As a Christian Platonist, Simone Weil found the theme of a divine mediator to be essential to her religious philosophy. In the essay “God in Plato” from the anthology On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God, Weil quotes Plato’s Symposium:
“God does not communicate directly with men, but all intercourse and converse between the divine and the human is effected through [an] intermediary.” [p.130]
A bit further on, she states in her own words:
“The idea of mediation is essential in Plato because, as he says in the Philebus, it is important not to proceed too quickly to the one.” [ibid., p.131, emphasis hers]
She subsequently turns to the Timaeus, making this rather striking observation:
“The Timaeus is an account of the creation. Its source appears to be so different that it is unlike any of Plato’s other dialogues. Either he was inspired from a source unknown to us or else between the other dialogues and this one something had happened to him. It is easy to guess what. He had come out of the cave and seen the sun and returned to the cave. The Timaeus is the book of the man who comes back into the cave from above. …
“In the Timaeus there is a trinity: the Artificer, the Model of the creation, and the Soul of the world.” [ibid., p.132]
She next quotes a passage from the Timaeus containing a proof of God’s existence. Because I have no Greek, I will eliminate the Greek words she incorporated to clarify her translation, but I will flag their locations with [*]:
“First of all we must, in my judgment, make this distinction. What is that which is eternally real but never coming into existence, and what is that which is always coming into existence but is never real? The one is apprehended by thought with the help of reason [*] since it is eternally self-consistent reality, whereas the other is a subject of opinion based on unreasoning sensation, since it becomes and perishes without ever possessing real existence. Again, everything which becomes [*] must necessarily have some author [*] since it is quite impossible for there to be a becoming without a cause.” [ibid., p.132, emphasis added]
Plato is, Weil says, “expounding a theory of artistic creation and, by analogy, of the divine creation.” She goes on to develop her explication of this analogy thusly:
“In creating a work of art…the artist’s attention is oriented towards silence and the void; from this silence and void there descends an inspiration which develops into words or forms. Here the Model is the source of transcendent inspiration—and therefore the Artificer fitly corresponds to the Father, the Soul of the World to the Son, and the Model to the Spirit. A model which is ultra-transcendent and unrepresentable, like the Spirit.
“ …This Model is a living Being, it is not a thing. “ [ibid., p.133]
The Soul of the World, in Weil's words, is "the engendered God who is related to the creation as mediator, at the intersection of the other world and this world." She has pointed out, just above, that Plato refers to the Soul of the World in the Timaeus as "the only son [*] which has been, is, and will continue to be." [ibid., p.135]
We can see that a divine trinity corresponding to the Christian concept of the Triune God is explicit in Plato. In the Hebrew scriptures of the Old Testament, however, this concept, if found at all, is found only by looking backward, after the established fact, to find text that can be interpreted as being vaguely referential to the persons of the Holy Trinity. In fact, the God of Israel is One, so far as Judaism is concerned. The Messiah of the Old Testament is not God, but a temporal warrior-king. The Holy Spirit, as such, is unknown. The Jews have yet to develop the doctrine of a divine trinity out of their own sacred scriptures. And it is at this point where I become a quasi-Marcionite.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Reflections: Of Things Past
Here's another little bit of Simone Weil under the spell of Plato:
"Oblivion:; another image of unfathomable profundity. What we have forgotten of the past -- for example, an emotion -- has absolutely no existence. And yet everything of our past that we have forgotten retains none the less its full reality--the reality proper to it, which is past reality but is not existence, because the past does not exist today."
~Simone Weil, On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God, p. 122, "God in Plato"
Weil writes this after quoting a passage in the Phaedrus containing this: "But it is not easy for every soul to remember the things it saw when it was up there [i.e. in heaven, prior to birth or rebirth], either because it only saw them for a short time or else because it has suffered some misfortune since it fell down into this world." The "things it saw" are the things of the Realm of Ideas; the Real Forms, of which the transitory things of this world are only pale reflections.
But it occurred to me upon reading this that memory works this way within our temporal lives, too. Any person who has ever picked up a journal or diary that he kept decades in the past and begun reading realizes how much of that, now long past, experience, which was so important to the formation of who he is today, has been completely forgotten. When we fall down into adulthood, we suffer many misfortunes, indeed. Not that our youth was heaven--far from it!--but that it was, perhaps, less jaded, less defensive, more open to...grace.
