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Some Platonic tweets
Jul. 18th, 2013 11:09 pm@cole_tucker: Do you have some idea of when the idea that every species has its own Platonic form ("chairness") gained currency?
Well, it has a certain basis in Plato's texts, to be sure: Rep. 596 comes immediately to mind, but such texts were not accorded much weight in antiquity, compared to what was known to have been taught at the Academy. As such, one could say that the idea gains currency in the wake of 19th c. attempts to dispense with the doxography and separate Plato from the later antique Platonic tradition.
The key here is the concept of logoi. Young Socrates wonders (in the Parm.) about whether there is, e.g., a form of "hair; later Platonists explain that hair will be a logos dependent upon the form of Animal. In this way, we have a more functional account that doesn't distinguish unnecessarily between, e.g., hair and quills. The early, heuristic class-forms—which may predate Plato himself—are thus replaced by a holistic account based on archai.
@cole_tucker: Thank you. I was wondering how the Renaissance Platonists interpreted the subject, and the class-forms seemed much too tied up in the Anglo-American philosophical stream to assume as applicable.
The Renaissance Platonists I know well enough to speak of, namely Cusa and Bruno, are both much closer to the ancient view. Hence Cusa and Bruno are critical of Scholastic substantial forms, due to the Platonic henological current they have tapped. Substantial forms are a different matter, of course, than what I have termed "class-forms, but what is salient here is that the renewed Platonism manifests itself in an anti-formalism. This suffices, I think, to show how far are we from the banal notion of a Platonic "theory of forms".
@cole_tucker: Following the development of logoi, was there any substantial interest in delimiting the forms? I remember you saying animal was a form, but human was not. Would chair-logoi fall within the form of artifice?
The theory of logoi was more developed by the Stoics; indeed, it may be that they are responsible for the actual terminology. For the Stoics, of course, there are no "forms" at all. Platonists pursued the notion of ideas as dependent on divine thought. As for the logos of a chair, it is the knowledge of what a chair is for, and based on that, parameters for its construction. Ultimately, it pertains to the sphere of animal needs.
@proclusberlin: They may be taking the notion from Aristotle's embryology, at GA II.1, IV.3, a thesis of David Hahm's (The Origins of Stoic Cosmology https://kb.osu.edu:443/dspace/handle/1811/24807kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/ … , see Chapter III, esp. p. 74ff)
Yes, and Aristotle in general uses the term logos a good deal; the Stoics would have been tempted to reify.
@cole_tucker: Forgive me, this brings me back around a bit, to my realization that Idealism is more properly how a World comes into being, rather than the genesis of matter. When Chlup develops the differences in ontology between Proclus and Plotinus, on the topic of evil, Plotinus is presented as having a break, matter separate from mind and so there's no need for forms to reach beyond thought. In his presentation of Proclus, matter was an expression of divine thought (mind-only?), which doesn't seem that far from the banal theory of forms.
I'm not sure I follow the last bit. In general, Proclus differs from Plotinus in resisting the notion of "intelligible matter", which one might think of as something like a principle of vagueness. Proclus resists any simple notion of matter. Matter, as the limit of a given formal regime, has a kinship with that which is prior to form, and thus divinity. Why does formal determination have limits? For one thing, because there are diverse formal schemata that overlap and interfere. Also, because certain potentials demand fulfillment, such as the contingently participating or the unproductive product.
@cole_tucker: I guess I'm resistant to the conception that all events/progressions have the ontic progression as their determining cause. I will be reading Proclus more along these lines, as with Chlup's presentation of P. as both determinist and advocate of agency.
Not sure I follow you. By "ontic progression", do you mean the hypostatic procession of Being?
@cole_tucker: Yes, unfolding of World from One.
But that's just the unfolding of cosmic order from the conditions of individuality, really countless individuals making World. So the procession of Being actually radically underdetermines any given event. Synthemata and symbola determine things much more closely, but at the cost, of course, of much idiosyncrasy. The truth about an individual qua individual will not be told by philosophy, i.e., ontology. (Except in general terms, of course: what it is, in general, to be utterly sui generis.) So the "One" that World unfolds from can only be each one, or all together, or from the *perspective* of this or that one.
