Beshara

Plato

Beyond Dogma and Doctrine: some non-eristic remarks on reading Plato and Ibn 'Arabi
by Peter Coates

Talk addressed to the students on the Six-month Course of the Beshara School at the Chisholme Institute, February 15, 2010

It is always a great pleasure to be here at Chisholme and I am indebted to the Beshara School for the rather absorbing opportunity to revisit the writings of Plato, particularly regarding the key question of 'realisation'.

But First Some Very Brief Preliminary Remarks
Let's start with some dates: Socrates lived 469-399 B.C., Plato 428–347 B.C., and Aristotle 384-322 B.C. Socrates and Plato were both Athenians. Plato was forty-years younger than Socrates and one of his long-standing students. At the time there was much talk about this rather strange character Socrates and his interrogative methods which finally led Socrates to be accused of 'corrupting the young'. Plato wrote a famous and dramatic account of Socrates own Defense against the charge and of his last days when facing the Death Sentence in what is known as the Apology and published by Penguin Classics under the title The Last Days of Socrates. Plato was so deeply impressed and moved by Socrates and the Socratic method that Socrates occurs in almost all of Plato's Dialogues as the central speaker. Most educated English-speaking readers will know of Socrates largely through Plato's writings (although there are certainly other important sources) so the Socrates I am dealing with in the talk is the Platonic Socrates - that Socrates documented centrally in most of the Dialogues. Aristotle was a student of Plato's Academy and left when, at Plato's death, he wasn't, I believe, appointed its Principal and went on to develop his own line of thinking and research. As well as his famous Studies on Ethics, Logic and Metaphysics he also inaugurated some extensive marine biological research and classification, which was probably the first of its kind. Socrates himself never wrote anything. Plato most likely knew Socrates from 'a very early age' and as we are told in the Last Days of Socrates 'The death of Socrates seems to have filled Plato with a passionate desire to preserve and protect his memory'. It certainly helped change Plato's direction from Politics to Philosophy, but equally resulted in a Theory of the State in which the Philosopher-Kings would rule supreme. But there are those who think that Plato seriously distorted the Socratic outlook – but for our purposes I duly confine my remarks to the Platonic Socrates: this will be sufficient for our purposes for it most certainly represents, if nothing else, Plato's view of human potential and self-knowledge. But there is a final point I wish to make as I conclude these preliminary remarks: that is, that there are no justified grounds in Plato for suggesting he may hold to 'an other-worldly mysticism'[1] which seeks to abandon as worthless ordinary human life – far from it. But Plato does present us with a metaphysical vision which is all-inclusive and explicitly seeks, in his own words, '... after the whole of things both human and divine'.[2] For Plato, 'know thyself' was not an irredeemable subjectivism but a path to a universal realisation.

'Growing Wings'[3]

Without their possessing some essentially common ground it would be nigh on impossible to give a true and proper appreciation of both the writings of Plato and of Ibn 'Arabi. Intrinsic to the work of both is the capacity to engender radically transformative effects on their readers, and not simply or primarily of an intellectual kind. Socrates, for example, who is one of the main Platonic interlocutors, sees himself, according to Plato, as a 'gadfly' stinging his listeners out of their comfort zones and dogmatic slumbers. And from some points of view Socrates may be seen as having paid ultimately a heavy price for adopting this function: not everyone likes to be stung. But as we shall see this was not the way that the matter appeared to Socrates himself. Socrates manner of death, so dramatically and beautifully portrayed in Plato's Apology illustrates in an extraordinary manner the grandeur and dignity of what it means to 'die before you die' and the universal realisation, not essentially in time, which is a prerequisite of it.

More generally and personally, after having quite accidentally picked up a copy of Plato's Republic from the local library (when I was, if I remember correctly, about seventeen or so) and not knowing anything about Plato or the book I soon found myself immersed in a universe of discourse totally foreign to me. At the time, I was young, working class and living in industrial Lancashire in a weaving and mining town and earning my living, because it was thought to have good prospects, at a Chartered Accountants. The impact of reading Plato's Republic was strange, haunting fascinating and became a life-long intellectual catalyst.