Since I can put my hands on such a journal, I decided to put these ideas to the test. I quickly found the following entry, written during the summer prior to my senior year in high school, which I probably haven't read since the day I wrote it:
"I've been thinking about prayer tonight. It seems to me that if you have a soul with a potential for godliness, then you also have the ability to find, within yourself, the answers to the questions which you might ask in prayer. Especially those questions that you would ask in deciding between wrong and right. God does not have to tell you directly what is wrong and what is right because you already know subconsciously. In prayer you are forced to face the facts truthfully and you cannot help but make the correct decision, which is built into you. God has really answered the question for you before you even think to ask it."
Natural Law from the mouths of babes. It is any wonder that I went on to admire Plato and Simone Weil?
Matthew 18:3 -- Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
"Oblivion:; another image of unfathomable profundity. What we have forgotten of the past -- for example, an emotion -- has absolutely no existence. And yet everything of our past that we have forgotten retains none the less its full reality--the reality proper to it, which is past reality but is not existence, because the past does not exist today."
~Simone Weil, On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God, p. 122, "God in Plato"
Weil writes this after quoting a passage in the Phaedrus containing this: "But it is not easy for every soul to remember the things it saw when it was up there [i.e. in heaven, prior to birth or rebirth], either because it only saw them for a short time or else because it has suffered some misfortune since it fell down into this world." The "things it saw" are the things of the Realm of Ideas; the Real Forms, of which the transitory things of this world are only pale reflections.
But it occurred to me upon reading this that memory works this way within our temporal lives, too. Any person who has ever picked up a journal or diary that he kept decades in the past and begun reading realizes how much of that, now long past, experience, which was so important to the formation of who he is today, has been completely forgotten. When we fall down into adulthood, we suffer many misfortunes, indeed. Not that our youth was heaven--far from it!--but that it was, perhaps, less jaded, less defensive, more open to...grace.
Since I can put my hands on such a journal, I decided to put these ideas to the test. I quickly found the following entry, written during the summer prior to my senior year in high school, which I probably haven't read since the day I wrote it:
"I've been thinking about prayer tonight. It seems to me that if you have a soul with a potential for godliness, then you also have the ability to find, within yourself, the answers to the questions which you might ask in prayer. Especially those questions that you would ask in deciding between wrong and right. God does not have to tell you directly what is wrong and what is right because you already know subconsciously. In prayer you are forced to face the facts truthfully and you cannot help but make the correct decision, which is built into you. God has really answered the question for you before you even think to ask it."
Natural Law from the mouths of babes. It is any wonder that I went on to admire Plato and Simone Weil?
Matthew 18:3 -- Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Readings: Gittin' Zippy Wid It
Over on Zippy Catholic, Zippy has an interesting discussion going on under a post entitled “Material Prosperity Is Immoral.” In the penultimate paragraph of his post, Zippy writes: “The bottom line is that poverty is a sign (though not a dispositive sign) of virtue, and wealth is a sign (though not a dispositive sign) of vice: not merely in the case of individuals but in the case of economic systems. If we are not self consciously making choices that we know are reducing our material prosperity from what it could be, we are doing evil.” I will readily admit that the reasoning which gets him to that point is soaring way over my head. However, when Zippy says, in response to one of his commenters, “…greed is immoral” he strikes a responsive chord in me.
Just now, as I continued my reading in Simone Weil’s essay “God in Plato” I was provided with words that are descriptive of the problem that I have with the pursuit of “material prosperity” (whatever that is). Weil’s context here is an exposition on the grace of the beauty of the natural world as a source of spiritual energy:
“Various objects can be sources of energy, but of energy on different levels. For example, in war a decoration is really a source of energy (in the literal, physical sense of the word) on the level of military courage; it stimulates movements for which otherwise one would lack the strength. Similarly money, for work.”
I don’t know if I can buy her idea that medals provide soldiers with physical energy; but I certainly agree that money is an effective motivator of work. She continues:
“In a general way, whatever there is a desire for is a source of energy, and the energy is on the same level as the desire. Beauty as such is a source of energy on the level of spiritual life, and the reason is that the contemplation of beauty implies detachment.”
I’m going to give her this, if only because I whole-heartedly agree with the conclusion to which this statement leads her:
“The energy supplied by other objects of desire can only be transmuted into spiritually usable energy through an act of detachment or refusal—declining the decoration or giving away the money.”
