Oddcast episode

November 6, 2024

Michæl Griffin on the Virtues in Ancient Platonism: Painters, Dancers, and Godlike Sages

The ancient Platonist tradition as a whole was deeply concerned with acquiring aretai, what are often called ‘virtues’, but maybe this term is not quite right. In this episode we draw on Michæl Griffin’s deep knowledge of the development of Platonist thinking about these qualities – to be acquired by the philosopher, but self-subsisting in divine realms as well, so that by acquiring them we are in some way participating in divine realities at their most primal – to get an outline of the tradition as a whole. This interview could serve as an excellent introductory course on ‘the virtues in ancient Platonism’, but it goes well beyond that, and, like the highest level of Late Platonist virtue – the ‘hieratic’ or ‘theurgic’ – enters into the territory where philosophy embraces divine madness, the unsayable, and a kind of inspirational wisdom which eludes description even as it serves as the ultimate telos of human life.

We go back to the Platonic corpus, and specifically to Plato’s Socrates, the exemplar of virtue for the Platonist tradition. Griffin identifies four different ‘modalities’ of Plato’s Socrates, relevant to later classifications of the virtues:

• Socrates the gadfly of the city, messing with people’s heads: social virtues
• Socrates the ascetic practitioner, separating the noetic from the sensory and bodily: purificatory virtues
• Socrates the visionary: contemplative and/or paradeigmatic virtue
• Socrates the inspired, divinely-mad visionary: higher levels of virtue, the hyper-philosophic virtues.

We then discuss the rise of Platonism properly so-called in the first century CE, with a newfound text-based approach to philosophy and a new emphasis on homoiōsis tōi theōi, ‘likeness to god’,

Plotinus, especially as he is portrayed by Porphyry as being able to ‘glance’ back and forth between the worldly and noetic realities,

What Porphyry does with Plotinus’ ideas and his own in the Sententiæ,

Iamblichus’ augmented list of the virtues, including sub-philosophical ‘natural’ virtues, and a hyper-rational virtue or excellence known (in Damascius’ report of Iamby’s teachings) as ‘priestly’ (hieratikē aretē),

And what the later Platonists do with Iamblichus’ synthesis.

Interview Bio:

Michæl Griffin is Professor of Classics and Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, co-editor (with Richard Sorabji) of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle series, and generally a very busy man.

Works Cited in this Episode:

There is an awful lot of Plato cited in this episode; we have not listed these citations, but most of them are discussed in our Plato episodes.

Editions and Translations of Primary Works Cited:

Dirk Baltzly and Michæl Share, trans. Hermias: On Plato Phædrus 227A-245E. Bloomsbury, London, 2018.

Jean Bouartigue. Porphyre: De l’abstinence. Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1979.

John Dillon, editor. Alcinous: The Handbook of Platonism. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993. Translated with an introduction by John Dillon.

Erich Lamberz, editor. Porphyrii sententiae ad intelligibilia ducentes. Teubner, Leipzig, 1975.

Secondary:

John Dillon. The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347-274 BC). Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.

Dominic O’Meara. Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2003.

Themes

Chaldæan Oracles, Damascius, Divinisation, Egypt, Esoteric Hermeneutics, Hermeias, Iamblichus, Interview, Late Platonism, Middle Platonism, Nous, Olympiodorus, Philo of Alexandria, Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Soul, Syrianus, Theurgy