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The Pilgrim, Contemplative Self: Plotinus’s Platonic Portrait of Perfection

08 Monday Jun 2015

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In the last post (found here), I discussed at length the epistemology of Plato, focusing especially on his understanding of the spiritual contemplation of beauty. This post will explore and elaborate Plotinus’s view of contemplation.[1] It will do so for two reasons: (1) I find Plotinus a fascinating read and an engaging pedagogical presence in the classroom, and (2) as Kenney notes, “it was in Plotinus that pagan monotheism achieved its clearest philosophical articulation” (16). As in the previous post, I will follow some of the course laid out in John Peter Kenney’s helpful book, Contemplation and Classical Christianity.

As Kenny notes, while Plato’s philosophy terminated in the notion of intelligible being as “first-level transcendence,” Plotinus (following Middle Platonists[2]) moved from intelligible being to the postulation of a first principle, the One. The One was deduced through a “negative or apophatic theology that served to mark off the One’s unique status in reference to the intelligibles,” and thus it “was systematically removed from any finite predication” (16). In the words of Plotinus, the One is an existence, a “presence that is beyond knowledge” (Enneads, 6.9.4, 4).

Plotinus’s Apophatic Method

Plotinus’s postulation of the One was entirely interconnected with his idea of apophatic discourse. Kenney explains, “Apophatic discourse allowed Plotinus to reject any conception that might have allowed the One to be drawn back into the structure of reality, whether that reality was transcendent of the spatio-temporal world or contained within the cosmos” (17-18). Indeed, he later elaborates,

Apophatic theology was thus about challenging the embodied soul’s own self-representation. For to predicate is both to categorize and to occupy a grammatical place as a subject. Affirmative theology is a dualistic process of representation; theological predication accentuates the contemplative soul’s distance from a divine object within the frame of its semantic appraisal. As such it is a mode of theological discourse that promises divine description at the expense of presence. Forcing a separation between the divine and the soul (32).

Apophatic theology is the only way to understand the otherness of the One and simultaneously (and ironically) hold to the monism of reality.

In this manner, Plotinus’s apophatic method forced his system into a philosophical monism, one in which there is a single transcendental principle that is the source of all. His view, Kenney explains, “was thus an inclusive understanding of monotheism; the force of his theology was centered not on establishing a single deity against a plurality of gods but on finding a final divine unity within and behind the cosmos” (18). Notice the departure from Plato at this juncture; notice also that Plotinus rightly can say that he is merely elaborating what Plato has already maintained (cf. Plato, Symposium).

The newness of Plotinus was simple: “The force of Plotinian monotheism rested on a profound paradox: that the One was entirely hidden and intensely present, transcendent of all predicates and yet the immediate ground of all finite being” (19).

Epistemological Basics

Following Plato’s influential wake, Plotinus thus developed his united epistemology. He stressed that knowledge includes the external dimension of the forms that are united in his rational postulation of the “One.” As he asserts, a person “knows” something when the soul begins its “ascent to intellect and there will know the Forms;” moreover, as these forms or ideas “are beauty,” they refer to “the nature of the Good” or “primal beauty” (Enneads, 1:6.9).[3] While Plato merely attaches the external dimension to the forms themselves, therefore, Plotinus places the forms within the mind of the One, who is simple, indivisible, and incomprehensible.[4]

Because the One itself is, as Plotinus says, “simple and without need,” it brought forth into being all things through the process of emanation. The nous (“mind”)—which contains Plato’s forms—proceeds first, and the thinking psuche (“soul”)—which is an intermediary between the celestial (nous) and sub-celestial (body)—proceeds second.[5] A fact or reality, therefore, is deemed true insofar as it reflects the fact or reality found inside the One.[6] All knowledge, therefore, is ultimately derived from and based upon the One.

Kenney articulates well the advantages of emanation:

First, emanation sharply accentuates the singularity and sufficiency of the One as the source for all other sorts of reality. No primordial stuff is needed…. Second, this ontological cascade is in no way arbitrary or based upon a divine choice among finite alternatives. It is grounded exclusively in the inner life of the One, in its mysterious and infinite existence, and is the One’s best and only finite expression (19-20).

Notice, therefore, that creation and emanation are not sharply contrasted in Plotinus. Kenney writes, “There is, as it were, more volition around than one might suspect in Plotinian monotheism, a residual commitment to the One’s inner volition from which all reality then can be said to depend” (20).

The Tolma and the Dialectic

The metaphysical necessity of emanation, based upon apophatic discourse, thus leads inevitably to the idea of the “fall” in his system. In other words, as the Nous emanates from the One, there is for the first time something other than the One. The Nous, then, contemplates and imitates the perfection of the One, resulting in lower emanations. (While this post will not elaborate the hierarchy of emanations, it is helpful to note that the Nous’s activity here is the groundwork for Plotinus’s prescription of human contemplation of the One.)

After the Nous, the Soul emanated from the One. Plotinus suggests, however, that souls were not content with returning to the One; rather, they had the audacity to desire individuality and otherness: “Now the origin of evil for them [souls] was audacity [tolma] and being born and initial otherness and the desire to be on their own”” (Enneads, 5.1.1, 4-5). While the soul desires distinctiveness and otherness, it ironically loses its understanding of the true self, the highest self, and the One itself.

