PHIL 310 Philosophy of Art

Course Guide
N.B.! This is an informal guide based upon lecture notes and created as a convenient aid to
students and should not be used as a model of scholarly form. If any errors or points of
confusion are discovered, please notify the instructor, Clinical Associate Professor Jeffrey
Dirk Wilson, Ph.D.

The arc of this course is to examine briefly the Modern Mind approach to art as the
default setting for us as denizens of modernity/post-modernity before returning to the
foundations of art in Classical Mind. Having examined Classical Mind authors, the course will
conclude by reading two shorter texts written in the modern period, one which represents
Modern Mind (Hume) and then a second which seeks a restoration of Classical Mind (Pieper)
order. In short, this course will argue that in Classical Mind art is primarily rational employing
the senses and the imagination instrumentally and that in Modern Mind, art is primarily
imaginative (along with the senses) employing reason instrumentally.
This course begins with a brief investigation of our cultural default settings as a result of
Descartes Cogito, I think, therefore I am. If, as Descartes claims, what I am essentially is a
thinking thing, then what is the status of the thing I carry around which I call my body?
Under the term, body, I understand both the senses and the imagination as well as the physical
extension which I conceive the body to be.
Descartes sought clear and distinct ideas as the purest truth. The material world,
apprehended inaccurately by the senses and imaginationtaken together as the faculty of
representation, distracts me from thinking clear and distinct ideas. Therefore, not only is sense
perception lesser than clear and distinct ideas apprehended by the thinking thing, they are a kind
of evil because they compete with the higher order rational conception.
Art is material; it is the physical representation of things in the world. Art is, in effect, the
exteriorization of the human faculty of representation and is a class of stimuli which distracts me
from clear and distinct ideas. It is, as such, an obstacle to my realization of the purest truth.
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (A.D. 1714-1762) addressed the post-Cartesian problem of art
and proposed parallel kinds of knowing, noetic and aesthetic cognition. The first kind of
knowing is Cartesian apprehension of clear and distinct ideas, noetic cognition. The second kind
of knowing is the apprehension of the world with the faculty of representation, aesthetic
cognition. (Aesthetic comes from the Greek world for sensation.)

Baumgarten continued:
--affectivity of art: in other words, art can be measured in two ways, first in what it is in itself,
and second, how it moves me.
Example: sonnet, mechanics of it as well as how affects me (and how Descartes stands
behind this).
For example, from The Financial Times, August 29, 2015, in an article by Rachel Spence,
Painting the Great Outdoors: The Dutch painter [Van Gogh], though he also uses the highkeyed pastels beloved of his predecessors, applies them in brief, unmixed strokes whose nervy
intensity tells us that this is less a view of a river than the sensation experienced by the artist
when he looks at it.

--art in parallel to reason: This complex of human mental powers is productive of

pleasure, through the sensible representation of perfection, in its own right.

Aesthetics . . . is the science of sensible cognition (Aesthetica, 1, p. 107).
The aim of aesthetics is the perfection of sensible cognition as such, that is,
beauty, while its imperfection as such, that is, ugliness, is to be avoided (Aesthetica,
14; Schweizer, p. 115).

--Baumgarten creates categories of perfection

Nevertheless, some of Baumgarten's categories of aesthetic qualities are
important. The list of the perfections of every kind of cognition that Baumgarten gives
in the first chapter of the Aesthetica is wealth, magnitude, truth, clarity, and
liveliness (ubertas, magnitudo, veritas, claritas, certitudo et vita cognitionis), and
thus beauty consists in the aesthetic versions of these perfections (Aesthetica, 2225; Schweizer, pp. 118-21).
--Baumgarten stressed that the moral content of a work of art is only one source of
beauty, and that a work of art can be beautiful without any moral grandeur.
[A]esthetic dignity, he claimed, belongs to aesthetic magnitude as a part to the
whole, but if a work of art represents moral agents then it cannot be maximally
beautiful without representing moral dignity, and it certainly cannot be beautiful if it
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conveys an attitude contrary to morality. What is important here, finally, is the moral
standing of what is contained in the work of art, not the actual morality of the artist
himself.
Problems:
--But how do we know what is beautiful? Is it in the eyes of the beholder? Is
perfection for one person perfection for another or is beauty a question of relative
perfection.
--Although for Baumgarten, beauty is essential to the project of aesthetics, he has,
nonetheless, begun the severing the necessary connection between art and beauty 1)
by proposing aesthetic judgement as something in parallel to rational apprehension,
and 2) by locating the judgement of art in human affectivity. Once the latter has been
done, then it is only a small step to the relativity of art.
Paul Guyer http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetics-18th-german/#Bau accessed January 11,
2012
Following Baumgarten, the modern science which studies art is often called aesthetics.
Our course is called Philosophy of Art leaving open other possibilities.
I shall argue that the Classical Mind understanding of art is as a rational enterprise which
uses the senses and imagination instrumentally and that the Modern Mind understanding of art is
as an imaginative enterprise which uses reason instrumentally.
Plato on Beauty and Art
--Homer: the world of gods and heroes

--For Homer, myth is the principle means of telling the truth about the world
Professor Most draws attention to this point, We ourselves may justly admire the evident
imaginative originality and inventiveness of early Greek epic poetry; but, for their part,
Homer and Hesiod claim that, on the contrary, the only validation of their poetry is that it
tells the truth, conforming veridically to a real past or present state of affairs.1
--By the time of the 5th century B.C., at least in the Greek world, myth had run its course. The
great river of myth flows into three new streams: philosophy, drama, and history
1 Most, Poetics, 342-43.
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--Plato and Aristotle represent two different approaches to myth.

--Parmenides 540-450 B.C. (?) important predecessor to both Plato and Aristotle
His book, On Nature
Two parts: The Way to Truth (Being) and The Way of Appearance(Seeming)
Key to Platos Being vs. Becoming and Aristotles substance and accidents
--Discuss briefly the problem of comparing the works of Plato and Aristotle:
1. Platos extant works are exoteric;
2. Aristotles extant works are esoteric.
3. Thus, comparing them is like comparing one professors published works to another
professors lecture notes.
4. Plato never appears in his dialogues; we can discuss him far more explicitly as an
author than as a philosopher in the sense that he never speaks in his own voice.
5. Thus, in addition to the problem of comparing the exoteric works of Plato to the
esoteric works of Aristotle, there is the additional problem of comparing the indirect
voice of Plato (through his characters) and the direct voice of Aristotle (in his lecture
notes.
--For Plato, Homeric myth is seriously flawed and even dangerous, and yet Plato does not reject
myth as a way of telling truth, but he does reject poetry. Thus, in place of the old poetic
mythology of Homer, Plato gives us a rational mythology.
--For Aristotle, Homer is just literature. According to Aristotle, philosophy has superceded myth.
He recognizes that myth used to be the way that people told and learned the truth. Poetic myth is
just out-dated. Dialectical philosophy has replaced it. (We shall see this explicitly stated in the
Poetics.)
Restoring the Rational Soul: The Human Problem
Reading: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.13.
Aristotle teaches that there are rational and non-rational elements to the soul. The relevant
passages are "Nicomachean Ethics" 1.13 and 6.1. Descartes jettisons the non-rational elements of
the soul, and the soul is rational only. For Aristotle, the human being is a rational animal; again
for Descartes, rational only (for Hume, animal only). That leaves the qusetion of what to do with
the non-rational elements of our make-up (a problem with which Descartes wrestled but without
resolution). Although I am not sure I made the point at the time, we can see how the Cartesian
move sets up Baumgarten in defining the aesthetic as "sensisble cognition." That is part of how
to address the non-rational elements of human being.
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Part IAre Art and Philosophy Mutually Exclusive? Two Answers

Analogy of the Good and the Divided Line
1. Start from the divided line.
2. Establish the hierarchical character which becomes so important for Neo-Platonism.
3. Examine the faculties for apprehension of each kind of object apprehended. (Turkey
wrap and i-pod)
4. Notice that he is only claiming belief for things in the world, whether for natural
objects or human artifacts.
5. Knowing is reserved for objects known as intelligibles.
6. Go to analogy of the Good.
7. It is the Good by which the soul sees the Forms, so in the hierarchy established here, the
Good is above the Forms.
507b4: And we say that the many beautiful things and the rest are visible but not intelligible,
while the forms are intelligible but not visible.
sensible

intelligible

_________________________________
Forms

no

yes

_________________________________
things

yes

no

507c-509c: discussion of perception and knowledge in an attempt to come to an analogical

understanding of truth.
509d-511e: the Divided Line.
Intelligible:
Understanding (noesis)

Forms (eide)

unhypothetical first principle of everything

known through dialectic,
from forms, to forms, and ending in forms. 511b5-c5
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________________
Thought (dianoia)

geometry and calculation (ta mathematica)

________________________________________________________________________
Visible:
Belief (pistis)

things
natural objects and human artifacts

_________________
Imagination (eikasia)

images of things (eikones)

The Beautiful itself in the Republic

In multiple dialogues by Plato (e.g., Gorgias, Phaedrus, Theaetetus, and Republic), Plato
has a discussion of what philosophy is which often seems to scholars an interpolation which
interrupts the flow of the dialogue. In the Republic, this dialogue takes place in Books 5-7 and is
his longest discussion of the nature of philosophy, often called the metaphysical interlude. In a
strong sense of the word, invent, Plato invents philosophy in this metaphysical interlude. Prior
to Plato, we only have a few instances of the word being used at all. Most certainly, Plato loads
the word with new content and defines the boundaries of philosophy as had never been done
before. Intersting for our purposes is that he does so in relation to the question of beautiful things
and the Beautiful itself.
In Republic 5.475, Socrates is working toward the definition of the philosopher. He
accepts as a preliminary definition that the philosopher is someone who loves to behold with
wonder realities which are truly true (5.475e4). He immediately shifts to the question of beauty
(5.475e9-476c7), making pedagogical use of the contrast of beautiful things and the Beautiful
itself to persuade his auditors that purely intelligible realities exist and most truly exist, namely
the Forms. In other words, Socrates of the Republic makes practical application of that for which
Socrates of the Phaedrus argues, namely, that amongst the Forms, the Beautiful has
epistemological priority. For the balance of Republic 5, Socrates uses the contrast of beautiful
things and the Beautiful itself to resolve various philosophical problems (e.g., the Parmenidean
being vs. non-being, the distinction and definitions of opinion and knowledge).
In 6.501b1-7, Socrates names only Justice, Self-control, and the Beautiful itself, as he
does in Phaedrus 250b1-2, though for the former two he uses slightly different constructions of
the words. Only after Socrates has made his case for the existence of the Forms does he begin to
discuss the special status of the Good. Again, Socrates of the Republic applies that for which
Socrates of the Phaedrus argues, namely using the Form of the Beautiful itself to recognize the
Good itself. Socrates distinguishes beautiful things and good things from the Forms of the
Beautiful itself and the Good itself (6.507b1-10). Here he speaks of the two as two. If, however,
one reads this passage with what follows (6.508a11-509b10), a problem emerges because here
the Good itself is privileged over all other Forms. It is by the Good itself that the soul apprehends
all other Forms. Are the Good itself and the Beautiful itself two different Forms?
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Review this passage in class:

The key is 6.508e1-509a5, and in specific 6.509e3-6, Both knowledge and truth are beautiful
things, but the good other and more beautiful than they. The Good itself, however, cannot be
more beautiful than the Beautiful itself, otherwise the Beautiful itself would not be a perfectly
complete reality. The obvious solution is that the Good and the Beautiful are one and the same
Form, differentiated only in the mode of human knowing.
If these passages from the Republic are read with Phaedrus 250b1-5 where the Good is
not named, and it is by the Form of Beauty that other Forms are known, then one can reasonably
conclude that the Form of the Beautiful itself and the Form of the Good itself are one and the
same in being and distinguishable only in their mode of human knowing. It is a principle of
sound exegesis that when texts of an author can be read together, they should be read together.
The Relationship between the Symposium and the Phaedrus.
What is the relationship between the good and beautiful in Platos thought?
To kalon is more than beautiful, noble too. Back to every is implies an ought.
The Beautiful itself in the Symposium
The kinds of love in Greek thought: philia and eros the predominant kinds. When
Aristotle writes about friendship in Nicomachean Ethics 8 and 9, it is philia which concerns him.
Agape, the chief word for Gods love in the New Testament does not exist as a noun in ancient
Greece though the verbal form does, but tends to mean to treasure or to put a high value
upon. Storge is family affection. There is a sense in which Plato is more interested in eros and
Aristotle is more interested in philia.
It is imperative to exercise caution in making claims about any Platonic teaching, since
Plato writes dialogues in which he never appears. That caution is doubly necessary here because
Plato the author has distanced himself from the teaching about the nature of the Beautiful itself
by another remove. Plato the author has Socrates give the account of Diotima. Any conclusion
must be drawn by comparing Diotimas instruction with passages from other dialogues, and here
principally from the Phaedrus and the Republic.
Given the strongly homo-erotic character of the Symposium, it is startling that the speech
which seems to be pre-eminent is Socratess account of Diotimas discourse. Diotima was a
woman and a mid-wife. (Discuss midwife and the pedagogical role of the Socratic midwife!
Mention Theaetetus!)
--the good and the beautiful, 201c

Diotima sets forth a hierarchy from beautiful things through beautiful souls to the
Beautiful itself which, in turn, leads to the recognition that beauty inheres in things and souls
only as they receive the quality of beauty from the Beautiful itself (209e5-210e1). She then
proceeds to instruct Socrates on the nature of the Beautiful itself (210e1-211d1).
Diotima affirms that the Beautiful itself 1. always exists and thus is subject neither to
generation nor to corruption, 2. is beautiful simply and absolutely without qualification of any
kind, 3. is itself by itself with itself, a unitary Form, (211b1; compare with Phd. 83a6-b2) and
therefore cannot appear as or be mistaken for anything other than itself. Beautiful things are
beautiful because they participate in the Form of the Beautiful itself (211b2). Diotima names the
stages of ascent of which the Beautiful itself is the final cause (heneka tou kalou, 211c2),
drawing the lover from one beautiful thing, to all beautiful things, then to beautiful activities, to
beautiful teachings, finally to arrive at the knowledge of the Beautiful itself (211c1-d1). Having
reached the summit, the lover is lost in contemplation now enamored of the Beautiful itself
which he knows as Divine Beauty, a consummation forgetful of all save the reality which has
drawn him into this immortal embrace and coloring his life with divine immortality (211d1212a7).
Discuss Divided Line
The Beautiful itself in the Phaedrus
In the central section of the Phaedrus (244a-257b), Socrates Palinode, (His retraction
of what he has already said. Phaedrus had challenged him to offer a better defense of loveless
lust than had Lysias. Lysias, the son of Cephalus and brother of Polemarchus in whose house the
Republic takes place.) Socrates provides a partly mythological account of how the human being
can come to know the Beautiful itself and the relationship of that knowing to the philosophical
life. There are several questions here: 1. the nature of the Beautiful itself, 2. the nature of the
epistemological means to apprehend the Beautiful itself, 3. the nature of the philosophical life,
and 4. the relationship between knowledge of the Beautiful itself and the philosophical life. It is
interesting that in addressing these four questions, Plato has Socrates begin with the
epistemological question, and, indeed, this consideration constitutes the narrative context in
which the other three questions are considered. Socrates discusses madness as a means of
apprehending certain kinds of reality and presents a four-fold taxonomy of epistemological
madness (244b1-c2). The fourth and final sort of madness, he says is given to us by the gods
to ensure our greatest good fortune (245b1-c2). Socrates will return to this fourth kind of
madness, but only after discussing the human soul which will be possessed of that madness. He
argues for the immortality of the soul, and thereby for the connaturality of the soul with eternal
realities (argument for immortality 245c5-37; discussion of the souls structure and the kinds
of soul 246a3-249d4-5). Because the soul is immortal, it had a life prior to the earthly one and
remembers the realities of the purely intelligible realm. When the embodied souland the
context here is of a male human beingsees a beautiful boy, he is possessed of madness, i.e., the
madness of falling in love. If his memory is good enough, then he realizes that the beauty of the
boy is merely reminding him of the Beautiful itself, and that it is actually with the Beautiful itself
that he is in love or possessed of madness. If, however, his soul is forgetful, then he falls to the
epistemological temptation to mistake the beautiful boy as the object of his madness. He
mistakes the reminder for that of which he is being reminded. (249d4-250b1). Amongst the
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Forms, the Beautiful itself is the least difficult to behold because of its radiance. Beautys light
both illuminates the pure and further purifies them so that they can behold the ultimate mysteries.
Socrates describes a kind of intelligible ravishment (250b1-e1). The radiance of the Beautiful
itself makes it possible to behold the other Forms and perhaps realities which are unnameable.
Thus, the Beautiful itself is the Form by which other Forms can be known (250c7-e1). The
problem is the epistemological temptation already discussed, that seeing beautiful things in the
earthly realm tempts a man to abandon himself to the pleasures of beautiful things rather than to
the Beautiful itself (250e1-251a1).
To assess the place of art in relation to the Beautiful itself, one must turn back a few
pages to the discussion of the third form of madness that is possession by the Muses. The art
which results seems to be restricted to a glorious telling and teaching of historical events (245a18). Such art seems appropriate in the text, but there is no clear nexus established between such
art and the Beautiful itself. The discussion of the Beautiful itself in the Phaedrus seems to be
entirely in relation to natural objects (e.g., a beautiful boy). As shall be argued below, one can
easily extrapolate from the presenting issue of the beautiful boy to other natural objects.
Pieper, Enthusiasm and Divine Madness
John Wild, the distinguished American interpreter of Plato, says: The Sophist seems
just like a philosopher. He talks just like a philosopher. In fact, we may say that he appears even
more like a philosopher than the philosopher himself.
p. 10
Wild, Platos Theory of Man, 283.
Me:
As sophism is to philosophy
Lust is to erotic love
And wrong art is to right art
Thus, in the teachings of Protagoras, the measure of man is equated with his capacity to
achieve success: rightness means success. . . . Everything that serves success is good;
everything that hinders it is bad. But what hinders success? Philosophical theoria, for
example, that is to say, that mode of approaching the world which aims solely or chiefly at
one single thing: to find out the nature of reality. Philosophical theoria aims at truth and at
nothing else. Cicero and Seneca translated the word theoria into Latin; and the word they
chose to render it was contemplatio. We need only say the word to realize how
contemporary the Sophistic thesis is.
Pieper then contrasts the vita contemplative with the Cartesian goal to become master
and owner of nature.
p. 11
9

(But to master and own nature, we must reduce it so that it is smaller than we are.)
On the question of whether Platos Socrates disparages myths:
There are mythic tales, and there is Myth as such; there are a variety of traditions, and there is
Tradition. Myth and Tradition as such bear on the heart of existence; they bear on mans
salvation. Whenever these concepts crop up in the Platonic writings . . . Socrates clearly and
strongly proclaims his unconditional veneration. On such occasions Socrates does not talk about
having no time for Myth; he goes to considerable lengths to delve into its meaning.
On the speech of Lysias:
What is really so bad, in fact in human, about this attitude is not the craving for sensual
gratification, but the deliberate, systematic separation of sensuality from spirituality, of sex
from love.
p. 20
As A. E. Taylor puts it: Utility in the most sordid sense of the word.
p. 21
quote by Hackforth, p. 31
The passiones animae cannot be silenced without leading to inhumanity, either the inhumanity
of rigid rationality or of brutish sensuality. . . . Real man is a being by nature given to shattering
emotion.
p. 23
--analogous is art in which he ought is divorced from the is, that is to say, art for arts sake.
Oscar Wilde was one of the best known exponents of tis view.
In his book, The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies, published in 1890, the progressive modernist
painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, proposed that Art should be independent of all claptrap
should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye and ear, without confounding this
with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these
have no kind of concern with it.
Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe, http://arthistoryresources.net/modernism/artsake.html: accessed
January 22, 2012.

ABSOLUTELY CENTRAL: p. 80 on 247

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On 251d:
Loverswe may read this in Aristophanes speech in the Symposiumdo not know
what they really want of each other; in fact it is evident that their two souls crave something else
(something other than the pleasure of lovers intercourse); but the soul cannot express what this
other thing is, of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment (192c-d).
p. 82
Lovers do not have their wits about them, while
the lustful know quite well what they want; at bottom they are calculating, see clearly, and have
their wits about them. . . . Now, says Plato, what is most beloved and most moving is beauty
for which reason those who love the fair are simply called lovers as a general denomination.
Plato is speaking quite soberly; he is not mistaken in suggesting that much, if not most, of
what is ordinarily represented as love is nothing but lust. He knows that real ravishment by
beauty is something rare.
p. 82
Plato describes the distinctive mark of beauty on two levels: in the form of otherworldly
experience (beauty in the heavens, once upon a time, and in the form of present existence
(beauty in the here and now).
p. 83
Pieper uses Symp. 211-12 to interpret Phdr. 250a-d
On 251b1-252b4:
Only those who allow themselves to remember will experience the shock of emotion,
the shudder of awe. . . . This, says Platos Socrates, constitutes the true experience of love. The
gods therefore call Eros not the Winged One, but the Giver of WingsPlato at this point quotes
an old verse to this effect.
p. 85
We would not expect Goethe to espouse this ideayet he does, and has summed up his
Platonic concept in a single sentence of magnificent conciseness: Beauty is not so much
performance as promise. That, is when we receive beauty in the proper way, we experience
not so much a quenching of our thirst, satisfaction and pleasure, as evocation of an
expectancy; we are referred to something that is not-already present. Those who submit to
the encounter with beauty in the requisite spirit do not see and partake of a fulfillment but
a promisewhich perhaps cannot be kept at all within the realm of this physical
existence.
p. 85
On 249a-d:
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He [Plato] tells us that the erotic emotion experienced in the encounter with beauty is a
form of the theia mania, of divine madness, to the extent that what really takes place in it is
not gratification, not becoming at home in the here and now, but rather opening the inner
spaces of life to an infinite assuagement which cannot be had heresave in the form of
yearning and recollection. One who looks upon earthly beauty and recalls true Beauty
recovers his wings . . . ; and so the true lover returns to the community of the gods before
the full term of banishment is over.
pp. 85-86
On 249a1 in relation to Symp. 204:
Now Plato goes on to assert that this is true not only for the lover but also for the
philosopher. . . . Lovers and men philosophizing belong together to the extent that in erotic
emotion and in genuine philosophical inquiry something is activated which cannot come to
rest in the finite world. Both the philosopher and the true lover are insatiableunless it
happens that they are accorded divine satiation.
p. 86
This is his [Platos] thesis: in erotic emotion purely received and maintained, and perhaps in no
other way, man can catch a glimpse of that promise which aims at a satiation affording deeper
happiness than any gratification of the senses.
p. 87.

Man is a physical being, even to the point of sublimest spirituality. But his physicality, which
compels him to be a man or a woman even in the most spiritual expression of vitality, is not
necessarily only a barrier and limitation. It is simultaneously the overflowing vital source of all
human activity. Thomas Aquinas and Plato agree on that point.
p. 96

Preliminary Conclusion:
The working hypothesis derived from these readings of passages from the Phaedrus, the
Republic and the Symposium, is that it is possible for the human being to apprehend the Form of
the Beautiful itself though not dialectically rather through a philosophical madness. This
apprehension will be direct and temporary, but of such enduring effect that it makes possible
apprehension of other Forms which do not possess the radiance of the Beautiful itself. That much
of the working hypothesis is largely derived from the Phaedrus. In the Republic, the Good and
the Beautiful itself are discussed as two different Forms, and it is by the light of the Good that
the other Forms are apprehended by the soul.
By reading the respective passages of the Phaedrus and Republic together, it is argued that the
Good and the Beautiful itself are one in being differentiated only in the mode of human knowing.
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While it could be argued that such an interpretation is anachronistic Neo-Platonic (or even more
specifically Thomistic) projection onto the Platonic text, it is also possible that such an
identification was, in fact, in the mind of Plato or, at least, that the Platonic text provides the
necessary premises for the reader to draw that conclusion whether Plato himself assented to the
conclusion or not.
--Discuss St. Thomass trancendentals!
The existence of beautiful beings, whether natural or artifactual, is problematic for Platos
Socrates. In the Phaedrus and Symposium, Socrates is concerned with the beauty discoverable in
human bodies (i.e., a kind of natural body) which creates a profound ethical temptation. About
which more, shortly!
While in the Phaedrus Socrates sets forth the epistemology of the Beautiful itself, it is in the
Republic that Socrates treats of the beauty found in human artifacts which creates an
epistemological temptation. Thus, Phaedrus and Symposium, on the one hand, and Republic, on
the other, provide complementary treatments of the problem of the Beautiful in relation to
beautiful beings. Of course, ultimately, in Platonic thought, the ethical and the epistemological
questions are also identical since for Platos Socrates, to know virtue is to be virtuous.
Thus, one could say that in the Phaedrus and Symposium, Socrates begins with the
epistemological which leads to the ethical, and in the Republic, he begins with the ethical which
leads to the epistemological.
The ethical temptation is that the Beautiful itself move the human being so powerfully
that he may act in a way that is unfitting and possibly even destructive of either the soulful
apprehension of the Beautiful itself in the other or the beauty discoverable in the other. While the
specific context is homosexual, it is a simple move to transfer the same dynamic to heterosexual
apprehension of beauty in the other. Further, it is but an additional step to see the same dynamic
at work between humans and non-human bodies. For example, someone could be so moved by
the beauty of a valley that he might build a house there, and many being similarly moved also
build houses and eventually destroy the beauty of what attracted them in the beginning. Thus,
this metaphysical enquiry has thoroughgoing ethical implications.
The epistemological temptation is that the Beautiful itself embodied in artifacts should so
move the human that he will prefer apprehension of the artifact rather than pursuing the
Beautiful itself so embodied. Knowledge of the lesser becomes an obstacle to knowledge of the
greater. Platos epistemological concern can be used as the basis for a critique of the entire
aesthetics-philosophy of art regime that has prevailed since Baumgarten. In modernity, the
exclusive study of art as art or as object of human apprehension has occludedand by their
practitioners intentionallythe pursuit of the Beautiful itself or even the suppositions that 1. art
ought to be beautiful and 2. there is no morally neutral art. Socrates of the Phaedrus sets forth
the knowledge of the Beautiful itself as means of access to the highest intelligible entities. The
Republic sets forth the converse that if one does not pursue the Beautiful itself, then one denies
ones self access to the balance of the highest intelligible realm.

