The Practice of Philosophy in Plato and Plotinus: An Exploration

By Michael Bennett

Plato said over 2,500 years ago that "an unexamined life for a man is not worth living." To examine one's life, on a regular basis, cannot but lead to a consideration of virtue, which in turn leads to a search for the Good, which both Plato and Plotinus say all men naturally seek. What we call a good informs the value system we live by, but a good can only reflect the Good, if it is good for our soul and the soul of our neighbor, any more than we can claim virtue with a mote in our eye. Are the wrongs perceived in society also in ourselves, for where else could they have come from? So we need a different kind of inquiry and a different order of reflection; an inquiry that reveals errors in how we see things and a reflection that seeks a spiritual dimension to how we see things. It does not matter if it is called contemplation or meditation, for the principle of prayer has been with us ever since man first intimated the presence of the Divine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Feb 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532642081

Michael Bennett

Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) is an award-winning screenwriter, director and author. His first book, a non-fiction work telling the true story of New Zealand’s worst miscarriage of justice, In Dark Places, won Best Non-Fiction Book at the 2017 Ngaio Marsh Awards. Michael's second book, Helen and the Go-Go Ninjas, is a time-travel graphic novel co-authored with Ant Sang. Better the Blood, the first Hana Westerman thriller, was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction/Ockham New Zealand Book Award, as well as being shortlisted for the Audio Book of the Year at the Capital Crime Fingerprint Awards. It was also longlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Debut Dagger and was a finalist for both Best First Novel and Best Novel at the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards.   Michael's short and feature films have won awards internationally and have screened at numerous festivals, including Cannes, Toronto, Berlin, Locarno, New York, London and Melbourne. Michael is the 2020 recipient of the Te Aupounamu Māori Screen Excellence Award, in recognition of members of the Māori filmmaking community who have made high-level contributions to screen storytelling.     He lives in Auckland, Aotearoa (New Zealand), with his partner Jane, and children Tīhema, Māhina and Matariki.

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The Practice of Philosophy in Plato and Plotinus

An Exploration

Michael Bennett

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The Practice of Philosophy, as described in Plato and Plotinus

An Exploration

Copyright © 2018 Michael Bennett. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4206-7

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Manufactured in the U.S.A. March 6, 2018

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Preface: Genesis: The Practice of Philosophy in Plato and Plotinus

Introduction

Chapter 1: Self-Examination

Chapter 2: The Pursuit of Virtue (Arete)

Chapter 3: The Pursuit of the Good (Agathos)

Chapter 4: Inquiry

Chapter 5: Contemplation

Afterword

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

To the Hackett publishing Company for permission to quote from translations of Plato by G.M.A. Grube, with a grateful appreciation for the patience showed by their Permissions Editor, Maura Gaughan; and to Harvard University Press for permission to quote from the Enneads of Plotinus translated by A.H. Armstrong.

To Dr. David Horan for the initial inspiration, and to the encouraging response to the first four page synopsis of the project, by Arthur Farndell, Richard Gary, Shirley Burch, and Anthea Douglas.

To the staff at Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Introduction

Genesis

The Practice of Philosophy in Plato and Plotinus

The phrase, ‘The practice of philosophy,’ is used by Plato twice; in the ‘Phaedo,’ and in the ‘Phaedrus.’ So, given that Hadot says in ‘Philosophy as a way of life,’ that for the ancients, Philosophy was not a subject to be written about as it is seen, post-Descartes, but it was something to be discussed and practiced, including what we would now call, ethics, physics, metaphysics, mathematics—especially geometry, and so forth. With the establishment of Christianity as the state religion under Constantine, ethics and metaphysics reformed as Theology, and Philosophy as such became, in Hadot’s view, a servant to Theology.