Therefore, tolma affects all descended things from the One, including human souls. In particular, Kenney writes,

Soul’s procession from the Intellect [Nous] has an irreducibly self-assertive or irrational aspect to it. We harbor, in the very nature of our separateness, a desire for illegitimate distinctiveness born of our deepest, but most obscure, desires. At the core of our embodied nature is self-assertion, a demand for difference and independence. That desire fuels the soul’s descent from Intellect, driving the soul out of the table life of eternity into the rude sequence of time, psychic dispersal, and embodied consciousness (22).

Notably, the soul, according to Plotinus, is not entirely descended in the material world but rather has a higher self in contact with the One. Kenney explains again: “Plotinus maintained that the soul is here in the world at least in part because it chose to decline into materiality. And that act of audacity, of tolma, is an irrational one” (21; cf. Enneads, 5.1.1; 3.7.11). In other words, the soul is not a static thing but may move away from or towards the One. Plotinus summarizes, “So one might say that time is the living nature of the soul in transitional movement from one point of life to another” (3.7.11, 43-5).

This idea leads us to Plotinus’s theory of the dialectic. Tolma requires reunion with the One. As Plotinus suggests, we are able to overcome our tolma through our soul’s discrete powers. In other words, we can tap into powers of our soul. Kenney explains, “The soul had only to turn within itself, to the One present there, and secure access in a higher level of transcendence through theoria” (21). As embodied people, this higher intellectualization is imperfectly available to us as we are imperfectly related to the One.

Therefore, there are two options. The soul may return to its lower, animal-like sense experience, or it may move upwards in its rationality and spirituality. As Plotinus says, “We are this ruling part of the soul between two powers, one better and the other worse; the worse is sense perception, the better is intellect” (5:3.3, 37-40). The intellect is better than the senses, for it has as its telos knowledge and union with the One. Kenney explains, “That intellectual perception is the province of nous. Distinct from our everyday consciousness, it is nonetheless accessible to us through interior contemplation” (25). One can either move further away from the One, deeper into bodily pleasure and individual glory; or, one can move towards the one in contemplation and final metaphysical union. The choice is ours. Wherever we end up is exactly what our soul chose (Enneads, 5:3.9).

The ascent to the One is no easy task. Plotinus describes the ascent in detail in Enneads, 6.9.3, 1-11. Kenney paraphrases Plotinus well:

Here we find an unusual expression of the self’s fears at ascending to the unfamiliar level of the One, lacking as the One does any finite specification of its nature. Since the One is formless (aneideon), the soul is unable to comprehend it and so it becomes afraid that is has encountered nothing at all. It slips back down to the level of perceptible things, where it rejoices at things that seem solid. That suggests once again that the self has a menu of epistemic and ontological options at its disposal. Here the slide of the soul down from the formlessness of the One to the solid earth of perception seems understandable, although behind that description there lurks a host of questions of the moral aspects of this declension, in particular the specific source of the soul’s fright before its infinite source. Thus there is a deep spiritual poignancy in this passage, indicative of the anxiety that the self has with efforts to return to its original source. (27).

Because contemplation is best seen in the context of tolma and ascent, we will now turn to his theory of contemplation.

Contemplation through Ascent

Two things should be noted. First, as discussed before, contemplation is ultimately based upon the primordial activity of the One. As the One emanates, it produces its highest product, the Nous, or intellect. The Nous is the understanding of the One, seeking to contemplate and imitate perfection. As such, the Nous is naturally turned inwards, focusing its vision and imitation on the One itself. Through this contemplation, ironically, it also secures its own independent, secondary existence by an act of self-assertion. Kenney summarizes, “This attention by the first product of the One [that is, Nous] back upon the infinite is the primordial act of contemplation. Contemplation is thus an ontological principle of sorts, holding together the first instance of finite reality and its infinite foundation” (28).[7]

Second, the soul ascends by its own native, latent capacity within itself, that is, its relation to its higher nature. This higher nature can be found through the philosophical dialectic, which achieves understanding the intelligibles (cf. Plato), moderate asceticism, and the practice of virtue. He also prescribed somatic training and meditation. However, as Kenney rightly holds, “Negative theology was the primary method by which the soul could shift its focus from the incarnated self towards the divine and raise itself beyond finite materiality. Apophasis was integral to contemplation” (31).

As discussed before, apophatic theology is the only way to understand the otherness of the One and simultaneously (and ironically) hold to the monism of reality. “Plotinus maintains that when pursued with the proper philosophical guidance, apophatic contemplation offers a deep communion with the One as the boundaries of embodied consciousness dissolve. In order to discover the infinite ne, the soul must seek “a presence beyond knowledge’ (6:9.4,3). It must practice descriptive diffidence, and submit to a frameless cognition that rejects epistemic intentionality” (32).

