u/ThatsItForTheOther

Hi, I’m wondering what kind of connection there is between Hegel’s geist and the concept of World Soul in Platonism.

Both seem to be universal principles of divine discursive thought which inform the physical world…

I understand that they function rather differently, but they seem to have much in common as well.

Could somebody point me to some of the major similarities and differences between these concepts? Or perhaps an existing essay comparing them?

Thanks!

Please!!!!

Platonism certainly has a transcendent focus. It generally aims to go beyond individual difference in the world of becoming to rational universals in the world of Being.

This is great and all, but even Plotinus said (I believe in Against the Gnostics) that anyone who scorns the material world in favour of Eternity is confused, because the material world, as the outpouring of eternity, is also to be respected and exhalted (just not exhalted in a way that denies the metaphysical supremacy of Being).

It is by the Limit principle that we have unity, but it is by the Unlimited principle that we have diversity.

Individuals are a result of the combination of these two principles. Without the Unlimited there could not be multiplicity. So, the fact that there can be individuals at all is thanks in part to the Unlimited.

Now, multiplicity is generally not a good thing from a Platonic point of view. This is partially because Plato sees various aspects of human life as being objective and universal like math, such that it is correct that 2+2=4 and anyone who has a different opinion must be ignorant about math. So a diversity of opinions in such a case is not a good thing.

Likewise for diversity of medical opinions… a patient would rather the various doctors they speak to be on a similar page regarding their treatment… if they all seem to disagree it does not bode well!

And for more metaphysical reasons, oneness and goodness are basically identical in Platonism. Acording to Gerson’s Plato’s Moral Realism, “instantiating the Good is equivalent to a contribution to the acheivement of integrative unity according to kind” (p. 108). [Great book btw].

That is, my good, as a human being, is to acheive the greatest degree of harmony and unity among by parts as is possible and appropriate to me as a human being. The virtuous or physically healthy person makes a unity out of their various parts, whereas the vicious or physically unhealthy person’s parts work against one another.

This is all well and good… I’m a Plato lover… but, when it comes to human experience in general, variety is the spice of life! How boring would it be if there was no diversity, but every single person was just the ideal philosopher king, the perfect instatiation of the Human… I mean… let’s be real…

So even if it is true that the Unlimited principle is the source of all imperfection and disorder, which is to say badness… this is still ultimately a good thing! An absolutely essential part of creation.

So, without needing to alter Platonic metaphysics, I think it would be good to have a more reverent attitude towards the Unlimited principle, since without it there could not even be ‘order’, really, only pure oneness, pure Being.

Limit and Unlimited, Father and Mother… we, as creatures in the process of becoming have inherited qualities from both parents. It is no longer acceptable to have the ancient attitude of the mother as a mere incubator! We have a connection to both the Eternal and the temporal.

We need not reject our Mother, reject our differences and individuality, in order to honour the Father in whom all is one… we must simultaneously honour both our oneness and our diversity, and respect our diversity as the vehicle through which order might be made manifest.

As such, even though the Father or Limit plays many of the the roles most often associated with God (instills goodness and order, etc.)… the Mother also plays many other roles of God (paricipates in creation, forgives and witholds justice out of mercy, etc.)

There is a theme in Biblical theology of two qualities of God that operate in conjunction and conflict with one another:

God’s wrath, which corrects wickedness (making a unity out of a previous multiplicity).
And God’s mercy, which forgives wickedness (allowing multiplicity and disorder temporary existence).

If God’s wrath (here, the Father, Limit) were left unchecked, everything would be absolutely perfect and none of us would ever have been born.

Yet, if God’s mercy (here, the Mother, Unlimited) were left unchecked, then the universe would dissolve into unintelligible formless chaos…

But instead, these two principles are held together so that ‘God sends rain on the just and the unjust.’

So I think both aspects of God ought to be honoured as such, without rejecting Mom in favour of Dad! We must honour the complexity of our situation as individuals in the world of becoming.

Thank you for reading. Any comments are welcome.

Hi, I am a philosophy student who is mostly familiar with Platonic ethics, so I’ll be framing my question accordingly.

A Platonist might want to be justified in saying that it was objectively morally wrong for Socrates to be put to death.

Now, if it is true that ‘man is the measure of all things’ (moral relativism), then this would be a tough claim to justify because the Athenians voted to kill him.

