Did Socrates Meditate? On Some Traces of Contemplative Practices in Early Greco-Latin Philosophy
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an outstanding contribution and should be published. Religions, as a highly visible and interdisciplinary publication, is an ideal venue to bring these conclusions to broader attention.
The author effectively bridges more than three disciplinary domains, including ancient Greek and Buddhist philosophy and neuroscience, but does justice (so far as I am competent to judge) to all three. As the author notes, the suggested conclusions are necessarily speculative (p. 11); but the paper sets a sound foundation for further work, and the richness of the existing literature on Buddhist meditative practices and neuroscience help to facilitate a responsible intertheoretic dialogue.
On the Greek side, where I’m most equipped to judge, the author has selected (in my view) the strongest passages available to frame Socratic and broadly Platonist practices in meditative terms; and the use of Hadot’s framework of tonic motion and ‘contraction and expansion’ is creative and innovative.
I have a handful of minor suggestions.
1. The author may find value (I think) in Pierre-Julien Harter’s article on Hadot and Buddhism in David V. Fiordalis (ed.), Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path, Mangalam, 2018. In particular, Harter argues for a finer division of Buddhist practices—including preparation-exercises that serve to develop skills, and application-exercises that serve to implement dispositions—in juxtaposition with Hadot.
2. With respect to the core passages on sunageiresthai and athroizesthai in the Phaedo, I think the Hippocratic Regimen IV, 86, on dreams, offers interesting vocabulary about the soul collected out of the body to compare with Plato and Porphyry.
When the body (sōma) is awake, the soul (psychē) is its servant; it is never its own master, but partitions its attention among many things (epi polla merizomenē), assigning a part of itself to each faculty of the body—to hearing, to sight, to touch, to walking, and to acts of the whole body; but the thought (dianoia) never enjoys independence. But when the body is at rest, the soul, being set in motion and awake, keeps its own house (dioikei ton heōutēs oikon), and of itself, performs all the acts of the body. For when the body is asleep, it has no sensation (ouk aisthanetai), but when the soul is awake, it knows everything (ginōskei panta), sees…hears… walks....
I hope to see this contribution in print; for those of us working at the intersection of these questions, it will be a very helpful text to cite.
Author Response
Thank you for your favorable remarks, they are very much appreciated.
As far as the two points you raised are concernedd:
- I have discussed Pierre-Julien Harter’s article in another paper submitted for publication and currently under review: “Pierre Hadot and his critics on spiritual exercises and cosmic consciousness: from ancient philosophy to contemporary neurology“. While I believe that Harter’s distinction between top-down and bottom-up spiritual exercises is useful, I find his overall analysis highly problematic. Harter’s view is rather reductionist and instrumentalist: one practices SEs in order to become a more effective agent. In my view, that is certainly part of the goal of SE’s, but the overarching goal is a deeper transformation that will transform our mode of being into one that is more authentic and intense.
2. Many thanks for the reference to Hippocratic Regimen IV, 86, which does indeed provide an important parallel to passages from the Phaedo. Although I will not have space to discuss it in detail, I will certainly point it out (with acknowledgement) in a footnore.
Once again, many thanks for your careful and helpful reading.
Reviewer 2 Report
The author puts forward a clear, well-researched article focusing on “traces” of contemplative practices in Greco-Latin philosophy, in order to address the question: Did Socrates meditate? Building on the philosopher Pierre Hadot’s research on ancient “spiritual exercises” or practices, the author concludes that it is entirely possible that both focused and open meditation practices “may be attested as far back as Greco-Roman Antiquity, and perhaps even in the historical Socrates.” While this may seem far-fetched, at first glance, the author is clear that “I want to propose here that this in fact may be the case.” The article would be a good fit for the journal, specifically the Religions and Humanities/Philosophies Section.
A brief discussion of the neurophysiology of focused and open meditation is particularly helpful, before moving into the ancient texts, and serves as a point of reference throughout the article. For example, it is important to know something about the different forms of meditation, and the effect that each has on the brain. Focused or single-pointed meditation, a top-down form of meditation, can help to quiet the noisy mental chatter, whereas open or monitoring meditation, a bottom-up form of meditation, can give us a more expansive awareness of our present-moment experience, both internal and external. While Socrates would not have used this language, it seems clear that, as Hadot has noted, he was “capable of extraordinary concentration,” at times becoming “transfixed” as if in a quasi-trance.