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With respect to the question of whether there can be art consistent with the Platonic
philosophy of beauty, Socrates of the Republic provides the criteria for such art, and Plato the
author offers his dialogues as to how it is to be accomplished.

14-F: Poetic Lies and Philosophic Truth

Reading: Plato, Republic 2.
R. 2.368c-e: learning to see what we cannot see.
Contrast of philosophical nature 2.376a-b
and those who delight in myths 2.378b-e and 2.380b-e.
!!For Plato there is no art for arts sake.
--Storytellers of small children (who are to become guardians) must be guided R. 2.376d

Mythology: Dissolved and Resolved

Reading: Plato, Republic 3.
Ask for a summary of what is wrong with Homer according to Socrates in R. 2 and 3.
Review specific condemnations at beginning of Bk. 3. 386c-387
Positive Use of Homer: Be still my beating heart!
3.390c5-d4 and 4.441b2-c2 and Phaedo 94d3-5

Look at end of Book 5.479e-480a and beginning of Book 6,484a1: the beautiful itself vs.
beautiful things, knowledge and opinion.
The Ancient Quarrel R. 10

14

Central to this discussion is a new account of mimsis, or imitation, based on the metaphysical
theories introduced in Books V-VII. Earlier in Book III, imitation was something a person did by
impersonating a character in a poem (394dff.); now imitation is something a poem or painting
does.
Grube, 264.

Ancient Quarrel R. 10.607b5-c3

R. 10.605c6-8.
Homer, the seducing fire Gilbert Murray, Epic, 91.

Professor Marshall McLuhan offers an insight which applies here:

In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means
of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and
practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and
social consequences of any mediumthat is, of any extension of ourselvesresult
from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves,
or by any new technology.2
Along these same lines, Professor Most observes,
If it is a truism, proven most incontrovertibly by these four figures [Xenophanes,
Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles], that there is no ancient (or even modern)
philosopher whose discursive form can safely be neglected if his thought is entirely to be
understood, all the same it is particularly true in the case of the early Greek thinkers as a
group that no account of their philosophy that considers only the structure of their
arguments, and not also the form in which they chose to communicate those arguments to
their public, can be considered fully satisfactory.3

2 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, Massachusetts and
London: MIT Press, 1995), 7.

3 Most, Poetics, 335.

15

Platonic Problematic:
1.Art should be the representation of that which is (rather than of that which seems)
2. since there is a moral imperative implied in that which is, art as representation of that which is
implies a moral imperative
3. Art ought to correspond to the calculative part of the soul (rather than the non-rational part).
August 29, 2010, 5:25 pm

Platos Pop Culture Problem, and Ours

By ALEXANDER NEHAMAS
This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a case that may have the unusual result of
establishing a philosophical link between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Plato.
The case in question is the 2008 decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals striking down a
California law signed by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2005, that imposed fines on stores that sell
video games featuring sexual and heinous violence to minors. The issue is an old one: one
side argues that video games shouldnt receive First Amendment protection since exposure to
violence in the media is likely to cause increased aggression or violence in real life. The other
side counters that the evidence shows nothing more than a correlation between the games and
actual violence. In their book Grand Theft Childhood, the authors Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl
K. Olson of Harvard Medical School argue that this causal claim is only the result of bad or
irrelevant research, muddleheaded thinking and unfounded, simplistic news reports,.
In Platos ideal society, the work of Homer and other poets is subjected to ruthless censorship.
The issue, which at first glance seems so contemporary, actually predates the pixel by more than
two millennia. In fact, an earlier version of the dispute may be found in The Republic, in
which Plato shockingly excludes Homer and the great tragic dramatists from the ideal society he
describes in that work.
Could Plato, who wrote in the 4th century B.C., possibly have anything to say about todays
electronic media? As it turns out, yes, It is characteristic of philosophy that even its most
abstruse and apparently irrelevant ideas, suitably interpreted, can sometimes acquire an
unexpected immediacy. And while philosophy doesnt always provide clear answers to our
questions, it often reveals what exactly it is that we are asking.
Children in ancient Athens learned both grammar and citizenship from Homer and the tragic
poets. Plato follows suit but submits their works to the sort of ruthless censorship that would
16

surely raise the hackles of modern supporters of free speech. But would we have reason to
complain? We, too, censor our childrens educational materials as surely, and on the same
grounds, as Plato did. Like him, many of us believe that emulation becomes habit and second
nature, that bad heroes (we call them role models today) produce bad people. We even fill
our childrens books with our own clean versions of the same Greek stories that upset him, along
with our bowdlerized versions of Shakespeare and the Bible.
What is really disturbing is that Platos adult citizens are exposed to poetry even less than their
children. Plato knows how captivating and so how influential poetry can be but, unlike us today,
he considers its influence catastrophic. To begin with, he accuses it of conflating the authentic
and the fake. Its heroes appear genuinely admirable, and so worth emulating, although they are
at best flawed and at worst vicious. In addition, characters of that sort are necessary because
drama requires conflict good characters are hardly as engaging as bad ones. Poetrys subjects
are therefore inevitably vulgar and repulsive sex and violence. Finally, worst of all, by
allowing us to enjoy depravity in our imagination, poetry condemns us to a depraved life.
Both Plato and Arnheim ignored the medium of representation, which interposes itself between
the viewer and what is represented.
This very same reasoning is at the heart of todays denunciations of mass media. Scratch the
surface of any attack on the popular arts the early Christians against the Roman circus, the
Puritans against Shakespeare, Coleridge against the novel, the various assaults on photography,
film, jazz, television, pop music, the Internet, or video games and you will find Platos
criticisms of poetry. For the fact is that the works of both Homer and Aeschylus, whatever else
they were in classical Athens, were, first and foremost, popular entertainment.
Tens of thousands of people of all classes attended the free dramatic festivals and Homeric
recitations of ancient Athens. Noisy and rambunctious, they cheered the actors they liked and
chased those they didnt off the stage, often pelting them with the food it was customary to bring
into the theater. Drama, moreover, seemed to them inherently realistic: it is said that women
miscarried when the avenging Furies rushed onstage in Aeschyluss Eumenides.
To be realistic is to seem to present the world without artifice or convention, without mediation
reality pure and simple. And popular entertainment, as long as it remains popular, always
seems realistic: television cops always wear seat belts. Only with the passage of time does
artifice become visible George Rafts 1930s gangsters appear dated to audiences that grew up
with Robert De Niro. But by then, what used to be entertainment is on its way to becoming art.
In 1935, Rudolf Arnheim called television a mere instrument of transmission, which does not
offer any new means for the artistic representation of reality. He was repeating, unawares,
Platos ancient charge that, without a craft or an art of his own, Homer merely reproduces
17

imitations, images, or appearances of virtue and, worse, images of vice masquerading as

virtue. Both Plato and Arnheim ignored the medium of representation, which interposes itself
between the viewer and what is represented. And so, in Achilles lament for Patroclus death,
Plato sees not a fictional character acting according to epic convention but a real man behaving
shamefully. And since Homer presents Achilles as a hero whose actions are commendable, he
seduces his audience into enjoying a distorted and dismal representation that both reflects and
contributes to a distorted and dismal life.
We will never know how the ancient Athenians reacted to poetry. But what about us? Do we, as
Plato thought, move immediately from representation to reality? If we do, we should be really
worried about the effects of television or video games. Or are we aware that many features of
each medium belong to its conventions and do not represent real life?
To answer these questions, we can no longer investigate only the length of our exposure to the
mass media; we must focus on its quality: are we passive consumers or active participants? Do
we realize that our reaction to representations need not determine our behavior in life? If so, the
influence of the mass media will turn out to be considerably less harmful than many suppose. If
not, instead of limiting access to or reforming the content of the mass media, we should ensure
that we, and especially our children, learn to interact intelligently and sensibly with them. Here,
again, philosophy, which questions the relation between representation and life, will have
something to say.
Even if that is true, however, though, to compare the Iliad or Oedipus Rex to Grand Theft
Auto,, CSI: NY, or even The Wire may seem silly, if not absurd. Plato, someone could
argue, missed something serious about great art, but there is nothing to miss in todays mass
media. Yet the fact is that Homers epics and, in particular, the 31 tragedies that have survived
intact (a tiny proportion of the tens of thousands of works produced by thousands of ancient
dramatists) did so because they were copied much more often than others and that, as anyone
familiar with best-selling books knows, may have little to do with perceived literary quality. For
better or worse, the popular entertainment of one era often becomes the fine art of another. And
to the extent that we still admire Odysseus, Oedipus, or Medea, Plato, for one, would have found
our world completely degenerate as degenerate, in fact, as we would find a world that,
perhaps two thousand years from now, had replaced them with Tony Soprano, Nurse Jackie, or
the Terminator.
And so, as often in philosophy, we end with a dilemma: If Plato was wrong about epic and
tragedy, might we be wrong about television and video games? If, on the other hand, we are
right, might Plato have been right about Homer and Euripides?

18

Alexander Nehamas is professor of philosophy and comparative literature and Edmund N.

Carpenter, II, Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the
author of several works on Plato, Nietzsche, literary theory and aesthetics, including, most
recently, Only A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/platos-pop-culture-problem-and-ours/?hp
(accessed January 28, A.D. 2011)

Plato and Aristotle on Truth through Affirmation and Denial

Nicomachean Ethics 6 (Thomson/ Tredennick)
VI.i
Reprise on the Aristotelian soul: having distinguished the rational and irrational elements of the
soul, Aristotle now distinguishes two parts of the rational element of the soul. The scientific
element contemplates that which never changes. The calculative element contemplates that
which is subject to change.
VI.ii
Both kinds aim at truth.
VI.iii
1139b15-17: There are five ways in which the soul arrives at truth by affirmation or denial,
namely art (techne), science, prudence, wisdom and intuition.
--This is an extremely important point to which modern philosophy stands in contrast.
Remember Baugartens distinction between the noetic (the rational) and the aesthetic.
Aesthetics . . . is the science of sensible cognition (Aesthetica, 1, p. 107). For
Aristotle, art is a form of rational cognition.
--What would Plato say (Socrates of the Republic)? Is it that art is not a rational activity or that it
is but it attends to a low order rather than a high order reality?
I argue that for Plato the making and appreciation of art is a rational activity which are
goods if the work of art acts as a sign pointing toward intelligible and super-intelligible
realities. Art is an evil if either 1) the focus is on the work of art itself and not on the work
of art as sign, or 2) if the work of art wrongly signifies intelligible realities (the sign which
supposedly points toward Baltimore actually points toward Richmond). In effect, I am
arguing that Plato and Aristotle agree that art is a rational activity and engages the senses
as a means and, in fact, a secondary means.
Aristotles five intellectual virtues by way of knowing truth provides us with a basis
to critique Baumgartens dichotomy of noetic and aesthetic cognitions. The problem arises
from the modern reduction of rationality to the noetic. For Aristotle, the noetic knowing of
truth is only one of five rational approaches. The other four are the epistemic, the
19

phronestic, the philosophic, and the artistic. One would have to say far more about how the
modern noetic has collapsed into it elements of the other four. What one can say in brief,
however, is that for Plato and Aristotle the sensible is a means to the artistic as rational,
while fro the modern rationalists the rational is a means to the artistic as sensible.
Intelligible apprehended by artist in the intellect
Communicated by artist in medium (painting, words, music, building etc.)
Apprehended through the medium of the senses by the intellect.

Apophatic (negative) and kataphatic (positive) approaches to truth. This will become extremely
important in Neo-Platonism in talking about God, especially for St. Thomas Aquinas. We cannot
say what God is, only what he is not, thus primary affirmations about God that he is not-finite
(infinite), not-mortal (immortal), and not-changeable (unchangeable).
E.g., Venus de Milos arms and Michelangelo letting the horse out of the block of marble. (Also,
the curious precision of negation, e.g. His hair is not red, is more precise than His hair is
brown, because the negation is absolute and without qualification while the affirmation is
subject to qualification.
So, art is a way of knowing truth.
Discuss affirmation and denial.
Vi.iv
Read entirety.
Distinguishing action and production.
Art and non-art.
Art, then, as we have said, is a productive state that is truly reasoned, while its contrary non-art
is a productive state that is falsely reasoned; both operate in the sphere of the variable. 1140a2123.
VI.vii 1141a1 Art and prudence are only concerned with the variable.
Art, then works in a way analogous to the way to prudence. To understand the way that techne
works, then we can look at the way that prudence works.

Eth. Nic. 6.10 (1143a)

20

Universals

Nous abstracts

Prudence applies (and presumably so

does art-techne)

Particulars

VI.x-xi. 1143a1-b16.
VI.13
We see from these arguments that it is not possible to be good in the true sense without
prudence, or to be prudent without moral goodness. 1144b30-32
The relationship of prudence-practical wisdom (phronesis) to moral virtue.
Once again we see that every is implies an ought. Insofar as art represents that-which-is, art
also implies a moral imperative. Conclusion: there is no morally neutral art. Art, then, is oriented
to virtue and vice.

NE 10.6-8 Rational Contemplation

10.7:
Contemplation is the highest form of activity (since intellect is the highest thing in us, and the
objects it apprehends are the highest things that can be known), and also the most continuous,
because we are more capable of continuous contemplation than we are of any practical activity.
Also we assume that happiness must contain an admixture of pleasure; now activity in
accordance with <philosophic> wisdom is admittedly the most pleasant of the virtuous activities;
at any rate philosophy is held to entail pleasures that are marvelous in purity and permanence;

21

and it stands to reason that those who possess knowledge pass their time more pleasantly than
those who are still in pursuit of it.
NE 1177a18-28
So if the intellect is divine compared with man, the life of the intellect must be divine compared
with the life of a human being. And we ought not to listen to those who warn us that man should
think the thoughts of man, or mortal thoughts fit mortal minds; but we ought, so far as in us
lies, to put on immortality, and do all what we can to live in conformity with the highest that is in
us; for even if it is small in bulk, in power and preciousness it far excels all the rest.
NE 1177b31-1178a1.
Thus, Aristotle promotes rational contemplation.
Through rational contemplation we come to know the highest and best of that which is.
Art is the representation of that which is.
Therefore, the highest and best art is a representation of that which we come to know through
rational contemplation.

Background to the Poetics

Discuss the dissolution of Homeric mythology into drama, history, and philosophy. In the
Republic, Plato has his Socrates thinking about poetry all the time, primarily as found in Homer,
but the Greek dramatists have their part as well. In Platos Symposium, the Greek comic
playwright, Aristophanes, is one of the principal characters. And Aristophanes, for his part, wrote
a play 423 B.C., The Clouds, in which Socrates is the principal protagonist. It is reported that
when the play was performed, Socrates stood up in his place in the audience so that all could
compare the real Socrates with the depiction of him in the play. In Platos Apology, Socrates
makes mention of Aristophanes play.
Aristotle makes reference to Homer, Hesiod, and other poets, including the dramatists throughout
his works, but he gives us what is probably the first explicitly philosophical treatment of poetry
and, by inference art, in the Poetics which we are reading together. He speaks of Sophocles
Oedipus Rex with especial respect. A great change is to be observed from Plato to Aristotle.
Homer was not the consuming fire for Aristotle as it had been for Plato. For Aristotle, Homer
and the other great poets merely wrote literature. He was, in a sense, then more rational than
Socrates of the Republic who found he could not resist Homer. Aristotle appreciated Homer
greatly as a sublime poet, but he seemed to have no trouble resisting him.
The City Dionysia (Dionysia ta en Astei - , also known as the Great
Dionysia, Dionysia ta Megala - ) was the urban part of the festival, possibly
established during the tyranny of Pisistratus in the 6th century BC. This festival was held about
22

three months after the rural Dionysia, during the month of Elaphebolion (corresponding to the
end of March and the beginning of April), probably to celebrate the end of winter and the
harvesting of the year's crops. According to tradition the festival was established after
Eleutherae, a town on the border between Attica and Boeotia, chose to become part of Attica.
The Eleuthereans brought a statue of Dionysus to Athens, which was initially rejected by the
Athenians. Dionysus then punished the Athenians with a plague affecting the male genitalia that
was cured when the Athenians accepted the cult of Dionysus. This was recalled each year by a
procession of citizens carrying phalloi. . . . According to tradition, the first performance of
tragedy at the Dionysia was by the playwright and actor Thespis (from whom we have the word
"thespian") in 534 BC. His prize was a goat, a common symbol of Dionysus, and possibly the
origin of the word "tragedy" (which perhaps means "goat-song").
The next three days of the festival were devoted to the tragic plays. Three playwrights performed
three tragedies and one satyr play each, one set of plays per day. Most of the extant Greek
tragedies, including those of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, were performed at the Theatre
of Dionysus.
Dionysus was often seen as the god of everything uncivilized, of the innate wildness of humanity
that the Athenians had tried to control. The Dionysia was probably a time to let out their
inhibitions through highly emotional tragedies or irreverent comedies. During the pompe there
was also an element of role-reversal - lower-class citizens could mock and jeer the upper classes,
or women could insult their male relatives. This was known as aischrologia - or
tothasmos - , a concept also found in the Eleusinian Mysteries, on the second day of
the Thesmophoria, and perhaps during the chariot procession on the first day of the Anthesteria,
another festival of Dionysus.
The plays themselves could highlight ideas that would not normally be spoken or shared in
everyday life. Aeschylus' The Persians, for example, while patriotic to Athens, showed sympathy
towards the Persians, which may have been politically unwise under normal circumstances. The
parodies of Aristophanes mocked the politicians and other celebrities of Athens, even going so
far as producing an anti-war play (Lysistrata) at the height of the Peloponnesian War. The
circumstances of the Dionysia allowed him to get away with criticisms he would not normally be
allowed to voice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysia
Dithyrambs: chorus singing
Thespis (thus, Thespian): chorus singing plus one actor speaking
Aeschylus: addition of second actor
23

Sophocles: addition of third actor

See Poetics 1449a (p.9): Tragedy first arose . . . .

Performance: Greek tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state
religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentation took the form of a contest between three
playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days. Each playwright would prepare
a trilogy of three tragedies, plus an unrelated concluding comic piece called a satyr play.
http://faculty.gvsu.edu/websterm/Tragedy.htm
In other words: an all day event

Dithyramb:
The dithyramb ( dithurambos) was an ancient Greek hymn sung and danced in
honour of Dionysus, the god of wine and fertility; the term was also used as an epithet of the
god:[1] Plato, in The Laws, while discussing various kinds of music mentions "the birth of
Dionysos, called, I think, the dithyramb."[2] Plato also remarks of dithyrambs in the Republic
(394c) that they are the clearest example of poetry in which the poet is the only speaker.
Plutarch contrasted the dithyramb's wild and ecstatic character with the paean.[3] According to
Aristotle, the dithyramb was the origin of Athenian tragedy.[4] A wildly enthusiastic speech or
piece of writing is still occasionally described as dithyrambic.
The ancient Greeks themselves counted among the special criteria of the dithyramb its special
rhythm, its aulos accompaniment in Phrygian mode, its highly-wrought vocabulary, its
considerable narrative content, and its originally antistrophic character.[5]
The word dithyramb is of unknown but probably non-Greek derivation.[8] The form soon spread
to other Greek city-states, and dithyrambs were composed by the poets Simonides and
Bacchylides, as well as Pindar (the only one whose works have survived in anything like their
original form).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dithyramb (accessed January 31, A.D. 2011)
Satyr:

24

In Greek mythology, satyrs (Ancient Greek , Satyroi) are a troop of male companions
of Pan and Dionysus "satyresses" were a late invention of poets that roamed the woods and
mountains. In mythology they are often associated with sex drive and vase-painters often
portrayed them with perpetual erections.
The satyr play was a lighthearted follow-up attached to the end of each trilogy of tragedies in
Athenian festivals honoring Dionysus. These plays would take a lighthearted approach to the
heavier subject matter of the tragedies in the series, featuring heroes speaking in tragic iambic
verse and taking their situation seriously as to the flippant, irreverent and obscene remarks and
antics of the satyrs. The groundbreaking tragic playwright Aeschylus is said to have been
especially loved for his satyr plays, but none of them have survived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyr
Satyr Play
The mythological origins of the satyrs are closely linked to the advent of Dionysus into Hellenic
culture. The satyrs and their female counterpart, the maenads, were followers of Dionysus, a
late-comer to Olympus and probably of Asiatic origin.[8] According to Roger Lancelyn Green,
the satyrs probably began as minor nature deities, while their designated leader Silenus
originated as a water spirit, a maker of springs and fountains.[9] Silenus was already an attendant
to Dionysus when the satyrs joined the gods following, and was subsequently proclaimed their
father.[10] The satyrs characterised themselves by amorality, excessive drinking and the breaking
down of traditional values and barriers.[11] Eric Csapo and Margaret C. Miller further argue that
satyrs have a strong connection with music and dance and consider them to be archetypal
musicians and dancers,[12] thus linking them to Dionysiac processions and the origins of
performance culture.[13]
The material for a satyric drama, like that for a tragedy, was taken from an epic or mythology,
and the action, which took place under an open sky, in a lonely wood, the haunt of the satyrs, had
generally an element of tragedy; but the characteristic solemnity and stateliness of tragedy was
somewhat diminished, without in any way impairing the splendour of the tragic costume and the
dignity of the heroes introduced. The amusing effect of the play did not depend so much on the
action itself, as was the case in comedy, but rather on the relation of the chorus to that action.
That relation was in keeping with the wanton, saucy, and insolent, and at the same time
cowardly, nature of the satyrs. The number of persons in the chorus is not known, although there
were probably either twelve or fifteen, as in tragedy. In accordance with the popular notions
about the satyrs, their costume consisted of the skin of a goat, deer, or panther, thrown over the
naked body, and besides this a hideous mask and bristling hair. The dance of the chorus in the
satyric drama was called sicinnis, and consisted of a fantastic kind of skipping and jumping.