In other words, the pursuit of objects of desire (other than beauty), including material prosperity (however one defines it) might be seen as “immoral” in that it tends to exhaust the energy that might otherwise be available for the pursuit of spiritual advancement. One has, in effect, chosen against the Good. I think that this can also be seen as applicable to transcendent entities, such as nations. I have no idea if this is compatible with what Zippy is getting at, but his is how I see it.
Just now, as I continued my reading in Simone Weil’s essay “God in Plato” I was provided with words that are descriptive of the problem that I have with the pursuit of “material prosperity” (whatever that is). Weil’s context here is an exposition on the grace of the beauty of the natural world as a source of spiritual energy:
“Various objects can be sources of energy, but of energy on different levels. For example, in war a decoration is really a source of energy (in the literal, physical sense of the word) on the level of military courage; it stimulates movements for which otherwise one would lack the strength. Similarly money, for work.”
I don’t know if I can buy her idea that medals provide soldiers with physical energy; but I certainly agree that money is an effective motivator of work. She continues:
“In a general way, whatever there is a desire for is a source of energy, and the energy is on the same level as the desire. Beauty as such is a source of energy on the level of spiritual life, and the reason is that the contemplation of beauty implies detachment.”
I’m going to give her this, if only because I whole-heartedly agree with the conclusion to which this statement leads her:
“The energy supplied by other objects of desire can only be transmuted into spiritually usable energy through an act of detachment or refusal—declining the decoration or giving away the money.”
In other words, the pursuit of objects of desire (other than beauty), including material prosperity (however one defines it) might be seen as “immoral” in that it tends to exhaust the energy that might otherwise be available for the pursuit of spiritual advancement. One has, in effect, chosen against the Good. I think that this can also be seen as applicable to transcendent entities, such as nations. I have no idea if this is compatible with what Zippy is getting at, but his is how I see it.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Religion: Sauve Qui Peut
Reading further along in On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God, I found that Simone Weil is a proponent of the theory that The Republic is an allegory:
“We must remember that this city is a fiction, is purely a symbol representing the soul. Plato says so: 'Perhaps there is a model of it in heaven for whoever wishes to see it and, seeing it, to found the city of his own self.' [Republic, VI, 519c-520e.] The different categories of citizen represent the different parts of the soul. The philosophers, those who come out from the cave, are the supernatural part.” [p.112]
This idea is comforting to those of us who have been troubled by some of the totally impractical, and in places undesirable, proposals made by Plato’s Socrates, if enacted in the real world. Weil goes on:
“The entire soul must detach itself from this world, but it is only the supernatural part which enters into relation with the other world. When the supernatural part has seen God face to face it must turn back to rule the soul, so as to keep the whole of it awake, whereas in those whose deliverance has not been accomplished it is in a state of dreaming.” [p.112]
Consider this in relation to the Buddhist concept of the Bodhisattva:
Main Entry: bo•dhi•satt•va
Variant(s): or bod•dhi•satt•va /"bO-di-'s&t-v&, -'sät-/
Function: noun
Etymology: Sanskrit bodhisattva one whose essence is enlightenment, from bodhi enlightenment + sattva being -- more at BID
: a being that compassionately refrains from entering nirvana in order to save others and is worshipped as a deity in Mahayana Buddhism
The analogy to Plato here is that every human being who is successful in turning his attention towards God, must tear himself away from that glorious vision, and turn his attention back towards his material self, in order to live an earthly life directed towards the Good, thereby achieving his salvation. In effect, every saint is his own bodhisattva:
“The natural part of the soul, detached from this world and with no way of reaching the other, is in the void during the process of deliverance. It must be restored to contact with this world, which is its own; but to a legitimate contact which stops short of attachment.” [p.112]
It is perhaps interesting and fruitful to contemplate this “void,” as mentioned above, in the light of St. John of Cross and his exposition of the Dark Night of the Soul.
In summarizing this concept, Weil speaks in terms of “incarnation,” making these ideas that much more suggestive of the bodhisattva:
“In short, after having torn the soul from the body and having passed through death to approach God, the saint must incarnate himself, as it were, in his own body so as to shed upon this world, upon this earthly life, a reflection of the supernatural light; so as to make a reality of this earthly life and this world, for until then they are only dreams. It falls to him, in this way, to complete the creation. The perfect imitator of God first disincarnates and then incarnates himself.”