Now to discuss what the ascent ‘looks like’, so to speak…. Echoing Plato, Plotinus maintains an internal principle to knowledge wherein the person is part of the recollective process or, as he prefers, the ascent unto knowledge.[8] But Plotinus went beyond his intellectual teacher by positing a mystical stage, a “dance,” wherein the person is “transfigured to the godhead, nay, being in essence God;” therefore, the “Divine” is “not distinct but one with his own consciousness” (Enneads, 6:9.9, 10).[9] In other words, the ascent is not so much an escape from reality through intellectual cleansing (Plato) as a return to the One in mystical union.[10] The ascent is thus a vigorous enterprise, requiring ethical purification, knowledge, and intellectual and mystical union with the One.[11] It is not surprising, therefore, that Plotinus and his followers held that only an enlightened person could achieve participation.[12] Steven Strange summarizes well: “The participant is to be thought of as somehow active in participation: it ‘approaches’ the Idea in ‘striving’ to be like it, while the Idea remains unmoved and impassive.”[13]

There are consequently two elements within Plotinus’ epistemology: (1) the passive nature of the object of knowledge itself and (2) the active nature of a person’s knowledge that culminates in the ecstatic union with the One.[14] Plotinus’s integration of both elements allows him, like Plato before him, to maintain an external and internal basis for knowledge and thus achieve (at least partially) a unified epistemology.

Contemplation, then, is a rational necessity in Plotinus’s system. It allows him to explain what we ought to do and from what reality is ultimately produced.

[1]For a provocative biographical discussion of Plotinus, see M. J. Edwards, “A Portrait of Plotinus,” The Classical Quarterly 43:2 (1993): 480-490.

[2]Plotinus moves beyond Plato and Middle Platonism by his exultation of the first principle, the One. However, Middle Platonism did generally speak of a transcendent nous, a divine mind, that is over the world, but it did not speak of a primary, apophatic principle, like the One of Plotinus.

[3]Plotinus, Enneads, 7 vols., trans. A. H. Armstrong, LCL (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1984, 1988, 1988).

[4]As he argues, the One is best identified with the concepts or principles of Good and Beauty (Plotinus, Enneads, 1:6.9, cf. 1:6.6). In other words, he follows Plato by suggesting that the highest conception of the forms is the Beauty/Good, and he thereafter goes beyond Plato by suggesting that this highest conception is best understood as the One. This One, it must be added, cannot be explained or reasoned; it simply is and is without deficiency (Ibid., 3:8.11; 5:6.6). It is purely dynamis or potentiality without which nothing could exist (3:8.10).

[5]Ibid., 5:6.4, cf. 1:6.6, 9; 4:8.7. Namely, Plotinus argues that that Good itself, the One, “will not need thinking” (Ibid.), for thinking itself is a product of the ineffable One. Intellect or thinking is thus an expression of the One as it is “thinking the Good” (Ibid.). The soul, then, is an expression of the intellect as it thinks itself. He concludes on the relation of the One, nous, and soul: “The First should be compared to light, the next, to the sun, and the third, to the celestial body of the moon” (Ibid.). The One, therefore, is the ultimate divine light from and to which all other things emanate. For an excellent yet simple discussion, see Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, 201-211, 221-226; cf. John N. Deck, Nature, Contemplation, and the One: A Study in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967).

[6]He expresses this idea in Ibid., 5:6.4: “For Soul [psuche] has intellect as an external addition which colours it when it is intellectual, but Intellect has it in itself as its own, and is not only light but that which is enlightened in its own being; and that which gives it light is nothing else but is simple light giving Intellect the power to be what it is. Why then would it have need of anything?” In other words, the One does not think; the One simply is. The nous, which emanates from the One, is thinking Intellect, that which thinks the highest possible thoughts (i.e., the One). The psuche, which emanates from the nous, thinks only at it participates in the one. And such participation takes place via the nous, via the One. Knowledge or truth is thus ultimately only knowledge or truth as it derives from the One.

[7]Interestingly, Kenney notes, “In this way the primordial act of self-assertion is woven into the ontological self-expression of the One, and the fall becomes, as it were, both a culpable act and a moment of divine self-expression. For Plotinus, these two values are never wholly distinct. And so the finite reality that emerges from the One is thus both the best that can have emerged from the Good and also a fall Tom its perfection, never free from the tincture of that primordial choice and yet longing always for redress and return” (28).

[8]Plotinus, Enneads, 4:8.6-8; cf. Ibid., 1:6.9; Copleston, History of Philosophy, 1:470; Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder, 27-28. He begins, “If, then, there must not be just one alone—for then all things would have been hidden, shapeless within that one, and not a single real being would have existed” (Ibid., 4:8.6). In other words, the process of recollection and ascent necessarily presume the fact of one principle, that is, the One. The process of knowledge thus assumes an ascent, or growth, as a “seed”: “from a partless beginning” to a “final stage” (Ibid.). This ascent thus entails participation in the One, for anyone could share in knowledge “as far as each thing was able to participate in it” (Ibid.). Consequently, the soul “should not be annoyed with itself because . . . it occupies a middle rank among realities [between the One and matter]” (Ibid., 4:8.7). In other words, all knowledge happens only through the soul’s perception of the eternal One, for “there is always something of it in the intelligible,” whether this be something merely in sense perception or contemplation of the divine (Ibid., 4:8.8). Knowledge is had through the soul’s recollection and ascent into the divine.