25

Aeschylus is known to have written a satyr play, Dictyulci, in which the baby Perseus is allowed
to masturbate a satyr's penis, as that fragment survives. Another play discusses the need to gang
rape Helen.[14] The only satyr play to survive in its entirety is Euripides' Cyclops. We also have
large fragments of a Sophocles comedy called Ichneutae (Tracking Satyrs), and still smaller
pieces of other satyr plays exist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyr_play

Epidaurus
The prosperity brought by the Asklepieion [healing center] enabled Epidauros to construct civic
monuments too: the huge theater that delighted Pausanias for its symmetry and beauty, which is
used once again for dramatic performances, the ceremonial Hestiatoreion (banqueting hall),
baths and a palaestra. The theater was designed by Polykleitos the Younger in the 4th century
BC. The original 34 rows were extended in Roman times by another 21 rows. As is usual for
Greek theaters (and as opposed to Roman ones), the view on a lush landscape behind the skene is
an integral part of the theater itself and is not to be obscured. It seats up to 15,000 people.
The theater is marveled for its exceptional acoustics, which permit almost perfect intelligibility
of unamplified spoken word from the proscenium or skene to all 15,000 spectators, regardless of
their seating (see Ref., in Greek). Famously, tour guides have their groups scattered in the stands
and show them how they can easily hear the sound of a match struck at center-stage. A 2007
study by Nico F. Declercq and Cindy Dekeyser of the Georgia Institute of Technology indicates
that the astonishing acoustic properties are either the result of an accident or the product of
advanced design: The rows of limestone seats filter out low-frequency sounds, such as the
murmur of the crowd, and amplify/reflect high-frequency sounds from the stage.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidaurus

A Philosophy of Imitation
Poetics 1-8.
There were originally two books of the Poetics. We have only the first. The second, lost, book
was on comedy. There is substantial scholarship on the second book, but all the results are
speculative and, often, controversial. We shall deal only with the first book.
A question which scholars ask and which we too should be asking is, How much is Aristotle
thinking about what Plato wrote about poetry and, in specific, in the Republic and, even more
specifically, in book ten? (A paper might choose a passage from each and compare them to each
other.)
Poetics 1.
26

-- Aristotle agrees with Plato that poetry is imitative, but he at no point seems troubled by that
fact, in the way that it often troubled Plato.
1447a
Piction: literal imitation or representation
Depiction: imitate character, emotions, and actions
From a photo of two adults and three children (piction), we infer parents and children, and then
perhaps something about their relationships, jealousy, generosity, love, hate (depiction).
Piction is what the work of art signifies at the literal level, at the level of appearances.
Depiction is what the work of art signifies at the level of meaning, and thus crosses the boundary
from physics into metaphysics.
I think Professor Stephen Halliwell is pointing to the same distinction when he writes, The plot
structure of a play is compared in ch. 6 (50b 1-3) to a visual image a significant form, to be
perceived (like all Aristotelian forms) not as a mere pattern but as the design of a particular
entity.4 (Discuss Aristotelian form and matter-form composites.)
e.g., Shakespeare, Sonnet 73 begins, That time of year thou mayst in me behold/ when yellow
leaves, or none, or few, do hang/ Upon those boughs which shake against the cold/ Bare ruined
choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
The pictive meaning is that I am middle-aged. The depictive meaning is more complex,
proposing that in middle age on experiences an admixture of beauty, wistfulness, and wisdom.
[On the day, I used Robert Brownings Taking News from Ghent to Aix.]

Giambattista Vico observes, Now the sources of poetic locution are two: poverty of language
and need to explain and to be understood.5
1447b1 In ancient Greek, poesis means making. Writing a poem and building a house are
equally poesis. Here Aristotle is shaping a distinction when he compares Homer and
Empedocles. Both write in verse, but writing in verse is not enough to make a poet. Homer was
truly a poet, but Empedocles was a physicist, i.e., a student of the physical world. Poetry must
have a certain kind of content as well as a certain kind of form. Thought experiment: proposing
the periodic table in verse as distinguished from a Cole Porter song in which a woman patient
discusses the doctors examination of various parts of her body.
4 Stephen Halliwell, Aristotles Poetics (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1986), 5.
5 NS 22.

27

Poetics 2
1448a
The discussion of painting as an analogue to poetry suggests that Aristotle allows that his
principles of poetry apply to other art forms as well. This becomes more explicit when he says
that the same principles apply to dancing and to music with or without words.
The question of depicting character: more than, less than, and as is.
Tragedy depicts better character, comedy worse. Why is that? Perhaps because even though
tragedy represents many human failings, it does so in a way that is noble, while comedy holds up
the ignobility of those failings, often the same failings. Indeed, in comedic parody, even the
highest of human character can be presented ignobly. I think Plato would have said that about
Aristophanes Clouds in which Socrates is parodied. So, there is something here related to the
account given by Socrates of the Republic that only the decent man at his best ought to be
imitated.
Poetics 3
(Read 1 aloud. Analyze Platos writing according to this standard.
Read 1 aloud. Note distinctions: means, models, manner)
Comparing Homer with Sophocles: both imitate superior men.
Comparing Sophocles with Aristophanes: both present their imitations in action, and thus are
dramas and not merely poems.
Poetics 4
Two causes of poetry: imitation and (he repeats) imitation along with melody and meter.
Note the completely different outlook on the relationship of imitation and that which is imitated:
imitation reminds one of that which is imitated. Knowing the original enhances the imitation.
(Think of family photographs.)
Also what Dr. Walker Percy calls the Delta factor. See Message in a Bottle. The pleasure of
children in imitation.
For Aristotle, imitation is a distinctly human characteristic and a clear good. (Compare with
Platos view.)
Poetics 5
1449b12-13: Unity of time
Poetics 6
1449b28: catharsis. Again, a point of contrast with Plato. Imitation at its best is exercise of the
soul analogous to exercise of the body by which poisons are cleansed from the body. Professor
28

Kaufman makes the point that (contra Platonem) it is amazing how little affected people are by
art.
--In Aristotles Politics, he actually has a good deal more to say about catharsis: Pol. 8.1341b351342b16. He says there that he says more in the Poetics, but he does not in what we have left of
the Poetics. Perhaps the material on catharsis was in the lost material on comedy.
1450a7-10: six elements of tragedyplot, character diction, thought, spectacle, music.
Plot and character: nice discussion of the relationship between poetic drama and painting.
1450b: Introduce logos/ lexis distinction !
Poetics 7
1451a9-15: preserving the unities. Limitation (to apeiron) as virtue.
Poetics 8
Unity does not mean telling everything.
From II.i.6 of my dissertation
Aristotle simply does not seem to think of referring to theological mythology to explain natural
philosophy though, one must add, in the esoteric Aristotelian corpus which remains. Where
formerly various states of reality were explained in terms of gods, now Aristotle uses the word,
cause ( ), a word not found in Greek literature until Pindar and Herodotus.6 Instead of
the imaginative metaphysics of Homers poetic myth or even the rational account of either
Parmenidess poetic myth or the Platos rational prose myth, one arrives at abstraction in
sinewy7 prose, or as Aristotle himself says, . Rational categories are
sufficient for Aristotle to explain the worlds being.8 Even as he suggests that philosophy
replaces mythological poetry for the more highly developed rational humans, Aristotle explains
the transition from what has been called here imaginative metaphysics to abstract
metaphysics. Speaking about the origin of poetry he says:
To be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the
rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it; the reason of the
delight in seeing the
6 LSJ s.v. . is found in Homer, but the word means blameworthy, to blame. Cunliffe s.v. . This
suggests that cause was, in the first instance, a negative thing: i.e., a cause was something which was negatively
responsible for something happening; a cause was what could be blamed.

7 Barnes 1.xi.
29

picture ( ) is that one is at the same time

learning (
)gathering the meaning of things ( ), e.g.
that the
man there is so-and-so (
); for if one has not seen the
thing before, ones pleasure will not be in the
picture as an imitation of it, but will be due
to the execution of colouring or some
similar cause.9

Poetry accomplishes learning through pictures what philosophy accomplishes through rational
argument. Aristotles use of here doubles for both poetry and philosophy. In its
root meaning, the verb means to reckon altogether, bring at once before the mind as used by
Herodotus and then to bring together premises as found in Plato, and finally to infer by way
of syllogism, to conclude as Aristotle usually employs the word.10 In poetrys repetition of
images, one learns that this is that ( ). Depiction and argument are analogues.
Depiction is the syllogism of poetry. To analyze this passage from Aristotle, the distinctions of
Vico are useful with respect to imaginative and rational metaphysics:
The first men, the children, as it were, of the human race, not being able to form intelligible
class concepts of things, had a natural need to create poetic characters;
that is imaginative
class concepts or universals, to which, as to certain models or
ideal portraits, to reduce all
the particular species which resembled them.11

8 Here, one sees that it were truer to use the term Pre-Aristotelian instead of Pre-Socratic of philosophy. All of
philosophy prior to Aristotle does lead to Aristotle in a way that a similar claim is not true of Socrates. Socrates and
Democritus, for example, are equally Aristotles predecessors. Among the most pre-eminent Pre-Aristotelian
philosophers, of course, would be ranked Socrates and Plato. Although Professor Barnes is the author of an
important work which has the title, The Presocratic Philosophers (Jonathan Barnes, The Presocratic Philosophers, 2
vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), he indicates elsewhere that he regards Aristotleand not Platoas
the monumental philosopher, Plato had an influence second only to Aristotle. Jonathan Barnes, Introduction, in
The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), xv.
He adds, Someone was is [sic] A. N. Whitehead observed that Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to
Plato. A witty apophthegm, but false: substitute Aristotle for Plato and the aphorism will be, as it were, less
false. Ibid., xvn3.

9 Aristotle, Poetics 4.1448b13-18; Barnes 2.2318.

10 Liddell and Scott, 5th, s.v. ; e.g., An. Pr. 40b30, 42a39, 68b16, LSJ s.v.
.
11 NS 209.

30

What Vico calls imaginative class concepts is what Aristotle calls .

Aristotle understands that in poetry, the poet (and then the hearer of poetry) gathers this, this,
this, this, this and says Zeus or Athena or Odysseus, as the case may be.
Professor James E. Redfield recognizes the significance of Aristotles use of in
the aforegoing passage.12 He begins his comment on Imitation as a Mode of Learning,
Aristotle extends or renews the Homeric tradition of identifying the central organizing principle
of the poem as the storyno longer called kleos, but muthos, plot.13 Aristotle commences the
Poetics with a use of in the way Professor Redfield describes, I propose to speak not only
of poetry in general but also of its species and their respective capacities; of the structure of plot
() required for a good poem.14 If Professor Redfield is correct, then the shift from
to by Aristotle is an enormous reduction of Homer. Achilles in assessing the prospect of
his death as a warrior observes:
One day a man on shipboard, sailing by
on the winedark sea, will point landward and say:
There is the death-mound of an ancient man,
A hero who fought with Hektor and was slain.
Someone will say that someday. And the honor ()
won by me here will never pass away ( ).15
Homers is not merely story, but as is manifest in this passage it, at very least, implies
eternal glory. The warrior will die, but report of his deeds will never be destroyed. The verb
() is a strong one. It is what was done to cities when they were laid waste. It means to
bring to nothing.16 Homer employs as a vehicle to immortality. Other than procreation, it
12 James E. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector, Expanded Edition, Durham:
Duke University Press, 1994), 52-55.

13 Redfield, Nature, 52.

14 Poet. 1447a7-9; Barnes 2.2316.

15 Il. 7.87-91; Fitzgerald 164. See Kaufmann, Tragedy, 161-62.

16 Cunliffe s.v. .

31

was the only means to immortality which is the one characteristic of the gods which the heroes
not only did not share, but also could not share. Aristotles reception of Homer was not only as
conceptualization of what Homer depictsand thus the analogous relationship of conceptual
argument to concrete depictionit was also a transformative reception of Homer which reduced
heroic poetry from a means by which mortals could attain immortality, to a merelyand in this
case, purelyliterary form.
IMMORTAL MYTH HAS BECOME MERE LITERATURE.
Professor Redfield concludes his discussion of Imitation as a Mode of Learning by
understanding his own opinion to be a variation on the theme already set forth. As Aristotle puts
it, he says, and then he quotes Poetics 1451b5-11:
Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since
its statements are of a nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. By
a universal statement I mean one as to what such or such a kind of man will probably
or necessarily say or dowhich is the aim of poetry, though it affixes proper names
to the characters; by a singular statement, one as to what, say, Alcibiades did or had
done to him.17

Aristotle recognizes Alcibiades as a universal (and presumably would recognize Achilles and
Odysseus as universals as well). Aristotle supposes, however, that Homers method was that of
fifth century dramatists, workingto use Professor Redfields termsfrom science to imitation,
rather thanas Vico asserts and is affirmed herein terms of imitation, i.e., poetic depiction of
the world in imaginative genera.
In factshould anyone want to disparage this works metaphysical reading of the Poetics
Aristotle in Metaphysics Lambda explains his view that ancient science had handed down its
conclusions in terms of the poetic story:
Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to us their posterity a
tradition, in the form of a myth ( ), that these substances are gods and
the divine encloses the whole of nature ( ). The rest
of the tradition has been added later in mythical form () with a view to
persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian expediency; they say these gods
are in the forms of men or like some of the other animals, and they say other things
consequent on and similar to these which we have mentioned. But if we were to separate
the first point from these additions and take it alonethat they thought the first
substances to be gods ( )we must regard this as

17 Poet. 9.1451b5-11; Barnes 2.2323.

32

an inspired utterance, and reflect that, while probably each art and science has often been
developed as far as possible and has again perished, these opinions have been preserved
like relics until the present. Only thus far, then, is the opinion of our ancestors and our
earliest predecessors clear to us.18

Several points are to be noted. 1) Aristotle speaks of recurrence (e.g., each art and science has
often been developed as far as possible and has again perished) in a way that very much
anticipates Vichian corso e ricorso.19 2) He says that the ancients regarded the gods as first
substances, in other words that this is that. This passage from the Metaphysics is entirely
consistent with the previously quoted passages from the Poetics. 3) He recognizes the fluidity of
being (e.g., they say these gods are in the forms of men or like some of the other animals, and
they say other things consequent on and similar to these which we have mentioned) in
mythology although he regards it as a second stage of development. He also assumes that the
overlay of fluidity was intentional and pedagogical (The rest of the tradition has been added
later in mythical form with a view to persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian
expediency;) which is to say 4) that he assumed teachers had long since used myth the way that
Plato says explicitly myth should be used.20 5) By pointing to the way myth was formerly used
pedagogically, Aristotle separates himself from that tradition. He is saying that that is how myth
used to be regarded and employed for public purposes, thus implying that it is no longer current
practice. 6) Aristotle makes clear how he regards myths: they are cultural artifacts to be studied
18 Metaph. 12.1074b1-14; Barnes 1698, quoted by Luc Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths. Allegorical
Interpretation and Classical Mythology, trans. Catherine Tihanyi (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004),
38.

19 One of Vicos great themes is the recurrence of the three ages (of gods, heroes and men).
Book IV is called The Course the Nations Run and Book V, The Recourse of Human
Institutions thus corso e ricorso. In countless passages scattered throughout this work and
dealing with countless matters, we have observed the marvelous correspondence between the
first and the returned barbarian times. From these passages we can easily understand the recourse
of human institutions when they rise again. NS 1046. See also Bergin and Fisch, Introduction,
xlii-xliii.
20 Socrates of the Republic summarizes his critique of myths educational function in his ideal commonwealth. He
concludes with a criterion for the acceptable myth, We should probably take the utmost care to insure that the first
stories they hear about virtue are the best ones for them to hear. R. 2.377e6-378e6 and in specific 2.378e1-3;
Cooper 1017. The Athenian Stranger justifies the noble lie, But just suppose that the truth had been different from
what the argument has now shown it to be, and that a lawgiver , even a mediocre one, had been sufficiently bold, in
the interests of the young, to tell them a lie. Could he have told a more useful lie than this, or one more effective in
making everyone practice justice in everything they do, willingly and without pressure? L. 2.663d6-e2; Cooper
1354.

33

as signs of how society once was but is no more in a way that has an analogue in modern
archeological method, both of physical archeology made famous by Schliemann and of
philosophical archeology made famous by Foucault.21 7), Adopting here the exposition of
Director of Research Luc Brisson, it is held here that Aristotle held metaphysics to be embedded
in the oldest stratum of mythology:
In this perspective and with certain reservations, metaphysics constitutes the essence of
Greek mythology; therefore Aristotle anchored metaphysics into the most distant past.
While the various branches of knowledge, including philosophy, had to be learned anew
after the recurring destructions suffered by humankind, perceptions of
the gods,
conveyed by myths, had been maintained without interruption from their beginning to the
time of Aristotle.22

On this account, Aristotle recognizes metaphysics to have been the first speculative science to be
discovered in human society, and the first to be rediscovered when humans gather themselves
again after the most recent destruction. Myth bears metaphysics when rational discourse has, for
the time being, been lost. The relationship to Homeric mythology of Plato and Aristotle
respectively can be distinguished. Monsieur Brisson writes, In contrast to Plato, Aristotle did
not adopt an attitude of radical rupture.23
21 Foucault explains his method in relation to his Naissance de la clinique, Par archologie, je voudrais dsigner
non pas exactement une discipline, mais un domaine de recherche, qui serait le suivant. Dans une socit, les
connaissances, les ides philosophiques, les opinions de tous les jours, mais aussi les institutions, les pratiques
commerciales et policires, les murs, tout renvoie un certain savoir implicite propre cette socit. Ce savoir est
profondment diffrent des connaissances que lon peut trouver dans les livres scientifiques, les thories
philosophiques, les justifications religieuses, mais cest lui qui rend possible un moment donn lapparition dune
thorie, dune opinion, dune pratique. Michel Foucault, Dits et Ecrits, I, 1954-1975 (Paris: Gallimard, 2001),
526.Foucault also sums up his archeological method in a way which can be applied to metaphysical depiction. In
relation to the monologue of reason about madness he writes, Je nai pas voulu faire lhistoire de ce langage ;
plutt larchologie de ce silence. Ibid., 188. Archeology studies the primarily non-verbal artifacts of civilization,
that which a civilization expresses apart from language.

22 Brisson, How, 39. Dans cette perspective, et sous certaines rserves, la mtaphysique
constitue la quintessence de la mythologie grecque. Par l, Aristote ancre la mtaphysique dans
le pass le plus recul. Alors que les diffrents savoirs, y compris la philosophie, ont d faire
lobjet dun nouvel apprentissage aprs les destructions priodiques subies par lhumanit ; les
opinions sur les dieux, que vhiculent les mythes, se sont maintenues sans interruption depuis
lorigine jusqu lpoque dAristote. Luc Brisson, Introduction la philosophie du mythe.
Sauver les mythes, 2nd ed. (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2005), 56-57.
23 Brisson, How, 39. A la diffrence de Platon; Aristote nadopte pas lgard du mythe une
attitude de rupture radicale. Brisson, Sauver, 58.
34

As has been shown even in the passage just quoted from the Metaphysics, Aristotle
describes the method of using mythology pedagogically and legislatively which Plato
exemplifies, but as a method which he deems pass. It may be that Aristotle understood
myth better and in a more positive light precisely because he was not engaged with
mythology as Plato had been. Monsieur Brisson is certainly correct when he points to the
fundamental difference in the way that Plato and Aristotle addressed mythology. Plato
sought to re-found mythology on rational grounds and with pedagogical purpose.
Aristotle recognized that pedagogical purpose. He did not himself choose to utilize myth
pedagogically and seemed to criticize or, at least, to distance himself from those who did.
Aristotle held the rational abstraction of philosophy as correspondent to the imaginative
abstraction of poetry in general.24 In this respect, though Aristotle dispensed with myth in
philosophy, as Plato never did, nonetheless he understood poetry in its own terms far better than
Plato for whom mythological image was merely metaphor, the concrete expressing rational
abstraction.

Claude Levi-Strauss Le Cru et le cuit

Food is not only good for eating, but also for thinking.
Poetics 9
Aristotle discusses here tragic poetry, but it is fair to extrapolate from this a view of serious art.
Aristotle proposes that that poets task is to represent what-is-not as if it were, It is not the
poets business to relate actual events, but such things as might or could happen in accordance
with probability or necessity (1451a34-35). This is an extraordinary claim when examined
against the backdrop of the problematic which emerged from Platos Republic.
Use at the end of Aristotle(?):
Let us review briefly the over-arching theme of this course. I have proposed that the question is
how one sees the world (i.e. apprehends the world) and, then, how that seeing of the world is
represented. According to Socrates of the Republic, the problem with art is that it represents the
world in terms of becoming, of seeming, of appearances, AND that it does so in a way that
makes the lowest form of reality, i.e., images, so beautiful that they distract even the most
rational person from apprehending the highest form of reality, namely the Forms.
24 Though Vico does not state his case explicitly in relation to Aristotle, it would seem that the
position taken here is at odds with that of Vicos own in relation to Aristotles view on the origin
of poetry. See NS, 384. At the same time, Vico quotes with approbation a passage from
Aristotles Rhetoric which makes a similar point about rhetorical universals in the form of
maxims (i.e., NS 816; Rhet. 2.1395b1-10).
35

In sharp contrast to that view, Aristotle suggests that art actually serves a positive purpose in
reminding the viewer of that of which it is the representation (Poetics 4.1448a). Now, Aristotle
proposes something even more radically counter to the views of the Republics Socrates, namely
that art should represent what-is-not as if it were. So, Socrates of the Republic complains that
poetry makes that-which-is into that-which-seems-to-be. Aristotle says that poetry ought to make
that-which-is-not into that-which-seems-to-be. We have, then, two very different answers to the
question of whether art and philosophy are mutually exclusive, or, at very least, two different
proposals as to the right relationship of art to philosophy.
Discussion of history versus poetry as the representation of particulars as particulars (history)
and particulars as universals (poetry).
1452a2-4 Here Aristotle gives a hint as to why poetry is more philosophical than history. It
arouses wonder which Aristotle says in the Metaphysics is the starting point of philosophy:
For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to
philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by
little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the
moon and those of the sun and the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man
who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth
() is in a sense a lover of wisdom (), for myth is composed of
wonders); therefore since they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any
utilitarian end.25
(Theme of pity and fear recurs: 1452a2-4, 1452a36-1452b2, 1452b36-1453a6, 1456a-b)
(Theme of unity recurs: 1451a9-15, 1451a16-35 (all of Poetics 8) 1452a11-13, 1453a12-16

To be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the
rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it; the reason of the
delight in seeing the
picture ( ) is that one is at the same time
learning (
)gathering the meaning of things ( ), e.g.
that the
man there is so-and-so (
); for if one has not seen the
thing before, ones pleasure will not be in the
picture as an imitation of it, but will be due
to the execution of colouring or some
similar cause.26
Piction presents the physical world; depiction, the metaphysical.
25 Aristotle Metaphysics 1.982b11-22, Barnes 2.1554.
26 Aristotle, Poetics 4.1448b13-18; Barnes 2.2318.

36

Art is the coherent communication of a certain rational structure (logos) in some medium
(lexis).
R. I.C.: 1457b (pp. 43-44)
Here is a curious thing: in the middle of the final third of his Poetics (chapters 19-22), Aristotle
engages questions that pertain to a philosophy of language that jars the reader. This jarring is so
severe that important scholars have doubted whether Aristotle is actually the author of those
chapters. One (Else, 567-568), declines to comment on chapters 20-22 because the problems are
so extensive. In the place of commentary he has a two-page explanation as to why he does not
offer a commentary. Other scholars (e.g., Halliwell, 344) suggest that the material was written
early in Aristotles career. Professor Halliwell perceives that whatever the problems with these
chapters, they point to something really fundamental and perhaps revolutionary in Aristotles
treatment, namely that underlying all questions of poetry is the question of language. As far as
we know, Aristotle is the first ever to distinguish between verse and poetry. (Halliwell, 344)
Remember that he says though Empedocles wrote in verse, his writing is not poetry (1.1447b1719), and that though Herodotus might have written in verse (9.1451b1-2), that would not have
made his work poetry. Perhaps this also allows for the possibility of poetry without meter.
Lexis, (from which we get lexicon) translated diction, is literally spoken speech.
On this Halliwell:
A further definition of of lexis is offered at [14]50b 13-15: I mean by lexis . . . the verbal
expression, which has the same meaning for compositions in both verse and prose. The
relation between lexis and the chief task of the playwright is aptly crystallized in the
dictum of ch. 9, the poet ought to be a maker of plot-structures rather than of verses
[14]51b27f.). The poets principal work, in other words, is the intelligible design of the
poem, its essential framework; and the language is something then used to fill in this
structure and to give it a continuous fabric. The combination of the primary poetic artifact
the structure of actionwith a verbal expression which fleshes it out is recapitulated in
a phrase at [14]55a 22f., where the poet is said to construct his plots and to finish them
off with language.
Halliwell, 345
(He cites 1455a22f. and Gorgias fr. 11.18, Plato Prt. 312d, R. 548d, Sph 234b, 235e, 236c, L
6565e.)
What makes poetry then is the coherent communication of a certain rational structure (logos)
expressed in language. Let us remember again, that Aristotle has said that depiction is the
syllogism of poetry, which is to say that depiction is the argument of poetry.

