Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum / Platonic Resources.

**Posted by Jeremy Taylor** 7/01/2015 7:45 pm

Here is the place to find various resources on the Platonic tradition.

A reasonable place to start is with Thomas Taylor's Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato.

**Posted by Etzelnik** 7/01/2015 8:01 pm

In addition, Guttenberg archives has a lot of free classic texts available for free download (I use it on my android).

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/01/2015 9:27 pm

Thanks for getting this for me Jeremy, sorry I didn't get on top of it like I wanted to. Cars been acting up all week. Give me a couple hours and I'll go home and list all of the books and resources that I'm aware of.

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/02/2015 3:28 am

The core problem with scholarship in ancient philosophy in English-speaking scholarship (I will avoid speaking for the Continent and elsewhere) is that most authors proceed with the assumption that either ancient philosophers are manifestly wrong or else that if they aren't manifestly wrong they are saying something that's easy to render compatible with mainstream modern philosophical ideas. This is a kind of absurdity that is compatible neither with good sense nor the proclivities of anyone approaching ancient philosophy from the perspective of any kind of "Scholasticism". Nonsense scholarship leads to awful popular general summaries of ancient figures such as this one- http://crossref-it.info/articles/221/aristotles-empiricism -in which nearly every paragraph contains a falsehood.

I consider Platonism a robust historical intellectual school that, most controversially, is shared and not opposed by Aristotle but which also continues mostly unabated until at least 600 AD. This is neither popular nor typical thinking in English academia. Usually a story is told where Aristotle is some kind of Anti-Plato, and Plato and Platonism are are strictly separated, with Platonism coming in phases like Early-Platonism, Middle-Platonism, and Neo-Platonism, all of which are also separated. This renders Ancient Philosophy a chaotic jumbled mess. It also makes for really convenient scholarly specialization since tiny bits are easier to master than big unities.

On this approach see the works of Lloyd P. Gerson:

Two Basic Papers:

"What is Platonism" - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxMqpO75iGE0bUpfbXJvYTF6N3M
"On the Harmony of Plato and Aristotle According to Neoplaton" - https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxMqpO75iGE0NnRBVnF0YTJjV28

Other Papers:

See my Google Drive folder (all papers have been previously released by the author himself): https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxMqpO75iGE0fksxVGpEcnVaRjd5RVpBdXJLT096QjZsZHh2V2dGV0FQSlRCQnJfeTVFMkk

Monographs:

God and Greek Philosophy: Studies in the Early History of Natural Theology - December 13, 1994
Plotinus: Arguments of the Philosophers - May 8, 1998
Knowing Persons: A Study in Plato - May 4, 2006
Aristotle and Other Platonists - Jul 20, 2006
Ancient Epistemology - Feb 12, 2009
From Plato to Platonism - Dec 10, 2013

Essay Collection:

Graceful Reason: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy Presented to Joseph Owens, CSSR, on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday and the Fiftieth Anniversary of His Ordination - Jan 1, 1983
The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus - Aug 13, 1996
Aristotle: Critical Assessments - Jul 8, 1999
The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity - Feb 7, 2011

Lectures:

Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Forms

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Now, if you get the idea there's some question about how to introduce you to the whole thing, There are few contemporary harmonic introductions to anything I would call Platonism in English. The only straightforward one I'm aware of is a title called:

Thinking being: Introduction to Metaphysics in the Classical Tradition - by Eric D. Perl - February 6, 2014

This one tries to give a harmonic reading of Parminides, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Thomas Aquinas. It is guided in its outlook by Phenomenology, but this is not overly intrusive. It is unfortunately very expensive, and I'm not supposed to tell you how to get it for free in public...

Another book that is of some intrest is:

What Is Ancient Philosophy? – by Pierre Hadot

I would characterize this book as a kind of existential primer to Platonism. It serves to help one see why you should live a life in pursuit of the kind of things Platonists were pursuing. This is particularly important if you are not a religious Platonist (as is my case) since you might otherwise lack any in-built motivation to practice philosophy as a way of living, but even the Christian Platonist might find it edifying. Read it first and last.