[9]Plotinus, Enneads, 6:9.9, 10, cf. Copleston’s translation in idem, History of Philosophy, I:471; and Joseph Katz’s excellent discussion of Plotinus’s mysticism in idem, Plotinus’ Search for the Good (New York: King’s Crown, 1950), 15-28. Indeed, as Plotinus continues, the person can reach this mystical realm, which is the epitome of the “active actuality of the Intellect,” out of which springs all knowledge such as good, beauty, righteousness, and virtue (Ibid., 6:9.9). The person wants such knowledge because the soul “in her natural state is in love with God and wants to be united with him” (Ibid.).

[10]As Plotinus continues, this is why the mystical ascent entails, among other things, that there is ethical transformation and thus an absence of duality (Plotinus, Enneads, 6:9.9; cf. Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, 221-226).

[11]On account of the human soul’s contamination through its union with the material body, the soul must first ethically ascend in order to be mystically transformed and purified (Plotinus, Enneads, 4:8.6-8; cf. Copleston, History of Philosophy, I:470; Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder, 27-28). The first stages of this ascent follow Plato: purification, knowledge, and union with the Nous (“mind”). Purification is the first stage whereby the person, under the impulse of eros, frees himself or herself from the dominion of the body and its senses and instead practices virtue. As Plotinus rhetorically asks throughout the opening section, “What could be more fitting than that we, living in this world, should become like to its ruler(?),” a question that explicitly attempts to follow Plato’s reasoning in his Symposium (Plotinus, Enneads, 1.2.1). Knowledge is the second stage whereby a person rises above his sense perception and turns towards the Nous in the study of philosophy and science (Ibid., 1.3.4; the “Nous” here corresponds to the Nous of Aristotle, which, again, is that which is uncontaminated by matter [Copleston, 1:471]). As he continues later, it is through this “ascent to intellect” that the person “will know the Forms” (Ibid., 1:6.9). The union with Nous, the third stage, is that stage whereby the person rises about discursive thought to union with the Nous (Ibid., 6:9.9-10). Plotinus characterizes this stage as “protos kalos,” that is, “first beauty.” cf. Hajime Nakamura, A Comparative History of Ideas (Jawahar Nagar, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992), 313. These three stages, then, lead to the fourth and final one, a stage beyond Plato, whereby a person is mystically united with the One.

[12]Proclus Diadochus, Commentary on the First Alcibiades of Plato, trans. L. G. Westerink (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1954), III. For example, Iamblichus also argued for the necessary value of divine illumination. As one scholar summarizes him, he says, “We must look to divine revelation in order to ascertain the means of entering upon union with God” (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:477; cf. I:476-477). Indeed, Plotinus “regards mystical experience as the supreme attainment of the true philosopher” (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:472). For a more recent discussion, see Edward Moore, “‘Likeness to God as Far as Possible’: Deification Doctrine in Iamblichus and Three Church Fathers,” Theandros 3:1 (2005). The assertion will also be defended implicitly in the following discussion on Augustine.

[13]Steven K. Strange, “Plotinus’ Account of Participation in Ennead VI:4-5” JHP 30:4 (1992): 495, cf. 479-496. For an excellent discussion of Plotinus’s mysticism, see Joseph Katz, Plotinus’ Search for the Good (New York: King’s Crown, 1950), 15-28.

[14]Regarding this summary, one scholar wisely perceives, “Christian theology leaned heavily on these concepts, and it was not without temptation and crucifixion that it gradually (and not entirely) transformed them” (Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder, 29).

Plato’s Spiritual Epistemology: The Nature and Result of Contemplation in the Writings of Plato

26 Tuesday May 2015

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The following post is more substantial and lengthy than usual. I may have gotten carried away. I make no apologies, however. 🙂

After reading John Peter Kenney’s Contemplation and Classical Christianity, I am on a philosophical kick again. In the next couple posts, I want to summarize Plato and Plotinus’s view of ‘contemplation,’ which they summarize variously as they discuss recollection/dialectic (Plato) and the soul’s epistemic, ethical, and mystical ascent (Plotinus). While these views are not biblical, and while they do not adhere to the Christian worldview, they are interesting and useful, profitably contributing to the broad contours of a philosophical account of spiritual epistemology.

Indeed, I find myself often defending Plato and Plotinus in the classroom. My students (especially at Ivy Tech) generally do not like these two philosophers. While I may disagree with these men’s views, I have to defend them. They purport thoughtful, relatively holistic, and constructive views. Their views are simply too profound and elegant to ignore them or shrug them off.

In this post, I want to discuss Plato and his unique position that elaborated, focusing, in the end, on his theory of contemplation. In order to accomplish this goal, this post will be a bit lengthy, discussing (1) the contours of contemplation in ancient Greece in general, (2) Plato’s view of dualism (especially body-soul), (3) his epistemology following his dualism, and finally (4) his account of contemplation.

Three preliminary notes: First, I am not being anachronistic to suggest that Plato held to a form of contemplation. As I will show throughout this post, his postulation of recollection necessarily led to an epistemic dialectic between ‘this’ world and the world of forms; this dialectic, in its final stage of gazing beauty, is itself what can rightly be called contemplation. Kenney, as far as I read him, would agree with this general assessment as well. Second, throughout my post, I am defining contemplation as that restful, transcendent gazing upon the divine, or in Plato’s case, the higher forms (especially of the Good/Beauty). Third, this post is a sketch. While it is lengthy, I am in no way attempting to be comprehensive. As always, I am open to feedback.

