Thread by @BanxyFamily

Origen deplored Plato, who took pains to learn the languages of Easterners, thus, ‘instead of remaining a Greek’, he opted for ‘behaving as a barbarian in order to benefit Egyptians & Syrians’, wherefore he ended up saying nothing helpful both to those barbarians & to the Greeks.

#Porphyry did not see Plato as an authority, not to mention his loathing of Socrates.

Aeneas of Gaza writes with contempt of Plato having misused the knowledge he received from the Egyptians and introducing transmigration of souls to animals, unlike ‘Plotinus, Harpocration, Boethus, and Numenius.’

Moreover, when ‘Porphyry the polymath, & Iamblichus the divinely-inspired (ἔνθους)’ cameupon Plato’s doctrine, they felt shame atthat, cos they realized that a rational soul is entirely different from an irrational one, and there is no way for one soul to transmigrate to another

Long before Aeneas, Clement of Alexandria had explicitly denounced ‘the best of [Greek] philosophers’ for having appropriated (σφετερισαμένους) the doctrine of transmigration from the Egyptians.

Yet if u put forward a philosophical question, we will settle this also for you by having recourse to the ancient stelae of Hermes: once upon a time, Plato, &, before him, also Pythagoras, gave them careful study, & subsequently they composed [their own] philosophy.
—Iamblichus

When Porphyry refers to ‘the Greeks’ (οἱ Ἕλληνες) it is quite evident that he does not necessarily see himself as one of them.

Actually, Porphyry speaks of the Greeks in the same manner as he does of the Brahmans (the savant of Indians), the Magi (the Persian hierophants), the Chaldeans (the sages of Babylon), or of the Egyptians, or the Romans, Syrians, and Thracians.

Porphyry does not downgrade his dues to the Greek culture,..
#AntecedentCauses

Modern scholars are fond of speaking of ‘Platonism’ while assessing the doctrine of transmigration of souls.

This could hardly be the case, not simply because Plato received this from Pythagoras, Empedocles, and the Egyptians, but because he was too confused to have an opinion of its own on this.
—Tzamalikos

Plato classified degradation of men through reincarnation to women, ‘the tribe of birds’, ‘the wild species of animal that goes on foot’, and, worst of all, ‘the tribe of fishes and of shell-fish (or, oysters) and all creatures of the waters’.

Plato’s general conclusion was that ‘living creatures keep passing into one another in all these ways, as they undergo transformation by either loss or gain of reason and unreason (νοῦ καὶ ἀνοίας ἀποβολῇ καὶ κτήσει μεταβαλλόμενα)’.

What Plato did not explain was the sense that ‘sin’ by a bird could possibly make, so that this animal should incur reincarnation into the worse condition of an oyster. 🦪

We normally speak of ‘evolution in Plato’s thought’ when we refer to his ‘theory of Ideas’, since it is indeed impossible to construct a cohesive theory conforming with all of his dialogues, even if they are considered as different stages of a process of thought;

This is why Aristotle terms Plato’s resolutions ‘twitterings’ (τερετίσματα) and ‘poetical metaphors’, on the grounds that a non-essential predicate requires a subject of its own in order to make sense.

Therefore, the notion of Ideas as self-subsisting individual hypostases is nonsense.

Plato was not as original as we have been instructed to believe; and since the doctrine of pre-existence and transmigration is attributed to him, it would be good to bear in mind how much of Plato’s work is the product of inconsistently adapted plagiarism.

Iamblichus: “By their own nature, the Greeks seek innovation, and they look eagerly round [in order to find it] because they have a character without ballast. For once they receive an idea from others, they do not care to cherish and preserve it, 1/2

but they are eager to abandon it, and, following their of unweighed sophistical ingenuity, they transform any presentation of everything. By contrast, the barbarians, who hold fast to their customs, remain stable and steadfast in their own doctrines.—Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, 2/2

Proclus recounts that Porphyry explained that the Egyptians taught Plato about certain hierarchical orders of the souls.

Against this relatively soft treatment of Plato by ancient intellectuals, a later Byzantine author was not so gentle with him; actually, he was blunt: Plato was merely a thief, which is how he managed to write the Timaeus.