I remember particularly in Book X of the Republic reading the description of souls choosing their lives and stopping to drink at the River of Unmindfulness and Forgetfulness, some drinking more that others, except for one, Er, who was kept from drinking the water –so the story could be told. Then they were all sent away 'up to their birth', that is, to their chosen lives. Interestingly Er, however, when he opened his eyes at dawn 'saw himself stretched on a funeral pyre'. Let me cite a little of Plato here at the point where the various souls were choosing their future lives: "more than strange it was... how the different souls chose their lives – sad and absurd, and foolish, for their choice was guided for the most part by what they were used to in their earlier lives. He saw the soul of Orpheus... choose the life of a swan, for he hated all women because of his death at their hands, and was unwilling to have a woman give him birth. He saw the soul of Thamyris choosing the life of a nightingale. And a swan changing over to the life of man... the soul of Agamemnon (whose) pains had made it hate all men, changed to the life of an eagle. The soul of Atlanta gave one look at the great honours of an athlete's life and grasped them at once, unable to go further. (One took the soul) of an expert workman. And it chanced that the soul of Odyseus... came to make its selection. From memory of the toils of its last life, it had no longer any ambition, and went in search of the quiet life of a private person and was a long time looking till it saw it at last in some out-of -the –way place untouched by the others... " [4]

Cognitively, this experience was on a par with being transported to a totally unfamiliar Weltanschauung, far removed from the vicissitudes and assumptions of an industrial working class culture and bearing no commonality that I could detect with balance sheets, debits and credits and audit procedures which were the stock-in-trade of my accountancy days. Neither, however, (which may seem even more surprising) did the reading of such Platonic passages lead me to consider whether this might be a theory of transmigration or reincarnation or, more likely, a totally improbable scene. What happened, in fact, was that it raised certain important questions which had never arisen in me before. The whole question of choosing one's life became very important for me as too did the fundamental state of being in forgetfulness, although I wasn't quite sure what this meant or implied. Plato's words, if nothing else, for me had an unforgettable psychological veracity. This veracity didn't strike me as simply subjective but rather oddly directive. I think looking back, after many years, there was here the beginnings of some kind of important realisation.

It was, therefore, quite confirmatory that some considerable time later (and after having been introduced to the writings of Ibn 'Arabi) to find Ibn 'Arabi referring to Plato as the Divine Plato and Ibn 'Arabi himself being sometimes referred to by others as the Son of Plato and Ibn 'Arabi's alignment of Plato unambiguously with those rare philosophers 'comparable to men of revelation and contemplation' [5]. So I make no excuses in linking Plato and Ibn 'Arabi in this way in this paper.

More generally, there are many ways of reading Plato ranging perhaps from a traditional understanding of his work as promoting a cult of scholars and as inaugurating the first proto-university methodically fostering critical debate and Socratic questioning; to Feminist critiques (for and against Plato's written treatment of women); to the Deconstructionist accounts of such as Nietzsche and Derrida; to philosophical reflections on his method of Indirect Communication via interlocutors; to its later theological influence on Christianity ; to literary censures on his view of poetry. And, finally perhaps, to what appear to be critical problems with his Theory of Forms and its implied logical mistakes, like that which is known as the Third Man argument. But I propose in this paper to somewhat by-pass these kinds of assessments and logical problems for they can lead to a very misleading account of what Plato is up to and fail to address the heart of the matter. Let me put this in the context of exploration and explanation. Plato is not in the business of exhaustive explanation. In fact, he deliberately refrains from this kind of strategy. But he is in the business of tentative, open-ended (and sometimes self-critical) contemplative exploration of his basic ideas. And this strategy has its own intellectual rigour and veracity which can be misread as something else. For example, the Platonic Socrates insists 'There are certain ideas of which all other things partake... just and beautiful things become just and beautiful because they partake of justice and beauty'. In Platonic studies this raises the logical Problem of Universals and particular instances. 'Justice' and 'Beauty' represent, for Plato, the Ideal Eternal Forms and the grounds in which all individual beautiful acts and so on have their origin. The individual acts themselves are shadowy images partaking in the intelligible reality of these eternal forms. These Forms, for Plato, possess a greater and more vivid reality than their phenomenal counterparts. Here we have the situation of these universal, intelligible forms of Beauty (corresponding somewhat to the Beautiful Divine Names in Ibn 'Arabi) being instantiated in individuals and the individuals partaking in the reality of these Forms. Much has been written questioning the conceptual intelligibility of how it can make any logical sense at all to say that particulars partake in the universals. According to an early commentator Bertrand Russell Plato has failed to recognise "how great the gap is between universals and particulars, his 'ideas' are really just other particulars". But Russell remarks also that Plato himself later seemed to have recognised that there was a problem here. This recognition is clearly seen in Plato's Dialogue Parmenides, which, unusually for Plato, sees Parmenides as the chief interlocutor rather than the usual Socrates and in this role Parmenides subjects Plato's Theory of Forms to a devastating logical attack, Socrates himself is portrayed in this particular Dialogue as a kind of philosopher-in-training.