The Contours of Contemplation in Ancient Greece

Philosophically speaking, the need for and use of contemplation begin whenever a worldview holds to a kind of dualism, especially a dualism between a ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ world. This kind of dualism may be loosely discerned in Heraclitus, as he postulated that the material flux of the empirical world was united by a transcendental Logos above. Dualism is also existent in Pythagoras’s conception of a spiritual and transcendent reality, even beyond that of the immaterial numbers. (While we do not have record of how he elaborates this notion, I think that it is implicit in his nod to the existence of the immaterial soul.) Even Parmenides’s more rational conception of the unchanging ‘One’ might have lent itself towards a ‘formal’ dualism, though we have no record of this. I am simply communicating that these proto-dualistic views—if I can call them this—contain the bare minimum ingredients necessary for the construction of a philosophical development of contemplation.

Plato’s Dualism

Historically speaking, the need for and use of philosophical conceptions of contemplation did not arise until the thoughtful architecture provided by Plato. Plato suggested that there is a dualism between the world as we empirically know it (the world of matter) and the world that must be (the world of forms). The latter reality is the transcendental grounding of the former. One might liken the forms to the universal blueprints of the world of matter. In the same way that a building infers the existence of an architectural blueprint, so also the reality of matter implies a design. If there is no design, if matter is all there is, then there can be no universals (such as goodness, justice, ethics, etc.). Indeed, if there is no blueprint, then there is no acceptable explanation concerning composition and form of one material thing versus another. Plato finds these suppositions problematic, rejects them, and thus avers the necessary existence of a transcendental world. In this way, Plato asserts what can be called classical transcendentalism, which, Kenney explains, is “the postulation of a level of reality that is both separate from the world of space and time and also superior to that world” (15).

For example, Plato often maintains that the body is an impediment to the soul. One cannot have true knowledge or attain full wisdom while the body is connected to the soul. Why? Plato answers on the basis that the body’s “companionship disturbs the soul and hinders it from attaining truth and wisdom” (Phaedo, 66a). The body is even “contaminated by such an evil” that “we shall never attain completely what we desire, that is, the truth” (Ibid., 66b). He reasons that the body has all sorts of needs (e.g., physical, emotional, etc.), in addition to being evil, and these issues distract the soul’s pursuit (66c). He concludes,

Because of all these things, we have no leisure for philosophy. But the worst of all is that if we do get a bit of leisure and turn to philosophy, the body is constantly breaking in upon our studies and disturbing us with noise and confusion, so that it prevents our beholding the truth, and in fact we perceive that, if we are ever to know anything absolutely, we must be free from the body and must behold the actual realities with the eye of the soul alone (66d-e).

Consequently, Plato maintains that we need to avoid, “so far as possible,” sex, communion with the body, purity, and all foolishness of the body (67a-b).[1] While embodied, in other words, the soul is affected by the material powers of the body. While reason (i.e., the soul) must drive the chariot, the reality is that embodied people necessarily fail. A person is only released from the effects of the body after physical death. Notably, Plato suggests, a person can (partially) overcome the powers of the body through the soul’s moral attempts toward perfection, that is, moral goodness (cf. 67a-b). For these reasons, Kenny also notes, Socrates himself even allows suicide (cf. 62b-c). The soul is the source of moral goodness within itself, for it—and it alone—has been eternally acquainted with the forms. A person can therefore know and do the good through cultivating the powers of the soul. (Notice how Plato’s argument runs entirely against the Christian worldview at these points—the nature and goodness of the soul, the relation between soul and body, the soul of goodness, and suicide.)

Plato’s Epistemology

In order to understand more comprehensively Plato’s notion of contemplation, it is necessary to explore his epistemology on a general basis. Plato’s thought contains a surprisingly united epistemology. In his view, knowledge is attained through a person’s intuition of the forms. The forms are the eternal and immutable basis of knowledge and objectivity in the material world. Plato argued that the forms are constants or universals, accounting for logic, justice, moral absolutes, and human dignity, among other things. Individual things (e.g., a table) are particular instances of these universals that “participate” in the universals (e.g., brownness, hardness, woodness, etc.). In other words, following Heraclitus, Plato accepts the relativity of sense knowledge and the fact that this world of matter is in flux; following Parmenides, he also accepts the existence of a transcendental world that can account for stability.[2] As he argues in the Republic, in the same way that the light of fire is derivative of the light of the sun, so also knowledge of material things is derivative of the forms.[3] Given his understanding of the forms, he continues in the Theaetetus to argue staunchly against the idea that “knowledge is perception.”[4] Under the guise of Socrates, he instead maintains that knowledge, as it corresponds to the forms, is objective and immutable, so much so that the person is an “infallible judge” of truth.[5] Using the broad language of my dissertation, knowledge for Plato includes an external dimension, that is, the unchanging forms.