@cole_tucker: With this or that one being the Henads?
Yes, primarily. But there is also an intelligibility to mundane solipsism, correctly understood. Phenomenology, for example, has a certain methodological solipsism at its basis, and it's in no way incoherent. I'm just saying that "the World unfolds from One" just means the unity of a world depends upon the nature of unity as such. In that sense, the statement is analytic. Any interpretation giving more content to it is internal to some theology. "Emptily formal" is an extremely useful phrase for the would-be Platonist to have on hand.
@cole_tucker: Wouldn't the assertion of unity itself be internal to a theology, if solipsism qualifies as well?
No, because we're just talking about the analytic sense of unity implicit in any solipsism many times over. It's logic, it's thin. Henology is the thinnest thing there is if you're doing it right. If one wants to hear something exciting about the world, they need to talk to a scientist or a priestess. Having "the One" as one's archê is, in effect, to be an ontological anarchist. (And this is more or less Aristotle's complaint against Platonism! E.g., "It's just math!", "It's like a bad play, episodic!", and so on.)
@proclusberlin: But this is also one platonist criticism of Aristotle: "your intelligible world is bare! there's nothing to see!" And also "there's no way to account for the actual structure of this world and for its providential ordering!" Which is compatible with your point: Aristotle has confused the thin register of unity with the rich one of nous.
A very good point. Compare the Platonic demiurge-and-paradigm, with the Aristotelian self-cognizing demiurge. For Proclus, the paradigm is in one sense contained in the demiurge, in another sense not. To this corresponds two senses of Being, one strictly complementary to nous, one wider.
@cole_tucker: I'm just going to have to make the time to dig into the primary sources. Difficult to determine where to start. Would reading the Academy syllabus give me enough background for following the more intricate discussions?
I think that the curriculum, though late, gives a good sense of the priorities of ancient Platonists. I wouldn't want to give the impression that I think of the Academy as monolithic or even continuous over time.
@cole_tucker: Not at all. My primary concern is enriching my practice, but I'm very interested in your assertion that the Left could greatly benefit from developing a metaphysics (with the clear implication you prefer a Platonic one).
Well, yes, it doesn't seem to square too well with my assertions about the "thinness" and analyticity of Platonism. But that thinness with respect to substantive ontology goes hand in hand with the centrality of the Good. Goodness is just too diverse to be something.
@erdoganhs: or too ephemeral…
That doesn't matter.
@erdoganhs: don't know abt psycho-soc but as per an obscure pol theory becoming precedes "goodness" the way evaluation, the tragic act, precedes the "values" we retrospectively take for granted
That's a different register of inquiry altogether, though: in Platonism goodness is implicit in the agent who acts. It is relevant, though, to the question of just how much political help a metaphysics spread so thin can be.
"The procession of Being actually radically underdetermines any given event": I'm ambivalent about this statement upon further thought. The procession of hypostases is about generating entire planes of Being, so of course that is underdetermining in the peculiar case; but I wouldn't want to seem dismissive of the power of dialectical inquiry.
@proclusberlin: Dialectical inquiry should ideally be able to determine cosmic events, at least. Evil actions, though, certainly not. So that gives us an upper and a lower limit.
Yes, I was getting carried away. I'd even say there's no question to which such inquiry can give no answer.
On a general point raised by @cole_tucker, I recalled something from Proclus, In Parm. 825. Here, Proclus distinguishes between positing "ideas" of cosmic individuals, and grasping their causes. He rejects the former, but explains the latter in this fashion: "If you want a single cause, [for a cosmic individual], it could be the order of the universe; or if several, you could name the motion of the heavens, the particular natures, the properties of the seasons, or the various regions, or the Gods that superintend these causes, for all of these are involved in the making of individuals."
And so here you can see that one does not determine the cosmic individual purely from ontology in the narrow sense, but from the widest possible inquiry, that involves the natural sciences, philosophy most broadly construed, as well as theology.