If we accept this Parmenidesian strategy the question arises did Plato change his mind about his so-called Theory of Forms because of its incoherence? If we take this tack we head off into the logical quagmire of asserting infinite regression implicit in his Theory of Forms.. And even more seriously, if Paramenides, is correct, it would show (according to one modern commentator) 'that, if the forms are as Socrates has described them, they cannot be known by human beings... (and it would also)... show that, if the forms are as Socrates has described them, then the gods cannot know human affairs'[6]. Both of these conclusions, if true, would be devastating to the Platonic Theory of Forms. The academic debates about this matter remain inconclusive.

But the point is, I suggest, is that Plato's account of the forms can be considered incomplete, suggestive and exploratory rather than dogmatic and incoherent. Perhaps it lacks an explicit Akbarian premise of man as an isthmus or bridge between, or in-between, the Real and the Phenomenal which 'connects the internal or interior aspects of the Single Unique Reality with its external or exterior aspects'[7] In this way (and by contrast with Plato) Ibn 'Arabi's metaphysics of unity, whilst acknowledging the great achievement of Plato and recognising that Plato is essentially in the same line of business, takes us away from the situation of one 'thing' participating in another 'thing' (even at the level of intelligible realities) to an understanding of Union-without-Union which emphasises the path of conscious recognition of our already existing Union with the Divine and an acknowledgement of the unity of all existence.

What I'm suggesting is that we look at Plato not as a theoretical metaphysician but as a man of theophanic vision who used whatever resources, cultural and otherwise, that were available to him during his lifetime (logical, mathematical, metaphorical, practical, discursive, ethical, spiritual, mythical and also political) to turn his contemporaries towards that theophanic vision in a direct and often challenging manner and as far as it was possible to do so in words and conversation.

Consider the following. Plato conceives of reality as having two major dimensions: Being and Becoming (or the Intelligible and the Visible) which roughly are a Platonic analogue to Ibn 'Arabi's Haqq and Khalq. If we take these distinctions as promoting a Theory of Ideas or a set of Theoretical Doctrines certain logical problems conceivably arise. But, if we take them rather as referring to the situation on which we all depend (and which we, in some way, come to realise for ourselves the reality and importance of this situation) then the import of these Platonic metaphors take on an entirely different significance: they become not primarily candidates for logical puzzlement or philosophical challenge but guides to the esssential. In fact, for Ibn 'Arabi (and I suspect for Plato) what is sometimes deemed conceptually impossible by the ordinary human intellect is the way reality actually is.[8] Let us take an example closer to home. All first course students at this School visit Turkey as an intrinsic part of their studies. As part of the itinerary they visit the Chora in Istanbul where they come across that most potent and beautiful icon of the Virgin Mary known as the 'Dwelling Place of the Uncontainable' or sometimes described as the 'Container of the Uncontainable'. Now are we to regard this is as an insoluble logical puzzle fatal to the whole metaphysical edifice alluded to in Plato and Ibn 'Arabi? Or rather, take it as a most holy invitation to the true spiritual reality which is ourselves, empty of anything but God – in total receptivity and submission. And as Edward Hallinan (also a student of this School ) points out in his interesting book on this famous icon "All icons have but one purpose: which is 'to show us both the condition of our original creation as according to the 'image' 'and the likeness' of God and the means whereby we may return to that condition" [9] – what Ibn 'Arabi would call our 'original nature' (fitra).