37

I want to extrapolate from these comments of Aristotle, which are clearly about poetry per se,
some observations about art in general. I want to suggest that art is the coherent communication
of a certain rational structure expressed in some medium.
An insight from post-modernism:
Jacques Derrida (A.D. 1930-2004)
What is de-construction?
What Ms. Smith reported of their conversation at the Polo Grill is the following:
"It is impossible to respond," Mr. Derrida said. "I can only do something which will leave
me unsatisfied." But after some prodding, he gave it a try anyway. "I often describe
deconstruction as something which happens. It's not purely linguistic, involving text or
books. You can deconstruct gestures, choreography. That's why I enlarged the concept
of text."
Mr. Derrida did not seem angry at having to define his philosophy at all; he was even
smiling. "Everything is a text; this is a text," he said, waving his arm at the diners around
him in the bland suburbanlike restaurant, blithely picking at their lunches, completely
unaware that they were being "deconstructed."
From a lecture by John Rawlings: http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/
What I want to take from Derrida is his enlargement of the concept of text. Indeed, everything
is a text.
What is a statement?
20.1457a24logos
22.1458a17 ff.examples of when speech is not coherent, and, therefore, not a logos.
Looking for logos in a work of art and also using the standard of logos by which to judge a work
of art.
From Aristotles Parts of Animals
We need also to determine, about these causes, which sort is naturally first and which
second. Not it is apparent that first is the one we call for the same of which; for this is an account
[logos], and the account is an origin alike in things composed according to art and in things
composed by nature. For once the doctor has defined health, and the builder has defined house,
38

either by thought or perception, they provide the accounts (logoi) and the causes of each of the
things they produce, and the reason why it must be produced in this way. Yet that for the sake of
which and the good [to kalon] are present more in the works of nature than in those of art.
1.639b12-21.
Aristotle. On the Parts of Animals. Translated with a commentary by James G. Lennox. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2001.
22. 1458a-1458b
1459b The epic . . .
25.1460b Since the poet. . . .
(p.56) Note the question: Can poetry (art) tell the truth? (To which we add the question,
and what kind of truth, natural, historical, or metaphysical?)
(Answer?) 1461b Generally speaking . . . .
Exegesis: reading what is in the text
Eisegesis: reading what I think into the text
Are Art and Philosophy Mutually Exclusive
Let us review briefly the over-arching theme of this course. I have proposed that the question is
how one sees the world (i.e. apprehends the world) and, then, how that seeing of the world is
represented.
Question: Do we get a different account from the Symposium and the Phaedrus than we do in the
Republic? Can they be read together? Yes, but that does not eliminate the fact that Socrates of the
Republic delivers a severe critique of Homer, in specific, and of art, in general.
According to Socrates of the Republic, the problem with art is that it represents the world in
terms of becoming, of seeming, of appearances, AND that it does so in a way that makes the
lowest form of reality, i.e., images, so beautiful that they distract even the most rational person
from apprehending the highest form of reality, namely the Forms.
In sharp contrast to the view of Socrates of the Republic, Aristotle suggests that art actually
serves a positive purpose in reminding the viewer of that of which it is the representation
(Poetics 4.1448a). Now, Aristotle proposes something even more radically counter to the views
of the Republics Socrates, namely that art should represent what-is-not as if it were. So, Socrates
of the Republic complains that poetry makes that-which-is into that-which-seems-to-be. Aristotle
says that poetry ought to make that-which-is-not into that-which-seems-to-be. We have, then,
two very different answers to the question of whether art and philosophy are mutually exclusive,
or, at very least, two different proposals as to the right relationship of art to philosophy.

39

Two schools of thought on philosophys relationship to mythology, represented by Messrs.

Francis MacDonald Cornford and John Burnet, respectively, [are] that philosophy was the
natural outgrowth of mythology and that philosophy replaced mythology. There is a sense in
which the writings of Plato exemplify the former view and those of Aristotle the latter. From
beginning to end, Homer accompanies Plato, sometimes haunting him, other times serving him
as his best authority. Plato argues with Homer, lambasts him, manipulates what he says, but he
never dispenses with the blind bard. Aristotle can take Homer or leave him, but, in the end, he
understands Homer better than Plato did. Aristotles insight about Homer, and poetry in general
as was seen in II.i, is that depiction is the syllogism of poetry. He points to what Vico will call
imaginative genera; in poetrys repetition of images, one learns that this is that (
).27 As depiction and argument are analogues, so poetry and philosophy are analogues.
They stand as two approaches to understanding the world as it is. Aristotle was apparently
satisfied that poetry and philosophy be alternatives. He went to the theatre for poetry, and he
went to his classroom for philosophy. (from my dissertation, I.ii)
Plotinus and Neo-Platonism
As I have already argued, in modernityfollowing Descartes identification of the soul with the
thinking thing (Discourse, 4)the spiritual part of the rational soul was assigned to religion and
art. Thus, it is not surprising that as moderns, we should typically think of mysticism as religious.
In the late Middle Ages, this shift had already begun with writers like the German mystic,
Meister Eckhart (A.D. 1260-1328). The great protestant, Martin Luther, in effect excluded
rationality from religious faith when he proclaimed, Faith alone!
That cultural circumstance does not belong to Plotinus (A.D. 204-270), however. Plotinus was a
rational mystic. This characteristic is, in fact, what makes many modern philosophers feel
nervous about his work. Think about it: if the default settings of modernity include a bifurcated
soul, then how could rationalists regard any mystic rationally? And an empiricist, such as Hume,
so doubtful about rationalism in general, feel confirmed in their reservations when confronted
with a rational mystic such as Plotinus. In fact, it is fair to say that Hume rejects as fairy tales
exactly the kinds of accounts that Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius give us. The knowledge that
Neo-Platonists hold as most important, Hume denies as not existing at all.
Neo-Platonism is a synthesis of Platonic and Aristotelian thought.
It is a commonplace to say that Plotinus follows Plato. He is, after all, the father of NeoPlatonism, i.e., the new Platonism. That is true beyond any possible denial. What is often missed,
however, is how much Aristotle comes into the thought of Plotinus. We have already noted the
Aristotelian contribution through affirmation and denial, kataphatic and apophatic knowledge
from NE 6.1139b15-17a formulation which has no known corresponding formulation in Plato.
Neo-Platonism picks up final cause from Aristotle and, in general the structure and logic of
Aristotles thought. (Review four causes!) What is more remarkableand I think less
acknowledgedis the rational contemplation advocated by Aristotle which, if it does not rise to
27 Poet. 4.1448b13-18 and Metaph. 12.1074b1-14.

40

the level of Plotinian mysticism, is, at least antecede. (Read selections from NE 10.1177b17-35,
10.1178a5, 10.1178b8-23.
Plotinus was a pagan. His disciple, Porphyry (A.D. 234-305)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/porphyry/ (who wrote commentaries on Aristotles logical works,
thus making completely explicit the Platonic-Aristotelian synthesis of Neo-Platonism, was not
only a pagan but a vigorously anti-Christian pagan.
Not mistaking Neo-Platonism for Christianity.
I.vi [1] Beauty
4. Emphasize last paragraph of four: rational ascent like falling in love.
5.

Note the evangelical character

7.

Ascent to the Good:

Discuss what St. Thomas will call the transcendental: insofar as a thing exists, it is
good and true (and perhaps beautiful). The good, beautiful, and true are modes of being.
Thus, by implication, evil has no positive existence. It is entirely privative.
9. Read in class. Plotinus coaches the reader in the mystical ascent. Note the apophatic character
of the rational contemplation.
Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn
(Recommend Bright Star)
BY JOHN DONNE 15721631 John Donne Holy Sonnets: Batter my heart, three-person'd God
Batter my heart, three-person'd God
By John Donne 15721631 John Donne
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

41

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

John Donne

73. "What if this present were the worlds last night?"

WHAT if this present were the worlds last night?
Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright,
Teares in his eyes quench the amasing light,
Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell.
And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,
Which pray'd forgivenesse for his foes fierce spight?
No, no; but as in my idolatrie
I said to all my profane mistresses,
Beauty, of pitty, foulnesse onely is
A signe of rigour: so I say to thee,
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign'd,
This beauteous forme assures a pitious minde.

10

Herbert J.C. Grierson, ed. (18861960). Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the 17th C. 1921.
http://bartelby.org/105/73.html.
Professor Wilsons commentary:
What is most amazing about this extraordinary poem is that Donne compares the beauty of
Christ on the cross with the beauty of the women with whom he had had affairs. If I understand
him, he does not deny their beauty, rather thinks of them as idols who received that devotion
which he truly owed to Christ. If my interpretation is correct, then Donne is in agreement with
Plotinus that wherever beauty is found, it is because Beauty itself has penetrated matter and
manifested itself: Beauty perceived in material things is beauty borrowed (Plotinus, Enneads
V,9 [5].2). If beautiful beings distract us from pursuing Beauty itself, then they are bad things,
but insofar as they point us toward Beauty, then they are themselves good.
42

V,9 [5] The intelligence, the Ideas, and Being

Returning to the claim that soul organizes the world . . . we can add that this activity
presupposes an art, that is a body of knowledge, a wisdom, which guides it. The wisdom shown
by soul, Plotinus argues, in its ordering of things is not one belonging to nature to soul. Soul is
informed with this wisdom: soul can acquire and can lose it. Or, to speak in terms which brings
us close to Alexander of Aphrodisias reading of Aristotles De anima, soul is brought to the
activity that is wisdom by a prior agent, an intellect which must be independent of it and of the
world as that which inspires soul in making the world. This independent intellect does not
receive wisdom, or become wise, for else we would have to postulate yet another independent
intellect which would inform it and which would itself be wisdom as its source. . . . (1) The
divine intellect presupposed by the rational organization of the world by soul must be
independent of the world . . . so as to be the source of the wisdom which informs souls action;
and (2) that this intellect has as its inherent activity wisdom, that is, knowledge of the Forms
which are the models followed by the soul.28
1. Notice all the Aristotelian notes. Also note how Plotinus uses Aristotle and disparages him all
at once. Note the hierarchy: 1. Those who live in the senses only, 2. Those who rise somewhat
above the senses, 3. Those who ascend to the intelligible realm.
2.

Again coaching in how to make the ascent.

What is the born lover?
This the guiding thought: beauty perceived in material things is beauty borrowed.

Shapeless matter given shape by formthis Aristotelian form. (see chapter 9 on intelligence as
form.
3.
The Intelligence. Essence/existence distinction and separationother Aristotelian themes
(Explain these)
4.

The Soul and the Intelligence

5.

The intelligence is ouside time and space

11.

Read in class: Art and its place

One might be tempted to compare the higher non-discursive way of knowing that Plotinus has
in mind with modern concepts of intuitive, artistic or poetic understanding, as opposed to
scientific or logical thought. This comparison would be misleading. Plotuinus is not speaking of
28 OMeara, Plotinus, 35.
43

a form of knowing that is an alternative, possibly a corrective, to science and logic. Rather it
represents the goal of science and logic. In his view, discursive thinking is, for us, the means to
an end, complete knowledge, and not the end itself, which is a possession of truth such that it is
free of the troublesome, fallible methods which we must use to reach it. And this truth is found in
the unity constituted by divine intellect and its objects of thought, the Forms.29
Neo-Platonic vision of art: art represents the intelligible in some material medium to the human
soul through the human senses.
IV, 8 [6] The Descent of the Soul
Procession and Return
1. Descent from intellection to the discourse of reason
One gets here a sense of Plotinuss assessment of Heraclitus, Empedocles and the divine Plato.
Though Plotinus is critical of Heraclitus, he takes the point of Heraclitus that the way up and the
way done are the same.
General comment on Plotinus: There is the awareness that world constituted with matter is more
than it would be without matter. This is an awareness that one finds more readily in Aristotle than
in Plato, though one does find inklings of it in the later Platonic works, e.g., Theaetetus, Laws.
2.

So, Plotinus asks the question whether Platos demiurge do right in making this world?

We see that there is the cosmological Soul within which there are many souls just as The
intelligence has within it many intelligences. OBrien, 60.

29 OMeara, Plotinus, 43.

44

S
S

the doctrine of The Intelligence as creative artist, of the Soul as the giver of the cosmic pattern.
(OBrien, 45.) Is The Soul the logos of the world?
3.

Human soul

Notice the degree to which Plotinus depends upon metaphor to give us an idea of the nonsensible realm he describes.
4.

Individual souls have a desire for return (the eternal return).

Allusion to Analogy of the Good

Individuation (responding to the problem of the One and the Many)
Last paragraph: the double life of the soul
5.

Necessity includes free choice.

45

Second paragraphtwo wrongs of the soul: 1) its descent, 2) evil done after arrival here
below.
Father OBrien writes of a Fall (60).
The Soul plunges into body.
6.
The One is not the loneliest number.
The Many occurs because of the One. The One breaks out into many.
Second paragraphthe Good is communicated to all.
Third paragraphimitation which is the door to art.
7.
Summary of how things stand with the individual soul: it plunges too deeply into body
and, thereby, ceases to be wholly united to The Soul.
The Intelligence
The Soul
Individual soul
8.

No soul enters into the body completely.

Read last paragraph.

A short but important word: For The Soul governs bodily not by discursive reasoning, as we do,
but by intuition (much as is done in the arts).
6, 9 [9] The Good or The One
Plotinus words about the One are not gratuitous mind-games; their purpose is to lead the reader
to insight into the world, human nature, and their origin. In this situation the reader is far from
the end of his philosophical journey, a direct grasp of the One. Rather the reader is at the
beginning, moving towards a first notion of the non-ultimacy of the things that are the most
familiar. At higher stages in the journey, when greater knowledge is attained, words, as the
expression and communication of knowledge, are no longer necessary; they give way to the
silence that is the grasp of truth in the divine intellect, a silence which is preparation for union
with the One. Thus all speech, including speech about the One, takes place for the use of souls
which have not as yet reached the knowledge that will lead them to union with the One. It is
therefore appropriate that speech about the One refers to the things that are at first most familiar
to us, in so far as they point beyond themselves.30
30 OMeara, Plotinus, 59.
46

2. What the One is not.

Here Plotinus makes clear that this is not pan-theism (i.e., that the One is everything). He
concludes the second chapter:
Thus The One is not all things because then it would no longer be one. It is not the Intelligence,
because The Intelligence is all things. It is not Being because Being is all things.
3. What is the One: the difficulties in the mystical ascent.
The One, then, is not The Intelligence but higher. The Intelligence is still a being, while The
One is not a being because it is precedent to all being. Being has, you might say, the form of
being; The One is without form, even intelligible form.
4. Transcending knowledge
When the soul knows something, it loses its unity. It cannot remain simply one because
knowledge implies discursive reason and discursive reason implies multiplicity. The soul then
misses The One and falls into number and multiplicity.
. . . if the soul does not feel a rapture within it like that of the lover come to rest in his love . . .
6. Formal versus material infinity.
Formal infinity: The One is greatest, not physically but dynamically. Hence it is
indivisible, not physically, but dynamically. . . . The One is infinite not as extension or a
numerical series is infinite, but in its limitless power. . . . Compress unity within your mind, it is
still more than that. Here is unity superior to any your thought lays hold of, unity that exists by
itself and in itself and is without attributes.31
Material vs. formal infinity
Extensive vs. intensive infinity
The One is superior to the Good; it is the Good, not for itself, but for other things to the
extent to which they can share it.
What a thing is in itself as opposed to what something is to others.
7. Begin contemplation.
Analogy of Contradiction:

31 OBrien, 81. 6.9.6

47

It is said that matter must be void of all qualities in order to be capable of receiving all forms.
So must the soul, and for a stronger reason, be stripped of all forms if it would be filled and fired
by the supreme without any hindrance from within itself.
8. Souls movement is circular.
Last line: We are always around The One. If we were not, we would dissolve and cease to exist.
Yet our gaze does not remain fixed upon The One. When we look at it [The One], we attain the
end of our desires and find rest. Then it is that, all discord past, we dance an inspired dance
around it.
The One is the center of metaphysical gravity.
9.
First line In this dance the soul looks upon the source of life, the source of Intelligence, the
origin of Being, the cause of the Good, the root of the Soul.
Third paragraph: The pregnant soul and the loss of wings
Last paragraph: becoming divine
11. fifth paragraph: self-abandonment
Final line: Such is the life of the divinity and of divine and blessed men: detachment from all
things here below, scorn of all earthly pleasures, the flight of the lone to the Alone.
Giving Shape to the Shapeless
From The Matrix Reloaded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1y9vl2J9VE

Review of Principles:
From Heraclitus
The way up and the down are one. Prepares for the idea of procession and return
From Plato
Divided Line which presents the idea of hierarchy, but without naming it.
Metaphysics of being: existence of concrete particulars through participation in the forms

From Aristotle
48

Apophatic and kataphatic knowledge

Matter-form composite of which logos-lexis is a variant
Art is product, truly reasoned, with respect to the variable. NE 6.4.1040a20-22.
Rational contemplation: NE 10.7.1177a12-1178a8 (Put on immortality ! 1177b33-34)
From Plotinus
Formal infinity: compress unity in your mind
Mediation: there are no gaps in the order of reality.
The One (which becomes identified with God in Christian Neo-Platonism)

Pseudo-Dionysius
INTRODUCTION:
The Celestial Hierarchy was written by someone who claimed to be Dionysius the
Areopagite who, according to Acts 17:34, was converted under the preaching of St. Paul in
Athens. The areopagus, or Mars hill, is the part of the Acropolis in Athens where the assembly
of Greek citizens would meet. It was, in effect, the meeting place of the Athenian Supreme
Court. On the Acropolis, there were temples of various gods of which ones name was unknown,
and it was this unknown god whom St. Paul identified with the Jewish God who had revealed
himself through the resurrection of the dead. The entirety of St. Pauls sermon, Acts 17:16-34, is
worth reading because there one finds set forth themes which are developed in the writings
published under the name of Dionysius. For example, St. Paul says of God, in him we live, and
move, and have our being, thus pointing to the fundamentally metaphysical claims about the
Jewish God, now also the God of the Christians. St. Paul also claims that God is beyond
materiality, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven
by art and mans device (17:29). Even the setting helps us to understand why the writings under

49

the name Dionysius were received as speculative philosophy, rather than as mystical theology.
St. Paul held conversation with philosophers of the day, both Epicureans and Stoics. It was they
who led him to the Areopagus for a wider hearing. It is is also highly significant that St. Paul
uses the altar TO THE UNKNOWN GOD as his point of departure, because Gods
unknowableness becomes an important part of the Dionysian writings. It is also worth noting that
as St. Paul addressed the Athenians he had around him some of the greatest art in the history of
the world. The sculpture of Phidias, older contemporary of Socrates, for example, adorned the
Parthenon.
St. Paul was martyred sometime about A.D. 64, so Dionysius the Areopagite could not
have lived much beyond A.D. 100. In fact, Dionysius the Areopagite did not write the books
published under his name. We know this for a variety of reasons, one of which is that he uses
material by another author, Proclus, who lived A.D. 411-485. Because the writings of the person,
henceforth, known now as Pseudo-Dionysius (or sometimes, Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite),
are cited by another author about 513, Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, the date of PseudoDionysiuss active life is the late fifth and early sixth centuries.32 It is also generally accepted
that he was a Syrian, Syria at that time being a Greek-speaking region. Beyond this rough
approximation of when he lived and that he was a Syrian, and therefore wrote his treatises in
Greek, nothing is know about Pseudo-Dionysius who wrote the Celestial Hierarchy and other
works as if he were the convert named in Acts 17:34 who was writing to his fellow bishop, St.
Timothy, someone also closely associated with St. Paul.

32 Dionysius (6) the Pseudo-Areopagite in ODCC.

50

[Something on the tradition of writing under the name of another. Contrast ancient and
mediaeval practice with that of modern use of pseudonyms.]

Just to confuse matters a little further, there is a third Dionysius who comes into the story,
the first bishop of Paris. For the study of the Pseudo-Dionysian texts, this third Dionysius matters
little, but as those texts influenced the creation and development of Gothic architecture and, in
particular, the stained glass windows of Gothic churches, the third Dionysius is extremely
important. The pious legend about Bishop Dionysius of Paris is that he was martyred for his faith
about A.D. 250 under the first systematic persecution of Christians under the Roman Emperor
Decius. The legend is his sentence of death was execution by decapitation. Once his head was
cut off, he is said to have picked it up and then carried it into Paris where he fell over on a
northern hill overlooking his city. He was buried on that hill which was therefore named,
Martyrs mount, or, as it is in French, Montmartre. Some centuries later, his alleged remains
were exhumed and translated to the site of his actual beheading, north of Paris, in a monastery
named for him and which was associated with the kings, first, of the Franks, and later of France.
In French, Dionysius is Denis, thus, in French, he is St. Denis. The monastery was named
for him as is the French city which, today is a suburb of Paris.
Abbot Hilduin of St. Denis, who died A.D. 840, identified St. Denis, the third century
bishop of Paris, with Dionysius the Areopagite, the first century convert. Thus, he believed that
the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius were actually the writings of his monasterys patron saint
whom he believed to have been converted under the preaching of St. Paul.33 Thus, three historical
persons are conflated: Dionysius the Areopagite, Bishop Denis of Paris, and Pseudo-Dionysius,

33 Dionysius (3) St., of Paris in ODCC.

51

author of the The Celestial Hierarchy.34 It was this same Hilduin who translated the works of
Pseudo-Dionysius into Latin. It was his translation which when his twelfth century successor,
Abbot Suger, read it, his way of seeing the world was transformed. It is Sugers reading of The
Celestial Hierarchy which is of moment for the creation of Gothic architecture.
Bibliography
Cross, Frank L. and E. A. Livingstone, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2nd
ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Celestial Hierarchy
1.1 Procession and return (See footnote. Relate to the ascent of the soul in Plotinus.)
Light descending, enlightening and ascending to this end:
we need to rise from this outpouring of illumination so as to come to the simple ray of Light
itself. 121B
READ IN CLASS: last paragraph of ch. 1
The role of art: He [God] revealed all this to us in the sacred pictures of the scriptures so that he
might life us in spirit up through the perceptible to the conceptual, from sacred shapes and
symbols to the simple peaks of the hierarchies of heaven. 124A
What is the role of art? Is it a concession to our nature?
2.1 Drive imagery from our minds!
2.2 Beings so simple that we can neither know nor contemplate them.
-- Why give shape to the shapeless?
34 Karlfried Froehlich, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, Pseudo-Dionysius: The
Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibhed, Forward, notes, and translation collaboration by Paul Rorem, Preface by
Rene Roques, introductions by Jaroslav Pelikan, Jean Leclercq, and Farlfriend Froehlich (New York: Paulist Press,
1987), 34.

52

140A First, we lack the ability to be directly raised up to conceptual

contemplations.
Second, it is most fitting . . . that the sacred and hidden truth . . . be
concealed through the inexpressible . . . and be inaccessible to the hoi polli.
This, second, reason may at first seem elitist and prone to Gnosticism (explain)
which certainly at times has followed from it. We get a truer sense of this we think of it
through the metaphor of lovemaking between husband and wife. Intimacy is spoiled
through talking about it with others. And even if it is talked about, if it is talked about
truly, it is talked about in terms of the unique and ineffable.
2.3
--140D via negativa
141A-C How the material points to the transcendence of materiality. Again, the
concession to our nature.
Even amongst those lazily satisfied by base image the pious theologians
enabled that part of the soul which longs for the things above actually to rise up.
2.4.
--Even appetite for the material is a vector of our yearning for divine beauty and in the
total commitment to the real object of all desire. 144A-B
--Even the lowest form of matter is some echo of intelligible beauty.end of 144B
2.5. Ps.D. tells us that the reason he commenced this work was that he was troubled by the
Biblical depictions of heavenly beings (145A-B).
3.1 What we humans call the beatitude of God is something uncontaminated by dissimilarity. It
is full of a continuous light and is perfect, indeed, it lacks no perfection whatsoever.
Here we have introduced the explicit theme of purification, illumination, perfection, the
use and transformation of Aristotelian catharsis.165C
4.2. Angels enter into a more generous communion with the Deity (180A).
4.3
180C
--Sacred visions fashioned to suit the beholders Again accommodation to human frailty,
procession and return, the lexis that fills in the gaps of the logos.
--the formless God is represented in forms theophany
--Recipients of such visions are lifted p to the divine. They are granted divine
enlightenment and are somehow initiated in the divine things themselves.
53

--divine access, enlightenment, and communion

5
--heavenly beings are all called angels because of their common ability to enter into
communion with the light coming from God. Reminder: This is a philosophy of light.
The question addressed by the next chapters is how God can be known by humans. First (chapter
7), Dionysius discusses the first rank of heavenly beings whose apprehension of God is nearly
immediate. For the most part, the balance of the work can be said to explain how the light of God
is mediated to and eventually by human beings.
7.2 theosis 208C-D
7.3 first rank of heavenly minds is hierarchically directed by the source of all perfection. . . . It
becomes purified, illuminated and perfected in that it is unmixed with any weakness, filled with
the first of all light, and achieves perfection as a partaker of primary knowledge and
understanding.
In summary, we can reasonably say that purification, illumination, and perfection are all
three the reception of an understanding of the Godhead, namely, being completely purified of
ignorance by the proportionately granted knowledge of the more perfect initiatiions, being
illuminated by this same divine knowledge (through which it also purifies whatever was not
previously beheld but is now revealed through the more lofty enlightenement), and being also
perfected by this light in the understanding of the most lustrous initiations. 209C
7.4 The nourishing gifts of God bring oneness in unity without diversity. 212A
It [the Godhead] is the Cause and source beyond every source for every being and it
transcendently draws everything into its perennial embrace.
7.2 Art is essentially contemplative
7.3. Purification, illumination, and perfection are all three the reception of an understanding of
the Godhead.
7.4. How do these three occur?
212D It [the Godhead] is the Cause and source beyond every source for every being and it
transcendently draws everything into its perennial embrace.
8.1 The higher rank mediates the divinizing power (240A) to the ranks below (240B).
8.2 How the mediation occurs, direct participation and mediated participation (240C-D).