Some influential scholars, such as Georg Hegel, unhelpfully terminate their description of Plato’s epistemology at this point, contending that Plato is merely an externalist or objectivist.[6] This argument, however, fails. Plato continues to suggest that knowledge includes what you might call an internal dimension, which is grounded in his conception of recollection and the dialectic process. Plato’s concept of recollection (“anamnesis”) makes the claim that the objective forms of the world exist in the person’s mind through intuition. Through this multifarious process, the person is in contact with the eternal forms so that the forms are apprehensible by the intellect.[7] Therefore, Plato’s concept of recollection is grounded on the fact that knowledge includes not only the immutable but also the mutable, not only the external forms but also the internal person.[8] The person thus knows only in so much as their immortal soul recollects (i.e., intuits) the forms. This epistemic action is the soul’s[9] ascent towards knowledge, that is, the higher ideals of beauty. (I will discuss this process more in the following section.)

Recollection, Dialectic, and Contemplation

The preceding begins to illuminate Plato’s basic conception of contemplation. Indeed, Plato’s concept of recollection itself is an upward dialectic process. As a person lives, he begins to recall or re-collect the truth of reality through his familiarity with the forms. Because all souls—before embodiment—were ‘swimming around’ the celestial pool of the forms, to put it crudely, all people have recollection of the universals.

Recollection, therefore, is an upward dialectic process. According to Plato, the dialectic process is a mental progression whereby the person is able to arrive at knowledge itself. Plato also calls this process the ascent towards knowledge—something that his follower, Plotinus, extensively elaborated (see my next post). As Plato says, by the person’s dialectic, the soul is raised “to the contemplation of that which is best in existence.” Or, more literally, this activity “has the ability to uplift the best part of the soul toward the contemplation of the best in things that are in the real world (Plato, Republic, 532c-d, cf. 531d–534d).”[10] Plato thus bridges the external and internal in knowledge as he simultaneously maintains the objectivity of truth in the world of forms and the internal subjectively of the person whose knowledge (correctly) corresponds to those forms. Copleston sums masterfully,

Man appears as the knowing and willing subject, the being who realizes, or should realize true values in his individual life and in the life of society, the being endowed with an immortal soul; and human knowledge, human nature, human conduct and human society, are made the subject of profound and penetrating analyses and considerations.[11]

Knowledge requires the immutable forms and the mutable mind, which knows the forms through the re-collective dialectic process. Knowledge, in other words, is acquired through an upward process whereby the person recollects the universal and thereby contemplates good/beauty itself, the highest, most abstract form. (Because Plato can speak of good and beauty simultaneously as the most transcendent form, I will henceforth call it ‘beauty’ for short.)

The final stage for Plato, so to speak, is gazing beauty itself, which is the result of contemplation. While the soul has no sensory experience of the “good,” “just,” or “beautiful,” it can apprehend them intellectually (Phaedo, 65d-e). This is the importance of a rational, contemplative mindset (that is, a mindset attuned to the higher transcendental realities). As Kenney notes, the soul alone, at the height of its epistemic power, may grasp these intelligibles (15).

Thus, unsurprisingly, there is a strong association between contemplation and the soul’s salvation in Plato’s writings (cf. Symposium, 210a-e).[12] Plato elaborates the association through the words of a wise Mantinean woman,

When a man has been thus far tutored in the lore of love, passing from view to view of beautiful things, in the right and regular ascent, suddenly he will have revealed to him, as he draws to the close of his dealings in love, a wondrous vision, beautiful in its nature; and this, Socrates, is the final object of all those previous toils (210e).

The lover of beauty, she continues, is characterized as such:

Beginning from obvious beauties he must for the sake of that highest beauty be ever climbing aloft, as on the rungs of a ladder, from one to two, and from two to all beautiful bodies; from personal beauty he proceeds to beautiful observances, from observance to beautiful learning, and from learning at last to that particular study which is concerned with the beautiful itself and that alone; so that in the end he comes to know the very essence of beauty. In that state of life above all others, my dear Socrates,’ said the Mantinean woman, ‘a man finds it truly worthwhile to live, as he contemplates essential beauty. This, when once beheld, will outshine your gold and your vesture, your beautiful boys and striplings, whose aspect now so astounds you and makes you and many another, at the sight and constant society of your darlings, ready to do without either food or drink if that were any way possible, and only gaze upon them and have their company (211c-d).

Summarizing Plato here, one might say that life is not about knowing or loving material things; rather it is about contemplating spiritual, transcendental things. Life is about going ever upward for the sake of beauty to the form of beauty itself. This higher, intelligible beauty exists without change. It is, as Kenney summarizes Plato, the stable paradigm in which beautiful things in this world participate (cf. 211b). As it looks within itself (by contemplation), the soul brings forth fruits “in a plenteous crop of philosophy” (210d), and herein it can perceive the transcendental nature of beauty itself (210e). By contemplating true being itself, the soul might even become immortal (211d). As Kenney well notes, this is the salvific promise of contemplation (15).

Elsewhere, in the Republic, while Plato discusses the allegory of the cave, he also hints at contemplation’s true goal, that is, what later philosophers and theologians would call the ‘beatific vision’:

My opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of the Good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual (Republic, 517b-c).

“The Good” (or “Beauty”) is the highest, most abstract form for Plato, the form in which all other forms participate. For Plato, this form is the author of all others, albeit mysteriously. As later Christian theologians would summarize (e.g., Augustine), the form is analogous to the idea of God.