A clear implication of this is, in fact, a point about the starting point of education: that is, self knowledge. Socrates describes himself as a Midwife of the Spirit. His mother had been the more normal kind of midwife and it was a condition of Greek midwives that although they must have had children themselves they also must be beyond child-bearing age. Socrates saw himself as acting as a catalyst helping people to give birth to themselves. Socrates, whom posterity regards perhaps as the most famous teacher in Ancient Greece, claimed that he had never taught anybody anything: it had always come from themselves – the word education meaning 'drawing out'. And the starting point of this education, for Socrates, was the realisation that you have no wisdom: that you are in the state of quite profound ignorance about yourself – a state of forgetfulness. Socrates asserts in the Republic:
"Education is not truly what some of its professors say it is. They say they are able to put knowledge into a soul which hasn't got it – as if they were putting sight into blind eyes... .But our argument points to this: the natural power to learn lives in the soul and is like an eye which might not be turned from the dark without a turning round of the whole body. The instrument of knowledge has to be turned round, and with it the whole soul, from the things of becoming to the things of being, till the soul is able, by degrees, to support the light of true being and can look at the brightest... " [10]

There is a particular traditional classical monorhyme in a poem of Uftade's in The Nightingale in the Garden of Love which is repeated at the end of each stanza for maximum resonance: "With all your soul and with all your heart you must love". The question arises as to what 'soul' is being referred to here? It is undoubtedly, in my opinion, the same soul as Plato's interlocutor Socrates is referring to in this extract and which is also described by Ibn 'Arabi as 'the chief of the three souls' and the reality signified by the world "I": "it is that perfect and simple substance, which is living and active, whose sole activities are remembering, retaining ideas, comprehending, discriminating and reflecting".[11] But this is not to be identified with what is ordinarily understood as the intellect nor is it to be identified with the animal body and its desires. This soul, I suggest, is what the gadfly Socrates seeks to awaken in the slumbering inhabitants of Plato's cave or, more accurately still, seeks to turn this essential forever-present epistemic power of the soul in the direction of the light. For those who may not be familiar with Plato's famous Parable of the Cave let us briefly recount it:

"Picture men living in a cave which has a wide mouth open towards the light. They are kept in the same places, looking forward only away from the mouth of the cave and unable to turn their heads, for their legs and necks have been fixed in chains from birth. A fire is burning higher up at their backs, and between it and the prisoners there is a road with a low wall built at its side, like a screen over which puppet players put up their puppets... See again then men walking under cover of this low wall carrying past all sorts of things, copies of men and animals, in stone or wood or other materials; some of them may be talking and others not... the only real things for them would be the shadows of the puppets" [12]

This Socratic descriptor of the human condition carries with it a directive: that is, that it is possible for human beings to find their way out of the cave and reach the pure sunlight. Of course it will take time for their eyes to adjust but they will come to see the real world and how different it is to their cave-like impressions of the shadows. Not only this but there will be some who are directed to return to the Cave to help the others to see for themselves the true reality of the situation, a situation very similar and suggestive of the Third Journey recounted by Ibn 'Arabi in the Kernel of the Kernel.

But now I want to say a little more about that feature of reading the works of Plato which has attracted the attention of various commentators. I quote one such recent commentator (2009):

"When one compares Plato to some other commentators who are often ranked with him –Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant, for example – he can be recognised to be far more exploratory, incompletely systematic, elusive and playful than they".[13] I think this is definitely so and that there are at least one or two very profound reasons for it. In my opinion, as already mentioned , Plato is not trying to construct a metaphysical system for our intellectual inspection nor is he in the business of systematic epistemology. On this point Einstein, although referring to 'the scientist' and not to Plato, provides us with a considerable insight when he says: 'the external conditions which are set for [the scientist] by the facts of experience do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted, in the construction of his conceptual world, by the adherence to an epistemological system. He, therefore, must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist'. There is something of this strategy, in both the writings of Plato and Ibn 'Arabi, [14]: of an almost playful opportunism, using whatever means will do the trick, to constantly turn our vision to the essential matter. Put another way, an overriding desire in the case of Plato, to point us in the direction of the potential realisation of our essential nature and to this end, to deploy a variety of discursive means: the most central one of which is the dialogue or dialectic which is essentially a conversational device. It is, therefore, heuristically useful when reading Plato to remember not only to look at 'the finger' (as Wittgenstein reminds us) but at what it is pointing to. And for Plato it is pointing to an all-inclusive metaphysical reality beyond the reach of language. Plato is not in the business of telling others what it is but rather pointing out where to look and the manner of looking. It is a path of self-knowledge the importance of which is famously expressed by Socrates when he reminds us that the unexamined life is not worth living. This is perhaps the deeper reason why Plato as an author generally only communicates with his audience indirectly via his interlocutors and 'never in his own voice'.[15] This is not unconnected with the ineffable nature of the mysteries to which his entire corpus alludes. But it does remain equally true that it is Plato who is, through his writings and dialectical methodology, communicating with us and intending an understanding. Perhaps, even prompting 'a reading between the lines'.

