Plato: A.E. Taylor vs. P.E. More

To the newcomer to the study of Plato it is remarkable how much disagreement there is, among even the most respected authorities, as to what Platonism actually is. For example, A.E. Taylor cited Paul Elmore More (see July 13 post) as one of the indispensable authors on Platonism, yet Taylor's interpretation is in at least one crucial way almost the opposite of More's.

An essential feature of More's Platonism, as found in his book of that same name, was that it was dualistic, holding that God formed the world out of a non-divine matter ruled by "necessity" (and thereby resembling matter as now understood by physics). This dualism represented a definite advance, More believes, over the monistic pantheism of the pre-Socratic Parmenides and his defender Zeno. It is a kind of middle way between pure materialism and pure idealism. Such dualism provides a solution to the problem of evil: evil is the fault of the resistance of matter to being formed into a perfect cosmos. This seems like an attractive solution in that it avoids the need, fraught with spiritual danger, to postulate the existence of a malevolent second god, as in Manichaeanism or other kinds of Gnosticism (or for that matter the Christian idea of the Devil). No such malign higher power is necessary to account for evil; one must only grasp the tendency of matter to relapse into chaos if left to its own devices, or in the terms of modern science, entropy. In the words of More, the world is a good, ordered place insofar as is allowed by "natural necessity consenting and yielding to the persuasion of reason."

For More, Platonic dualism also covers ethics, which he regards as the central concern of Platonism and the key to understanding it as an integrated whole. (For example, the Republic is on one level a utopian blueprint, but more essentially, More holds, it is an examination of the otherwise hidden inner natures of various kinds of individual souls by drawing analogies with the more visible and familiar structures of various kinds of city-states.) Each of the three pairs of ethical concepts,

pleasure	happiness
virtue	morality
opinion	knowledge

indicates two fundamentally different entities—though this does not mean that the two (for example, pleasure and happiness) can never be found together. The first member of each pair is the natural counterpart of the second, 'divine' member. And each of these three natural attributes is associated with the mortal, pleasure-driven component of a dualistic Platonic soul, while each divine attribute is linked to the higher, immortal part of that soul.

By contrast, A.E. Taylor (in Platonism and its Influence) in effect regards dualism, at least as far as the doctrine of Creation is concerned, as merely an Aristotelian deviation from Plato. "Plato . . . teaches 'creation' in the sense that he regards the existence of the whole universe and everything in it as an effect of one single cause, the divine goodness, exactly as Thomas [Aquinas] himself does." Aristotle on the other hand "makes the universe a resultant of two equally eternal causes, God, the source of the motion by which 'Form' or 'structure' is evoked or induced, and the structureless 'first matter,' . . . from which or upon which the First Mover evokes or superinduces 'Form.' (pp 123–124). Each author praises Plato for holding the view which that author favours, but the two views do not seem compatible.

(To further add to the confusion, More regards the neo-Platonists as having regressed from dualism to monism, while Taylor seems to overlook any basic distinction between Plato and the neo-Platonists on this point.)

Half of kids in Ontario Crown care are drugged

Here are some edited extracts from a Globe and Mail article (June 9, subscription only) on the officially sponsored doping of children in Canada, with particular reference to those who find themselves wards of the Crown in Ontario. (H/T: Epoch Times. Full article, by Margaret Philp, obtained from Psychdata.) One one hand, the problem seems rapidly to be getting worse; on the other, at least some people in authority acknowledge its existence . . . . CONTINUE

The central position of Plato

The now little-known Paul Elmer More (see for example this article by Brian Domitrovic) was one of the leading American conservative thinkers of the early part of the twentieth century. His major work was a series of volumes on "the Greek tradition from the death of Socrates to the Council of Chalcedon", an attempt to provide a philosophical history of Western culture, through both its Hellenic and Christian phases, that has some parallels to Voegelin's (much larger) project. More's work seems more accessible, however, than that of Voegelin, whose manner is often less that of a systematic teacher than of someone discussing ideas with which the reader is assumed already to be familiar. Reading More might be a good way of learning about Platonist philosophy.

Here is More issuing a kind of "Platonist manifesto": . . . . CONTINUE

New piece by Theodore Dalrymple

Here—from a comparatively obscure source, the Nova-Scotia-based Atlantic Institute for Market Studies—is a new article by Theodore Dalrymple, based on a speech he recently gave to the Civitas conference in Halifax: The Paradoxes of Cultural Confidence: Is Western Culture in Decline? (pdf format).

Pagan transcendentalism

(Revised post)

. . . . [E]ven if Plato is not describing true creation ex nihilo, it seems clear that the 'raw material' on which Plato's Creator worked is so formless that it must make little difference to his transcendent status. If the Creator is 'in' the world, it is only the world in an utterly chaotic and dead form, not the world with which we are familiar. In the Timaeus, even the immortality of the gods, let alone the immortality of the souls of mortals, remains dependent on the goodness of the Creator; it is not an inherent property of souls . . . . Plato [also] distinguishes the divine part of man, created directly by the Creator, from man's mortal components, the creation of which is delegated to the lesser gods. Should this belief not strongly encourage respect for the essential core of the individual, irrespective of "physical or social facts"? Does this not call into question Voegelin's claims about the key advance in consciousness represented by Christianity? CONTINUE

D.H. Lawrence on Christianity

Lawrence's Apocalypse, written when he was dying, contains his insights into the Book of Revelation. Basically he sees this as the highly influential foundation of a kind of shadow-side to the religion of love, Christianity—though he also finds in it some positive aspects, including interesting residues from lost pagan materials which he believes were used in the construction of the later Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings. In condemning the Book of Revelation, Lawrence issues a radical denunciation of Christianity as a whole, comparable to Nietzsche's. It is difficult for me to tell whether his claim is a powerful but dangerous truth or a powerful and dangerous lie, but in either case it seems an important one.

It is possible to regard Lawrence as refuting Eric Voegelin's argument about the advance in human consciousness represented by Christianity . . . . CONTINUE

Eric Voegelin (15)

Glenn Hughes on "Eric Voegelin and Christianity"

Voegelin has important things to say about Christianity but they may tend to remain buried among his copious writings. A valuable 2004 Intercollegiate Review article by Glenn Hughes, available here as a pdf file, summarizes Voegelin's assessment of the place of Christianity in the development of human consciousness . . . . CONTINUE