Concluding Reflections

This concluding chapter examines the term “Neoplatonism,” which has had a mainly pejorative connotation since its invention in the middle of the eighteenth century. If one insists on giving the term some more or less neutral descriptive content, the chapter suggests that it be used to refer to the versions of Platonism born out of criticisms of Plotinus by his successors. These criticisms for the most part focus on the problem of an absolutely simple first principle of all that is causally efficacious. Plato's answer is to appeal to the metaphor of “flowing” to indicate what the Good does eternally. Plotinus's logical argument is to the effect that if the first principle is unique as well as absolutely simple, then the outcome of the flow must be other than absolutely simple; it must be at least minimally complex. And then continued flow means increasing complexity until maximal complexity is achieved. Among the so-called Neoplatonists, an increasingly more refined account of this flow was sought. This account experienced two waves of attack; the first was from Christian philosophers who wanted to identify the first principle of all with the God of scripture. The second wave is related to the first. Roughly in the middle of the seventeenth century, Platonism was so thoroughly mixed up with Christianity that it could not meet the Naturalism of the new physics on philosophical grounds.

The Centrality of the Idea of the Good in the Platonic System (2)

This chapter investigates the centrality of the Idea of the Good for Plato's ethics. It is certainly a remarkable fact that just as the Idea of the Good has little presence in the bulk of Anglo-American scholarship on Plato's metaphysics, so it has little presence in accounts of Plato's ethics. The chapter demonstrates that any account of Platonic ethics is seriously deficient if the superordinate Idea of the Good is not the main focus and if the Good is not identified as the absolutely simple first principle of all, the One. There may be a number of reasons for the lack of interest in the Idea of the Good among students of Plato. At least one of these is that it is supposed that Aristotle's critique of the Form of the Good in his Nicomachean Ethics is decisive. The chapter then considers the knowledge of the Forms of the Virtues, and looks at goodness as integrative unity. It also studies the connection between eros and the Good, which is made explicitly by Plotinus in one of the most remarkable passages in his Enneads.

Introduction

This introductory chapter looks at how philosopher Richard Rorty advanced the thesis that Platonism and philosophy are more or less identical. The point of insisting on this identification is the edifying inference Rorty thinks is to be drawn from it: If one finds Platonism unacceptable, then one ought to abandon philosophy. Hence, a rejection of Platonism is really a rejection of the principles shared by most philosophers up to the present. The chapter then poses the opposition between Platonism and Naturalism as the opposition between philosophy and anti-philosophy. Plato states in his Republic in a clear and unambiguous way that the subject matter of philosophy is “that which is perfectly or completely real,” that is, the intelligible world and all that it contains. If Rorty is right, then the denial of the existence of this content is the rejection of philosophy. But self-declared Naturalists divide over whether philosophy has a distinct subject matter. Nevertheless, the most consistent form of Naturalism will hold that with the abandonment of the Platonic subject matter must go the abandonment of a distinct subject matter for philosophy.

Plotinus the Platonist

This chapter assesses the contributions of Plotinus to the completion of the Platonic project. In the time between Plato and Plotinus, there were some six hundred years of reflections on the dialogues, Aristotle's testimony, and the indirect tradition. These reflections left multiple seemingly intractable problems and a susceptibility among self-declared Platonists to various charges of inconsistency. The chapter outlines Plotinus's efforts to solve these problems and to introduce consistency into the systematic framework. The three basic principles or hypostases of Plotinus's system unite the elements of Ur-Platonism and the foundational principle. That is, antinominalism, antimaterialism, antimechanism, antiskepticism, and antirelativism have their theoretical foundation in the hierarchically and causally ordered series One/Good, Intellect, and Soul. What this means, among other things, is that the correct version of what Aristotle calls the science of ultimate principles and causes will arrive at this triad. The chapter then looks at Plotinus's critique of Stoicism, distinguishing between Platonic and Stoic wisdom.

Plato’s Critique of Naturalism

This chapter discusses Plato's critique of Naturalism. A metaphysics of the natural world as conceived of by Naturalists is quite different from a metaphysics of the natural world conceived of by Platonists. For Naturalists, topics like identity, existence, cause, and time, all have to be approached as principles exclusively for knowledge of entities in a three or four-dimensional framework. By contrast, Plato assumes and Aristotle argues that identity is equivocally applied not just to artifacts and to things that exist in nature, but also to that which is immaterial. Plato's designation of the subject matter of philosophy as, roughly, “the intelligible world,” obviously excludes an extension of the term “philosophy” to that which is non-intelligible. But the sensible world, as Plato says in Republic, participates in the intelligible world in some way. Accordingly, insofar as it does, it belongs to the subject matter of philosophy. The difference between the natural scientist and the philosopher on this account is, as Plato says, that the former “hypothesizes” its foundations, while the latter grounds these in the “unhypothetical first principle.” The chapter then studies Socrates' “autobiography” in Phaedo, as well as the subject matter of philosophy in Republic, Theaetetus, and Sophist.

Platonism vs. Naturalism

This chapter distinguishes between Platonism and Naturalism. Plato's Platonism rests upon the foundation of his rejection of many, though not all, of the doctrines of his major predecessors. These include materialism, mechanism, nominalism, relativism, and skepticism. Plato rejects all these views with arguments, sometimes very elaborate and sometimes quite concise. All these negative arguments make up the foundation of Platonism. Meanwhile, the central pillar of the positive construct on the basis of this foundation is clear and unambiguous. It is an “unhypothetical first principle of all” called in Republic “the Idea of the Good” and, according to Aristotle's testimony, identified by Plato with “the One.” However, many contemporary philosophers embrace an opposing position, widely labeled “Naturalism.” Strikingly, many of the arguments for this position are arguments against elements of Platonism. The chapter then looks at attempts to seek a rapprochement between Platonism and Naturalism.