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:

Philo of Alexandria on being cast down from theōria into the ‘ocean of civil cares’: On the Special Laws/De spec. leg. 3.1-6.

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.

Dillon on the ‘oblivious sage’: Idem, 1983/1990, ‘Plotinus, Philo and Origen on the Grades of Virtue’, in H.-D. Blume and F. Mann (eds.), Platonismus und Christentum: Festschrift für Heinrich Dörrie, Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhanlung, 92–105. [On page 100] (Reprinted in Dillon, The Golden Chain: Studies in the Development of Platonism and Christianity, 1990.)

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

O’Meara’s schematisation of the virtues in Plotinus On Virtues: Idem (2018). Plotin: Traité 19: Sur les vertus. Paris: Vrin [see the introduction].

Anne Sheppard. Proclus’ Attitude to Theurgy. Classical Quarterly, New Series 32(1):212-24, 1982.

Christoph Helmig and Antonio Vargas. Ascent of the soul and grades of freedom: Neoplatonic theurgy between ritual and philosophy. In Pieter d’Hoine and Gerd Van Riel, editors, Fate, Providence, and Moral Responsibility in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern Thought: Studies in Honour of Carlos Steel, pages 253-66. Leuven University Press, Leuven, 2014.

Wilberding’s argument that the sage is being good at ‘going back and forth’: Wilberding, James. 2008. “Automatic Action in Plotinus,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 24: 373-407, at pp. 391-2.

Recommended Reading:

Michael Griffin on the Virtues Recommended Reading

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