If a person’s opinion about moral truth is equivalent to moral truth itself, then it is hard to see what could be more authoritative than a majority of opinions.

Plato tries to argue, therefore, for an objective and universal standard of Justice (and Truth, etc.) to which human opinions are held accountable.

Such a standard could provide a non-arbitrary means for sorting superior opinions from inferior ones.

Without such a standard, a person would be hard pressed to argue against the majority that Socrates was in fact innocent, since the fact of the matter would be in fact whatever the jury said it was.

Plato makes a rather convincing case to me, so I wonder what authority a person who is not a moral realist might appeal to if they were to make a social critique. I’m only really familiar with the realist side of things.

Would the moral relativist simply have to settle for ‘it is my opinion that Socrates was killed unjustly?’ or perhaps ‘Socrates was killed unjustly according to my personal brand of justice’?

The problem here seems to be that other people would not necessarily feel the need to change their minds or behaviours based on a person’s personal opinion.

If the Socrates example is too mundane, maybe the case of slavery is better? What arguments are available to the relativist who wants to condemn slavery in a country where it is ingrained in the culture?

Thank you in advance for any help.

If Kierkegaard wants me to be subjectively infinitely concerned with God without objective/world-historical mediation, why must my God-relationship be mediated by the Bible?

Currently reading Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

I’m really loving this book but I’m wondering why a Kierkegaardian mystic has to bother with Christian dogma, when to me this would seem to be an impediment to the subjective individual who is infinitely concerned with their inward God relation.

Is not Christianity something external to this? Why must my God-relationship be mediated by Paul and company? Isn’t the very appeal of Lessing that he prevents such mediation and requires his readers to relate to Truth in subjective immediacy??

I fail to see how Christianity is not a roadblock to the Kierkegaardian subjective mystical individual.

Could someone please offer any kind of insight on this matter? I would much appreciate it.

Hi, I’ve been really interested in Platonism for the past couple years but have recently started working on Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript and (extremely recently) his Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits.

I find that Kierkegaard and Plato really have a lot in common, and I think Kierkegaard seems to have a (maybe pretty good) reading of Plato’s Socrates as a kind of Kierkegaardian subjectivist…

Plato is often really characatured as totally casting off the world of becoming in favour of the world of being, but, though it is certainly partially true, I think this is a shallow reading of Plato, who was very aware of his fallibility and had many subjectivist tendencies.

None of this is to say that Plato didn’t prioritize objective universal truth—because he did— but he also had the subjective sense to express himself double-reflective-ly through dialogue and so on.

It would seem that the Apology was heavily influential on the Postscript.

Anyway I just wonder what your thoughts are on all this. I expect to hear a diversity of opinions.

Hi! I’ve been working through Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript and I want to work on becoming the kind of authentic person he describes in this book but I’m really struggling!

As it stands, I am enjoying this book in a kind of speculative way… I’m thinking a lot about philosophy but I am not actually living… How do I break away from my previous way of being as he argues I must?

Any practical advice for how to actually implement this book (or aspects of it) into my life? Instead of just speculatively admiring it from a safe distance?

Sorry this post is a bit vague but I want to leave room for whatever you might have to say about living with this book. Thanks!

I feel like I want some context before rebirth maybe…? Plus crisis seems cool… Any insight would be helpful!

I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Is there no practical help for this problem in this life?

Paul seems to me to say that you either get the grace to overcome it or you don’t, and there’s nothing you can do about it but have faith.

Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.

So Plato’s One seems to be the limiting principle while his indefinite Dyad is the unlimited principle?

Are these the ‘1’ and ‘2’ for Plato…?

What happened to the Intellect? Isn’t Intellect ‘2’ in Plotinus’ system? Eternal being?

Does the ‘2’ of Plato’s system (indefinite Dyad) not correspond to the ‘4’ of Plotinus’ (matter)??

I have so many questions that I don’t know where to begin!

Could someone please provide (or point in the direction of) a brief overview of this development?

Thanks!

I am very interested in Platonism and Neoplatonism.

I am quite familiar with several of Plato’s dialogues but have not read most. I have read from the Enneads a little bit but I haven’t really jumped in yet.

I just read Plato’s Parmenides and I think a neoplatonic exegesis would be very helpful.