I will tentatively summarize Plato’s view of knowledge as the following (though bear in mind that this post does not intend to do so comprehensively): (1) empiricism, as it corresponds with the world of matter, is a necessary but incomplete epistemology; (2) knowledge fundamentally is rationally drawn through a recollective process grounded on the world of forms; (3) this knowledge is thus directed upwards in a dialectic process of moving from concrete to abstract forms (e.g., from the ideal color “royal blue” to the ideal reality “beauty”); (4) the philosopher consequently ought to direct his mind upwards into contemplation of the truth; and (5) this temporal contemplation is experienced in perfection through the beatific vision. I realize that Plato’s writings do not consistently distinguish points 2-5. There is a huge debate in Plato studies here, but I will have to refrain. My opinion should be clear: At the very least, I believe that formal distinctions amongst 2-5 are helpful to the reader.

Conclusion

Plato has plenty to say about gazing at the immovable, that is, beauty. Contemplation (or, as he more often calls it, the dialectic or theoria) even becomes a central theme throughout his writings. Indeed, glancing at his philosophy in general, contemplation is the epistemological hinge from which his philosophy swings. As he maintains in the baldest sense, there must be a transcendental world; the only way to know this world is through something like recollection; therefore, the most attuned person, the philosopher, is the person who knows ultimate reality as it is grounded in the forms. Contemplation is thus the postulation that unites his ideological philosophy. It is the only way to know and experience the other, as later philosophers would assert.

Obviously, this post is not prescribing Plato’s view. While I do find it fascinating and insightful, it is important to remember that it is not Christian. A later post will articulate things we can learn from Plato and Plotinus, but here I can only emphasize that his view of contemplation can be devastating. Indeed, following platonic emphases, many early Christian thinkers naturally but harmfully distinguished contemplation from practice, suggesting that the most virtuous person does not “do” something (e.g., feeding the poor) so much as “gaze” at God. Sadly, as I have experienced, many Christians today implicitly hold to a similar distinction, believing that the more spiritual person is the one who “knows” the most. Anyway, I will tackle this issue at a later time.

Thank you for reading. I realize that this post is not as tight as some of my other posts. It is simply a reflection and elaboration of Plato’s understanding of contemplation and, broadly, his epistemology.

My next post will describe Plotinus’s elaboration of the theory of contemplation.

© copyright Ryan A. Brandt

[1]Translations from Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 1, trans. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966).

[2]Cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:149-150; 164-165; L. P. Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy: Studies in the Early History of Natural Theology (London: Routledge, 1990), 33-39. These forms exist on their own, apart from the world of the material (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:166ff., cf. 174-175). The forms, in fact, are analogous to numbers (Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 4:251ff., 525; cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:194-196). For an excellent and comprehensive understanding of Plato’s theory of knowledge, see I. M. Crombie, An Examination of Plato’s Doctrine’s: Volume II, Plato on Knowledge and Reality (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), 1-152. Therefore, while Plato was primarily concerned with the objectivity of knowledge of persons, as Copleston notes, “Plato’s effort was not to enrich, beautify and transmute this world by subjective evocations, but to pass beyond the sensible world to the world of thought, the Transcendental Reality” (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:205).

[3]Plato, Republic, in vol. 6 of Plato, trans. Chris Emlyn-Jones and William Preddy, LCL [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013], 516A-517B. Put in another way: just as the Sun is the source of the “seasons, and the years, and governs everything in the visible world,” so also the forms are the source and stability for all knowledge (Ibid., 516B). Plato suggests this analogy in the context of his allegory of the cave. In this allegory, Plato describes people living chained to the wall of a cave for all of their lives. As the fire from the cave casts shadows on the wall, people can only see and describe these shadows. The philosopher, however, is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, but that reality is rather something greater than he could have imagined (Ibid., 514A-520A).

[4]Or, he also says, “perception is knowledge,” an idea that Plato attributes especially to Protagoras, in whom Theaetetus enthusiastically places his trust (Plato, Theaetetus, Sophist, 151E).

[5]Ibid., 160D. In other words, the immutable soul of the person, as it was eternally familiar with the world of forms, may know things objectively according to its familiarity with the forms (cf. Ibid., 160-210). Indeed, continues Plato, existence and non-existence cannot be perceived by wavering perception but only by immutable reason, lest a person confuse existence with a mirage (Ibid.; cf. cf. Copleston, 1:144-146). Plato therefore moves from defining knowledge as perception, as does Protagoras (Ibid., 151E-187), to knowledge as true judgment (Ibid., 187-202), and finally to knowledge as true judgment with a logos or an account (Ibid., 202-210). He continues to suggest that the objects of knowledge must be stable and abiding, fixed, capable of being grasped in clear and scientific definition, which is of the universal (cf. Ibid., 209-210). He concludes, “Then, it seems, if asked, ‘What is knowledge?’ our leader will reply that it is right opinion with the addition of a knowledge of difference; for that would, according to him, be the addition of reason or explanation” (Ibid., 210A).