Well, it has a certain basis in Plato's texts, to be sure: Rep. 596 comes immediately to mind, but such texts were not accorded much weight in antiquity, compared to what was known to have been taught at the Academy. As such, one could say that the idea gains currency in the wake of 19th c. attempts to dispense with the doxography and separate Plato from the later antique Platonic tradition.
The key here is the concept of logoi. Young Socrates wonders (in the Parm.) about whether there is, e.g., a form of "hair; later Platonists explain that hair will be a logos dependent upon the form of Animal. In this way, we have a more functional account that doesn't distinguish unnecessarily between, e.g., hair and quills. The early, heuristic class-forms—which may predate Plato himself—are thus replaced by a holistic account based on archai.
@cole_tucker: Thank you. I was wondering how the Renaissance Platonists interpreted the subject, and the class-forms seemed much too tied up in the Anglo-American philosophical stream to assume as applicable.
The Renaissance Platonists I know well enough to speak of, namely Cusa and Bruno, are both much closer to the ancient view. Hence Cusa and Bruno are critical of Scholastic substantial forms, due to the Platonic henological current they have tapped. Substantial forms are a different matter, of course, than what I have termed "class-forms, but what is salient here is that the renewed Platonism manifests itself in an anti-formalism. This suffices, I think, to show how far are we from the banal notion of a Platonic "theory of forms".
@cole_tucker: Following the development of logoi, was there any substantial interest in delimiting the forms? I remember you saying animal was a form, but human was not. Would chair-logoi fall within the form of artifice?
The theory of logoi was more developed by the Stoics; indeed, it may be that they are responsible for the actual terminology. For the Stoics, of course, there are no "forms" at all. Platonists pursued the notion of ideas as dependent on divine thought. As for the logos of a chair, it is the knowledge of what a chair is for, and based on that, parameters for its construction. Ultimately, it pertains to the sphere of animal needs.
@proclusberlin: They may be taking the notion from Aristotle's embryology, at GA II.1, IV.3, a thesis of David Hahm's (The Origins of Stoic Cosmology https://kb.osu.edu:443/dspace/handle/1811/24807kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/ … , see Chapter III, esp. p. 74ff)
Yes, and Aristotle in general uses the term logos a good deal; the Stoics would have been tempted to reify.
@cole_tucker: Forgive me, this brings me back around a bit, to my realization that Idealism is more properly how a World comes into being, rather than the genesis of matter. When Chlup develops the differences in ontology between Proclus and Plotinus, on the topic of evil, Plotinus is presented as having a break, matter separate from mind and so there's no need for forms to reach beyond thought. In his presentation of Proclus, matter was an expression of divine thought (mind-only?), which doesn't seem that far from the banal theory of forms.
I'm not sure I follow the last bit. In general, Proclus differs from Plotinus in resisting the notion of "intelligible matter", which one might think of as something like a principle of vagueness. Proclus resists any simple notion of matter. Matter, as the limit of a given formal regime, has a kinship with that which is prior to form, and thus divinity. Why does formal determination have limits? For one thing, because there are diverse formal schemata that overlap and interfere. Also, because certain potentials demand fulfillment, such as the contingently participating or the unproductive product.
@cole_tucker: I guess I'm resistant to the conception that all events/progressions have the ontic progression as their determining cause. I will be reading Proclus more along these lines, as with Chlup's presentation of P. as both determinist and advocate of agency.
Not sure I follow you. By "ontic progression", do you mean the hypostatic procession of Being?
@cole_tucker: Yes, unfolding of World from One.
But that's just the unfolding of cosmic order from the conditions of individuality, really countless individuals making World. So the procession of Being actually radically underdetermines any given event. Synthemata and symbola determine things much more closely, but at the cost, of course, of much idiosyncrasy. The truth about an individual qua individual will not be told by philosophy, i.e., ontology. (Except in general terms, of course: what it is, in general, to be utterly sui generis.) So the "One" that World unfolds from can only be each one, or all together, or from the *perspective* of this or that one.