My questions are as follows:

1. Would this commentary give me a decent understanding of a Neoplatonic interpretation of the Parmenides in general, or will it be highly specific to Proclus’ own system?
2. Will it help me to understand Plato’s original meaning or will this get obscured by Proclus’ own innovations?
3. Is it very difficult to read and understand? I am somewhat used to reading philosophy at this point but I want to know what I’m getting into…

The book is rather expensive and lengthy so it is not a purchase I can make without hearing some reviews haha. Thanks!

[Edit: typo]

I find that Plato’s philosophy seems to point toward a model of reincarnation and eventual education/purification/theosis.

For instance, in Gorgias it is said that
no one willingly does wrong (since everyone does everything for the sake of the good 468b) and that the appropriate ‘punishment’ for ignorance is education (337d).

But he concludes the dialogue with a myth which includes permanent damnation…

This would seem to me to be merely a scare tactic for his interlocutors who are dangerous to the community and won’t be swayed by argument… except that Phaedo and Republic have similar myths! This makes it trickier.

There are myths that support the alternative position (like Phaedrus), but I am surprised that hell would come up at all in a dialogue like Phaedo where he’s talking with his friends.

Another reason eternal damnation should be impossible for Plato: everything eternal is good. There are no bad forms; badness is a kind of privation of being or a disharmony, but it does not have essential being itself.

It seems to me that eternal damnation is so obviously contrary to Plato’s metaphysics that he must have included it for two reasons:
A. to scare non-philosophers into being moral
B. to give his philosopher readers practice identifying and arguing against myths that are not true (as I am doing now). I think just as Plato censored Homer he is offering himself as practice for us— it is our responsibility to sort out what is true from what is not. He’s a philosopher not a dogmatist and he expects the same from his (serious) readers.

There is significant evidence to support this.

After Gorgias myth he says (527a) “You probably consider it a ludicrous old wive’s tale. There would indeed be nothing strange about despising it if we could somehow come across a better and truer account, but as it is you can see that you three—you, Polus, and Gorgias, the three cleverest people in Greece today—have failed to prove that any other way of life is preferable to the one I’ve been arguing for, which also turns out to be to our advantage in the next world too.”

And after the Phaedo myth (114d): “No sensible man would insist that these things are as I have described them, but I think it is fitting for a man to risk the belief—for the risk is a noble one—that this, or something like this, is true about our souls and their dwelling places, since the soul is evidently immortal…”

You might argue that Plato’s world is justly ordered and therefore bad people must be tormented for their crimes… but that contradicts my first argument as well as, for instance, Gorgias 335e: “we’ve found that it is never right to harm anyone.”

I think Socrates is being ironic, ‘torment’ just refers to the way that immoral people hate being proven wrong and how sunlight hurts the cavedwellers’ eyes. Just punishment does not confer harm but benefit.

It is the function of morality to benefit others, and the function of immorality to harm others. How then could we expect God, the principle of goodness itself, to cause eternal harm?

Again, “Anyone who pays a fair penalty for his crimes, then, is having good done to him, agreed?” (Gorgias 477a). How can this be said for those with no hope of escaping torture forever? It can’t.

What do you think about this?

For instance, my love for the Platonic tradition coexists with my love for the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, etc.

I’m also a big fan of Kierkegaard and Alan Watts, who explicitly set themselves up as anti-Platonic, and are extremely different from one another.

To me it all fits together some way or other…though I certainly won’t be doing the systematizing!!

Also the Grateful Dead are a big influence on me. Listen to the song ‘Terrapin Station’, it is as Neoplatonic as it gets and it is awesome.

I’m curious to hear what kind of melting pots are going on in other peoples’ heads!

If Platonic forms exist in some way, then what are the various explanations for why the form of beauty is beautiful but the form of car is not a car?

It seems non-negotiable that the form of beauty must be beautiful or else the whole erotic aspect of Platonic philosophy crumbles.

Yet, it seems equally non-negotiable to have an actual car existing in eternity beyond time and space. How can it be called a car if it can’t move or be driven?

Or, more simply, how can the form of triangle really be a triangle if there is no time or space in eternity? As Kant said, it is impossible to imagine a triangle that is not extended in space.

Triangualrity itself can rather easily be conceived to be eternal, but triangularity is not a triangle. Beauty itself, on the other hand…. Is beautiful. This distinction sounds right to me.