John Tzetzes (c. 1110 ‒ 1180, a Georgian from his mother’s side) was described as a vain man, who did not tolerate rivalry or challenge, and, consequently, he indulged easily in vitriolic attacks against his fellow grammarians whom he regarded too slow to grasp his genius.

fwd: Themistius did not dispute the contribution of Plato to philosophy; but he saw this as a systematic exposition of philosophies that existed both throughout the Hellenic world and in Egypt,

Themistius believed that it was in Egypt alone that the study of philosophy was already firmly established (ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ δὲ μόνον ἐφιλοχώρει τὰ μαθήματα), until Plato gathered the dispersed views both from there & from Italy, &made an integral ‘body’ of philosophy out of them

...as if, up to that time, philosophy were something like the scattered parts of an animal’s body (ταῦτά τε οὖν ἅπαντα ξυνήρμοσε πρῶτος, ὥσπερ μέλη ἑνὸς ζῴου διερριμμένα).

Plato assembled all of these lessons together into one exposition, in like a manner Theseus made Athens one city out of many separate districts.

(edit/ugh!) Therefore, ‘Plato stole everything he found in Philolaus’ book, especially ‘everything Plato said about the soul’.

(this is building to the reason/reasons Origen was #antiPlatonist. Origen was a modified-#Anaxagorean Christian Philosopher) #Cosmology

Plutarch reports that, upon visiting Egypt in order to obtain knowledge from the native sages, Plato took advantage of the trip in order to make money: he bought oil and took it with him, so as to sell it to the locals.

Likewise, the otherwise unknown sixth-century Abba Nonnus reported that Gregory of Nazianzus wrote that Plato set sail to Sicily for the sole purpose of enjoying the extravagant banquets of Dionysius (διὰ τὴν πολυτέλειαν τῶν ἀρίστων Διονυσίου).

Abba Nonnus should be believed, since his testimony can be confirmed by an erudite star of Christian doctrine, who happened to have written as a Platonist concerning critical aspects of his theology:

Gregory of Nazianzus studied mathematics and philosophy at the Academy of Athens and, at least in the circles of the school, the echo of who and what Plato really had been, was an alive tradition, perhaps also as gossip.

Plato was an erudite man, but whether he was actually wise was doubted, if indeed ‘wisdom’ had to be a quality confirmed by one’s own conduct of life.

Gregory of Nazianzus studied at Athens, he taught rhetoric there for a short time, and he was definitely aware of all the hearsay about Plato’s character.

[Tzamalikos] argue[s] that Platonism imbued critical aspects of Gregory's own exposition, but in his Songs his criticism of Plato is devastating: he addresses Plato in second person, and asks him rhetorically, “So what if you were considered the most wise of all men, o Plato?”;

Then, Gregory states that the Athenian philosopher conducted a life virtually as a parasite, that is, one who used to eat at the table of a tyrant, and repaid him with flattery and buffoonery:

Plato lived the ‘miserable knavish life’ (καπήλου δυστυχοῦς ἔζη βίον), and exhausted himself in dealings that had to do with profit out of sea-transport, the content of that transport being oil (πόνους διαντλῶν κέρδεσιν θαλαττίους· ἔλαιον ἦν ὁ φόρτος);

moreover, Plato was a man that prostrated himself before the banquets of tyrants (τραπέζας προσκυνεῖν τυραννικὰς Πλάτωνα). What then should one say of such a conduct? Only, “alas!”, considering his philosophical ‘teaching and lofty theories’ (φεῦ λόγων τε καὶ σεμνῶν πόνων!).

One would have thought that Gregory was too relentless to Plato. However, he did not really go as far as he could: thus, he adds, “and I eschew any reference to sales or not sales” (ἐῶ λέγειν πράσιν τε καὶ οὐχὶ πράσιν),...

...meaning of course the notorious story about Plato’s purchase of the works of Philolaus and Sophron, and the looting of their ideas.

No wonder, according to Tzetzes, ‘Plato wrote about the soul, as well as about tens of thousands of other things, & the Timaeus, & other dialogues’ (περὶ ψυχῆς καὶ ἕτερα μύρια, καὶ Τίμαιον γεγράφηκε καὶ ἄλλους διαλόγους), after he took possession of the books of Philolaus.

In fact, not only the Timeaus, but also the Republic was allegedly a product of plagiarism from Egypt.

This allegation is not found in any Christian opponent, but in Proclus reporting that ‘the first exegete of Plato, namely, Crantor’ said that Plato was laughed at because of the story about Atlantis,

whereupon his contemporaries claimed that it was not Plato himself who wrote the Republic, but, in reality, he had expounded Egyptian stories.

Crantor added that ‘the prophets of the Egyptians assured that all those things [that Plato wrote about Atlantis] were written in their stelae, which were still extant’ during the times of Crantor himself.