The author argues that the spiritual practice of Socrates has “key features in common with meditative practices and experiences as attested in Zen Buddhism.” While there are common features, it would be worth noting some key fundamental differences. For example, there is little if any dualistic focus on body and soul, so that Zen Buddhism would not frame the issue as tearing ourselves away from the body and the soul being released from the “chains” of the body, or the soul retreating from the “flesh” if we put in more religious terms. As Richard Davidson (2012), a contemporary neuroscientific researcher and Buddhist practitioner has noted, the key to cultivating open awareness is learning to take “the perspective of a nonjudgmental third party,” as we observe our thoughts and feelings and bodily perceptions and sensations “as just the exudations of [our] brain’s synapses and action potentials” (pp. 173; 201). It is, in other words, a more embodied form of spiritual practice.
It would be helpful to know why the author wanted to bring all of this to our attention, i.e., what do you want readers to do with it? Is it meant to be primarily a contribution to scholarly literature? Could it also be something of a corrective to the view that contemplative practice has its origin primarily or even exclusively in the world of Eastern religion? The article ends on a rather ambiguous note, with the author pointing out that the “entire discussion has been highly speculative,” and “unless I’m completely wrong” the evidence presented suggests certain results or conclusions. I would do away with the “unless I’m completely wrong,” and instead put it in the more persuasive language used in the beginning, e.g., “I want to propose here that this in fact may be the case.”
Davidson, R.J. (2012). The emotional life of your brain: How its unique patterns affect the way you think, feel, and live – and how you can change them. Plume.
Author Response
Thank you for your careful and insightful reading of my article.
I agree that it would be important to stress differences with Zen Buddhism. As you rightly point out, the approach of Zen is resolutely embodied, and far from the ascetic approach of the Phaedo which focuses on the separation of soul from body. In fact, the absence of any somatic component, whether in the form of preferred bodily postures or techniques of breath control, in Greek “meditation” is quite striking. One does not begin to find traces of such ideas in Greece until Johannes Climacus in the 7th century CE, and they are not explicitly integrated into treatises on meditative techniques until the mature Hesychasm of Gregory Palamas in the 14th century.
With regard to the question “What do I want readers to do with it?”: well, I guess I would like them to read it, but after that the choice is entirely up to them. I suppose your first suggestion corresponds most closely to my intentions: the article is intended as a contribution to scholarly literature. It is not widely accepted that Socrates or any other early Greek thinker practiced something that can legitimately be called “meditation.” I argue that he did, and if my view is accepted that may change the way we view the history of Greek philosophy. I am not terribly anxious to contest the thesis that “contemplative practice has its origin primarily or even exclusively in the world of Eastern religion”: such quarrels about priority do not really interest me. I would argue that meditation, like mysticism (another ill-defined term) are very much cross-cultural phenomena, and that fact that these tendencies recur throughout history and in widely separate geographical areas may have more to do with the structure of the human cognitive apparatus than with any explanation by cultural diffusion.
Finally, I will adopt your helpful suggestion about being less dubitative in my conclusion. Many thanks.
Reviewer 3 Report
The paper offers an interesting and original discussion of the presence of proto-forms of breath control, meditation and attention management in early Greek thought. Following insights by Pierre Hadot, the author argues that Socrates must have engaged in exercises that share important features with Buddhist meditative practices and experiences. The author focuses, in particular, on the exercise that combines concentration upon oneself (for self-knowledge) and spiritual ascent (for identification with cosmos): an exercise that Hadot compares to the movement of respiration and that involves "a stage of inward-directed motion followed by one of outward-directed expansion" (the FAM and OMM meditation in neurophysiological terms). The article is written in clear language, has a good structure and makes an important contribution to studies in the work of Hadot and philosophy as a way of life. Its main strength and originality lies in the careful and insightful development of Hadot's insights in the context of modern neurophysiology, on the one hand, and in the solid fundamentation of the article's hypothesis in passages from Plato, Porphyry, Augustinus, Aristophanes and Marcus Aurelius. The paper has a long and up-to-date bibliography and it also suggests paths for future research on the field.
Author Response
Thank you for your kind and encouraging remarks.