Compare this with such New Testament teachings as John 12.24:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
“We must remember that this city is a fiction, is purely a symbol representing the soul. Plato says so: 'Perhaps there is a model of it in heaven for whoever wishes to see it and, seeing it, to found the city of his own self.' [Republic, VI, 519c-520e.] The different categories of citizen represent the different parts of the soul. The philosophers, those who come out from the cave, are the supernatural part.” [p.112]
This idea is comforting to those of us who have been troubled by some of the totally impractical, and in places undesirable, proposals made by Plato’s Socrates, if enacted in the real world. Weil goes on:
“The entire soul must detach itself from this world, but it is only the supernatural part which enters into relation with the other world. When the supernatural part has seen God face to face it must turn back to rule the soul, so as to keep the whole of it awake, whereas in those whose deliverance has not been accomplished it is in a state of dreaming.” [p.112]
Consider this in relation to the Buddhist concept of the Bodhisattva:
Main Entry: bo•dhi•satt•va
Variant(s): or bod•dhi•satt•va /"bO-di-'s&t-v&, -'sät-/
Function: noun
Etymology: Sanskrit bodhisattva one whose essence is enlightenment, from bodhi enlightenment + sattva being -- more at BID
: a being that compassionately refrains from entering nirvana in order to save others and is worshipped as a deity in Mahayana Buddhism
The analogy to Plato here is that every human being who is successful in turning his attention towards God, must tear himself away from that glorious vision, and turn his attention back towards his material self, in order to live an earthly life directed towards the Good, thereby achieving his salvation. In effect, every saint is his own bodhisattva:
“The natural part of the soul, detached from this world and with no way of reaching the other, is in the void during the process of deliverance. It must be restored to contact with this world, which is its own; but to a legitimate contact which stops short of attachment.” [p.112]
It is perhaps interesting and fruitful to contemplate this “void,” as mentioned above, in the light of St. John of Cross and his exposition of the Dark Night of the Soul.
In summarizing this concept, Weil speaks in terms of “incarnation,” making these ideas that much more suggestive of the bodhisattva:
“In short, after having torn the soul from the body and having passed through death to approach God, the saint must incarnate himself, as it were, in his own body so as to shed upon this world, upon this earthly life, a reflection of the supernatural light; so as to make a reality of this earthly life and this world, for until then they are only dreams. It falls to him, in this way, to complete the creation. The perfect imitator of God first disincarnates and then incarnates himself.”
Compare this with such New Testament teachings as John 12.24:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”
Monday, September 24, 2007
Interlude: Bloggin' Like the Do-Dah Man
Although I pretty much know what I want to post next, I've spent so much time in the past day or two visiting what are to me new blogs, here and here, that I haven't gotten around to it.
I have never added a blogroll at this site because many of the blogs that I regularly visit are either primarily political in nature, or are sectarian. I don't mean for Rodak Riffs to be a place of controversy. I hope that it will be a place where visitors might learn something, find something new to contemplate, and, in turn, leave something here to be learned and contemplated.
This does not mean that I don't like to argue, because I do. While I don't want to add a permanent blogroll to this site, I will now provide any person who stumbles across this post with one-time-only links to some of the places I visit on a fairly regular basis either to argue, or to find ammunition for use in arguments elsewhere.
These places are here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.
Please visit them. Bookmark them. Read them and comment. Make some new friends. Tell 'em Rodak sent you.
[Update: and now, also, here.]
I have never added a blogroll at this site because many of the blogs that I regularly visit are either primarily political in nature, or are sectarian. I don't mean for Rodak Riffs to be a place of controversy. I hope that it will be a place where visitors might learn something, find something new to contemplate, and, in turn, leave something here to be learned and contemplated.
This does not mean that I don't like to argue, because I do. While I don't want to add a permanent blogroll to this site, I will now provide any person who stumbles across this post with one-time-only links to some of the places I visit on a fairly regular basis either to argue, or to find ammunition for use in arguments elsewhere.
These places are here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.
Please visit them. Bookmark them. Read them and comment. Make some new friends. Tell 'em Rodak sent you.
[Update: and now, also, here.]
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Reflections: To Cave, or Not to Cave...
Simone Weil further elucidates her ideas in "God in Plato" from On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God by her discussion of the famous “Allegory of the Cave”, from Plato’s Republic. While I have every confidence that any person who finds himself reading Rodak Riffs is very familiar with The Republic and the cave allegory, I thought it best to google it in order to provide a link to a transcript for anybody who needs a little refresher course. After spending some time at this task, I was unable to find a transcription of the cave allegory that wasn’t embedded in some philosophy professor’s lesson plan. But this one has less extraneous material than most. I also thought it would be good to provide a graphic of the cave, as an aid to visualization. Again, I resorted to google. Of the various versions I found on the first few pages, I liked this one best: take a look.