While the dialogues of Plato can be read as being didactic, there is little to suggest that something is to be practiced, but a closer reading of the ‘Phaedo’ for example, refers to one practice of ‘gathering the soul together,’ and in fact it is mentioned five times. Dialectic is seen as superior speculative thinking, and some form of contemplative practice is alluded to in ‘the Symposium.’ ‘The Apology’ mentions the importance of discussion with others and self-examination, while almost in every dialogue the question of whether virtue can be taught, is raised. Could these separate elements form a practice? What then arose was the concept of a developmental practice beginning with self-examination and ending with contemplation, with the core aim being dictum of Apollo at Delphi to ‘Know Thyself.’ While the stages in such a practice could be seen as developmental, I did feel that it would be in error to conceive of them like that, like rungs of a ladder, self-examination would be initiated but should be continuous, and then someone suggested to me, ‘five strings to a bow,’ which is subtly different from five arrows. That was accepted, hence the five chapters.

Some 600 years after Plato we have Plotinus who sees himself as a follower of Plato, and not only does he have access to 600 years of thought and commentary on Plato by others to explore, he also develops his own methods. Diotima’s ‘ascent to beauty’ in ‘the Symposium’ is followed very closely by Plotinus in his Ennead on Beauty, but he gives direction, that is clear and explicit: "turn, close your eyes, and wake another way of seeing which all men have, but which few use.’ So we, as it were, ‘begin’ with self-examination (with Plato) and we ‘end’ with contemplation, under Plotinus’s generous guidance.

This exploration would not have come to light without the introduction to Plato and Plotinus, provided by Dr. David Horan of Trinity College, Dublin. A combination of enthusiasm and insight gained from study, nourished that impulse, and what sustained it was the conviction that grew with further study of Plato and Plotinus, that the discipline of asking questions, especially those which challenged what I thought I knew, were far more important, than any apparent answer.

Introduction

Primary distinctions:

W hat we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning (T.S. Eliot). Yet we cannot speak of the end, for we have not yet arrived; any more than we can speak of the beginning, which we may not have left; or, if we do speak, we may only repeat a tale long told; a tale told in many places and at many times; a tale of where we once were and what we have been and when, and of what is forgotten.

"This, we may say, is the first act of generation: the One, perfect because it seeks nothing, has nothing, and needs nothing, overflows as it were, and its superabundance makes something other than itself. This, when it has come into being, turns back upon the One and is filled, and becomes Intellect by looking towards it. Its halt and turning to the One constitutes its being, its gaze upon the One, Intellect. Since it halts and turns towards the One that it may see, it becomes at once Intellect and Being. Resembling the One thus, Intellect produces in the same way, pouring forth a multiple power—this is a likeness of it—just as that which was before it poured it forth. This activity springing from the substance of Intellect, Is Soul, which comes to be this while Intellect abides unchanged: for Intellect too comes into being while that which is before it abides unchanged. But Soul does not abide unchanged when it produces: it is moved, and so brings forth an image. It looks to its source, and is filled, and going forth to another opposed movement generates its own image, which is sensation and the principle of growth in plants."

(Ennead V 2:1 Armstrong tr.)

 . . . we must begin by making the following distinction: What is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which becomes but never is? The former is grasped by understanding, which involves a reasoned account. It is unchanging. The latter is grasped by opinion, which involves unreasoning sense perception. It comes to be and passes away but never really is.

(Timaeus 27d–28a Zeyl tr.)

This is the primary division in Plato, and is the binary opposition at the heart of all of Shakespeare’s plays, being especially obvious in the Tragedies. In Macbeth for example, it takes the form of the opposition between Good and Evil; but it also takes the form as well, as it does in Lear, and Hamlet, of Appearance v. Reality (1).¹ Timaeus’s distinction, simple, as it appears, a lot of implications: for example, in the instance of knowledge (episteme), as distinct from understanding (noesis); clearly the knowledge of that which does not change and which can be approached through reason will be of more significance than the knowledge of what is ever changing, however necessary that may be. Plotinus makes the analogous point in Ennead V 5:7, that the ‘light’ which illuminates objects is of a greater significance than those objects illuminated by it. This can be taken as a metaphor: For man, as a soul-embodied creature, knowledge needs to be acquired about his environment, not only for his own survival and continuation,² and sooner or later he begins to wonder who he is and what is he doing here?