54

Image of Christus Pancrator

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Spas_vsederzhitel_sinay.jpg
Allegri: Miserere
St. Pauls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKvSzI8tT4U
New College, Oxford
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfmTIRN3efs&feature=related
Discuss transcendence (going beyond the present reality) and immanence (the present reality, the
here and now)!
240C-D The first intelligences perfect, illuminate, and purify those of inferior status in such a
fashion that the latter, having been lifted up through them to the universal and transcendent
source, thereby acquire their due share of the purification, illumination, and purification of the
One who is the source of all perfection.
IMPORTANT: Last paragraph 241C
241C-D This arrangement is copied by our own hierarchy which tries to imitate angelic beauty
as far as possible, to be shaped by it, as in images, and to be uplifted to the transcendent source
of all order and of all hierarchy.
--In other words, we are to be artworks shaped by mediated participation in God. (pros hen
analogy).
Housman: Loveliest of trees
Chapter Nine
260Dwhen the light is refused
All participation is not equal. (Reprise of Aristotle NE 6.4 Art is a productive state
rightly reasoned. In a sense, total irrationality would be non-existence. Everything insofar as it
exists has a logos, but not equally.
Chapter Ten
273C Participation : how the heavenly hierarchy is mirrored in each of us.
Chapter Eleven
284 D- Mediation

55

Chapter Twelve
READ CHAPTER TWELVE IN ENTIRETY: Why human hierarchs are called angels.
Artist as angel.
12.3
--293B Transcendental hiddenness of God: God hidden is more manifest than that which
is clearly revealed. (Analogy of contradiction)
--All intelligences are made for reunion with God through divine enlightenment.
Chapter Thirteen
13.1Purifying the interpreter
Philosophical Medication on Isaiah 6
Isaiah 6
King James Version (KJV)
Isaiah 6
1
In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up,
and his train filled the temple.
2

Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with
twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
3

And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is
full of his glory.
4

And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with
smoke.
5

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the
midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
6

Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken
with the tongs from off the altar:
7

And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is
taken away, and thy sin purged.

56

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then
said I, Here am I; send me.
9

And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed,
but perceive not.
10

Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see
with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be
healed.
11

Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant,
and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,
12

And the LORD have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the
land.
13

But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak,
whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance
thereof.
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%206&version=KJV: Accessed March 16,
2012.
13.2 purification by fire and rekindling obedience
13.3
--how the light is received:
-- on being initiated into the divine
-- how the divine light is received: The power of the Godhead spreads out everywhere,
penetrates all things irresistibly and yet remains inapparent to all, not only because it is
transcendentally above everything but also because it transmits all its providential
activities in an ungraspable way. Where we see goodness, truth, or beauty, we see God at
work. In other words, everyone is initiated into divine things
-- Procession of the light :Read from Let me make myself clearer . . . Important for
Gothic architecture.
--301C-D On Mediation
13.4

57

--Causality: Mediation is the instrument of cause, and thus also explains how
participation works (304C-D) pros hen analogy of being.
--305A-B purification through participation
--308A-B Again the emphasis on the rational character of this enterprise: It is up to your
intelligence and your critical understanding to decide on one or another of the solutions.
13.4 305A-B Purification through participation, mediation, from secrecy to mediation
Chapter Fourteen
A brief chapter: in a sense this is a response to Aristotles criticism of Plato on
multiplication of the Forms.
14.1
321A fragile and limited realm of our physical numbers
Chapter Fifteen
Ezekiel 1 in the background
15.2

Why fire? (Prometheus?)

This imagery of fire best expresses the way in which the intelligent beings of heaven are
like the Deity.
? Our God is a consuming fire. ? Hebrews 12:29
329A-B the hidden which illuminates (and thus the darkness which is brighter than light)
15.3
329C-332A: IMPORTANT: How senses relate to intelligence, and thus the metaphysical
significance of the physical sense, and, thus, also a response to Platos problem of the body.
Spiritual character of the physical anatomy. Here is a clear statement about the use of physical
language to express intelligible truths.
15.5. READ ALOUD
--explicit reference to architectural equipment
last line : correlation of physical signs and invisible reality.
15.6

clouds
holy and intelligent beings are filled in a transcendent way with hidden light.
58

15.7 colors as symbols 336C

15.9 wheels of the mind 337D
joy of heavenly ranks
Last line: to honor with respectful silence the hidden thing which are beyond me.
Perhaps it is that moment most of all which art should lead us.

Follow Celestial Hierarchy 15.5. with Hugh of St. Victor on symbolum

Reception of Pseudo-Dionysius in the Latin West
John Scottus Eriugena A.D. 800-877
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
1.3 The Translation of Pseudo-Dionysius
Despite the official ecclesiastical condemnations of On Predestination, for reasons that are not
known but are presumed to be political, Eriugena continued to have the protection and patronage
of King Charles the Bald, who, around 860, invited him to translate the writings of PseudoDionysius the Areopagite, a mysterious Christian Neoplatonist who purported to be Dionysius,
the first convert of St. Paul at Athens, but was more likely a late fifth or early sixth-century
Christian follower of Proclus. The Corpus Dionysii had been given a gift to Charles the Bald's
father, Louis the Pious, from the Byzantine Emperor Michael the Stammerer in 827, a gift
thought appropriate possibly because of a misidentification of Pseudo-Dionysius with the patron
saint of France, St. Denis. Hilduin had attempted an earlier translation in 832-5, but Eriugena's
version was most successful and remained in circulation until the thirteenth century when Jean
Sarrazin's translation replaced it.
The discovery of Dionysius had a profound effect on Eriugena's thinking. He enthusiastically
adopted the Areopagite's main ideas (many of which appear to be drawn from Proclus
Commentary on the Parmenides), e.g. the distinction between affirmative and negative theology,
according to which denials concerning God (e.g. God is not good [in the way we know
goodness]) are more true, (verior) better, more apt, than affirmations (God is good), as
well as the analysis of the divine names as applying only metaphorically (metaphorice,
transferre, per metaphoram) and not literally (proprie) to God, who is beyond all that is. For
Pseudo-Dionysius, we do not know God directly but know Him only through his theophaniai, or
divine appearances (Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, ch. 7, PG III 869c-d). We could, in
59

affirmative theology, attribute attributes to God, because He is the cause of all (aitia panton,
Mystical Theology, ch. 2, PG III 1000b), but in fact God in His nature is transcendent and
unknowable, he is the more-than-divine divinity, which Eriugena renders as superdeus deitas
in his translation (PL CXXII 1121c). Pseudo-Dionysius claims that God is the affirmation of all
things, the negation of all things, and beyond all affirmation and denial (in Eriugena's translation:
God is omnium positio, omnium ablatio, super omnem positionem et ablationem inter se invicem,
PL CXXII 1121 c-d).
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/#1.3 (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Introduction of Pseudo-Dionysius to the West

The Dionysian corpus came into prominence in the West through diplomatic exchanges which
occurred between the Carolingian court and Constantinople. These political meetings normally
were accompanied by an exchange of cultural gifts from each party and took place between the
years 756-840 C.E. (McCormick 25-34). One such gift was a Greek manuscript of the works of
Pseudo-Dionysius given by the Byzantine Emperor Michael the Stammerer to Louis the Pious at
Compiegne in 827 C.E.. Hilduin, abbot of St.-Denis, a monastery on the outskirts of Paris placed
under the patronage of Dionysius, saw this as an opportunity to increase the prestige of his
abbey. He first intention was to produce a translation of the corpus. Although the translation
itself was barely readable, Hilduin also composed a work entitled, Incipit passio sancto Dionysii
which drew on previous sources and firmly established the Dionysian legend in the West. He
argued that Dionysius was not only bishop of Athens but later bishop of Paris and was now
buried in the monastery of St.-Denis where he was the abbot. Hilduin's ultimate proof for this
was the miracles which had accompanied the gift of Pseudo-Dionysius' writings which indicated
the saint's own blessing. Though Pseudo-Dionysius already was viewed as an authoritative
figure, the Passio renewed his prominence among those in the West.
The work of John Scotus Eriugena served as the primary channel of Dionysian thought through
his translation of the corpus and appropriation of its content into a philosophical system. Due to
the unintelligibility of Hilduin's translation, Charles the Bald commissioned John Scotus
Eriugena to make a fresh translation in 862 C.E. Eriugena revised this translation several times
and the papal librarian, Anastasius brought out a further revision in 875 C.E. This translation of
the entire corpus was widely used in the twelfth century to understand Dionysian thought. In
addition, Eriugena added a commentary to the corpus and translated other works from Maximus
the Confessor and Gregory of Nyssa. His own thought was an attempt to harmonize East and
West in a new philosophy by incorporating the Greek sources into the Periphyseon. In many
cases Eriugena's thought and that of Pseudo-Dionysius went hand in hand.
In the first few decades of the twelfth century certain authors referred to the Dionysian corpus
through the works of Eriugena. At the School of Laon run by Anselm of Laon (d. 1117) and his
brother Ralph began compiling the Glosa Ordinaria, a compilation of quotations from various
authors around passages of scripture for the purposes of exegesis and clarification. Anselm and
Ralph were both fond of the writings of Eriugena placing quotes from his writings into the
60

Glosa. A second writer which brought attention to the Dionysian corpus in the early part of the
twelfth century is Honorius Augustudonensis (d. ca. 1140). He was a wondering scholar who was
highly influenced by the work of Eriugena. In fact, the Clavis physicae of Honorius is a summary
of Eriugena's own masterpiece Periphyseon. Through Eriugena Honorius and the brothers from
Laon appropriated some Dionysian themes into their writings, particularly insights into the
structure of the universe. In the following years the influence of Dionysius began to steadily
grow, increasing the popularity of the corpus.
Dionysian Thought at the Abbey of St.-Denis
It is undisputed that Suger, abbot of St. Denis (1122-1151) drew on Dionysian light mysticism
for the justification of the stained glass windows and symbolism throughout the abbey church
(Panofsky 19- 26). In his works, the De Administratione, the De Consecratione and the
Ordinatio there is a polemical description of the project which acts as a guide to the construction
of the building and its symbolism. Suger used Dionysian thought for the inspiration of the
symbolism as well as the justification for the elaborate nature of the project. The poem in De
Administratione 26 lies at the heart of his Dionysian framework for the symbolism of the
tympanum. Suger recorded the verses which were inscribed on the door. He states,
Whoever thou art, if thou seekest to extol the glory of these doors,
Marvel not at the gold and the expense but at the craftsmanship of the work.
Bright is the noble work; but, being nobly bright, the work
Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights,
To the True Light where Christ is the true door.
In what manner it be inherent in this world the golden door defines:
The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material
And, in seeing this light, is resurrected from is former submersion (Panofsky 479).
In the final two verses there is a clear Dionysian theme of the person rising through the various
hierarchies encoded in symbols from material to immaterial until union with the divine is
achieved.
The extent to which Pseudo-Dionysius thought was incorporated into the construction of the
abbey and Suger's own source for that thought have caused debate. Panofsky suggested that
Suger mined the Celestial Hierarchy and Eriugena's commentary for insight (Panofsky 18-19),
recently however scholars have looked to a more contemporary source for Suger's inspiration.
Hugh of St. Victor has been pointed to as the one who brought Dionysian thought to the attention
of Suger. Zinn and Rudolph have both argued that one can detect certain features of Hugh's own
thought interwoven into the design of the abbey (Zinn, "Suger" 33-40; Rudolph 32-47). One such
feature is the prominence of Christ in the symbolism. Christ has virtually no role to play in the
Dionysian writings, however, Hugh placed Christ at the center in his writings. The extent of the
influence of Hugh on Suger has not been fully explored, yet it points to the central role which St.
Victor played in the dissemination of Dionysian thought. Regardless, Suger's use of Dionysian
thought introduced new justifications for the art program at St.-Denis and its symbolism.

61

Dionysian thought was proliferated further through the abbey of St.-Denis by a new translation
from John Sarrazin. One of the few persons in the West who understood enough of the Greek
language to provide a translation. Sarrazin had already written a commentary on The Celestial
Hierarchies (1140 C.E.). William the Physician, a Provencal, returned to Paris from
Constantinople with new manuscripts of the Dionysian corpus and at the request of John of
Salisbury (Patrologia Latina 199.143-44) Sarrazin used them to improve on the translation of
Eriugena. His basic project was to eliminate the Hellenisms and Greek terms in order to simplify
the Latin of Eriugena's translation (Dondaine 30). Sarrazin's revision was completed in 1167 and
used extensively in the thirteenth century being referred to as the "new translation" of the
Dionysian corpus.

Dionysian Thought at the School of St. Victor

The school of St. Victor is primary in the development of Dionysian thought and its spread in the
twelfth century. The two main representatives of the school, Hugh and Richard, both
incorporated Dionysian themes into the mysticism they developed and both were highly
influential in certain areas of thought for the remaining of the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries.
Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1142) is the most significant source for the transmission and adaptation of
Dionysian categories in the early part of the twelfth century. He worked for several years on two
commentaries on The Celestial Hierarchies eventually combining them into one around 1137.
The finished commentary has been referred to as being Dionysian in its themes but Augustinian
in its tone (Baron 133). In it Hugh sets forth his understanding of symbol as "a collecting of
visible forms for the demonstration of invisible things" (Patrologia Latina 175.941B). This
statement communicates the basic Dionysian idea that symbols "demonstrate" the divine, acting
as "bridges between the experience of the senses and that which lies or reaches beyond" (Ladner
241). He next defines anagogy as an "ascension," "elevation of mind," or a "drawing above" to
higher things as the invisible comes through the visible (Patrologia Latina 175.941C; De
scripturis et scriptoribus, Patrologia Latina 175.12B). In Augustinian fashion he then classifies
symbols into those of nature and grace centering the image of grace on Christ, the Wisdom of
God. While Pseudo-Dionysius provides the framework, Augustine shifts some of the emphases
in that framework.
If the commentary is Dionysian in theme and Augustinian in tone, the exact opposite can be said
of Hugh's thought in general. Following Augustine, his contemplative ascent is an inward one
that integrates the Dionysian three stage ascent through the hierarchies. In the three treatises on
Noah's ark, Hugh describes the ark as a symbol which must be interiorized. As it is interiorized
one comes to participate in the hierarchies because the ark itself "demonstrates" the history of
salvation in the heart. Through this internalization the contemplative begins to move through
each stage. Hugh's first stage is an Augustinian addition to the three Dionysian stages of
purgation, illumination, and perfection. This is the stage of awakening and reveals a concern for
the sinfulness of humanity which does not enter the Dionysian corpus. Furthermore, Hugh
interprets the stage of purgation in ascetic and penitential terms rather than as the removal of
ignorance which Pseudo-Dionysius does. These emphases in Hugh indicate at least a partial
embracing of the Dionysian view of reality, albeit modified to fit with Augustinian categories
with Christ as the Wisdom of God at the pinnacle of the ascent and a doctrine of sin at its
beginning.
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Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) was highly influenced by Hugh's own use of Dionysian categories
and sought to employ them in a subtle manner in his mystical writings. Bonaventure tells us that
"Richard aimed at Dionysius in contemplation" (De redactione artium ad theologiam, Quaracchi
321), indicating somewhat contemporary opinion on the extent Richard's thought weaves
Dionysian themes into its fabric. Older scholars have tended to discount this aspect of Richard,
however, in recent studies it has been shown that Richard appropriated the corpus in a nuanced
manner. In his commentary on the book of Revelation (In apocalypsim joannes) Richard
constructs his basic understanding of symbols and anagogy borrowing extensively from Hugh.
He states, "symbol is the gathering together of visible forms to demonstrate invisible things.
Anagogy is the ascension or elevation of the mind contemplating the highest things" (Patrologia
Latina 196.687B). In the Mystical Notes on the Psalms anagogy is placed alongside the other
senses of scripture as the way in which the invisible things of God are perceived (Patrologia
Latina 196.370A).
These initial explorations using Dionysian categories are extended in the mature work De arca
mystica where Richard describes the contemplative ascent and its stages. The ark Richard has in
mind is not Noah's as in Hugh, but the ark of the tabernacle. In a recent study, Chase indicates
that Richard moves beyond the Dionysian dialectic of negative/positive into a coincidentia
oppositorum or coincidence of opposites (Chase 37-48). Building on the relationship of
dissimilar similarity, Richard uses this dialectic of opposites to express certain distinctions in the
contemplative quest. One example is the two cherubim which represent the final two stages in
Richard's exposition. They symbolize various opposites which are to be held in tension such as
consent to reason/contrary to reason and trinity/unity. Furthermore, between the cherubim lies
the space in which God speaks. Under the protection of their wings Richard expresses the desire
"to be led above ourselves...with so much alienation of soul that for a while our mind might
know nothing of itself while it is astounded as it is suspended in the viewing of such cherubim"
(De arca mystica 4.9; Patrologia Latina 196.143-44; Zinn, Richard 272) The ultimate goal here
is "alienation of mind" which leads to "contemplative ecstasy of mind" by means of "anagogic
endeavors" (De arca mystica 4.16; Patrologia Latina 196.155; Zinn, Richard 286-89). Here we
see the fruit of Richard's own appropriation of Dionysian categories.
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d'Alverny, M.-T. Alain de Lille: Textes Inedits. Edited with Introduction. Paris, 1965.
Baron, Roger. Etudes sur Hugues de Saint-Victor. Bruges, 1963.
Chenu, M.-D. Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological
Perspectives in the Latin West. Selected, edited, and translated by J. Taylor and L. Little.
Chicago, 1968.
Chevallier, Phillipe. Dionysiaca. 2 vols. Paris, 1937-49.

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Dondaine, H.F. Le corpus Dionysien de l'universite de Paris au XIIIe siecle. Rome: Edizioni de
Sturia e Litteratura, 1953.
Dronke, Peter. Fabula:Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism.
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Evans, G.R. Alan of Lille: The Frontiers of Theology in the Later Twelfth Century. Cambridge
University Press, 1983.
________. Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic Discipline.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.
Fuehrer, M.L. "The Principle of Similitude in Hugh of Saint Victor's Theory of Divine
Illumination." American Benedictine Review 30 (March 1979):80-92.
Gregory, Tullio. "The Platonic Inheritance." In A History of Twelfth Century Western philosophy.
Edited by P. Dronke. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Haring, N.M. "The Porretans and the Greek Fathers." Medieval Studies 15 (1953):181-209.
__________. Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and His School. Toronto:
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Healy, Patrick J. "The Mysticism of the School of St. Victor." Church History1 (1932):211-221.
Javelet, Robert. "Thomas Gallus et Richard de Saint-Victor, mystiques." Recherches de theologie
ancienne et medievale 29/30 (1962/63):206-33/88-121.
Knowles, David. "The Influence of Pseudo-Dionysius on Western Mysticism." In Christian
Spirituality: Essays in Honor of Gordon Rupp. Edited by P. Brooks. London: SCM Press, 1975:
81-94.
Ladner, G. "Medieval and Modern Understanding of Symbolism: A Comparison." Speculum 54
(April 1979):223-56.
Leclercq, Jean. "Influence and Noninfluence of Dionysius in the Western Middle Ages." In
Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid. New York: Paulist Press,
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Lubac, Henri. de. Exegese medievale. 2 vols. Paris, 1959-64.

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McCormick, Michael. "Diplomacy and the Carolingian Encounter with Byzantium down to the
Accession of Charles the Bald," in Eriugena: East and West: Papers of the Eighth International
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18-20 October 1991. Edited by B. McGinn and W. Otten. University of Notre Dame Press: Notre
Dame, 1994.
McGinn, Bernard. "Pseudo-Dionysius and the Early Cistercians." in One Yet Two: Monastic
Tradition, East and West. Edited by B. Pennington. Cistercian Publications: Kalamazoo,
1976:200-241.
Migne, J.P. Patrologiae Latinae. Vols. 1-220. Paris, 1855 (see also Patrologia Latina Database,
Chadwyck-Healey Inc., 1994).
Panofsky, Erwin. Abbot Suger: On the Abbey Church of St.- Denis and its Art Treasures. Second
Edition. Princeton, 1979.
Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid. New York: Paulist Press,
1987.
Roques, Rene. Structures theologiques: de la Gnose a Richard de Saint-Victor. Essais et analyses
critiques. Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes: Section des sciences religieuses, 72. Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1962.
___________. L'univers dionysienne. Structure hierarique du monde selon le Pseudo-Denys.
Paris, 1954.
Rorem, Paul. Biblical and Liturgical Symbols within the Pseudo-Dionysian Synthesis. Toronto:
Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984.
_________. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their
Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
_________. "The Uplifting Spirituality of Pseudo-Dionysius." In Christian Spirituality: Origins
to the Twelfth Century. Vol. 16 of World Spirituality, edited by B. McGinn, J. Meyendorff, and J.
Leclercq. New York: Crossroad, 1989: 132-51.
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Weatherbee, Winthrop. Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century: The Literary Influence of
the School of Chartres. Princeton, 1972.
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http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/culture/philos/coulter.html
Seeing the Invisible
Discuss word renaissance.
Carolingian Renaissance Twelfth Century Renaissance
It is interesting that interest in Dionysius revives in those two centuries and that almost no notice
is taken of him in the intervening period.
Charlemagne A.D. 742-814. (Show slides of Germigny des pres and Fleury)
Prior work of Hilduin, abbot St. Denis, d. November 22, A.D. 840, translated Celestial
Hierarchy and wrote a biography in which he identified Dionysius the Areopagite of Acts who,
by legend, became first the bishop of Athens and with, two hundred years later, the first bishop
of Paris where he was martyred for his faith.
John Scottus Eriugena c. A.D. 800-877
Overall, Eriugena develops a Neoplatonic cosmology according to which the infinite,

transcendent and unknown God, who is beyond being and non-being, through a
process of self-articulation, procession, or self-creation, proceeds from his divine
66

darkness or non-being into the light of being, speaking the Word who is understood
as Christ, and at the same timeless moment bringing forth the Primary Causes of all
creation. These causes in turn proceed into their Created Effects and as such are
creatures entirely dependent on, and will ultimately return to, their sources, which are
the Causes or Ideas in God. These Causes, considered as diverse and infinite in
themselves, are actually one single principle in the divine One. The whole of reality or
nature, then, is involved in a dynamic process of outgoing (exitus) from and return
(reditus) to the One. God is the One or the Good or the highest principle, which
transcends all, and which therefore may be said to be the non-being that transcends
being. In an original departure from traditional Neoplatonism, in his
dialogue Periphyseon, this first and highest cosmic principle is called nature (natura)
and is said to include both God and creation.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/: accessed March 21, 2012.
Scot in this sense means Irish. Pre-eminent Latin philosopher in period from Boethius to
Anselm. Knew Greek (but how?) and translated Greek works into Latin.
Called to Carolingian court where he was asked to translate the works of Pseudo-Dionysius, on
the premise that The writings of St. Denis, therefore, were important for the authority and
prestige not only of the monastery which bore his name but also to the Holy Roman Emperor
who was, at this point in history, a Frankish and Carolingian monarch. Eriugena did not merely
translate as Hilduin had, but also wrote a commentary on the work, and, further, adopted the
philosophical principles of Pseudo-Dionysius.
(For those with pious concerns, it might be well to note that Eriugenas most important and
famous work, the Periphyseonwhich means about nature by which Eriugena meant
everything, including Godwas on the Churchs Index of Forbidden Books during the entire
existence of that list, i.e., A.D. 1687-1966. There is some question about what the status of the
Index is today.)
Procession from God and return to God is not only revelatory of the divine being, but also
causal.
Hugh of St. Victor A.D. 1178-1141
Online works in English:
http://www.archive.org/stream/hughofsaintvicto012978mbp/hughofsaintvicto012978mbp_djvu.t
xt
Between Eriugena and Hugh only a few authors took any notice of Dionysius, but interest
picked up in the twelfth century, especially in Chartres and Paris.
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Rorem, Early Latin Dionysius, 604.

