Platonism

Q. For some time I have been wanting to ask you your thoughts about the status of deities in Platonism. Because of my long history with Buddhism my tendency is to regard deities in the way traditional Buddhism does. That is to say that I think of deities as beings, subject to karma, and still trapped in genesis / samsara. Though deities are long-lived, they are not necessarily wise.

Platonism appears to take a different view. It seems that Platonism views deities as embodied emanations of a higher status than those beings in the material realm. And some passages suggest that they are immortal (rather like angels in monotheism). This comes in the dialogues when Plato argues against the accounts of the bad behavior of deities, saying that deities could not behave in such nefarious ways because they are close to the One and the Good. This seems to be the dominant view of deities in the dialogues.

It might be possible to integrate the two views: some deities are still in genesis while others are of a higher status. Although technically possible, such a solution strikes me as forced and ad hoc.

Any insights?

A. I also tend to think about deities in what you describe as the traditional Buddhist manner (of course, I have a similar long history with it as you do), and I think that Platonism, as I will further explain, has the same perspective, in fact, actually even more so, and there is actually no contradiction, unless in the opposite way that Platonism accords even less status and importance to deities than Buddhism does, particularly because of its situation as an institutionalized religion for the many, which Platonism happily avoids. There is only experience, mind, consciousness, as Plotinus says, all is contemplation, there is only contemplation. There is no physical, fixed, or enumerated particular structure or cosmology for the alleged universe 'out there', as in the six (or otherwise numbered) realms of Buddhism, for the range of possible relative individuated spatio-temporal phenomenal experiences at the lowest level of the third hypostasis of soul that individual souls may experience according to their karma and which together comprise 'the world' as experienced by the world soul. Individual souls may, for a time, experience rebirths in such conditions as we might describe as deities of various sorts, but they are no more than that and, as you say, still karmic beings, subject to karma, and still trapped in samsara/genesis, and not of importance or spiritual significance, unless, I suppose, they manage somehow to practice as philosophoi in that state. Not only would any deities be incapable of possessing and transmitting true wisdom, which comes only from the higher hypostases of Nous and the One, and the higher soul in direct contact with them, but it seems that we happen at the moment to live in a relative reality system where such deities are not likely to appear, which is not to say that they couldn't in other relative reality systems, and, in any case, even if they do, they are not important and are just to be ignored, while one just directs one's attention solely to transcendent spiritual practice aimed at the higher hypostases. (And I think that this is clearly Plato and Plotinus' view.) In discussing the position of Platonism, note first that I am not at all talking about the silly theists and theurgists like Iamblichus, Proclus, Thomas Taylor, etc. and their followers both ancient and modern, whom I don't consider to even be real Platonists at all and don't need to be at all taken into account, anymore than, for example, Hindu tantric theists need to be. Rather, I am only referring to Plato/the dialogs and Plotinus/the Enneads (and any following them), whom I consider to be the only real Platonists. Remember that the dialogs are to a large extent and in many places and in their overall dramatic frame allegorical and symbolic and anagogical and expressed in a different language and vocabulary and terminology and mode of expression than we are usually accustomed to. When Plato refers to the gods throughout the dialogs, and in the sort of positive way that you mention, he is referring to/means, not individuated sensory (in the broadest sense that would include even the formless/without sensation deities of Buddhist cosmology) deities such as we are talking about, but the divine principles of, at the lowest level, divine necessity, karma, and providence as mediated by the world soul, and, at the higher levels, of Nous and the Good. One of the things that makes this clear is that he refers to gods plural and god singular alternatingly and indiscriminately, sometimes mixing them even in the same passage, if I recall correctly, indicating 'god(s)' and divinity as an abstract principle, and rarely by name as if he is concerned with the specific Greek pantheon. Even when he does give some by name, note that, for example, that in the Phaedo when Socrates, who symbolizes the higher divine soul and individual nous, not any actual individual named Socrates, says that he is consecrated like the swans to Apollo, that 'Apollo' in Greek is a pun on 'a-polla' meaning 'not-many', i.e., that Socrates as nous is consecrated to the One as non-multiplicity (nisprapanca in Sanskrit). Similarly, when he says that the accomplished philosphos when the soul is released from the body goes to be among the gods or his soul will go to the good and wise god (note again the indiscriminate use of singular and plural) he means that the individual nous and higher soul released from the lower soul and the experience of the body re-merges with Nous and the One. In the discussion of the fact that the gods can only do good and be good, such as in the earlier books of the Republic, which I gather you are referring to, he is not talking about the Homeric/Hesiodic, etc. 'gods', though they and quotations from the poets are used in the discussion, especially since he concerned to counter popular misconceptions of divinity, but showing that the three hypostases as divine principles are wholly good (evil coming from the darkness of non-being) and that the law of necessity/karma/justice operative inexorably throughout the level of soul and becoming/samsara/genesis is wholly just and righteous and divine and always works, so that good is always rewarded and evil always punished. It would be a big project to go through all the instances in the dialogs referring to god/gods and show their actual or undermeaning, but I hope this is enough to give you the idea for now. I want to at least add that in the Enneads Plotinus generally uses god or gods to refer to one or another of the three hypostases, usually the higher two, and even when he may refer to, for example, the sun as a deity is referring to the fact that all is only mind/contemplation/soul and the ordering of even lowest soul level reality is according to divine spiritual principles mediated through the world soul so that one needs to respect this higher spiritual reality and not disparage it or disregard the divine necessity and law. When he does mention conventional lower deities in the sense that you are asking about, just following along with the conventional phenomenal relative consensus reality that he happens to be functioning in in his time and place, and in regard to 'magic', physical cosmology, 'prayers', astrology, etc., he treats them all as unimportant and irrelevant to spirituality and spiritual and philosophic practice and as inferior or irrelevant to the true philosophos, the true renunciant contemplative ascetic. I hope that this may be enough to resolve the 'aporia' that you raised about deities in Platonism and show that there is no contradiction with the Platonist view as expressed in the dialogs and Enneads and the Buddhist attaching no profundity to deities that we have both held to over the past years. In fact, as I pointed out, Buddhism is really much more concerned with deities, at the popular and institutionalized monastic level at least, with Dharma protector gods and etc., etc., even if they are irrelevant to attaining release from samsara and are inferior to the Buddhist ascetic yogin. Platonism of and in the dialogs and Enneads is, as I have attempted very briefly to show with I hope some success, actually much more purely concerned only with transcendence and dismissive of deities as unimportant, unwise, and irrelevant since it has no need of deities at all, even as protectors of the faith, but is content with the really divine principles of the actual divine underlying structure of reality and of the hypostases and the aspiration for genuine transcendence and release from all relative realities, including any which may include deities, and any seeming reference to a higher ontological status of deities is actually a reference to the higher ontological status of the higher hypostases.