Conclusion

At the close of Pater’s career, then, one can summarize the broad strokes of his Platonism. He calls it a tendency and a temper; but it is really a critical acuity for negotiating or reconciling the paradox of opposites one sees on a daily basis, such as the many and the one, or the finite in the infinite, the recognition of form in matter, which in the right balance is beauty. Calling it a tendency emphasizes its enduring power in a person’s personality. It is taking seriously the importance of love in Platonism that opens Pater’s teaching up to charges of a peculiar or idiosyncratic form of the philosophy. Platonically, his aestheticism is the desire to possess beauty, and begins with the very things around us, possessing a high degree of form, becoming rarer and rarer, more select, as one learns to identify better instances of it and his taste advances. Because he is a lover and philosopher at once, he progresses up the Platonic ladder with enthusiasm for visible ideas and knowledge of Dialectic, which relies on scepticism, or a suspension of judgement, which is both a suspension of belief and disbelief. Because he becomes ...

Introduction

When Walter Pater (1839–94) was asked by a friend what his ‘favourite intimate passages’ were, foremost was the maxim of Plato: ‘Honour the soul; for each man’s soul changes, according to the nature of his deeds, for better or worse.’1 Many of the motivations in Pater’s work can be found in this statement. The Platonic imperative makes a great claim for the power of influence—the power of art upon one, for example, as both an observer and a creator—so that one’s consideration of influence becomes as scrupulous as religion, a sort of religion of the awareness or consciousness of one’s surroundings. The maxim also commands respect for self and self-knowledge, towards which Plato’s Socrates urges his interlocutors, which education alone helps to cultivate. The statement blends the concrete with the metaphysical, furthermore, patently arguing for people to inform their own malleable characters. Plato’s aesthetics include ethics because he finds people so susceptible to their environment: ‘men’s souls are’, writes Pater in his final book, ‘according to Plato’s view, the creatures of what men see and hear’ (...

Platonic Communion and ‘An Unfinished Romance’ in Gaston de Latour

This chapter explores the Platonism in Pater’s Gaston de Latour, which began publication in monthly instalments in 1888. Like Marius, Gaston is set in a time of religious turmoil—the religious wars of sixteenth-century France—and follows a single character in search of spiritual transcendence. Along the way Gaston has critical encounters with historical authors, such as Michel de Montaigne and Giordano Bruno, who enrich his understanding of Platonism. The love that seeks wholeness in Plato’s Symposium is proposed as a model for Pater’s critical engendering with historical authors. Beyond Platonic love narratives, Pater incorporates the Odyssean homecoming, employed by Neoplatonists, and the Christian narrative of desire in Song of Solomon. Gaston’s later chapters seem to engage with Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Portrait of Mr. W. H.’ concerning what Pater means by the phrase ‘lover and philosopher at once’, inspired by Plato’s Phaedrus.

Paideia, or Platonic Education, in Marius the Epicurean

This chapter examines Platonic education in Marius the Epicurean (1885)—that is, music and gymnastics, also known as paideia. As an apology for the ‘Conclusion’ to The Renaissance, Marius explains aesthetic education Platonically as an overcoming of scepticism brought about by the Heraclitean flux, which led to the establishment of Forms in Plato’s Cratylus as a way to save meaning in language. Much of Pater’s aesthetic education, therefore, is the recognition of form within matter, as beauty indicates reality. Marius has philosophical encounters with the historical Marcus Aurelius, Apuleius, and Lucian, engaging with, among other philosophies, Platonism and outgrowing Epicureanism. But it is more personal encounters that shape Marius, both literary and ultimately religious, as he is increasingly guided by his daimon or guardian spirit. When Marius sacrifices himself for the sake of friends his conversion to Christianity is obscured because the highest knowledge, Platonically, is first-person.

From Myth to Logos in Greek Studies

This chapter analyses Pater’s understanding of myth and its creation in his Greek Studies (1895). Although the book was published posthumously, the majority of its essays appeared within a five-year period, beginning in 1876 with ‘The Myth of Demeter and Persephone’ and ‘A Study of Dionysus’. Pater follows a three-stage mythopoeic process, beginning with the myths of the people, which are collected and organized by the poets, and finally sculpted into ethical archetypes, conveying the development from myth to logos. Apollo comes to exemplify the archetypal character for Pater, influenced by Plato’s reverence for the god as the embodiment of reason, light, sanity, and music. Around the time of these first studies on myth, in their account of how traditional stories are created and characters are formed, Pater first turns his hand to publishing fiction.

The Ethics of Contemplation in ‘Wordsworth’

Through the study of Plato, Pater was instrumental in changing the way Aristotle was read in Oxford’s Literae Humaniores as evident in his essay ‘On Wordsworth’ (1874). The more ideal elements of Aristotle’s Ethics are emphasized, particularly its passages on contemplation and energeia, in keeping with the image of the divine philosopher in Plato’s Theaetetus. Comparing Pater’s essay to Matthew Arnold’s essay on Wordsworth, it is discovered that it is their diverging views of Platonism that determine whether or not they view Wordsworth as a philosopher. Pater ascribes the ideal teaching of Aristotle to the mysticism of Wordsworth, particularly the ethical importance of contemplation, in being over doing, a preference which in turn affects Oscar Wilde and the values associated with aestheticism.

Strange Beauty and the Platonic Narrative as History in The Renaissance

Pater removed the word ‘history’ from the original title of The Renaissance (1873) for its second edition, and this chapter explores what Pater means by history. Although Pater was conversant with the historic method then popular at Oxford, which sought to contextualize its subject, he reveals a strong preference for depicting the individual genius of Michelangelo, Pico della Mirandola, and other Renaissance artists, beyond their historical conditions. Expanding his definition of the Renaissance beyond fifteenth-century Italy, Pater views it as a Platonic temper shared even by Johann Winckelmann as revealed in biographical narratives of ascension that are modelled on Plato’s Phaedrus and Symposium. The pattern of ascension is even evident in the charm and mystery of Pater’s style that refines from seen to unseen beauty.

The Revelation of Plato and Platonism and the Authority of Affinity

This chapter traces the momentum of Platonic themes in essays leading up to Plato and Platonism (1893) and explores the book as a revelation of Pater’s lifelong philosophy informing his work. The structure of the book is explained as representative of Oxonian Platonism without losing sight of what makes it so characteristic of Pater. The central themes of Pater’s writing are elucidated through his understanding of Platonism, particularly through The Republic. Concerned with Plato as an author, Pater explains how he seeks organization in things, States as well as persons as well as artwork, for the sake of sanity, a conservative commitment that fights against decadence. The maintenance of sanity, the reason in beauty, is sought for the sake of one’s soul in Platonic education. It is Platonic love, explained as the affinity for persons like-to-like, that enables one to attain knowledge and express oneself with authority.