And there can be no doubt of Plato's high estimation of the Socratic method and of Socrates himself, although Socrates never committed anything to writing. This is an interesting fact and raises intriguing questions about the nature and authority of authorship, particularly when writing or conversing about such extraordinary metaphysical matters. As we know Ibn 'Arabi is much more explicit here when he tells us that in all his writings he 'never had a set purpose as other writers' but they were inspired by almost overwhelming divine inspiration which could only be put from his mind by committing them to paper.[16]

As for the quality of serious playfulness in Plato's writings it could certainly stem from his inducing a dazzling bafflement in the listener (or co-interlocutor) stemming from Plato's own unassailable love and confidence 'in the whole of things human and divine' and often reflecting an interrogative sense of 'Come on... you really do know this?'

Consider the following in Book X of the Republic where Socrates in conversation with Glaucon broaches the importance of recognising the shortness of human life and the urgency of directing our attention to its essential ground:

Socrates: What great thing may a little time take in? One lifetime is small in comparison with all time.
Glaucon: It is nothing.
Socrates: What then? Should an eternal thing be seriously troubled about anything so short rather than about all time?
Glaucon: You are right but why do you say this?
Socrates: Have you not seen that our souls live for ever and never come to an end?
Glaucon: No, by Zeus, I haven't. Are you able to say that?
Socrates How would I not? And you may, for there is nothing hard about it[17]

So in accordance with the numinous nature of Plato's mysticism the exploratory, the incompletely systematic, the elusive and the playful are entirely apt and equally so intellectual rigour: for you have to be a pretty bright cookie to follow the cognitive intricacies of his discourses

Let us note at this point that the intellectual demands of reading Plato are radically antithetical to the deployment of sophistry. If you remember, the Sophists or 'Wise Men' were essentially 'professional itinerant teachers many of whom encouraged scepticism by stressing the two-sidedness of every question... and undermined values by preaching a kind of subjectivism and relativism (which) aimed at producing simply cleverness and efficiency... and they charged for their services... (by emphasising) the view that 'Knowledge is impossible, but I can show you how to make the most of yourselves' [18] This was about as far as you can be from the Platonic meaning of Wisdom and comes in for scathing Platonic criticism. The inappropriateness of assessing Plato's writings in an eristical manner is what prompted the use of the word non-eristic in the title of my talk. A telling translation of the word eristic is word-fighting: it is a species of argument aimed at victory rather than truth. It occurs in this form in Book V of the Republic where Socrates remarks unequivocally to Glaucon "they (the Sophists) make opposites of things when it is only the words that are opposite, and go in for eristic, word-fighting – not dialectic'.[19] Perhaps, it is possible to recognise here how eristic-centered communication fills and forecloses mental space whereas truth-strategies open and allow space for skilful flexibility of mind and contemplation. Essentially, Plato's dialectic is of this latter kind. But we also must be careful not to confuse Platonic dialectics with the historical dialectics of a Hegel or a Marx.

Plato presents us with an extraordinary cognitive map of his whole metaphysics of Being and Becoming in the famous Divided Line in Book V1 of the Republic. I could not have made much sense of it really without having read Ibn 'Arabi. He says , that is Plato, 'Take a line and cut it into two unequal parts – the short part for seeing (ie the Visible world) and the long one for thought (the Intelligible world). Now cut these two parts again in the same unequal measure'. Now these divisions represent degrees of increasing clarity and knowledge about the nature of reality: the small part ruled by the Sun of the Visible stands at the lower end of this ascending line of increasing clarity and vision and the long part, ruled by the Good (what we might call, for exegetical access, though Plato does not, 'the Sun' of the Intelligible World although he does represent it as the ultimate source of all Light), stands at the higher part of the ascending line. And we are reminded in the dialogue with Glaucon "as it was right before not to take seeing and light to be the sun, though they are sunlike, so here you will take knowledge and the true to be their parallels and like the good, but don't take them to be the good. The good has a still higher place of honour". Glaucon replies: "Beautiful beyond thought will it have to be, if it is that which gives us knowledge and the true and is still more beautiful than they are".[20]

