A few words about Christos Yannaras's remarks on Plato (in his Person and Eros 2007, p. 75). One must, of course, read the entire book to understand the implications of Yannaras's stance toward Plato, but here is a nice summary and review of the contents.
Plato recognized the salvific quality of Beauty, notably in its ability to awaken the desire for eternal truth or wisdom, not merely the possession of physical instances of 'the beautiful' (cf. Symposium 206 ff.). Our initial contact with instances of living beauty here in the world has the potential to inspire and raise us up to contemplation of the source of that beauty, which is the Idea of Beauty Itself. Yet it must not be forgotten that life amidst changeable, pale reflections of beauty is where our intuition of eternal Beauty begins. Our fallen existence is one bereft of Beauty, and life is the arena of remembrance of our forgotten association with Beauty.
The visible world, or kosmos, for Plato is alive, ensouled, endowed with reason. We are akin to this world, not strangers in a strange land; yet Plato is clear that we exist for the sake of this world, not vice-versa (Laws, Bk. X). Our kinship, however, is not that of a mere part, or intra-cosmic function; the cosmos is possessed of nous, as are we, and the purpose of life is to dwell in contemplation of the eternal source of all things, i.e., the Good and the Beautiful that is "beyond being" (Republic, Bk. VI). Herein lies our kinship with the cosmos: it exists through, and is dependent upon, its contemplation of changeless Good (as Plotinus explained so well), and we, as intellective parts of this cosmos, owe our being to contemplation (theoria) as well. Yannaras writes that for Plato "the categories of beauty are revelatory of life rather than of a personal presence." This betrays his misunderstanding of Plato. Beauty does not reveal life; life is revelatory of beauty. If beauty did not exist, nothing would exist. For Beauty is beyond change, motion, rest, being, becoming, etc. It reveals nothing, but everything yearns for it, and this yearning is the source of life, understood as the quest for intellectual perfection. Life and Beauty are primarily intellectual; physical instances of living beauty are secondary, and depend upon and reveal, as image, the noetic Beauty that is life's hidden or forgotten source.
Yannaras goes on to state that the Platonic view "keeps human knowledge of the world within the bounds of an experiential relationship with the objective whole or totality of physical reality." Yet this reality is revelatory of the Good and the Beautiful, and so is not a closed system. Neoplatonic metaphysics, especially in the philosophy of Plotinus, makes clear that all beings depend upon their prior for their existence; since Beauty is prior to the physical life of the cosmos, the so-called cosmic animal is not an independent entity -- even though Plato, in the Timaeus, describes it as taking in nothing and exuding nothing. What he is referring to here is the physico-biological life of the material realm, not its rational nature, which is the vivifying presence of the Demiurge or Intellectual Principle within the created order. This is not, to be sure, a "personal presence" in the Christian sense of a creator God whose work is expressive of His will and love; rather, Plato's Demiurge ordered pre-existent matter into an ordered universe because he desired everything to be as good and perfect as possible, on the basis of the model from which he was working, i.e, the Forms or Ideas. So, the Demiurge did not have much choice in HOW he crafted the world; but he did desire its perfection and beauty as far as possible.
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