Feser's works actually serve to get you closer to Platonism than most scholarship, though he has the unfortunate tendency to treat Aristotle and Aristotelianism as fundamentally disharmonious with Plato and Platonism. This is a mistake that's generally not too important except insofar as it pushed him away from trying to account for Form in a fuller way than he often does, but if you want to at least get your head on right read Feser, then read introductions to Plato and Aristotle, and disregaurd anything incompatible with what Feser says. That will get you closer than you'd otherwise be picking some average introduction. After that, I recomend a primary sources approach followed by considered Scholarship:

Parminides:

Plato:

Aristotle:

[...]

Plotinus:

[...]

Last edited by iwpoe (7/05/2015 9:20 am)

**Posted by DanielCC** 7/02/2015 5:29 am

The following two titles are classics but a thread on Platonism cannot be without them:

A.E. Taylor:

Plato: The Man and His World
A Commentary on Plato's “Timaeus

Both of these are essential for understanding the relation between Plato’s later cosmological ideas and Aristotle’s concept of the Four Causes.

Paul Friedlander:

Plato vol I (Introduction)
Plato vol II ((The Dialogues, First Period)
Plato vol III (The Dialogues, Second and Third Periods)

A three volume collection of essays from a German Classicist and, I believe, friend of Heidegger. The essays are gracefully written and cover all manner of topics from alleged difference between Platonic and Neoplatonic Natural Theology and the role of Intuition phenomenologically conceived in Plato’s own epistemology.

Giovanni Reale:

Towards a New Interpretation of Plato

A master-piece in which Reale attempts to reconstruct Plato’s so called Unwritten Doctorine as discussed in his letters and through-out the writings of Aristotle. In doing so Reale establishes the close link between Platonism and earlier Pythagorean ideas as well as the natural continence between Plato and his later Neoplatonic interpreters. I would recommend this to Aristotelians as well since it shows just how close Plato’s Monad and Dyad where to Pure Actuality and Prime Matter.

Last edited by DanielCC (7/02/2015 5:30 am)

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/02/2015 6:05 am

DanielCC wrote:
and, I believe, friend of Heidegger.

I'm not sure this is so. I know they were colleagues. I know they both sat in examination of Gadamer. And I know that Friedländer somewhat famously denied on philological grounds that the historically original meaning of 'aletheia' was un-forgetting and not truth as correspondence. I don't know, however, that they got on together.

**Posted by Jeremy Taylor** 7/02/2015 6:34 pm

Thanks for that, I know Gerson and Reale are excellent sources for Platonism.

I would add that term Platonic resources should be interpreted broadly to include Christian Platonists and others right down to modern Platonists. I also would add the Pythagoreans as there is a large crossover (in my opinion Pythagoreanism-Platonism is a more accurate description of antique Platonism - Plato was essentially a somewhat eclectic Pythagorean with some Eleatic influence). With that in mind, I would stronly recommend:

The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology of Ancient Writings which Relate to Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy by Guthrie, K.S.

It is an excellent introduction to ancient Pythagoreanism, with a good modern summation at the beginning and lots of primary sources stretching from early Pythagoreans to the late antique Platonists. The information about the role of number and the limit and unlimited is a great resource for understanding Platonic ideas on unity and the One and the Dyad.

Essentially, all the works of Thomas Taylor are good resources for ancient Platonism in modern times; Taylor still offers the best and even only English translations of some of the works of tge late antique Platonists, such as some of Proclus.

Sir W.D. Ross's Plato's Theory of Ideas is a very good, but expensive, overview of the Forms.

**Posted by Etzelnik** 7/02/2015 6:43 pm

I've linked this elsewhere, but here is an online edition of Michael Friedländer's translation of Maimonides' Guide.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/

**Posted by RM** 7/09/2015 9:29 pm

Has anyone read any of Josef Pieper's works on Plato? I've been wanting to do a Pieper reading project for a while and was wondering what people thought of those particular works.

**Posted by iwpoe** 7/09/2015 9:47 pm

RM wrote:
Has anyone read any of Josef Pieper's works on Plato? I've been wanting to do a Pieper reading project for a while and was wondering what people thought of those particular works.

I haven't, but a glance over looks promising.