[6]As Hegel writes with regards to Plato’s Republic, “[T]he principle of subjective freedom is lacking, i.e., the principle that the individual’s substantive activity . . . shall be mediated through his particular volition” (Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox, in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 46, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins [Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952], 100 [section 299]). Hegel goes on to show that, in Plato, the person in knowledge is completely overlooked (Ibid., 100-106 [sections 300-320]). Or, as he writes elsewhere, Plato “absolutely excluded” the “principle of self-subsistent particularity” from the state and family so that the “subjective will” or “subjective freedom” is “denied;” as he continues, he notes that “this principle dawned in an inward form in the Christian religion” (Ibid., 64 [section 185]). In other words, he suggests that Plato was only interested in the external or outward form of knowledge (as he overlooked the inward or subjective principle), and the inward form of knowledge was only expanded through later Christian writings. While Hegel is right that Plato tends to emphasize the external dimension of knowledge, at least in this particular analysis, he often overlooks the rest of Plato’s philosophy outside of the Republic.

[7]Plato, Symposium, in vol. 3 of Plato, trans. W. R. Lamb, LCL (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 175-208. The eternal forms, then, are truly known and acted upon by the person. For example, Plato (in the guise of Socrates) suggests that we know love and beauty through this process. He uses the example of Alcestis, Orpheus, Achilles and several others to make his point (Ibid., 179, 201, 206). Contact with the forms, then, simultaneously presumes the immortality of the soul (Ibid., 206). In this sense, Plato’s high view of the forms is inseparable from his high view of the subject of the person (Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 4:389; Michael L. Morgan, “Plato and Greek Religion,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992], 236-238). This idea does not entail that the forms are confined to the mind (Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, 33-39, 52-56; Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:174-175, cf. 1:164). For an excellent discussion on recollection, especially concerning Plato’s Meno, see J. T. Bedu-Addo, “Sense-Experience and Recollection in Plato’s Meno” AJP 104:3 (1983): 228-248; or Norman Gulley, “Plato’s Theory of Recollection” CQ 4:3/4 (1954): 194-213.

[8]This argument runs contra Parmenides, with whom he often dueled. In the Sophist, for example, he says that the philosopher must include both the “moveable and immoveable” in his definition or understanding of “being and the universe” (Plato, Theaetetus, Sophist, 249D). He is obviously responding to Parmenides’ conception of being here. Moreover, Plato continues, both “motion and rest” are real and not opposed to one another, and thus we must admit what changes and change itself are real things (Ibid., 250A; cf. 250B-261; cf. Copleston, 1:187-8; 1:179ff.). For Parmenides, see Parmenides, Fragments, in Plato and Parmenides: Parmenides’ ‘Way of Truth’ and Plato’s Parmenides Translated with an Introduction and a Running Commentary, ed. Francis MacDonald Cornford (London: Humanities Press, 1951); and his Fragments, in The Fragments of Parmenides, ed. A. H. Coxon (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1986).

[9]He calls the soul the motion of the body. This idea is perceived most clearly in Plato, Laws, in vol. 11 of Plato, trans. R. G. Bury, LCL (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1984), 896:A-B, 775ff., wherein he defines the soul as “the motion able to move itself.” It is, therefore, “self-movement,” or the movement of the self. It is the volitional or willful capacity of (or rather, within) the body. For an excellent discussion here, see Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:207-209.

[10]Therefore, the dialectic allows one to transcend the flux of reality and to know that which is truly infallible. As Guthrie notes, the dialectic “aims directly at a knowledge of beauty and goodness” and ultimately “reaches the self-authenticating source of their existence and intelligibility: the Form of the Good” (Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 1:524, 526; cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:151-160). In this sense, the ascent is primarily intellectual. It was not religious or mystical (cf. A. E. Taylor, Plato, the Man and His Work [London: Methuen, 1926], 225). Copleston suggests a possibility of the latter, but he concedes that its more likely upward, ethical or intellectual dialectic (Copleston, A History of Philosophy, I:197, 200). Namely, Plato writes in his Symposium, “Beginning from obvious beauties he must for the sake of that highest beauty be ever climbing aloft, as on the rings of a ladder . . . so that in the end he comes to know the very essence of beauty” (Plato, Symposium, 211C; cf. 179, 201, 206; cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:199-200; Julie Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010], 26-27). This ascent includes a threefold ethical and intellectual process: purification, illumination, and contemplative union (Plato, Symposium, 210 A-D [Diotema’s Speech]; cf. 179, 201, 206; he explains the ascent in terms of beginning with [1] purifying beauty by being “in love with one particular body,” [2] illuminating beauty by seeing how the beauty attached to the first body is “cognate” to others, and finally, and of “higher value,” [3] “contemplating” the splendor of the soul until “he decries a certain single knowledge connected with a beauty which has yet to be told” [Ibid.].). For other excellent descriptions of the dialectic, see Ian Mueller, “Mathematical Method, Philosophical Truth,” in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 183-194; and John Sallis, Being and Logos: The Way of Platonic Dialogue, 2nd ed. (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities, 1986). Interestingly, some argue that Plato replaced his earlier idea of recollection (i.e. anamnesis) with the dialectic (cf. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, V:174, n. 2). As Guthrie notes, however, most scholars do not take this recourse.

[11]Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 1:491. In other words, Plato, for all his emphasis on the object, also left room for the person in knowledge by his understanding of recollection and the person’s dialectic process.

[12]All references from Plato, Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 9, trans. Harold N. Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925).