I'm sure it is somewhat baffling to many readers but the main point I wish to draw is that, for Plato, the dialectic allows its participants (in their deliberations) to come under the contemplative influence of the intelligible world of forms and equally the visible world of images, things and thoughts. The discursive dialectical processes involved utilise the world of visible images and things to allude to the invisible world of mind and forms and, in some way, gain an entrance into that world. At any rate the highest form of knowledge allows a much more direct grasp of essential matters than the indirectness of the ordinary intellect. The dialectic is like an essential conversation: taking its nourishment from the Sun of the Visible World and the Source of light of the Intelligible World. It does not seem to be a process of ordinary mental reflection: it is much more like clear vision of ultimate truth. I'll give you a very small taste from the text: "the things reason takes as a basis are not taken by it as unquestioned starting points but ... as helps or stepping stones, as something to give a footing, or as springboards, by which it is made able to go up to that on which all depends". This I take to be arrival at the Intelligible Forms – illuminated by, as it were, the Light of the Intelligible World – and once having arrived there, even if it returns to the shadows, it can no longer perceive them from their point of view[21] and furthermore it recognises the complete intelligible order of all-and-every thing. You could say its own house has been put in order and mirrors the order of the whole. This I take to be the central significance of the all pervading mathematical proportions into which the Line, both horizontally and vertically is divided. The whole of reality has an intelligible rational order , everything having its proper place and determinate position. Plato, like Ibn 'Arabi, stands in awe at this most beautiful and ultimately indescribable arrangement. Maybe, it is what later followers of Ibn 'Arabi were referring to as the Unity of Existence. Plato is much more circumspect – but then again he lived in a very different milieu with very different cultural and conceptual assumptions and a different audience. One is inclined to say, however, in line with Ibn 'Arabi's appreciation of Plato: how extraordinary and all-inclusive Plato's theophanic vision was.

But what really strikes me, allowing for the enormous cultural, religious, geographical and time differences between the two writers, Ibn 'Arabi brings to its full flowering the universal nature of the Platonic ontology and, this may seem an even stranger thing to say, brings it out in a less time-capsuled way and even more so for today's world.

We have seen earlier that the vital epistemic key giving access to these matters is self-knowledge. We have also seen that Socrates refers to himself as a spiritual midwife and the son of a midwife, whom incidentally he describes as a 'fine buxom woman'. Here's a conversation snippet which is rather wonderful and may ring some personal bells:

"My art of midwifery is in general like theirs; the only difference is that the patients are men, not women, and my concern is not with the body but with the soul that is in travail of birth. And the highest point of my art is to prove by every test whether the offspring of a young man's thought is a false phantom or instinct with life and truth. I am so far like the midwife, that I cannot myself give birth to wisdom; and the common reproach is true, that although I question others, I can myself bring nothing to light because there is no wisdom in me. The reason is this: Heaven constrains me to serve as a midwife, but has debarred me from giving birth. So I myself have no sort of wisdom, nor has any discovery been born to me as the child of my soul. Those who frequent my company may at first appear, some of them, quite unintelligent; but as we go further with our discussions, all who are favoured by heaven make progress at a rate that seems surprising to others as well as to themselves, although it is clear that they have never learnt anything from me; the many admirable truths they bring to birth have been discovered by themselves from within. But the delivery is heaven's work and mine."[22]

This process of self-knowledge or self-remembering is technically described as Anamnesis or recollection: recollecting what we already know but have forgotten. As Socrates insists every human soul has had a vision of reality, and needs not to have knowledge put into it, but to recollect'.[23] In comparison, other kinds of knowledge are simply opinion or conjecture whereas the knowledge arrived at through the process of anamnesis is veridic. And it is interesting to remember here that some twentieth-century giants in the philosophy of science (like Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend) unremittingly point out, unlike the received opinion of many scientists themselves, the intrinsically conjectural nature of all scientific theorising. Heisenberg (who discovered the Uncertainty Principle) in his cameo Philosophy and Physics makes a very incisive point about why this is so. But let us not deviate.