The Allegory of the Cave, as Weil interprets it, is an instruction by Plato concerning the human soul’s captivity in the prison of the flesh. This, Plato says, is not a cautionary tale; it is how we are now. In this, it is in some ways analogous to the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, if we want to understand the prisoners in the cave as representing Man-after-the-Fall. But such an interpretation adds nothing to the lesson, in my opinion. The allegory elucidates the need for the soul’s detachment from the things of the material world, in order to make possible a conversion that will enable the soul to comprehend Reality, thereby becoming capable of the salvific love of God.
As is shown in the allegory, this is a very difficult and painful process. In Weil’s words:
“Therefore, in order to turn its eyes towards God the entire soul has to turn away from the things which are born and perish, from temporal things… The entire soul—including therefore its sentient and carnal part which is rooted in the things of sense and draws life from them. It must be uprooted. And this is death. And this death is what conversion is.
… “Thus it is total detachment that is the condition for the love of God, and when once the soul has performed the motion of totally detaching itself from the world so as to turn entirely towards God, it is illumined by the truth which comes down to it from God.
“This is the very same idea that is at the center of Christian mysticism.”
In addition to its correspondence to Christian mysticism, we note that it is not different in any fundamental way to the previously discussed Hindu concepts of yoga, Maya, Bhakti, etc. As Weil puts it, “We are born and live in passivity… We are born and live in unconsciousness. We are unaware of being under punishment, of being in falsehood, of being passive, and, of course, of being unconscious.”
I have, in the past, stated that I no longer attend the cinema because I can’t tolerate the way the experience of viewing a film in a theater totally overwhelms the senses, in effect usurping one’s consciousness. I was, therefore, interested to see Simone Weil say with regard to the human condition as presented in the “Allegory of the Cave”:
“What we live at any moment is what is offered us by the puppet-master. (We are not told anything about him…The Prince of this world?) We possess absolutely no freedom. One is free after being converted (and even during the process), but not before.
... “The talking cinema is very much like this cave. Which shows how much we love our degradation.”
Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about.
The Allegory of the Cave, as Weil interprets it, is an instruction by Plato concerning the human soul’s captivity in the prison of the flesh. This, Plato says, is not a cautionary tale; it is how we are now. In this, it is in some ways analogous to the Christian doctrine of Original Sin, if we want to understand the prisoners in the cave as representing Man-after-the-Fall. But such an interpretation adds nothing to the lesson, in my opinion. The allegory elucidates the need for the soul’s detachment from the things of the material world, in order to make possible a conversion that will enable the soul to comprehend Reality, thereby becoming capable of the salvific love of God.
As is shown in the allegory, this is a very difficult and painful process. In Weil’s words:
“Therefore, in order to turn its eyes towards God the entire soul has to turn away from the things which are born and perish, from temporal things… The entire soul—including therefore its sentient and carnal part which is rooted in the things of sense and draws life from them. It must be uprooted. And this is death. And this death is what conversion is.
… “Thus it is total detachment that is the condition for the love of God, and when once the soul has performed the motion of totally detaching itself from the world so as to turn entirely towards God, it is illumined by the truth which comes down to it from God.
“This is the very same idea that is at the center of Christian mysticism.”
In addition to its correspondence to Christian mysticism, we note that it is not different in any fundamental way to the previously discussed Hindu concepts of yoga, Maya, Bhakti, etc. As Weil puts it, “We are born and live in passivity… We are born and live in unconsciousness. We are unaware of being under punishment, of being in falsehood, of being passive, and, of course, of being unconscious.”
I have, in the past, stated that I no longer attend the cinema because I can’t tolerate the way the experience of viewing a film in a theater totally overwhelms the senses, in effect usurping one’s consciousness. I was, therefore, interested to see Simone Weil say with regard to the human condition as presented in the “Allegory of the Cave”:
“What we live at any moment is what is offered us by the puppet-master. (We are not told anything about him…The Prince of this world?) We possess absolutely no freedom. One is free after being converted (and even during the process), but not before.
... “The talking cinema is very much like this cave. Which shows how much we love our degradation.”
Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about.
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