"That is why we must distinguish two forms of cause, the divine and the necessary. First, the divine, for which we must search in all things if we are to gain a life of happiness to the extent that our nature allows, and second, the necessary, for which we must search out for the sake of the divine. Our reason is that without the necessary, those other objects about which we are serious, cannot on their own be discerned, and hence cannot be comprehended or partaken of in any other way."

(Timaeus 69 a)

The idea that the soul is immortal carries the implied assumption that it does not change, but that is clearly not quite the case, for the whole issue of purification which is discussed later, implies that it can ‘change’, in the same way that appearances can change, and also it is held responsible for such changes which arise from whatever actions the embodiment undertakes. But there is also, what Timaeus refers to as ‘the straying cause, Necesssity, or Ananke: For this ordered world is of mixed birth; it is the offspring of Necessity and Intellect (Timaeus 48 a). Necessity will lead us to generation and mortality; Intellect will lead us towards immortality and the Divine; for things of earth lead to earth; and things of heaven lead to heaven. The obvious question then is, if the soul is immortal as Plato asserts in the Phaedo, ‘Why does the soul not know that it is immortal?’ The shadow question to that is obviously ‘What difference would such knowledge make?’ The fact that the individual soul does not appear to know that it is immortal is implied in the famous injunction of Apollo at Delphi: ‘Know thyself’: which is the aim, of what Plato calls ‘the practice of philosophy.’

While the five phases of a journey to this end described in the following are presented as a sequence, it is not intended, that they be regarded as distinct and separate steps, for each one of the five; Self-Examination; the Pursuit of Virtue; the Pursuit of the Good; Inquiry; and Contemplation; are discrete aspects as ‘steps’, each ‘step’ will contain or use, aspects of the other steps, so that the five steps should be seen as a whole. The second ‘step’—the Pursuit of Virtue, also recognizes that the first step, Self Examination, can in one sense, never be completed; it continues. We begin, however, as might be expected, in this physical world of sensory experience.

‘The Myth of Er’ and the ‘choosing of lots’:

For many, the concept that we have chosen our own life, is probably derived from the cultural memory of the ‘Myth of Er’³ where we are given an account of how the soul, before it is reincarnated, is given the new life it appears to have chosen in the form of a lot which is a kind of contract for the next life, into which the soul will be reincarnated. The lot, which can be read before it is fixed to the soul, is like a contract in that it contains a general though deterministic account of what is to be expected in the new life. However, the ‘choice’ is not as open as it might appear to be: the choice available in the ‘free choice’ is from those lots that have fallen close by the waiting soul. Because of the kind of conflation that can occur in recalling narrative details, it is important to remember that the choosing of the lots, and the choosing of the lives, are two separate actions; in the case of the lots, perhaps choosing is the wrong word to use. Firstly, the lot, only determines the number or position in a queue, for the choosing of lives, but the point is made that in terms of the balance of good and bad in each life (the lots proper) that can be chosen, there is no distinction in terms of content, between those chosen first and those chosen last.

So is the choosing of the lots then purely an administrative ritual, for the choice of lot can only be from those which have been cast down near the soul, and given the caveat about content, the actual order of choosing is not in itself significant. We then have two competing pieces of information: the first is that the embodiment enshrines the operation of Justice, in so far it is said to inversely reflect the life led in the previous embodiment, but then that does not quite concur with the information that all the choices are in a sense neutral. But this stated principle, also appears to be at odds with statements that the souls, are judged on their previous life, and are punished, or rewarded accordingly, before they are re-embodied; that is, before they have their new life. One explanation might be as follows: Punishment normally is considered as serving two functions: one is the retributive element—if you do wrong you get punished, and the other is the reformative aspect—if you have done wrong, the impulses that led to the commission of wrong acts, need to be corrected. It may be that the time in Hades is part is the retributive part, and the actual choice made in Er’s account, is the reformative part. Er’s account, which is echoed in the Phaedo, is justice at the level of the divine, but there is also the sense of justice being determined and enacted at the human level. This is a different perspective from our modern day one is indicated by the language used at the end of the 5th. century: the word ‘timoria’ referred to in its primary sense, to vengeance, but it was also the word used for punishment, and this conflation is reflected in the modern concept of a vendetta, the technical word for punishment, as in punishment in prison was ‘kolasdein.’ We will return to this issue later, because it was at the root of Socrates’s rejection of retaliation.