The only somewhat acceptable answer seems to be that the transcendental forms (oneness, goodness, truth….) are the only ones that really are what they are, whereas the rest do not self-predicate.

What do you think?

(Further, thinking ahead to Pseudo-Dionysius, although I know it is not quite the same framework, he writes that it is wrong even to ascribe goodness to the first principle, since it is utterly beyond description.

So perhaps another solution would be to deny self-predication even of the transcendental forms… however, again, this would seem to crumble Plato’s Eros, so I worry.)

I’ve been reading some debates here and I just want to try to help clear up one issue.

Atheists tend to be very surprised at the claim that God ‘intends’ good, but is almost begrudgingly said to ‘allow’ evil, though it is contrary to good.

I’m not talking about the entire problem of evil here. Only the claim that God does not ‘intend’ all things to the same extent.

When a non-theist hears this, they tend to think this is totally contrary to reason. Cherry-picking for the sake of dogmatically making God good. If God is responsible for all, it should be clear cut, they say.

But there is a reason for this thought process that you’ll need to understand if you want to argue effectively.

It’s helpful to look back to Plato and the Neoplatonists (who were very influential on abrahamic theology).

God is responsible for ordering the world. Not just in the sense of ‘creating’… but in the sense of God being that universal ordering principle that underlies reality, making it logically coherent.

God is that principle from which the Platonic Forms are derived… God made numbers, logic, ethics, all fields of knowledge, be the way that they are.

God is that logical principle that determines which actions are virtous and conducive to good outcomes and which are bad and conducive to bad outcomes.

Most people (who are not something like a Kantian, I guess) agree that there is such a universal principle.

What we disagree about is whether it’s
a) good
b) conscious
c) revealed in the Bible
Etc.

Now it is thought that this universal ordering principle is supremely good.

This can be understood by the Platonic view that what is most logically ordered is best.

For instance, the most logically ordered political institutions ought to function best and do the best for their citizens.

Likewise, logically consistent scientific theories are preferable to inconsistent ones. The logical doctor is better than the witch doctor.

A human has a certain order to it that we call good health. Succumbing to disease means introducing disorder.

Logical coherence is good, under this view.

God is what makes order order. Therefore God is good, since order is what makes things good.

This is why good (ordered) things are said to be ‘intended’ by God, whereas bad (disordered) things are said to be accidental and merely ‘allowed’.

I hope I’ve explained this perspective somewhat clearly. Again, I only mean to clear up some confusion around this one claim.

Hello! I want to argue that it is better to have an open-minded attitude towards every religious tradition and follow your intuition taking bits and pieces as you understand them and as you grow.

I think it is better to study all kinds of scripture and critically engage with it rather than to choose only one text as God’s truth and dismiss other things.

I think that clinging to a belief that your specific book/tradition holds the ultimate message of God for humanity is a sign of a lack of faith.

It seems to me that a person who truly has faith and loves God unconditionally (and fears him) would not make such a bold claim as to have access to God’s truth in such a way.

We should remember Job… God is not under the obligation to explain everything to us.

The Bible/Christianity is not available to everyone, but direct mysticism is. The kingdom of heaven is within you. It should be obvious then that this is the path given by God, if God really wants to give everyone a chance. And if he is omnipresent.

Not to mention the idea of eternal damnation which I find quite disturbing.

I’ll grant that the Bible is in part inspired by the Holy Spirit… but only if we also say that other sciptures from other cultures are also inspired by the Holy Spirit, and that we don’t know which is ‘supreme’.

I think the opposing view is somewhat ethnocentrist and could lead to colonial tendencies.

I’m not saying that belonging to one tradition is bad. No need to overwhelm yourself learning a million different philosophies…

But having the attitude that you KNOW that your tradition is TRUE… I think is irreligious.

Ultimately, I think that every religion is like a different path starting from various spots at the base of a mountain. They lead to the same summit but are initially far apart.

But I fear that people will not reach that summit, because they are too consumed in their cultural religious construct to notice the living God, who transcends culture and religion.

Thanks in advance!

I don’t have a great idea of what the historical Jesus is suspected to have been exposed to.

But I thought not much, since he grew up in a rural Jewish environment? (Albeit under Roman rule…)

I wonder how much he would have been exposed to greco-roman rhetorical kinds of things? And in what contexts? What do we think he is likely referencing?

Thanks!