Hugh also shared the view that the three Dionysii were really one.
Used Eruigenas translation, on the whole gave a faithful exposition, not inserting himself.
Important exception: Love Above Knowledge Hugh of St. Victor followed this motif.
A symbol, as defined by Hugh of St. Victor, a theologian of the 12th century, is a gathering
together of physical forms in order to demonstrate invisible ones.35
Suger and St. Bernard: The Abbey churches of St. Denis and Fontenay
There Dagobert I, king of the Franks, who reigned from 628 to 637, founded the Abbey of Saint Denis, attached to
a Benedictine monastery. http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/paris-st-denis

Hilduin of St. Denis

Clovis I 466-511
The abbey at Saint-Benot-sur-Loire (originally known as Fleury Abbey) was founded around 630-50 [Merovingian
period] . But its history really begins in 672 or 673, when some of its monks traveled to Montecassino Abbey in Italy,
dug up the remains of St. Benedict of Nursia (d. 547) and his sister St. Scholastica and brought them home. The
relics were interred at Fleury Abbey, which was renamed Saint-Benot-sur-Loire ("St. Benedict on the Loire").
The coup was made possible by the earlier sack of Montecassino by the Lombards, after which it lay in desolated
ruins for over a century (581-714). There is some evidence that in 749, a bit of the relics were returned to their
original home at the request of Pepin the Short and the pope. Either way, Saint-Benot became a major place of
pilgrimage due to its possession of the mortal remains of the Father of Western Monasticism (and current patron saint
of Europe).
The renown of Saint-Benot Abbey was further enhanced by the able leadership of Abbot Gaucelin, an illegitimate
son of King Hugh Capet, who began serving in 1004. He established an influential abbey school and began
construction on a new abbey church. The west tower, still known as Tour de Gauzlin after its patron abbot, was begun
in 1020.
The church that stands today was begun around 1071. There was a destructive fire in 1095, but the church was
complete enough for it to be dedicated on March 21, 1108. Construction continued to about 1130. The nave was
either rebuilt or completed later; it has been dated to the late 12th century. The nave vault is one of the few Gothic
elements, added in the early 13th century. Also from this period is the richly-sculptured north portal.
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/france/saint-benoit-sur-loire-abbey-fleury

35 Symbolum est collatio formarum visibilium ad invisibilium demonstrationem. Patrologia Latina 175,
p. 941 B quoted in Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), 32. At
some point in the history of usage collatio rises to the meaning of analogy. Hugh of St. Victor was probably not
using collatio in that sense, and yet his definition of symbolum has an analogical aspect to it which I have found
suggestive for my discussion here.

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1. John Scot Eriugena (A.D. 800-877) as a philosopher of Gothic architecture in the Age of
Romanesque
2. Sugers interest in a new kind of architecture was part of his response to St. Bernards attack
on Cluniac architecture, i.e. late Romanesque. In an odd but true sense, we can speak of Gothic
architectures beginning as a reform and even as a reform with an ascetical edge.
--an odd point: the modern reading of St. Bernard is that he is the arch-conservative, but, in fact,
it was Romanesque architecture which old-fashioned and St. B. who was the innovator, the
Cutting-edge thinker.
Window into second quarter of the twelfth century, the novel: Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard.
Transition Architecture: From Romanesque to Gothic
--St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153): abbot of Clairvaux from 1115. Most of the secondary
literature which treats St. Bernard in general terms suppose him to be an arch conservative. In
fact, he was a radical reformer and cutting edge thinkerthough that did not prevent from
opposing other cutting edge thinkers. That, however, is not unusual. A great deal of philosophy
has a polemical edge.
--Peter the Venerable (1092-1156): abbot of Cluny from 1122, which made him the head of an
order of Benedictine houses numbering more than two thousand. Though a much more
sympathetic figure to the typical modern reader, Peter was the conservative defender of the
status quo.
--Suger (1081-1151): abbot of St. Denis from 1122. Construction of new abbey church 11371144. In many ways, Suger was the least likely of the three to apply Neo-Platonism to
architecture. The place of Abbey of St. Denis in the life of France and in relation to the
monarchy. Suger as an old schoolmate of Louis VI. Made regent of France during the Second
Crusade when Louis VII was in the Holy Land.
From John Scot Eriugena:
It is impossible for our mind to rise to the imitation and contemplation of the celestial
hierarchies unless it relies upon the material guidance which is commensurate to it. . . . The
material lights, both those which are produced on earth by human artifice, are images of the
intelligible lights, and above all of the True Light itself in order that they may journey through
true light to The True Light.
Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 24
In many ways, Suger was the least likely of the three to apply Neo-Platonism to architecture.
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Suger:
When, out of affection for the Church, we contemplate these new and old ornaments, seeing
that admirable cross of St. Eloi, the lesser crosses, and that incomparable ornament commonly
called "the crest" all placed on the golden altar, I say, sighing right down to my heart, "Every
precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the jaspar, the chrysolite and the
onyx, and the beryl, the sapphire and the carbuncle, and the emerald" (Ez. 28:13). Those familiar
with the properties of gems note to their astonishment that no type except the carbuncle is
lacking here, but rather all abound in great number.
Thus sometimes when, because of my delight in the beauty of the house of God, the multicolor
loveliness of the gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation,
transporting me from material to immaterial things, has persuaded me to examine the diversity of
holy virtues, then I seem to see myself existing on some level, as it were, beyond our earthly one,
neither completely in the slime of earth nor completely in the purity of heaven. By the gift of
God I can be transported in an anagogical manner from this inferior level to that superior one.
Suger, On His Administration
Suger had been abbot of St. Denis for five years when St. B. sent him the following letter
LETTER XIX (A.D. 1127)
To Suger, Abbot of S. Denis
He praises Suger, who had unexpectedly renounced the pride and luxury
of the world to give himself to the modest habits of the religious
life. He blames severely the clerk who devotes himself rather to the
service of princes than that of God.
1. A piece of good news has reached our district; it cannot fail to do
great good to whomsoever it shall have come. For who that fear God,
hearing what great things He has done for your soul, do not rejoice and
wonder at the great and sudden change wrought by the Right Hand of the
Most High. Everywhere your courage is praised in the Lord; the gentle
hear of it and are glad, and even those who do not know you, [22] but
have only heard of you, what you were and what you are now, wonder and
glorify God in you. But what adds still more to their admiration and
joy is that you have been able to make your brethren partake of the
counsel of salvation poured upon you from above, and so to fulfil what
we read, Let him that heareth say, Come (Rev. xxii. 17), and that What
I tell you in darkness that speak ye in light, and what ye hear in the
ear that preach ye upon the house tops (S. Matt. x. 27). So a soldier
intrepid in war, or rather a general full of bravery and devotedness,
when he sees almost all his soldiers turned to flight and falling
everywhere under the hostile blades, although he may see that he would
be able to escape alone, yet he prefers to die with those, without whom
he would think it shame to live. He holds firm on the field of battle
and combats bravely; he ranges, sword in hand, along the ranks, through
the bloody blades which seek him; he terrifies his adversaries and
reanimates his followers with all his powers of voice and gesture.

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Wherever the enemy press on more boldly and there is danger of his
friends giving ground, there he is present; the enemy who strikes he
opposes, the friend who sinks exhausted he succours; and he is the more
prepared to die for each one, that he despairs to save them all. But
while he makes heroic efforts to hinder and to stop the pursuers who
press upon his followers, he raises as best he can those who are fallen
and recalls those who have taken flight. Nor is it rare that his
splendid valour procures a safety as welcome as unhoped for, throws
into confusion the hostile ranks, forces them to fly from those whom
they were pursuing, and overcomes those who bore themselves almost as
victors, so that they who a little before were struggling for life are
now rejoicing in victory.
2. But why do I compare an event so profoundly religious to things
secular, as if examples were wanting to us from religion itself? Was
not Moses quite certain of what God had promised him, that if, indeed,
the people over whom he ruled should have perished, he himself should
not only not perish with them, but should be besides the chief of a
great nation? Nevertheless, with what affection, with what zeal, with
what bowels of piety did he strive to save his people from the wrath of
God? And, finally, interposing himself on behalf of the offenders, he
cries: If Thou wilt forgive their sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray
Thee, out of Thy book which Thou hast written (Exod. xxxii. 32). What a
devoted advocate! who, because he does not seek his own interests,
easily obtains everything which he seeks. What a benign chief, who,
binding together his people with bonds of charity as the head is united
with the members, will either save them with himself or else encounter
the same danger as they! Jeremiah, also bound [23] inseparably to his
people, but by the bond of compassion, not by sympathy for their
revolt, quitted voluntarily his native soil and his own liberty [24] to
embrace in preference the common lot of exile and slavery. He was free
to remain in his own country had he chosen, while others must remove,
but he preferred to be carried away captive with his people, to whom he
knew that he could render service even in captivity. Paul, animated
beyond doubt by the same spirit, desired that he might be anathema even
from Christ Himself for his brethren (Romans ix. 3). He experienced in
his own heart how true is that saying, Love is as strong as death,
jealousy is cruel as the grave (Cant. viii. 6). Do you see of whose
great examples you have shown yourself an imitator? But I add one more
whom I had almost passed over, that of the holy king David, who,
perceiving and lamenting the slaughter of his people, wished to devote
himself for them, and desired that the Divine vengeance should be
transferred to himself and to his father's house (2 Sam. xxiv. 17).
3. But who made you aspire to this degree of perfection? I confess that
though I earnestly desired to hear such things of you, I never hoped to
see it come to pass. Who would have believed that you would reach, so
to speak, by one sudden bound, the practice of the highest virtues, and
approach the most exalted merit? Thus we learn not to measure by the
narrow proportions of our faith and hope the infinite pity of God,
which does what It will and works upon whom It will, lightening the
burden which It imposes upon us, and hastening the work of our
salvation. What then? the zeal of good people blamed your errors at
least, if not those of your brethren: it was against your excesses more
than theirs that they were moved with indignation; and if your brothers
in religion groaned in secret, it was less against your entire
community than against you; it was only against you that they brought

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their accusation. You corrected your faults, and their criticisms had
no longer an object; your conversion at once stilled the tumult of
accusation. The one and only thing with which we were scandalized was
the luxury, the pride, the pomp, which followed you everywhere. [25] At
length you laid down your pride, you put off your splendid dress, and
the universal indignation ceased at once. Thus you had at the same time
satisfied those who complained of you, and even merited our praises.
For what in human doings is deserving of praise, if this is not
considered most worthy of admiration and approval? It is true that a
change so sudden and so complete is not the work of man, but of God. If
in heaven the conversion of one sinner arouses great joy, what gladness
will the conversion of an entire community cause, and of such a
community as yours?
4. That spot so noble by its antiquity and the royal favour, was made
to serve the convenience of worldly business, and to be a meeting-place
for the royal troops. They used to render to Caesar the things which
were Caesar's promptly and fully; but not with equal fidelity did they
render the things of God to God. I speak what I have heard, not what I
have seen: the very cloister itself of your monastery was frequently,
they say, crowded with soldiers, occupied with the transaction of
business, resounding with noise and quarrels, and sometimes even
accessible even to women. How, in the midst of all that, could place be
found for thoughts of heaven, for the service of God, for the interests
of the spiritual life? But now there is leisure for God's service, for
practising self-restraint and obedience, for attention to sacred
reading. Consider that silence and constant quiet from all stir of
secular things disposes the soul to meditation on things above. And the
laborious exercise of the religious life and the rigour of abstinence
are lightened by the sweetness of psalms and hymns. Penitence for the
past renders lighter the austerity of the new manner of life. He who in
the present gathers the fruits of a good conscience, feels in himself a
desire for future good works, which shall not be frustrated, and a
well-founded hope. The fear of the judgment to come gives way to the
pious exercise of brotherly charity, for love casteth out fear (1 S.
John iv. 18). The variety of holy services drives far away weariness
and sourness of temper, and I repeat these things to the praise and
glory of God, who is the Author of all; yet not without praise to
yourself as being His co-worker in all things. He was able, indeed, to
do them without you, but He has preferred to have you for the sharer of
His works, that He might have you for the sharer of His glory also. The
Saviour once reproached certain persons because they made the house of
prayer a den of thieves (S. Matt. xxi. 13). He will doubtless then have
in commendation the man who has accomplished the task of freeing His
holy place from the dogs, of rescuing His pearl from the swine; by
whose ardour and zeal the workshop of Vulcan is restored to holy
studies, or rather the house of God is restored to Him from being a
synagogue of Satan to be that which it was before.
5. If I recall the remembrance of past evils it is not in order to cast
confusion or reproach on any one, but from the comparison with the old
state of things to make the beauty of the new appear more sharply and
strikingly; because there is nothing which makes the present good shine
forth more clearly than a comparison with the evils which preceded it.
As we recognize similar things from similar, so things which are unlike
either please or displease more when compared with their opposites.
Place that which is black beside that which is white, and the

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juxtaposition of the two colours makes each appear more marked. So, if
beautiful things are put beside ugly, the former are rendered more
beautiful, the ugliness of the latter is more apparent. That there may
be no occasion of offence or confusion, I am content to repeat with the
Apostle: Such, indeed, ye were, but ye are washed, ye are sanctified (1
Cor. vi 11). Now, the house of God ceases to open to people of the
world, there is no access to sacred precincts for the curious; no
gossip about trifling things with the idle; the chatter of boys and
girls is no longer heard. The holy place is open and accessible only to
the children of Christ, of whom it is said: Behold I and the children
whom the Lord hath given me (Isaiah viii. 18). It is reserved for the
praises of God and the performance of sacred vows with due care and
reverence. How gladly do the martyrs, of whom so great a number ennoble
that place, listen to the loud songs of these children, to whom they in
turn reply no less with a voice of charity: Praise, O ye servants of
the Lord, praise the name of the Lord (Ps. cxiii. 1), and again, Sing
praises to our God, sing praises, sing praises to our King, sing
praises (Ps. xlvii. 6).
6. When your breasts are beaten with penitent hands, and your pavements
worn with your knees, your altars heaped with vows and devout prayers,
your cheeks furrowed with tears; when groans and sighs resound on all
sides and the sacred roofs echo with spiritual songs instead of worldly
pleadings, there is nothing which the citizens of heaven more love to
look upon, nothing is more agreeable to the eyes of the Heavenly King.
For is not this what is said: The sacrifice of praise shall honour me
(Ps. l. 23)? O, if any one had his eyes opened, as were those of the
prophet's servant at his prayer! He would doubtless see (2 Kings vi.
17) The princes go before, joined with the minstrels in the midst of
the players on timbrels (Ps. lxvii. 26, Vulg.). We should see, I say,
with what care and ardour they assist at the chants, and at the prayers
how they unite themselves with those who meditate, they watch over
those who repose, they preside over those who order and care for all.
The powers of heaven fully recognise their fellow-citizens; they
earnestly rejoice, comfort, instruct, protect, and provide for all
those who take the heritage of salvation, at all times. How happy I
esteem myself while I am still in this world to hear of these things,
although I am absent and do not see them! But your felicity, my
brethren, to whom it is given to bear part in them, far surpasses mine,
and blessed above all is he whom the Author of all good has deigned to
make the chief worker of so good a work; it is you, my dear friend,
whom with justice I congratulate for this, that you have brought about
all which I so greatly admire.
7. You are wearied, perhaps, with my praises, but you ought not to be
so; they are far different from the flatteries of those who call evil
good and good evil (Isaiah v. 20), and so please a person to lead him
into error. Sweet but perilous is the praise when the wicked is praised
in the desire of his heart, and the unjust is blessed (Ps. ix. 3,
Vulg.). The warmth of my praises comes from charity, and does not once
pass, as I believe, the limits of truth. He is safely praised, who is
praised in the Lord, that is, in the truth. I have not called evil
good, but have pointed out as evil what was evil. But if I boldly raise
my voice against that which is evil, ought I to be silent in presence
of good, and not give my testimony to it? That would be to show myself
an envious critic, not a corrector; and to prefer to mangle rather than
to mend, if I am silent as to good and raise my voice only about evil.

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The just reproves in mercy, the wicked flatters in impiety; the one
that he may cure, the other in order to hide that which needs to be
cured. Do not be afraid that those among us who in the fear of the Lord
praise you will pour upon your head that ointment of the sinner with
which they were wont to anoint you. I praise you because you are doing
right. But I do not flatter you; I only accomplish in your case, by the
gift of God, those words of the Psalmist: Those who fear Thee shall see
me and shall rejoice, because I have hoped in Thy word (Ps. cxix. 74);
and again: Many shall show forth his wisdom (Ecclus. xxxix. 10). It is,
then, your wisdom which more praised than blamed the former folly.
8. I would that you should take pleasure in the praises of such as fear
just as much to flatter vice as to depreciate virtue. That is the true
praise, which, as it is wont to extol nothing but what is good, so it
knows not how to caress what is evil. All other is pretended praise,
but really blame, which Scripture refers to: The sons of men are vain;
they are deceitful upon the weights, so that they deceive even more
than vanity (Ps. lxii. 10). Such are altogether to be avoided according
to the counsel of the wise man: My son, if sinners entice thee consent
thou not (Prov. i. 10), since their milk and their oil, though they be
sweet, are poisonous and deadly. Their words, he says (that is, those
of flatterers), are softer than oil, and yet are they very swords (Ps.
lv. 21). The righteous has oil, too, but of mercy, of sanctification,
of spiritual joy. He has wine, which he pours into the wounds of the
haughty soul. But for the soul of him that mourns, and for him of
contrite heart, he has the oil of mercy, with which he is wont to
soften its sorrow. Where he corrects, he pours in wine; when he
soothes, oil; but wine without bitterness, and oil without guile. Thus,
not every praise is flattery, nor every blame mixed with rancour.
Blessed is he who can say: Let the righteous smite me in mercy, and
reprove me: but let not the oil of the sinner break my head (Ps. cxli.
5), which when you have put far from you, you have shown yourself
worthy of the oil and wine of the saints.
9. Let the children of Babylon seek for themselves pleasant mothers,
but pitiless, who will feed them with poisoned milk, and soothe them
with caresses which will make them fit for everlasting flames; but
those of the Church, fed at the breasts of her wisdom, having tasted
the sweetness of a better milk, already begin to grow up in it unto
salvation, and being fully satiated with it they cry: Thy fulness is
better than wine, Thy fragrance than the sweetest ointments (Cant. i.
1, 2). This to their mother. But, then, having tasted and known how
sweet the Lord is, how truly the best of fathers, they say to Him: How
great is Thy goodness, O Lord, which Thou hast laid up for them that
fear Thee (Ps. xxxi. 19). Now my whole desire is accomplished. Formerly
when I saw with regret with what avidity you sucked in [26] from the
lips of flatterers their mortal poison, the seed of sin, I used, with
grief, to desire better things for you, saying: Who shall give thee to
me, my brother, who sucked the breasts of my mother (Cant. viii. 1)?
Far from thee henceforth be those men with caresses and dishonest
praises, who bless you before your face and expose you at the same time
to the reproach and derision of all men, whose applause in your
presence is the world's by-word, or rather makes you a by-word to the
world. If they murmur even now, say to them: If I yet pleased you, I
should not be the servant of Christ (Gal. i. 10). Those whom we please
in evil things we cannot please in good things, unless they are
themselves changed, and begin to hate what we were, and so at length to

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love what we are.

10. In our time two new and detestable abuses have arisen in the
Church, of which one (permit me to say it) was no stranger to you when
you lived in forgetfulness of the duties of your profession; but this,
thanks to God, has been amended to His glory, to your everlasting gain,
to our joy and an example to all. God is able to bring about that we
may soon be consoled for the second of these evils, the odious novelty
of which I do not dare to speak of in public, and yet am afraid to pass
over in silence. My grief urges my tongue to speak, but fear restrains
the words; fear only lest I may offend some one if I speak openly of
what troubles me, since truth sometimes makes enemies. But for enmity
of this kind thus incurred I hear the truth consoling me. It is
needful, he says, that offences should come. And I do not think that
those words which follow, Woe to that man by whom the offence cometh
(S. Matt. xviii. 7) concern me. For when vices are attacked and a
scandal results thence, it is not he who makes the accusation who is to
answer for the scandal, but he who renders it necessary. In short, I am
neither more cautious in word nor circumspect in action than he who
says, "It is better that a scandal should arise than that the truth be
compromised" (S. Greg. Magn. Hom. 7 in Ezech. near the beginning, and
S. Aug. de Lib. Arbitr. et de Prdest. sanctor.). Although I know not
what advantage it would be were I to hold my tongue about that which
all the world proclaims with a loud voice, nor can I alone pretend to
overlook the pest whose ill odour is in all nostrils, and not dare to
guard my own nose from its ill effect.
11. For whose heart is not indignant, and whose tongue does not murmur
either openly or secretly to see a deacon equally serving God and
Mammon, [27] against the precept of the Gospel heaping up
ecclesiastical dignities, so that he seems not to be inferior to
Bishops, yet so mixed up in military offices that he is preferred even
to Dukes. What monster is this, that being a clerk, and wishing at the
same time to appear a soldier, is neither? It is equally an abuse that
a deacon should serve at the table of the King, and that the server of
the King should minister at the altar during the holy mysteries. Is it
not a wonder, or rather a scandal, to see the same person clothed in
armour march at the head of armed soldiery, and vested in alb and stole
read the Gospel in the midst of the Church; at one time give the signal
for battle with the trumpet, and at another convey the orders of the
Bishop to the people? Unless, perhaps, that man (which would be
scandalous) is ashamed of the Gospel of which S. Paul, that Vessel of
election, was so proud? Perhaps he is ashamed to appear a cleric, and
thinks it more honourable to be supposed a soldier, preferring the
Court to the Church, the table of the King to the Altar of Christ, and
the cup of demons to the chalice of Christ. This seems the more
probable, because he is prouder (they say) to be called by the name of
that one post which he has obtained at the palace than by any of those
titles of ecclesiastical dignities which, in defiance of the canons, he
has heaped upon himself, and instead of delighting to be called
Archdeacon, Dean, or Provost to his various Churches, he prefers to be
styled Dapifer to H.M. the King. O, unheard of and hateful perversity!
thus to prefer the title of servant of a man to that of the servant of
God, and to consider the position of an official of an earthly king one
of higher dignity than that of an heavenly! He who prefers military
warfare to the work of the ministry places the world before the Church,
is convicted of preferring human things to Divine, earthly to heavenly.

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Is it then more honourable to be called the King's Dapifer than Dean or

Archdeacon? It may be to a layman, not to a cleric; to a soldier, not
to a deacon.
12. It is a strange but blind ambition to delight more in the lowest
things than in the highest, and that the man whose lines had fallen to
him in pleasant places should recreate himself upon a dunghill with
eager desire, and count his precious lands as nothing worth. This man
mingles the two orders and cunningly abuses each. Military pomps
delight him, but not the risks and labours of warfare; the revenues of
religion, but not its duties. Who does not see how great is the
disgrace, as much to the State as to the Church? for just as it is no
part of clerical duty to bear arms at the pay of the King, so it is no
part of the royal duties to administer lay affairs by means of clerics.
[28] What king has ever put at the head of his army an unwarlike clerk
instead of some brave soldier? What clerk, again, has ever thought it
otherwise than unworthy of him to be bound to obey any lay person
whatsoever? The very sign which he bears upon his head [29] is rather
the mark of royalty than of servitude; on the other hand, the throne
finds a better support in the force of arms than in chanting of Psalms.
Still, if the abasement of the one contributes to the greatness of the
other, as is sometimes the case; if, for example, the humiliation of
the King raised higher the dignity of the priest, or the abasement of
the clerk added something to the royal honour; as it happens, for
instance, if a woman of noble rank marries a man of the people, she
indeed loses in grade by him, but he gains by her; if, then, I say,
either the King had advantage from the clerk, or the clerk from the
King, it would be an evil only in part, and perhaps ought to be borne
with; but, on the contrary, since there is no gain to either from the
humiliation of the other, but there is loss to each; since neither does
it become a cleric, as has been said, to be or to be called the server
of the King; nor is it for the King's advantage to put the reins of
government into any but strong and brave hands. Truly then it is
strange that either power endures such a man as this; that the Church
does not repulse the deacon-soldier, or the State the
prince-ecclesiastic.
13. I had wished to inculcate these principles by still stronger and
more detailed arguments, and perhaps ought to do so, did not the
necessary limits of a letter oblige me to defer this for the present;
and because, most of all, I fear to offend you, I have spared a man for
whom, it is said, you had formerly a great regard. I would not that you
should have a friend at the expense of the truth. But you have still a
friendship for him; show yourself a true friend, and exert yourself to
make him, too, a friend of the Truth. Then at length there will be a
true friendship between you, if it is bound together by a common love
of truth. And if he will not yield to you in this, hold fast what you
have; join the tail to the head of the sacrifice. You have received by
the grace of God a robe of many colours; take pains to make it reach
even to the feet, for what will it profit you to have put your hand to
the work if (which, God forbid) you do not attain finally to presevere?
I end my letter by warning you to make a good ending of your good work.

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Ps.D. CH 15.5 (333C) A discerning mind would not be hard put to find a correlation between
visible signs and invisible reality.
15.7 symbolism of metals and colored stones
15.8 animal figures
15.9 rivers, wheels chariots.

