Initiation into the Philosophy of Plato

In these pages Raphael gives just a simple introduction to the Teaching of Plato, sending the seeker back to direct meditation on the texts.

According to Giovanni Reale, so much has been written and continues to be written about Plato - and in all the main languages - that it is now quite impossible to master all these writings. It is therefore understandable why a number of scholars have for some time been postulating the need to cut back on all this literature and get on with reading Plato himself without having to go through these writings, or with a relative independence from them.

A further consideration is that every commentator expounds his own point of view, which may sometimes be quite the opposite of the viewpoint held by other commentators. Think, for example, of the different interpretations given to the concepts of philía, Eros, the Demiurge, χώρα (chóra), and so on.

However, although people may have read and even studied Plato extensively, we believe that there are few who have meditated deeply, and without scholarly preconceptions, on the Platonic Teaching, extracting its essence and its deeply 'ascetic' and realisative content.

In the course of time the concept of Philosophy has taken on a meaning that is completely different from what it was originally, to the point of becoming a merely conceptual pastime which can offer only opinions and not the Truth.

The Philosophy of Plato is of an initiatory order. It is a turning towards Being. It is Initiation into the supreme Good. This is not our idea: it is Plato's. In order to comprehend it, therefore, it is not enough to speak about it: it has to be integrated into our consciousness. In other words, it has to be lived.

Platonism was held in high regard even by the Church Fathers (Ambrose, Augustine, John of Damascus, Anselm of Canterbury, and others) and until the twelfth century its teaching received the approbation of the Church.

Later, in the Renaissance, Platonism received a fertile positive impulse through the Florentine Academy (Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and his nephew Gianfrancesco Pico, together with many others), and later still through the Cambridge Platonists (Henry More, Thomas Gale, John Norris, and others).

The Philosophy of Plato is characterised by a deep yearning for a better society, a vision of life which embraces humanity in its totality and not in its phenomenal, sensible state of fragmentation. It also encourages a method of learning which involves a step-by-step appropriation of noetic intuition rather than merely formal logic. But its most outstanding feature is its firm and unshakeable confidence in man's capacity to comprehend and realise noetic Truth and to model his life and affairs on the principle of this truth.

In addition to supplying numerous extracts from modern writers who confirm the thesis presented in this book, Raphael draws a succinct parallel with Śaṅkara, the codifier of Advaita Vedānta, which takes its inspiration from the Vedas. Between these two Teachings, which were codified by two divine Masters and which are apparently distant or different from each other, those who have comprehended the single, universal Tradition of the Mysteries will find only 'adaptations' that are required by time and space.