FOREWORD This essay is a bit of a mess. It’s a few scatty, possibly even misunderstood concepts drawn from my current reading (I’ve just gotten a big sourcebook of Platonist philosophy!). What I do hope it is not is uninteresting and lifeless abstraction! So my apologies and hopes that it can prove of some worth to readers!
The eternal Forms/Ideas which are the Mind of God1(the unifying and teleological power of the Forms to act on matter and shape the cosmos) are taken by many Academics and Platonists to occupy a distinct and higher realm (Being) to the universe of experience (Becoming). Traditionally a problem in classical western philosophy has been to demarcate the boundaries of a relationship between the ‘mind/mental/noetic’ and ‘body/matter’ with a variety of answers of only slightly different emphases. Generally, priority and superiority has been given to the mental, at least in the classical traditions of Platonism and Aristotelianism. Is the transcendentalising of the ‘realm of the Forms and the Mind of God” necessary? Is the distinction between immanence and transcendence itself absolute? Could there be a way of recovering the noetic realm from a ‘beyond’ while not subjectivising it and reducing it to vulgar physicalism either?
As the ancient Mediterranean world moved towards late antiquity and the pressures and crises that came with a ‘global’ empire, the older vivacious and adventurous spirit of philosophical inquiry which may have been characteristic of Hellenistic civilization and into the late Roman republic (during which Epicureanism and Stoicism flourished) gave way to conservative pluralism. This new emphasis arose from the context of an expanded cosmopolitan society where the imperial state now included, and so had to integrate previously foreign and oftentimes intentionally ‘othered’ cultures.
From a positive angle, there was a revival of interest in and respect for ancient philosophical and religious traditions and a new emphasis on finding and exalting the unifying principles and common features of the various ones within the empire. Already the Stoic philosophers looked back to find traces of a universal philosophy embedded in the various religions and mythological systems which had arisen in scattered humanity. Platonists took up the strategy of interpreting the traditions of the new pluralistic state through a framework derived from Plato and the Academy. ‘Foreign’ gods and myths could be translated to fit into the worldview of the imperial intelligentsia, without denying or disrespecting the truths inherent in those traditions.
On a more pessimistic note, the world weariness symptomatic of empire tended to encourage the search for transcendence of the world and the consolation of mysticism and religious dogma.
If the early Academy (the Platonic ‘school’ before the advent of Platonism which latter took Plato as an authority nearing – though not quite – infallibility) had notions of transcendence and immanence – which they probably did – the distinction for them was more likely to have been formal rather absolute. The Forms and matter were never actually apart, the former always acting upon the latter, with the agent of this activity being God, himself an eternal Form. A similar thing is found in the Confucian philosophy of Zhu Xi where li (principle, pattern, coherence) and chi (physical stuff) are never apart, though priority is afforded to li. The sundering and widening of the gulf between God/Mind and the cosmos was a much later development from the early Academy, and could be seen as a characteristic of the circumstances of empire and the desire to exalt the Emperor of Heaven (Mind) in a way analogous to the newly exalted status of the Emperor of the World ( as in the Roman emperor).
Writing in the early 19th century, Arthur Schopenhauer sought to retrieve the Platonic realm of Forms/Ideas back to embodied experience as forms of cognition; akin to the categories of Kant, the principle of sufficient reason. For Schopenhauer, influenced by Buddhism, the world as it appears is structured according to the conditions inherent in the mind and the senses and is therefore, phenomenal or appearance-only. The noumenal aspect of reality is what he calls the Will, which being prior to the activities of the mind is undifferentiated and in a sense, transcendent of through immanence in all appearance. For Schopenhauer then, the Platonic realm of Forms/Mind of God would be a secondary hypostasis, not unlike the scheme of Plotinus where the Intellect/Mind is a lower order than the One which is beyond even Being (though absolutely present in all beings).
Eduard von Hartmann took issue with Schopenhauer on this one important point; while Schopenhauer denied the Will any content (a blind willing), Hartmann insisted that the contents of the Will be fully determined, as in, the Will must contain the ‘realm of the Forms/Ideas’. It cannot be blind Will. For Hartmann then, we could say that he both recovers the realm of the Forms and Mind from absolute transcendence of the world while not relegating it as derivative or secondary to Will as Schopenhauer did. Both Schopenhauer’s and Hartman’s philosophies might have had weaknesses, and certainly the men themselves were flawed (who isn’t ?!) but it is through their philosophy that I see a way to reconciling the ancient Platonic tradition with Buddhism.
A MEDITATION ON THE MIND AND FORMS
The Mind, the realm of Forms is neither objective nor subjective. Subject and object bifurcation is itself a paradigm/Form of the Mind. This ‘Mind’ is neither objective nor subjective in itself, neither transcendent nor immanent, but the source of all dualisms. The ego mind, the subjective mind, and therefore the ‘objective’ world, are only transient phenomena of this Mind which is the structuring and ordering principle of experience. Experience is carried along by the impulsion of the Will (not unlike Bergson’s elan vital), or in Buddhist terms, karma, through not realising/remembering it’s own nature which is ‘Emptiness’, Formlessness, or Noumenon. And what is the obstacle to realisation?
As is said in Sufi theosophy, which Schopenhauer himself admired, the only thing between God and man is the ego.
An interesting and controversial subject is what exactly Plato (and various Academics and Platonists) mean by the identity of the Forms with the Mind of God/ Demiurgic Intellect. As that which inspires thought, to which thought is directed, a Form is not a thought; it is a condition for thinking. A workable way to understand the relationship of the Forms and Mind is that Mind is the unity and power of the Forms, which are always completely interpenetrating as a unified whole. As we can only approximate through objectifying language this noetic schema, no words or terms need be taken absolutely literally.
The Platonist Philosophy sourcebook, what is its name and where can one find it?