, such as Plato constructed Socrates as hero of his works and all the things we pointed out in Part 16 on Socrates, we don t really know whether they are true. We don t know whether Socrates was really that convinced of himself or whether he was a modest man instead, but then upgraded through Plato s artistic writing. We don t know! But we know that many consequences pointed out to be Socratian are constructed to please the views of the modern reader ( modern as throughout history), and thus the Socrates propagated after Socrates death is same transformed in mind, than the Renaissance Socrates, than the Enlightenment Socrates and the nowadays Socrates (a proof for this can be seen in the history of the development of the saying scio me nescire that was never spoken out by Socrates, but is a result of his legacy, as discussed in Part 16). All we know is that Platonism created an ideal Socrates, while the real one is still in the shadow of time. Annotations: (1) When the word Neoplatonism is used, there is actually no direct link to Plato as such, as this philosophy was founded by Plotin (Πλωτῖνος) who picked up Plato s thoughts and gave it a new meaning and direction. Therefore, the word Plotinism is sometimes used instead. Before the rise of Neoplatonism, Middle Platonism represented Plato s thoughts. One of the most famous philosophers of Middle Platonism was Plutarch (Πλούταρχος), who picked up the idea of the immortality of the soul and emphasized that God is a transcendent being. Notes: 1. Grimes, Pierre: Wisdom Literature in the Platonic Tradition Lecture 61: Plato s Republic (Part 1), Opening Mind Academy, 1997

10 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) Kerns, Tom: Plato s Three Parts of the Soul, Philosophy 101, North Seattle Community College, (retrieved on 22 March 2016) 3. Sérange, Pierre (ed.): Les trois parties de l âme chez PLATON (La République, livre IV), es_20de_20l_20ame_20platon.pdf (retrieved on 20 March 2016) 4. passage translated in English by the author: that s the principle of the soul orientated exclusively towards the carnal pleasures, sensitivity, of the body 5. Kerns (retrieved on 22 March 2016) 6. Sérange (retrieved on 20 March 2016) 7. passage translated in English by the author: It has its seat in the head. It s the rational or hegemonic principle 8. Kerns (retrieved on 22 March 2016) 9. Sérange (retrieved on 20 March 2016) 10. Grimes, Lecture 61, ibid. 12. Coumoundouros, Antonis: Plato The Republic, Internet Enyclopedia of Philosophy, (retrieved on 24 March 2016) 13. Grimes, Lecture 61, Coumoundouros (retrieved on 24 March 2016) 15. ibid. 16. Grimes, Pierre: Wisdom Literature in the Platonic Tradition Lecture 62: Plato s Republic (Part 2), Opening Mind Academy, 1997; Grimes, Lecture 61, Grimes, Lecture 62, Plato: The Republic, 4.429d (English translation by Paul Shorey, taken from Plato in Twelve Volumes, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969) 19. Plato: The Republic, 429e 20. compare the explanation on a lie in Grimes, Lecture 62, see Schmitz, Timo: Rationalism versus Spiritualism and Atheism versus Polytheism in Buddhism, Berlin: epubli, 2015(a); Grimes, Pierre: Wisdom Literature in the Platonic Tradition Lecture 90: The Lankavatara Sutra, a treatise of self-realization of noble wisdom, Opening Mind Academy, 1998

11 Timo Schmitz: Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion (Part 21) Harper, Douglas Online Etymology Dictionary, entry idea (n.), (retrieved on 17 February 2016) 23. compare Harper (retrieved on 17 February 2016) 24. You might also compare Grimes, Lecture 62, 1997 for a fully Platonian view and Grimes, Lecture 90, 1998 for a comparision between the Platonian view and Buddhism. For another Buddhist view taking up on Grimes ideas see Schmitz, 2015a 25. Grimes, Pierre: Wisdom Literature in the Platonic Tradition Lecture 66: The One in Plato s Republic, Opening Mind Academy, 1997; Grimes, Lecture 62, Grimes, Lecture 66, ibid. 28. ibid. 29. Schmitz, Timo: The traditional Chinese worldview on cosmological principles and the role of human-beings in the world and beyond, self-published online article, 5 November 2015 (b), For a clear view into the storehouse conscious and the main points of the Lankavatara Sutra see Schmitz, 2015a 31. Schmitz, Timo: Right Intention a.k.a. Right Thought in Buddhism From emotional theory to practise, self published online article, 10 March 2016, ibid. 33. Schmitz, 2015a; Schmitz, In the discussion in end of Lecture 66 by Grimes, he points out that there are doubts whether Plato really talked of Socrates as such, or whether he made his Socrates up, as Plato invented many things in his works. However, I just want to take up this point as a self-critique of my Part 16 in which I talked of Socratic philosophy. However, what we think to be Socratic philosophy as such cannot be proven to be Socrates ideas, and thus Socratic philosophy as such is non-existent. I think it is important to point this problem out, as this matter was not critically analyzed in Part 16. Timo Schmitz, 8 April This article is Part 21 of the series Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion. Reprinting for one s own personal non-commercial use is allowed.