This point, made by Plato, that knowledge is recollection of what we already know but have forgotten has resonances in much contemporary literature from Wordsworth's 'Intimations on Immortality', to Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathrustra and his enigmatic proposal that 'we must become who we already are' to T S Eliot's 'iconic masterpeice' The Waste Land (1922) where the forgetfulness seems almost complete.

But what are the qualities then which would distinguish a soul that has not forgotten and does not forget what it is better to remember? In this respect, for Plato, the life and death of Socrates remains paradigmatic. Consider: we know from Plato that Socrates described himself as 'appointed by God' to lead 'the philosophic life' and that he was guided by an 'inner voice' and that even if he were granted a reprieve from the death sentence on the condition that he gave up the life of a philosopher and that he lived the rest of his life 'quietly minding his own business' he would continue nevertheless to do what he has always done 'leading the philosophic life and examining myself and others'. And earlier he had remarked: 'For let me tell you gentlemen, that to be afraid of death is only another way of thinking one is wise when one is not; it is to think one knows what one does not know'. And more finally, he says to his compatriots about his refusal to accept the quiet life "this is the hardest thing of all to make some of you understand. If I say that it would be disobedience to God, and that is why I cannot 'mind my own business', you will not believe that I am serious. If on the other hand I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the best thing that a man can do. And that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is gentlemen... "[24]

Socrates' certainty in these matters was unassailable but maybe it takes a Kierkegaard in the nineteenth-century to hit-the-nail-on-the-head not only about Socrates complete state of repose when facing his forthcoming death but his certainty as exhibiting the spiritual vigour and detachment to carry him through such strife with an heroic stature grounded in knowledge of the Truth:

His death sentence was announced to him. That instant he dies – for one who does not understand that the whole power of the spirit is required for dying, and that the hero always dies before he dies, that man will not get very far with his conception of life. So as a hero it is required of Socrates that he repose tranquilly within himself, but as an intellectual tragic hero it is required of him that he have spiritual strength to carry himself through. So he cannot like the ordinary tragic hero concentrate upon keeping himself face to face with death, but he must make this movement so quickly that at the same instant he is consciously well over and beyond this strife and asserts himself. So if Socrates in the crisis of death had remained mute, he would have weakened the impression of his life and awakened a suspicion that the elastic irony within him was not a cosmic force but a life-belt which by its buoyancy might serve to hold him up pathetically at the decisive moment. [25]

What strikes me is Socrates response to hearing the verdict and hearing the news of the narrow margin of the vote that condemned him to death: 'I should never have believed it would be such a close thing'.

Well we have covered an awful lot of ground but the basic point of this talk is to suggest that the vital importance when reading Plato or Ibn 'Arabi is to recognise the purpose of it all: to be brought to the point of realisation and that this is not the same as explanation and clarification but is, in fact, a point of vision – a universal vision and born of the Divine love to be known, in which love and knowledge can ultimately witness (what Glaucon called and Socrates confirmed) as "the Beautiful beyond thought". This is probably beyond the level of the Divine Names and qualities referred to in the writings of Ibn 'Arabi. But it is interesting that when Ibn 'Arabi deploys the term "realisation" one of the meanings he brings out is that "realisation is the station that accepts no detracting obfuscation" and he goes on to say "when the realiser hears... he knows what he hears, who hears, through whom is heard and what is required by the thing heard... (and when he sees, that is )... when the Real is his eyesight, he knows through whom he sees and what he sees. Hence no obfuscation enters into his consideration, no mistake in his sensation and no bewilderment into his rational faculty, for he belongs to God through God. So is also the case with all his movements and stillnesses – a Realiser's movements that derive from realisation. In this he does not consider those who count him in error, for it is utterly impossible for there to be... an affair that would conform to the personal desires of everyone, since God created their gazes disparate".[26]

Ibn 'Arabi puts it well when he says that all the extraordinary stories and descriptions in the Fusus al-Hikam, the Tarjuman and the Sufis of Andalusia (and much more) are "only bridges and passage ways set up so that we can cross over them... into our own essence/selves and our own particular states... (they are Reminders)... of what is within you and in your possession and you have forgotten".[27] If there is any plausibility in the development of what is said in this talk this is surely the case with reading Plato also.