The ‘life’ as represented by the ‘lot,’ can be imagined as a kind of contract, which the undecided soul can read, but like most contracts, there is the big print and the small print. Odysseus in Er’s account seems to be the only soul intelligent enough to carefully read the whole ‘life,’ because he realises that it is deterministic; what it says will be, will be. So when it is said at the end, that ‘the God is not responsible’ (for the choice), it means exactly that, for it is deterministic, probably in the most-likely sense, and will indicate situations where the soul has to meet some of the consequences of some of its actions in a previous embodiment—hence its connection with the idea of Eternal Justice. There is no suggestion that the soul has any freedom to go and have a look at other choices that have fallen in front of other waiting souls; one also needs to bear in mind that the account can be read allegorically, so things should not be taken too literally. Plato is mapping principles, for the soul chooses its next life according to the one it has previously lived, in much the same way that the soul can be said to contribute to its own imprisonment in the body (i.e. Phaedo 82 d). The ‘chosen’ lot, is then the one that is subsequently fixed to the soul. There then, is the question of the selection of the daimon.

"After all the souls had chosen their lives, they went forward to Lachesis (one of the daughters of Necessity) in the same order in which they had made their choices, and she assigned to each (soul) the daimon it had chosen as guardian of its life and fulfiller of its choice."

(Republic 620 e Grube tr.)

The allocation of the daimon (sometimes referred to as a guardian) is even more ambiguous: the soul may choose its daimon—but we are given no clue as upon what basis this choice is made, so is the choice, in a sense, predetermined as the falling of the lots appear to suggest—the choice of lot has to be made from the group that is most adjacent, and then Lachesis assigns the ‘chosen’ daimon to the particular soul. According to the account in the Phaedo, this daimon remains with the soul until the next one is appointed for the next embodiment. According to Er’s account, the souls then have to cross a desert, and the River Lethe (of forgetfulness) and the water has to touch their lips—although some drink a lot, but the water has the power to make them forget everything that has happened. (It has to be remembered that this is a story allegedly re-told by Socrates, so no one asks awkward questions, like, how far back does this loss of memory go? This re-telling strategy is that that Plato uses in other dialogues, the Phaedo, for example, is a retelling, but re-telling may also be a euphemism, for Phaedrus in the dialogue of his name, accuses Socrates of ‘making up stories.’) Plotinus’s reference to Er’s account puts a different orientation on it.

The inescapable rule and the justice (which governs the descent of souls) are thus set in a natural principle which compels each to go in its proper order to that which it individually tends . . . the cosmos has a destiny too . . . 

(Ennead IV 3:13)

It would be easy to equate the ‘inner’ guardian with the voice of conscience, but the range of the guardian’ role (or daimon),⁴ is much greater than that, and can be much greater according to how much the voice of conscience is heeded. Its’ focus is intended actions. Sometimes one is aware of an inner step, that a kind of resolution has been formed, not necessarily in the form of a verbalized resolution, but having the affective power of a resolution taken none the less: such as a decision to not lie. This is not necessarily an action of a guardian, but there is a sense that it has the guardian’s blessing. Socrates’s guardian, does not tell him what to do, but lets him know what he should not, and clearly Socrates has learned to trust his inner voice:

At all previous times my usual mantic sign previously opposed me, even in small matters, when I was about to do something wrong, but now that, as you can see for yourselves, I was faced with what one might think, and what is generally ought to be, the worst of evils, my divine sign has not opposed me, either when I left home at dawn, or when I came into court, or at anytime that I was about to say something during my speech.

(Apology 40 a–b Grube tr.)

Self examination:

‘Self-examination’ is a paraphrase of the ‘unexamined life’ that Socrates refers to in the Apology:

" . . . I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the ‘unexamined life’ is