@cole_tucker: With this or that one being the Henads?
Yes, primarily. But there is also an intelligibility to mundane solipsism, correctly understood. Phenomenology, for example, has a certain methodological solipsism at its basis, and it's in no way incoherent. I'm just saying that "the World unfolds from One" just means the unity of a world depends upon the nature of unity as such. In that sense, the statement is analytic. Any interpretation giving more content to it is internal to some theology. "Emptily formal" is an extremely useful phrase for the would-be Platonist to have on hand.
@cole_tucker: Wouldn't the assertion of unity itself be internal to a theology, if solipsism qualifies as well?
No, because we're just talking about the analytic sense of unity implicit in any solipsism many times over. It's logic, it's thin. Henology is the thinnest thing there is if you're doing it right. If one wants to hear something exciting about the world, they need to talk to a scientist or a priestess. Having "the One" as one's archê is, in effect, to be an ontological anarchist. (And this is more or less Aristotle's complaint against Platonism! E.g., "It's just math!", "It's like a bad play, episodic!", and so on.)
@proclusberlin: But this is also one platonist criticism of Aristotle: "your intelligible world is bare! there's nothing to see!" And also "there's no way to account for the actual structure of this world and for its providential ordering!" Which is compatible with your point: Aristotle has confused the thin register of unity with the rich one of nous.
A very good point. Compare the Platonic demiurge-and-paradigm, with the Aristotelian self-cognizing demiurge. For Proclus, the paradigm is in one sense contained in the demiurge, in another sense not. To this corresponds two senses of Being, one strictly complementary to nous, one wider.
@cole_tucker: I'm just going to have to make the time to dig into the primary sources. Difficult to determine where to start. Would reading the Academy syllabus give me enough background for following the more intricate discussions?
I think that the curriculum, though late, gives a good sense of the priorities of ancient Platonists. I wouldn't want to give the impression that I think of the Academy as monolithic or even continuous over time.
@cole_tucker: Not at all. My primary concern is enriching my practice, but I'm very interested in your assertion that the Left could greatly benefit from developing a metaphysics (with the clear implication you prefer a Platonic one).
Well, yes, it doesn't seem to square too well with my assertions about the "thinness" and analyticity of Platonism. But that thinness with respect to substantive ontology goes hand in hand with the centrality of the Good. Goodness is just too diverse to be something.
@erdoganhs: or too ephemeral…
That doesn't matter.
@erdoganhs: don't know abt psycho-soc but as per an obscure pol theory becoming precedes "goodness" the way evaluation, the tragic act, precedes the "values" we retrospectively take for granted
That's a different register of inquiry altogether, though: in Platonism goodness is implicit in the agent who acts. It is relevant, though, to the question of just how much political help a metaphysics spread so thin can be.
"The procession of Being actually radically underdetermines any given event": I'm ambivalent about this statement upon further thought. The procession of hypostases is about generating entire planes of Being, so of course that is underdetermining in the peculiar case; but I wouldn't want to seem dismissive of the power of dialectical inquiry.
@proclusberlin: Dialectical inquiry should ideally be able to determine cosmic events, at least. Evil actions, though, certainly not. So that gives us an upper and a lower limit.
Yes, I was getting carried away. I'd even say there's no question to which such inquiry can give no answer.
On a general point raised by @cole_tucker, I recalled something from Proclus, In Parm. 825. Here, Proclus distinguishes between positing "ideas" of cosmic individuals, and grasping their causes. He rejects the former, but explains the latter in this fashion: "If you want a single cause, [for a cosmic individual], it could be the order of the universe; or if several, you could name the motion of the heavens, the particular natures, the properties of the seasons, or the various regions, or the Gods that superintend these causes, for all of these are involved in the making of individuals."
And so here you can see that one does not determine the cosmic individual purely from ontology in the narrow sense, but from the widest possible inquiry, that involves the natural sciences, philosophy most broadly construed, as well as theology.