I propose to conclude with two quite short, but poignant, Platonic recommendations.
Firstly, his warning not to harbour any secret constriction:
"Another criterion of the philosophical nature has to be considered... that there should be no secret corner of illiberality; nothing can be more antagonistic than meanness to a soul which is ever longing after the whole of things both divine and human" [28]
And secondly, Plato's advice to the student of these matters not to be overwhelmed by their personal list of lacks and deficiencies, but, to remain steadfast on facing the essential. He describes the image of the Sea-God Glaucos, ravaged by the sea and monstrously disfigured by incrustations and Plato remarks:
"And the soul which we behold is in a similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand ills. But not there, Glaucon, not there must we look. Where then? At her love of wisdom. Let us see whom she affects, and what society and what converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal and eternal and divine: also how different she would become by following this superior principle... "[29]

Thankyou.

Notes

[1] Irwin Terence Classical Thought Oxford University Press 1989 p 114
[2] Plato The Republic Book V1 Britanicca Great Book V0l 7 Chichago 1987 p374
[3] Plato in Phaedrus Britanicca Great Book Vol. 7 Chicago 1987 p126 says of the seeker 'that he is like a bird fluttering' who 'when he sees the beauty of the earth, is transported with the recollection of true beauty' and apparently "careless of the world" seeks to fly away and is often thought by others to be mad – but not by Plato, except in so far as it can described as a 'divine madness', like love itself.
[4] Richards I. A. Plato's Republic Cambridge University Press 1966 pp194-195
[5] Claude Addas Quest for the Red Sulphur Islamic Text Society, Cambridge 1993 p105
[6] Rickless S Stamford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (online: http:// plato.stanford.edu) Sect. 4.6
[7] Coates Peter Ibn 'Arabi and Modern Thought Anqa Publishing Oxford 2008 Second Edition p3
[8] In his remarks about the role of the Divine Creative Imagination Ibn 'Arabi discusses the whole question and importance of the manifestation of 'the impossible thing'. And as Dom Slyvester remarked 'paradox just happens to be the foundational nature of reality'.
[9] Hallinan Edward Mary Queen of the Palace Mistress of the House Parresia Press Newark 2009 p85
[10] Richards I. A. Plato's Republic Cambridge University Press 1966 p126
[11] Affifi A. E. The Twentynine Pages Beshara Publications Roxburgh 1998 pp 52-53
[12] Richards I. A. Plato's Republic Cambridge University Press 1966 pp123-125
[13] Kraut Richard Plato Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy pp1-22 [http://plato.stanford.edu/plato 2009.
[14] P. Feyerabend, Against Method (London, 1965) p10.
[15]Kraut Richard Plato Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy p6 [http://plato.stanford.edu/plato 2009.
[16] Austin R.W.J. The Bezels of Wisdom SPCK London 1980 p 13
[17] Richards I. A. Plato's Republic Cambridge University Press 1966 p184
[18] Plato The Last Days of Socrates Penguin Classics (Trans. H. Tredennick) 1969 p 7
[ 19]Richards I. A. Plato's Republic Cambridge University Press 1966 p88
[20] Richards I. A. Plato's Republic Cambridge University Press 1966 p118-119
[21] Richards I. A. Plato's Republic Cambridge University Press 1966 p121
[22] Cornford F M Plato's Theory of Knowledge Routledge & Kegan Paul London 1979 p 26
[23] Cornford F M Plato's Theory of Knowledge Routledge & Kegan Paul London 1979 p28
[24] Plato The Last Days of Socrates Penguin Classics trans. Hugh Tredennick London 1969 pp 60-72
[25] Fear and Trembling Soren Kierkegaard trs. Lowrie (Princeton University Press, 1952) p182.
[26] Chittick William The Self-Disclosure of God State University of New York Press 1998 p97
[27] Journal of the Muhyiddin Ibn' Arabi Society Vol XV11 p104
[28] Plato The Republic Book V1 Britanicca Great Book Vol. 7 Chichago 1987 p374
[29] Plato The Republic Book V1 Britanicca Great Book Vol. 7 Chichago 1987 p 436

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