The Neo-Platonic Synthesis in Philosophy and Art: Art Mediating the Intelligible to the Soul
Plato:
Phaedrus
Symposium
Socrates of the Republic drive poets out of Kallipolisthe beautiful city. He also
explains why art is inimical to truth, namely that images are three levels of reality lower than the
Forms and images are so beautiful that they often distract people from pursuing reality at the
highest level. Socrates is concerned with that which is beautiful, thus his Kallipolis, but he
wants humans to exercise their rational souls in order to be able to apprehend beauty as an
eternal reality and not merely in beautiful things of fleeting existence.
Although the term hierarchy will not be invented until centuries later by PseudoDionysius, in the Divided Line presented by Socrates of the Republic, there is a hierarchy of
reality from images to the Good which rules the intelligible realm. There is also the division of
reality into sensible and intelligible and a presentation of how the sensible is related to and, in
fact, dependent upon the intelligible.
Aristotle:
Poetics: Imitation is inherent to human nature. It is a good that reminds us of that which it
imitates. Art also serves a purpose as catharsis.
Nicomachean Ethics: On the other hand, Aristotle rejects the Platonic doctrine of the
Forms and in that rejection he includes the doctrine of participation.
Aristotle tells us that intellectual qualities as well as moral qualities are virtues,
excellences and in respect to the intellectual virtues, one can come to truth either through
affirmation or denial (NE6.1139b15-17), that is to say kataphatically or apophatically. After all,
as Heraclitus first observes, the road up and the road down are one and the same (D.-K.
Heraclitus B76). He gives us a definition of art: a productive state, truly reason with respect to
the variable (NE 6.1040a20-22). He also gives us the first philosophy of art in his Poetics.
Although the Platonic and Aristotelian teachings about the soul are not identical, they
have far more in common than they do in contra-distinction. What is especially important for us
to notice is that for both thinkers, the rational soul comprises both rational and non-rational
elements. There aspects of the human soul which are non-rational without being irrational. The
rational soul, which Plato and Aristotle called simply the soul, is not merely spiritual as it is so
77

often understood in modernity, rather it is primarily rational. In this context, Aristotle also gives
us a well-developed notion of rational contemplation (NE 10.1177a11-19, 1177b261178a8).
Thereby, Aristotle, at very least, suggests that there is a n order of reality which can only be
attained non-discursively.

Those are, more or less, the components of the problematic inherited by Plotinus.
We call Plotinus the founder of Neo-Platonism, that is to say of the new school of Platonic
philosophy. In fact, however, Neo-Platonism is a synthesis of Platonic and Aristotelian
philosophy. In many respects, Neo-Platonism resolves the challenges of the one philosopher in
terms of the other. Though Plotinus understood himself as a Platonist, he gives usas Fr.
OBrien observesPlato as he ought to have been rather than as he was. That is to say, even in
Platonic terms Plotinus advances the ideas and arguments which he finds in Platos texts.
For example, Plotinus
--answers Aristotles challenge to the Forms by elaborating them as eternal Ideas always
being thought within the divine intelligence.
--answers Socrates of the Republic with respect to the problem of images by adopting
Aristotles view that imitation reminds us of that which is imitated, and thus imitation need not
be understood as a distraction from reality rather as an aid to discovering higher order reality.
One theme which Plotinus develops, probably following ideas found in Platos Symposium is the
idea of the lover as the one who can know higher order reality as fully as humanly possible. This
is a theme which persists throughout Neo-Platonic philosophy and which will be taken up in our
final text by the twentieth century Thomist, Josef Pieper, Only the Lover Sings. This is an idea
which becomes extremely important in the western reception of Pseudo-Dionysius in the
formulation of Hugh of St. Victor, Love surpasses knowledge. In fact, this formulation is
valuable to remind us that Neo-Platonists claim there is a realm of reality which transcends
scientific knowledge and which cannot be spoken of discursively, making necessary the kind of
logic I have called the analogy of contradiction."

Homer: Odysseus seeking his home

Principles we have covered.
procession and return, Divided Line, hierarchy, metaphysics of being, apophatic and kataphatic
knowledge, matter-form composite of which logos-lexis is a variant, art (both as understood by
Plato and Aristotle), formal and material infinity, mediation, the One.

78

Review Aristotle on the human soul: comprising rational and non-rational elements
Go to Descartes, Discourse 4. Bifurcation of the soul
Robert Spaemanns point about Aristotelian philosophy accommodating the non-rational
elements: the city mirrors the soul. Aristotelian soul comprises rational and non-rational
elements, and thus the Aristotelian city can also accommodate rational and non-rational
elements. This is in contrast to the modern soul, purely rational, and the modern city which
mirrors it, neither of which can accommodate non-rational elements. The non-rational becomes
irrational. Spaemann gave the example of the Oresteia in which Athena through reason
accommodates and orders the non-rational elements in the city. By contrast, there is the Zarastro
in Die Zauberflte who says that those who cannot earn their right to a place in the city through
rationality should be killed.
Thus the contest in late modernity and post-modernity between rationalism and irrationalism.
Go to review of slides from Vermeer to Kandinsky and Rothko.
The move is from logos expressed in lexis to lexis with diminishing logos.
Dadaism: lexis without logos.
The following three points were quoted by Christopher With on a lecture about Kandinsky at a
2010 lecture at the Washington Goethe institute.
1. Paul Klee (1879-1940) Just because you cannot see it does not mean it cannot be
represented.
2. Synaesthetic sense: e..g., I hear music which causes me to see colors.
3. Book by Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art 1911.
Flattening the World
Hume repudiates the Classical Mind, i.e., both ancient and mediaeval philosophy, but he also
repudiates much of modern philosophy. He faults those philosophers who, like the Stoics, offer
under the name of philosophy what is really only a more refined system of selfishness, by
which we are meant to reason ourselves out of all virtue, as well as social enjoyment. (V/i)
--Briefly review Principles of Association, III.
--Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact, IV.
--Sceptical Solution of these Doubts
Read from Suppose a person, . . . . p. 27
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Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our
experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those
which have appeared in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant
of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should
never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of
any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of
speculation. p. 29
Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, V.
i.e., there is no causation in experience, only the constant conjunction of events to which the
reason adds an unwarranted explanation, namely that of necessary connexion.
--There is only probability, VI.
--XII/i
Read with care, beginning It seems evident, that men are carried . . . . p. 104
Classical Mind: both/and
--and here: both body and mind
Modern Mind: either/or
--and here: Hume (body) OR Descartes (mind)
Art in late modernity becomes increasingly body and feeling (impressionism and then leading to
Warhol) OR increasingly mindly and abstract (abstract expressionism). Either way, less realistic,
i.e., less a representation of that which is.

What Hume Misses in His Own Account

Comparing Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 10.4-5 and Hume, First Enquiry, Section 2.
1. There are pleasures which arise from sensation, whether external (e.g., sight, hearing, etc.) or
internal (e.g., emotions) and from thought.

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2. For Aristotle, pleasure depends upon the acuity of the apprehending faculty and the condition
of the apprehended entity. NE 10.4 (1174b20-24)
3. Aristotle states that pleasure from thought is in some ways the same and in some ways
different from pleasure from sensation. NE 10.4 (1174b24-25)
4. He also clearly holds that pleasure from thought is superior.
In any sense perception that activity is best whose organ is in the best condition and
whose object is the best of all the objects that fall within its range, and this activity will
be most complete and the most pleasant. For each sense, and similarly all thought and
study, has its own pleasure and is pleasantest when it is most complete when the organ is
in good condition and the object the worthiest of all that fall within its range; pleasure
completes the activity. Still, pleasure does not complete the activity in the same way in
which the perceived object and sense perception do, when both are good (1174b18-25).
Pleasure is not in time (1174b8). And if not in time, then it has something of an eternal
character to it.
The pleasures of thought . . . are superior to the pleasures of the senses (1176a2-3).
He asserts that the rational part of the human being is the best part, the divine part, and,
therefore, should rule the life of the human being. But why?
5. Part of the answer to that is that it is possible to exhaust the pleasure through sensation, but it
is not possible to exhaust the pleasure through thought. When I have exhausted the pleasure of
eating the anchovy pizza, I can continue to derive pleasure from remembering the eating of the
anchovy pizza. In fact, I can renew the pleasure of remembering the eating of the anchovy pizza
at any time. In order to renew the pleasure of eating the anchovy pizza, I need another anchovy
pizza. There is, then, on this account, something not only inexhaustible about the pleasure of
thought, but also something more durable.
6. Apprehending any work of art is, on the first encounter, within the realm of sensation. I can
see and take pleasure in a view of the hillside with steeples and rooftops rising amongst the
treetops. I can also see and take pleasure in a painting of that same landscape. What makes art
art, on Aristotles accountand certainly on a Neo-Platonic account, is that the work of art must
also communicate something intelligible. It is not merely sensible representation of a sensible
thing. It must also be rightly reasoned. Art is not merely an artistic lexisan artistic textrepresenting a natural lexisa natural textit is also an artistic lexis representing an intelligible
logos.
7. For Hume, however, it is otherwise. For Hume, it is the impressionwhether external or
internalwhich is always more vivid and more durable than thought.
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In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 2, Hume writes:

The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation. . . . Here we may divide
all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species, which are distinguished by
their different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly
denominated THOUGHTS or IDEAS. The other species want a name. . . . Let us . . . call
them Impressions . . . [by which] I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear,
or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will.
8. There must, then, be more pleasure in impressions than in thoughts.
9. The creation of art that follows Humes lead must emphasize making an impression.
Joshua Bell: You tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC9IvjrgZ7I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNt6cYOCYs4&feature=related

Cultural Prerequisites for Rational Contemplation

Reading: Pieper, 1-27.
Reference to Holderlin in the Preface:

Friedrich Holderlin - Bread and Wine

Bread and Wine

to Heinze

1.

Round about the city rests. The illuminated streets grow

Quiet, and coaches rush along, adorned with torches.
Men go home to rest, filled with the day's pleasures;
Busy minds weigh up profit and loss contentedly
At home. The busy marketplace comes to rest,
Vacant now of flowers and grapes and crafts.

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But the music of strings sounds in distant gardens:

Perhaps lovers play there, or a lonely man thinks
About distant friends, and about his own youth.
Rushing fountains flow by fragrant flower beds,
Bells ring softly in the twilight air, and a watchman
Calls out the hour, mindful of the time.
Now a breeze rises and touches the crest of the grove
Look how the moon, like the shadow of our earth,
Also rises stealthily! Phantastical night comes,
Full of stars, unconcerned probably about us
Astonishing night shines, a stranger among humans,
Sadly over the mountain tops, in splendor.

2.

The kindness of exalted Night is wonderful, and no one

Knows where she comes from, or what will emerge from her.
Thus she moves the world, and the hopeful minds of humans:
Not even a sage knows what she's up to.
The highest god, who loves you very much, wants it so;
Therefore you prefer reasonable day to the night.
But occasionally a clear eye loves the shadows as well,
And tries to sleep just for pleasure, before it's necessary,
Or a brave person likes to gaze directly into the Night:
Surely it's right to dedicate wreaths and songs to her,
Since she is holy to those who are lost or dead, although
She herself exists totally free in spirit, forever.
But she must grant us oblivion and holy drunkenness,
That in the hesitating interval, in the darkness,
There'll be something for us to hold on to.

83

She must grant us flowing words, sleepless

As lovers are, and a fuller cup, and bolder life, and
Holy remembrance as well, to stay wakeful at night.

3.

We, masters and apprentices both, hide our hearts

In vain, and repress our enthusiasm for no reason.
For who could stop it, or forbid us our pleasure?
The fire of the gods drives us to set forth by day
And by night. So come, let us look at what is apparent,
And seek what is ours, as distant as it may be!
One thing is certain: a standard always exists, at noon
Or at midnight, common to all of us. But also
To each of us something personal is granted;
Everyone goes and comes where he can.
Thus playful madness may mock mockery itself,
Seizing singers suddenly in the holy night.
Then let's be off to the Isthmus! There, where
The open sea roars at Parnassus, and the snow
Shines around the Delphian cliffs,
There in the land of Olympus, on Cithaeron's peak,
Under the pines, amid vineyards, from which
Thebes and Ismenos roar in the land of Cadmus.
The approaching god comes from there, and points back.

4.

Holy Greece! Home of all the gods so it's true,

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What once we heard when we were young?

A festival hall, whose floor is the ocean, whose tables
Are the mountains anciently built for a single purpose.
But where are the thrones? Where the temples, the songs,
The vases full of nectar for the pleasure of the gods?
Where are the oracles that shine for miles and miles?
Delphi sleeps, and where does great Fate resound?
Where does Fate suddenly break forth, full of omnipresent
Joy, thundering out of clear air over our eyes?
Father Aether! It called and flew from tongue to tongue
A thousand times, and nobody had to endure life alone.
Shared, such fortune is a joy; exchanged with strangers,
It becomes jubilant. Sleeping, the power of the word grows:
Father! Joyful! The ancient sign resounds, as far it reaches,
Inherited from the elders, striking, creating.
Thus the gods enter; thus the season of the gods falls
From the shadows down to men, shaking the depths.

5.

At first the gods come unperceived. Children try to get

Near them. But their glory dazzles and blinds and
Awakens fear. A demi-god scarcely knows the people
By name, who now approach him with gifts. But their
Courage is great. Their joy fills his heart, and he hardly
Knows what to do with the offerings. He busies himself
And becomes wasteful, and unholy things almost become holy,
Which he touches with a blessing hand, foolishly and kindly.
The gods tolerate it as long as they can, and then in truth
They appear themselves. And people become accustomed
To this fortune, to the daytime, and to the sight of the manifest

85

Ones, the faces of those formerly called the "One and All,"
Deeply making every silent breast content, and first and alone
Filling every desire. It's the way people are. When something
Good appears, and even when it's a god that provides them
With gifts, they don't see or recognize it. First they have
To get used to it; then they call it their closest possession.
And only then will words of praise arise, like flowers.

6.

And now they prepare in earnest to honor the holy gods.

Everything must really and truly proclaim their praise.
Nothing displeasing to the high ones may come to light.
Idle endeavors aren't proper for the Aether.
Therefore, to stand worthily in the presence of the gods,
Nations rise in splendid order and beautiful
Temples and cities are built, strong and noble, which rise
Above the banks of the waters but where are they?
Where are the famous, flourishing cities, crowning the festival?
Thebes and Athens are fading. Don't the weapons clash
At Olympus, or golden chariots at the games? Are there
No longer wreaths to decorate the ships of Corinth?
Why are the ancient holy theaters silent?
What happened to the joyful ceremonial dancing?
Why doesn't a god place his sign on a human forehead,
Leaving his mark on the person he has struck?
Or, as gods used to, come comfortingly, and assume human
Shape, then complete and close the festival of the gods?

7.

86

But friend, we come too late. It's true that the gods live,
But up over our heads, up in a different world.
They function endlessly up there, and seem to care little
If we live or die, so much do they avoid us.
A weak vessel cannot hold them forever; humans can
Endure the fullness of the gods only at times. Therefore
Life itself becomes a dream about them. But perplexity
And sleep assist us: distress and night-time strengthen,
Until enough heroes have grown in the bronze cradle,
With hearts as strong as the gods', as it used to be.
Thundering they arise. Meanwhile I often think it is
Better to stay asleep, than to exist without companions,
Just waiting it out, not knowing what to do or say
In the meantime. What use are poets in times of need?
But you'll say they're like holy priests of the wine god,
Moving from land to land in the holy night.

8.

Some time ago to us it seems like a long time

All those who made our lives happy climbed upwards.
The Father turned his face away from people,
And sorrow came rightly upon the earth.
Finally a quiet genius appeared, comforting in a god-like
Way, who announced the end of the day, and disappeared.
The choir of gods left some gifts behind, as a sign
Of their presence and eventual return, which we
May appreciate in our human fashion, as we used to.
That which is superior had grown too great for pleasure
With spirit among men. And to this day no one's strong enough
For the highest joys, although some gratitude survives quietly.
Bread is the fruit of the earth, yet it's blessed also by light.

87

The pleasure of wine comes from the thundering god.

We remember the gods thereby, those who were once
With us, and who'll return when the time is right.
Thus poets sing of the wine god in earnest, and their
Ringing praises of the old one aren't devised in vain.

9.

Yes, they say rightly that he reconciles day with night,

And leads the stars of heaven up and down forever
Joyful always, like the boughs of evergreen pine
That he loves, and the wreath he chose of ivy,
Since it endures, and brings a trace of the fugitive gods
Down to the darkness of those who must live in their absence.
What the sons of the ancients foretold of God's children:
Look, it's us, the fruit of Hesperia!
Through humans it is wonderfully and exactly fulfilled;
Let those believe who've examined the matter. But so much
Goes on, yet nothing succeeds: we are like heartless shadows
Until our Father Aether recognizes us and belongs to us all.
Meanwhile the Son, the Syrian, comes down among
The shadows, as torchbearer of the Highest.
Holy sages observe it; a smile shines out from
The imprisoned soul; their eyes thaw in the light.
Titans dream more softly, asleep in the arms of the earth
Even jealous Cerberus drinks and falls asleep.
P O S T E D B Y C O R I S C O P OE M S : GE O R G E , D AVI D AT 4 :1 3 P M

http://coriscopoems.blogspot.com/2010/05/friedrich-holderlin-bread-and-wine.html: accessed
April 16, 2012.

Brod und Wein

An Heinze

88

1.
Rings um ruhet die Stadt; still wird die erleuchtete Gasse,
Und, mit Fackeln geschmckt, rauschen die Wagen hinweg.
Satt gehn heim von Freuden des Tags zu ruhen die Menschen,
Und Gewinn und Verlust wget ein sinniges Haupt
Wohlzufrieden zu Haus; leer steht von Trauben und Blumen,
Und von Werken der Hand ruht der geschftige Markt.
Aber das Saitenspiel tnt fern aus Grten; vielleicht, da
Dort ein Liebendes spielt oder ein einsamer Mann
Ferner Freunde gedenkt und der Jugendzeit; und die Brunnen
Immerquillend und frisch rauschen an duftendem Beet.
Still in dmmriger Luft ertnen gelutete Glocken,
Und der Stunden gedenk rufet ein Wchter die Zahl.
Jetzt auch kommet ein Wehn und regt die Gipfel des Hains auf,
Sieh! und das Schattenbild unserer Erde, der Mond,
Kommet geheim nun auch; die Schwrmerische, die Nacht, kommt,
Voll mit Sternen und wohl wenig bekmmert um uns,
Glnzt die Erstaunende dort, die Fremdlingin unter den Menschen,
ber Gebirgeshhn traurig und prchtig herauf.
2.
Wunderbar ist die Gunst der Hocherhabnen und niemand
Wei, von wannen und was einem geschiehet von ihr.
So bewegt sie die Welt und die hoffende Seele der Menschen,
Selbst kein Weiser versteht, was sie bereitet, denn so
Will es der oberste Gott, der sehr dich liebet, und darum
Ist noch lieber, wie sie, dir der besonnene Tag.
Aber zuweilen liebt auch klares Auge den Schatten
Und versuchet zu Lust, eh es die Not ist, den Schlaf,
Oder es blickt auch gern ein treuer Mann in die Nacht hin,
Ja, es ziemet sich, ihr Krnze zu weihn und Gesang,
Weil den Irrenden sie geheiliget ist und den Toten,
Selber aber besteht, ewig, in freiestem Geist.
Aber sie mu uns auch, da in der zaudernden Weile,
Da im Finstern fr uns einiges Haltbare sei,
Uns die Vergessenheit und das Heiligtrunkene gnnen,
Gnnen das strmende Wort, das, wie die Liebenden, sei,
Schlummerlos und vollern Pokal und khneres Leben,
Heilig Gedchtnis auch, wachend zu bleiben bei Nacht.
89

3.
Auch verbergen umsonst das Herz im Busen, umsonst nur
Halten den Mut noch wir, Meister und Knaben, denn wer
Mcht es hindern, und wer mcht uns die Freude verbieten?
Gttliches Feuer auch treibet, bei Tag und bei Nacht,
Aufzubrechen. So komm! da wir das Offene schauen,
Da ein Eigenes wir suchen, so weit es auch ist.
Fest bleibt Eins; es sei um Mittag oder es gehe
Bis in die Mitternacht, immer bestehet ein Ma,
Allen gemein, doch jeglichem auch ist eignes beschieden,
Dahin gehet und kommt jeder, wohin er es kann.
Drum! und spotten des Spotts mag gern frohlockender Wahnsinn,
Wenn er in heiliger Nacht pltzlich die Snger ergreift.
Drum an den Isthmos komm! dorthin, wo das offene Meer rauscht
Am Parna und der Schnee delphische Felsen umglnzt,
Dort ins Land des Olymps, dort auf die Hhe Cithrons,
Unter die Fichten dort, unter die Trauben, von wo
Thebe drunten und Ismenos rauscht im Lande des Kadmos,
Dorther kommt und zurck deutet der kommende Gott.
4.
Seliges Griechenland! du Haus der Himmlischen alle,
Also ist wahr, was einst wir in der Jugend gehrt?
Festlicher Saal! der Boden ist Meer! und Tische die Berge,
Wahrlich zu einzigem Brauche vor alters gebaut!
Aber die Thronen, wo? die Tempel, und wo die Gefe,
Wo mit Nektar gefllt, Gttern zu Lust der Gesang?
Wo, wo leuchten sie denn, die fernhintreffenden Sprche?
Delphi schlummert und wo tnet das groe Geschick?
Wo ist das schnelle? wo bricht's, allgegenwrtigen Glcks voll,
Donnernd aus heiterer Luft ber die Augen herein?
Vater ther! so rief's und flog von Zunge zu Zunge,
Tausendfach, es ertrug keiner das Leben allein,
Ausgeteilet erfreut solch Gut und getauschet, mit Fremden,
Wird's ein Jubel, es wchst schlafend des Wortes Gewalt:
Vater! heiter! und hallt, so weit es gehet, das uralt
Zeichen, von Eltern geerbt, treffend und schaffend hinab.
Denn so kehren die Himmlischen ein, tiefschtternd gelangt so
90

Aus den Schatten herab unter die Menschen ihr Tag.

5.
Unempfunden kommen sie erst, es streben entgegen
Ihnen die Kinder, zu hell kommet, zu blendend das Glck,
Und es scheut sie der Mensch, kaum wei zu sagen ein Halbgott,
Wer mit Namen sie sind, die mit den Gaben ihm nahn.
Aber der Mut von ihnen ist gro, es fllen das Herz ihm
Ihre Freuden, und kaum wei er zu brauchen das Gut,
Schafft, verschwendet und fast ward ihm Unheiliges heilig,
Das er mit segnender Hand trig und gtig berhrt.
Mglichst dulden die Himmlischen dies; dann aber in Wahrheit
Kommen sie selbst, und gewohnt werden die Menschen des Glcks
Und des Tags und zu schaun die Offenbaren, das Antlitz
Derer, welche, schon lngst Eines und Alles genannt,
Tief die verschwiegene Brust mit freier Genge gefllet,
Und zuerst und allein alles Verlangen beglckt.
So ist der Mensch; wenn da ist das Gut, und es sorget mit Gaben
Selber ein Gott fr ihn, kennet und sieht er es nicht.
Tragen mu er, zuvor; nun aber nennt er sein Liebstes,
Nun, nun mssen dafr Worte, wie Blumen, entstehn.
6. Und nun denkt er zu ehren in Ernst die seligen Gtter,
Wirklich und wahrhaft mu alles verknden ihr Lob.
Nichts darf schauen das Licht, was nicht den Hohen gefllet,
Vor den ther gebhrt Migversuchendes nicht.
Drum in der Gegenwart der Himmlischen wrdig zu stehen,
Richten in herrlichen Ordnungen Vlker sich auf
Untereinander und baun die schnen Tempel und Stdte
Fest und edel, sie gehn ber Gestaden empor
Aber wo sind sie? wo blhn die Bekannten, die Kronen des Festes?
Thebe welkt und Athen; rauschen die Waffen nicht mehr
In Olympia, nicht die goldnen Wagen des Kampfspiels,
Und bekrnzen sich denn nimmer die Schiffe Korinths?
Warum schweigen auch sie, die alten heil'gen Theater?
Warum freuet sich denn nicht der geweihete Tanz?
Warum zeichnet, wie sonst, die Stirne des Mannes ein Gott nicht,
Drckt den Stempel, wie sonst, nicht dem Getroffenen auf?
Oder er kam auch selbst und nahm des Menschen Gestalt an
Und vollendet' und schlo trstend das himmlische Fest.
91

7.
Aber Freund! wir kommen zu spt. Zwar leben die Gtter,
Aber ber dem Haupt droben in anderer Welt.
Endlos wirken sie da und scheinen's wenig zu achten,
Ob wir leben, so sehr schonen die Himmlischen uns.
Denn nicht immer vermag ein schwaches Gef sie zu fassen,
Nur zuzeiten ertrgt die gttliche Flle der Mensch.
Traum von ihnen ist drauf das Leben. Aber das Irrsal
Hilft, wie Schlummer, und stark machet die Not und die Nacht,
Bis da Helden genug in der ehernen Wiege gewachsen,
Herzen an Kraft, wie sonst, hnlich den Himmlischen sind.
Donnernd kommen sie drauf. Indessen dnket mir fters
Besser zu schlafen, wie so ohne Genossen zu sein,
So zu harren, und was zu tun indes und zu sagen,
Wei ich nicht, und wozu Dichter in drftiger Zeit.
Aber sie sind, sagst du, wie des Weingotts heilige Priester,
Welche von Lande zu Land zogen in heiliger Nacht.
8.
Nmlich, als vor einiger Zeit, uns dnket sie lange,
Aufwrts stiegen sie all, welche das Leben beglckt,
Als der Vater gewandt sein Angesicht von den Menschen,
Und das Trauern mit Recht ber der Erde begann,
Als erschienen zuletzt ein stiller Genius, himmlisch
Trstend, welcher des Tags Ende verkndet' und schwand,
Lie zum Zeichen, da einst er da gewesen und wieder
Kme, der himmlische Chor einige Gaben zurck,
Derer menschlich, wie sonst, wir uns zu freuen vermchten,
Denn zur Freude, mit Geist, wurde das Grre zu gro
Unter den Menschen und noch, noch fehlen die Starken zu hchsten
Freuden, aber es lebt stille noch einiger Dank.
Brod ist der Erde Frucht, doch ist's vom Lichte gesegnet,
Und vom donnernden Gott kommet die Freude des Weins.
Darum denken wir auch dabei der Himmlischen, die sonst
Da gewesen und die kehren in richtiger Zeit,
Darum singen sie auch mit Ernst, die Snger, den Weingott,
Und nicht eitel erdacht tnet dem Alten das Lob.
92

9.
Ja! sie sagen mit Recht, er shne den Tag mit der Nacht aus,
Fhre des Himmels Gestirn ewig hinunter, hinauf,
Allzeit froh, wie das Laub der immergrnenden Fichte,
Das er liebt, und der Kranz, den er von Efeu gewhlt,
Weil er bleibet und selbst die Spur der entflohenen Gtter
Gtterlosen hinab unter das Finstere bringt.
Was der Alten Gesang von Kindern Gottes geweissagt,
Siehe! wir sind es, wir; Frucht von Hesperien ist's!
Wunderbar und genau ist's als an Menschen erfllet,
Glaube, wer es geprft! aber so vieles geschieht,
Keines wirket, denn wir sind herzlos, Schatten, bis unser
Vater ther erkannt jeden und allen gehrt.
Aber indessen kommt als Fackelschwinger des Hchsten
Sohn, der Syrier, unter die Schatten herab.
Selige Weise sehn's; ein Lcheln aus der gefangnen
Seele leuchtet, dem Licht tauet ihr Auge noch auf.
Sanfter trumet und schlft in Armen der Erde der Titan,
Selbst der neidische, selbst Cerberus trinket und schlft.
http://www.lyrikwelt.de/gedichte/hoelderling2.htm: accessed April 16, 2012.
1. religious meditation, the contemplative immersion of the self into the divine mysteries
2. philosophical reflection
3. We see still another form of such activity in the creation of the artist, who does not aim so
much at presenting copies of reality as rather making visible and tangible in speech, sound, color,
and stone, the archetypal essences of all things as he was privileged to perceive them.
4. (He does not say this is a fourth, but surely it is.) But those, too, who experience the spark of
poetry while listening to a poem, who behold a sculpture and perceive the artists intention, yes,
those who only listen and observe, as long as the conditions are right, can also touch, in
contemplation, the core of all reality, the domain of the eternal archetypes.
--When Pieper says eternal archetypes, what does he mean? (Platonic Forms)
--Pieper is proposing here that both the creation and beholding of art are forms of
contemplation, rightly understood.

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--My addition is to insist on a return to rationality as the basis for both contemplation and
art.
If the conditions are righthere lies the difficulty.
--isolation of artists, poets, but also philosophers and certainly those dedicated to the
contemplative life.
What are the right (pre-)conditions?
1. an attitude of receptive openness and attentive silence One of the fundamental
human experiences is the realization that the truly great and uplifting things in life come about
perhaps not without our own efforts but nevertheless not through those efforts. Rather, we will
obtain them only if we can accept them as free gifts.
--They are gifts, and yet we must be able and willing to receive them. We can do nothing
to get them, but we can prepare ourselves to receive them.
--St. Augustine reminds us that damnable is the refusal of grace. (On Free Choice of the
Will, 3.22)
2. Celebrate a feast
--At the conclusion of the mass, how many feel that they have been part of a celebration?
What, then is required to celebrate a feast? Obviously more than a day off from work/
3. There can be no feast without gods.
Conclusion: Wherever the arts are nourished through the festive contemplation of universal
realities and their sustaining reasons, there in truth something like a liberation occurs: the
stepping-out into the open under an endless sky, not only for the creative artist himself but for the
beholder as well, even the most humble.

Healing the Relationship between Senses and the Intellect

pp. 31-36
Mans ability to see in in decline. . . . We mean the spiritual capacity to perceive the physical
reality as it truly is.
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--What do the terms, spiritual and physical and reality, mean?

--Pieper observes empirically what I have suggested in relation to David Humes
philosophy, namely that we have accustomed ourselves NOT to see what is there. I am
suggesting that not only do we not see, but that we have actually been trained not to see.
There is too much to see!
"Part of our larger problem is that reality is rich and all of us go through life missing a
great deal. We're also easily distracted, and our age is prodigious in its ability to generate
distractions."
John McCarthy, at that time Interim Dean
School of Philosophy
The Catholic University of America
Quoted by Joanna Gardner, Famous Philosopher Featured in Lecture Series,
The Tower, January 14, A.D. 2011.
--This is part of the point made by Socrates of the Republic, images are beautiful and
seductive.
-- John Paul II called for zones of silence
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/documents/hf_jpii_let_23041999_artists_en.html
p. 34 A definition of theorein?
To see things is the first step toward that primordial and basic mental grasping of reality,
which constitutes the essence of man as a spiritual being.
p. 35
Artistic creation as a way of seeing.
p. 36 an eye for the previously overlooked
Descartes:
Even philosophers take it as a maxim in the schools that there is nothing in the understanding
that has not first been in the senses, where it is nevertheless certain that the ideas of God and the
soul have never been. And it seems to me that those who want to use their imagination in order to
grasp these ideas are doing the very same thing as if, in order to hear sounds or to smell odors,
they wanted to use their eyes. There is just this difference: the sense of sight assures us no less of
the truth of its objects than do the senses of smell or hearing, whereas neither our imagination
nor our senses could ever assure us of anything if our understanding did not intervene.
Discourse, AT 37.
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He regards the senses and the imagination as sources of the prejudice which prevents us from
believing in God:
As far as God is concerned, if I were not overwhelmed by prejudices and if the images of
sensible things were not besieging my thought from all directions, I would certainly
acknowledge nothing sooner or more easily than him. For what, in and of itself, is more manifest
than that a supreme being exists, that is, that God, to whose essence alone existence belongs,
exists?
Meditations, AT 69.
I consider that this power of imagination that is in me, insofar as it differs from the power of
understanding, is not required for my own essence, that is, the essence of my mind. For were I
lacking this power, I would nevertheless undoubtedly remain the same entity I am now. Ibid.,
AT 73.
the Ghost in the machine. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind.
Where we are headed (the Christian Neo-Platonist vision): The purpose of art is to mediate
intelligible reality to the rational soul through the senses.
Pieper on Music and Philosophy:
What indeed do we perceive when we listen to music? p.40
Music does not present an object to our ears in way that painting does. p. 41
How that corruption unfolds. pp. 29.51
The possibility of corruption. p. 46
Silence and Music. pp. 55-56: Noise is the opposite of both music and noise.
The Contemplative Life
Read from Hume again: First Enquiry 12.1.
--p. 39 music may be nothing but a secret philosophizing of the soul
Vico: the importance of poetry: poetry arises from the richness of experience and the poverty of
language. 34: Now the sources of all poetic locution are two: poverty of language and need to
explain and be understood.

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--p. 40 Drer: Detail of a Meadow

--p. 41 Beethoven, Sixth Symphony, Andante molto mosso:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtVarCkrtqM
--p. 43 This unquenchable inner dynamism, this persistent restlessless at the coreof the
unfolding human experience, this yearning has only one objective: perfect happiness
--p. 46 music of nihilism
--pp. 47-48: musics formative character for persons and societies
--pp. 49-50: music for slaves with skin-deep delight
--p. 50-51: Bachs wordless jubilation
--p. 55: rests make music
--p. 62: artist and priestGoethe: artist as someone called to be the custodian and eager
herald of an avowed sacred reality
-- pp. 64 Back to Hlderlin: What are the barren times? unable to celebrate a feast
--p. 67: Metaphysics is essential to celebration. Without metaphysicsi.e., if life is only
unconnected series of dotsthen what is there to celebrate; indeed, in the realm of unconnected
dots, what does the word celebration mean?
-- p. 68: Muses, the fine arts, are essential for keeping feasts.

Why are we here? To behold!. p. 72

Seeing rather than thinking. P. 73 (contra Descartes: I am most truly I when I am the seeing
being.
Ubi amor, ibi oculus. p. 74
--p. 76 Blinded by the object of its ultimate desires.

Closing Lecture: A Christian and Neo-Platonic Philosophy of Beauty

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This course is called philosophy of art. It could be called Aesthetics. Since the
Enlightenment, there have been two principal approaches to the philosophical study of art,
though they are not always or even often distinguished: philosophy of art and aesthetics. It is
generally accepted that the modern discipline of aesthetics was created by Alexander
Baumgarten in his 1735 work, Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema
Pertinentibus. The starting point for aesthetics is the human beings sensory capacities and
aesthetic judgements based upon sensory apprehension whether directed to natural objects or
human artifacts (e.g., Eagleton 1990). The emphasis of philosophy of art is on the work of art as
created and apprehended by human beings (e.g., Gentile 1972). Many important works on
aesthetics or philosophy of art make few references or none at all to Plato (e.g., Auerbach 1953,
Burke 1757, Eagleton 1990, Scruton 1974). Kristeller even argues for an understanding of
aesthetics which would occlude not only Plato but virtually all of ancient art and the philosophy
pertaining to it (Kristeller 1980, 163-227, quoted in Halliwell 2002, 7). Most of modern aesthetic
theory occludes Platos contribution to the question of art and aesthetics. In specific, the question
of the Beautiful itself in Platonic terms has been little regarded. This is easy to account for.
Except for Thomism, whether its mediaeval remnants in modernity or Neo-Thomism, philosophy
in modernity and post-modernity has strongly disregarded the metaphysical claims of extramental intelligible realities. Even much of Platonic and Neo-Platonic scholarship investigates the
claims of ancient authors about such realities without the necessity of giving credence to them
(e.g., Halliwell 1988, 7), in contrast to the scholars of say Aquinas or Kant who tend to be,
respectively, Thomists and Kantians. The notion of a really existing Platonic Form of the
Beautiful itself is largely foreign to those who pursue either aesthetics or philosophy of art in the
modern context and, indeed, to modern thinkers on the whole.
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My own investigation seeks to recover a philosophy of beauty (Gilsons calology,

1965) which is explicitly Platonic. A Platonic philosophy of beauty begins with the Form of the
Beautiful itself which, like all Forms, most truly exists eternally outside the human being. Any
Form is the most superlative possible expression of that quality by which it is named. The Form
of the Beautiful itself, therefore, is not only the most beautiful, but, in fact, is the most complete
being of beauty (R. 6507b5-7; see also Phd. 75c7-d5, 78c10-d7, 100b1-9). In terms of the
Divided Line (R. 6.510d5-511e5), the best recent study of Platonic aesthetics, Halliwell 2002,
attends to the lowest level of reality, the images, while this study examines the highest, the
Forms, and, in specific, the Form of the Beautiful itself. The human question is whether human
beings can apprehend the Beautiful itself immediately or only as mediated by natural objects and
human artifacts. The sharp contrast between aesthetics and philosophy of art, on the one hand,
and a Platonic philosophy of beauty, on the other, can be seen in relation to the variously
attributed formulation, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder which both the methods of
aesthetics and philosophy of art presuppose. A Platonic philosophy of beauty, by contrast,
presupposes that beauty has an absolute quality independent of all human apprehension and
judgement, and if the Beautiful itself can be known it is by the deliberative and knowing parts of
the soul rather than by the senses, or perhaps by that philosophic madness which is neither
knowing, nor sensing (e.g., the eye (R. 509d1-511e5; Phd. 65a8-67b5; Phdr. 250b1-c6). By
further contrast, neither aesthetics nor philosophy of art supposes that beauty alone is the
standard of art. The shocking, the ugly, the prophetic, and the innovative are putatively equally
valid standards for assessing artScrutons flight from beauty (1974, 2009). For a Platonic
philosophy of beauty, the entire question of art stands or falls in relation to the human ability to

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know the Beautiful itself. Art is admissible to the human community only insofar as it aids
humans towards that knowledge (R. 10.606e1-607d1).
My approach is not merely Platonic, but Neo-Platonic, that is a methodology which
embraces the thought of Plato and Aristotle especially as it was synthesized by Plotinus and
subsequent Neo-Platonic authors. I have contrasted this Classical Mind approach in which art
stands ultimately between two intellects, that of God and the beholder of the artwork with a third
intellect, that of the artist, with the Modern Mind approach which sees art as standing between
two imaginations (understanding the imagination to embrace the senses here), that of the artist
and the beholder of the art. And though Baumgarten himself understood art in relation to beauty,
as has already been observed, subsequent developments in art have discarded beauty as an
unnecessary and perhaps limiting criterion for art. At this point, we can see why a Neo-Platonic
view needs both Plato and Aristotle, for Plato gives us a thorough consideration of the Beautiful
itself in multiple dialogues but little definition of art as an exercise in reason, and Aristotle gives
us excellent definitions of art in relation to reason but little on the nature of beauty. At the same
time, Plato must of necessity consider any true art as a rational exercise, because it entails an
apprehension, at least, that the Beautiful itself exists, and perhaps even an apprehensionif only
momentary and fragmentaryof the Beautiful itself which of course for Plato is possible only
with the knowing or rational part of the soul. Likewise for Aristotle, his definitions of art simply
make little sense if considered apart from the standard of beauty, even though in none of his
extant works do we have an explanation for how one discovers that beauty, though he speaks of
it often enough not only in the Poetics but often and even surprisingly such a s a discussion the
Parts of Animals which he references in the Poetics. Of course, it is just this synthetic reading of
Plato and Aristotle which Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius offer us.

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All this is to say, if we consider the modern dictum, Beauty is in the eye of the
beholder, that for Plato, Aristotle, and the Neo-Platonic tradition, beauty is not in the eye of the
beholder, rather that the soul of the beholder apprehends beauty is which is immediately
transcendent, at a minimum in that the beholder finds beauty outside herself or himself. This
transcendent character of beauty is nicely expressed in Miss McGivneys self-observation, Even
though I do not believe it, when I go to mass I experience celebration.36 In other words, an
experience is generated from outside herself which conveys something to her, a sense of
celebration, which she has not generated. The observation has all the more weight because the
experience is in some sense contrary to the set of beliefs she carries with her. Something comes
to her from without to which she does not give assent. This is a transcendence of the Cartesian
I. The experiences of Beethoven and Monet which we discussed on Friday lend something to
this. Each artist in his respective field found his art transformed, rather than limited by the
diminution of his sensible powers. If art were primarily aesthetic, i.e., non-noetic, non-rational,
then the decrease in sensible powers should decrease someones ability to create art rather than to
transform it. Likewise, the beholder whose sensible powers decrease, though he or she may not
be able to apprehend hitherto unseen or unheard works of art, can return to the experience of of
apprehending art through memory, thus supporting the noetic character of apprehending as well
as creating art.

Poetics 4.1148b14-19 sullogizesthaigathering

Hugh of St. Victor in his commentary of Pseudo-Dionysius: Symbolum est collatio formarum
visibilium ad invisibilieum demonstrationem. PL 175, p. 941B

36 Brigit McGivney, Class discussion, PHIL 310, April 18, 2012.

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From my dissertation II.i

In factshould anyone want to disparage this works metaphysical reading of the Poetics
Aristotle in Metaphysics Lambda explains his view that ancient science had handed down its
conclusions in terms of the poetic story:
Our forefathers in the most remote ages have handed down to us their posterity a tradition, in the
form of a myth ( ), that these substances are gods and the divine encloses the
whole of nature ( ).
The rest of the tradition has been
added later in mythical form () with a view to persuasion of the multitude and to its
legal and utilitarian expediency; they say
these gods are in the forms of men or like some of
the other animals, and they say
other things consequent on and similar to these which we
have mentioned. But if we were to separate the first point from these additions and take it
alonethat they
thought the first substances to be gods (
)
we must regard this as an inspired utterance, and reflect that, while
probably each art
and science has often been developed as far as possible and has again
perished, these
opinions have been preserved like relics until the present. Only thus far,
then, is the
opinion of our ancestors and our earliest predecessors clear to us.37

Several points are to be noted. 1) Aristotle speaks of recurrence (e.g., each art and science has
often been developed as far as possible and has again perished) in a way that very much
anticipates Vichian corso e ricorso.38 2) He says that the ancients regarded the gods as first
substances, in other words that this is that. This passage from the Metaphysics is entirely
consistent with the previously quoted passages from the Poetics. 3) He recognizes the fluidity of
being (e.g., they say these gods are in the forms of men or like some of the other animals, and
they say other things consequent on and similar to these which we have mentioned) in
mythology although he regards it as a second stage of development. He also assumes that the
overlay of fluidity was intentional and pedagogical (The rest of the tradition has been added
later in mythical form with a view to persuasion of the multitude and to its legal and utilitarian
37 Metaph. 12.1074b1-14; Barnes 1698, quoted by Luc Brisson, How Philosophers Saved Myths. Allegorical
Interpretation and Classical Mythology, trans. Catherine Tihanyi (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004),
38.

38 One of Vicos great themes is the recurrence of the three ages (of gods, heroes and men).
Book IV is called The Course the Nations Run and Book V, The Recourse of Human
Institutions thus corso e ricorso. In countless passages scattered throughout this work and
dealing with countless matters, we have observed the marvelous correspondence between the
first and the returned barbarian times. From these passages we can easily understand the recourse
of human institutions when they rise again. NS 1046. See also Bergin and Fisch, Introduction,
xlii-xliii.
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expediency;) which is to say 4) that he assumed teachers had long since used myth the way that
Plato says explicitly myth should be used.39 5) By pointing to the way myth was formerly used
pedagogically, Aristotle separates himself from that tradition. He is saying that that is how myth
used to be regarded and employed for public purposes, thus implying that it is no longer current
practice. 6) Aristotle makes clear how he regards myths: they are cultural artifacts to be studied
as signs of how society once was but is no more in a way that has an analogue in modern
archeological method, both of physical archeology made famous by Schliemann and of
philosophical archeology made famous by Foucault.40 7), Adopting here the exposition of
Director of Research Luc Brisson, it is held here that Aristotle held metaphysics to be embedded
in the oldest stratum of mythology:
In this perspective and with certain reservations, metaphysics constitutes the essence
of
Greek mythology; therefore Aristotle anchored metaphysics into the most distant past. While
the various branches of knowledge, including philosophy, had to be
learned anew after the
recurring destructions suffered by humankind, perceptions of
the gods, conveyed by myths,
had been maintained without interruption from their
beginning to the time of Aristotle.41
39 Socrates of the Republic summarizes his critique of myths educational function in his ideal commonwealth. He
concludes with a criterion for the acceptable myth, We should probably take the utmost care to insure that the first
stories they hear about virtue are the best ones for them to hear. R. 2.377e6-378e6 and in specific 2.378e1-3;
Cooper 1017. The Athenian Stranger justifies the noble lie, But just suppose that the truth had been different from
what the argument has now shown it to be, and that a lawgiver , even a mediocre one, had been sufficiently bold, in
the interests of the young, to tell them a lie. Could he have told a more useful lie than this, or one more effective in
making everyone practice justice in everything they do, willingly and without pressure? L. 2.663d6-e2; Cooper
1354.

40 Foucault explains his method in relation to his Naissance de la clinique, Par archologie, je voudrais dsigner
non pas exactement une discipline, mais un domaine de recherche, qui serait le suivant. Dans une socit, les
connaissances, les ides philosophiques, les opinions de tous les jours, mais aussi les institutions, les pratiques
commerciales et policires, les murs, tout renvoie un certain savoir implicite propre cette socit. Ce savoir est
profondment diffrent des connaissances que lon peut trouver dans les livres scientifiques, les thories
philosophiques, les justifications religieuses, mais cest lui qui rend possible un moment donn lapparition dune
thorie, dune opinion, dune pratique. Michel Foucault, Dits et Ecrits, I, 1954-1975 (Paris: Gallimard, 2001),
526.Foucault also sums up his archeological method in a way which can be applied to metaphysical depiction. In
relation to the monologue of reason about madness he writes, Je nai pas voulu faire lhistoire de ce langage ;
plutt larchologie de ce silence. Ibid., 188. Archeology studies the primarily non-verbal artifacts of civilization,
that which a civilization expresses apart from language.

41 Brisson, How, 39. Dans cette perspective, et sous certaines rserves, la mtaphysique
constitue la quintessence de la mythologie grecque. Par l, Aristote ancre la mtaphysique dans
le pass le plus recul. Alors que les diffrents savoirs, y compris la philosophie, ont d faire
lobjet dun nouvel apprentissage aprs les destructions priodiques subies par lhumanit ; les
opinions sur les dieux, que vhiculent les mythes, se sont maintenues sans interruption depuis
lorigine jusqu lpoque dAristote. Luc Brisson, Introduction la philosophie du mythe.
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On this account, Aristotle recognizes metaphysics to have been the first speculative science to be
discovered in human society, and the first to be rediscovered when humans gather themselves
again after the most recent destruction. Myth bears metaphysics when rational discourse has, for
the time being, been lost. The relationship to Homeric mythology of Plato and Aristotle
respectively can be distinguished. Monsieur Brisson writes, In contrast to Plato, Aristotle did
not adopt an attitude of radical rupture.42 A passage from the Laws, in which the Athenian
Stranger speaks about the ancient authorities on the gods as first substance or nature shows the
balanced approach to myth which exemplifies Platos position as characterized by M. Brisson:
The subject of these writings (some of which are in verse and some in prose) is theology. The
most ancient accounts, after relating how the primitive substances (
)the
sky and so oncame into being, pass rapidly on to a description of the birth of the gods and
the details of how once born they subsequently treated
each other. On some subjects, the
antiquity of these works makes them difficult to
criticize, whatever their influencegood or
badon their audience; but when it comes to the respect and attention due to parents, I for one
shall never recommend
them either as a good influence or as a statement of the honest
truth. Still, theres no need to bother with this old material: we may freely allow it to be arranged
and
recounted in any way the gods find amusing. But the principles of our modern
pundits
do need to be denounced as a pernicious influence. Just look at the effects of
their
arguments! When you and I present our proofs for the existence of gods and
adduce
what you have adducedsun, moon, stars and earthand argue they are gods and divine
beings, the proselytes of these clever fellows will say that these things are just earth and
stones, and are incapable of caring for human affairs,
however much our plausible rhetoric
43
has managed to dress them up.
The Athenian Stranger acknowledges the authority of certain ancient sources, as does Aristotle,
but then takes a position easily distinguishable from that of Aristotle. No matter how ancient and
authoritative the source, the Stranger judges that they are still pedagogically impermissible. At
the same time, he distances himself from the pure materialists who would reject any
metaphysical reality. As has already been argued in I.ii, Plato continued the mythological
tradition after he had re-formed it. As has been shown even in the passage just quoted from the
Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the method of using mythology pedagogically and legislatively
which Plato exemplifies, but as a method which he deems pass. It may be that Aristotle
understood myth better and in a more positive light precisely because he was not engaged with
mythology as Plato had been. Monsieur Brisson is certainly correct when he points to the
Sauver les mythes, 2nd ed. (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2005), 56-57.
42 Brisson, How, 39. A la diffrence de Platon; Aristote nadopte pas lgard du mythe une
attitude de rupture radicale. Brisson, Sauver, 58.
43 L. 10.886b10-e2; Cooper 1543-44.

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fundamental difference in the way that Plato and Aristotle addressed mythology. Plato sought to
re-found mythology on rational grounds and with pedagogical purpose. Aristotle recognized that
pedagogical purpose. He did not himself choose to utilize myth pedagogically and seemed to
criticize or, at least, to distance himself from those who did. Monsieur Brisson argues that
Aristotle participated in the saving of mythology by approving and, to a limited degree, engaging
in allegorical interpretation of myth which Plato rejected.44 It could well be argued that the shift
is from spinning myths, which Plato did and Aristotlein extant literaturedid not, to
interpreting myths allegorically.

September 10, A.D. 2016

44 Brisson, How, 40, 29; Sauver, 58, 43. E.g., R. 2.378d5-8.

105