An Introduction to the Special Issue “The Platonic Tradition, Nature Spirituality, and the Environment”

Abstract

We can understand Platonism as both a storehouse of resources that can be drawn upon and a living philosophy capable of helping us address the present-day environmental crisis, one of humanity’s most important and pressing challenges. Platonism appears in the collected papers here in philosophical, theological, scientific, and literary contexts, demonstrating both its versatility and its capacity. One of the aims of promoting this avenue of research is to both explore and challenge the traditional characterisations and critiques of the Platonic tradition in relation to nature and ecology. This Special Issue demonstrates how Platonism can serve as a resource for addressing the environmental crisis in a present-day context. Collectively, the wide range of contributions allow us to begin to tackle the task of showing how a Platonically orientated metaphysics can provide an integrative and sustainable framework for conceptualising nature and the place of humans within it, particularly by offering an alternative to subject-centred epistemologies.

1. Introduction

The Platonic tradition has, throughout history, offered the possibility of a radically alternative understanding of the relationship between humans and nature and between humans and non-human animals. This Special Issue of the journal Religions includes papers that explore historical and contemporary examples of some of the numerous ways in which the Platonic tradition can conceptualise nature. In this way, Platonism is presented as both a storehouse of past resources that can be drawn upon and a living philosophy capable of addressing one of humanity’s most important and pressing problems. The articles that make up this Special Issue explore historical conceptualisations of Platonic nature by a number of individual thinkers, representative of numerous sub-traditions within the tradition. Platonism appears in the collected papers in philosophical, theological, scientific, and literary contexts, demonstrating at once its versatility and its capacity. In this way, as a metaphysical framework, Platonism also offers a valuable intellectual resource, as it can incorporate a range of perspectives and approaches within a broad metaphysical carapace. This has great importance in the context of the global environmental crisis.

The articles brought together here are refined and developed versions of papers that were first offered during recent sessions of the Platonism and Neoplatonism Unit of the American Academy of Religion, which gathers an international group of scholars working in this area on an annual basis. The Platonism and Neoplatonism Unit is committed to the ongoing study of Platonic traditions in connection with the history and philosophy of religions, from antiquity to the present. In this context, the Unit seeks to feature the research of new and established scholars working in this field. Through its annual meetings, it provides an avenue for the dissemination of new historical scholarship, as well as scholarship that draws upon the tradition as a resource to engage with important contemporary questions, as is the case in this Special Issue. Over the last several years, the Unit has hosted a number of panels exploring the relationship between the thought of the Platonic tradition and the concept of nature, with the aim of engaging with current environmental challenges. In the context of these meetings, numerous papers have demonstrated, within the broad context of Platonism as a metaphysical–religious orientation, how a range of historical, contemporary, and constructive possibilities present themselves as offering religious and philosophical alternatives to a wholly naturalistic and anthropocentric conceptualisation of nature. These papers help to demonstrate how the Platonic view of nature can open up possibilities for conceptualising the environment as a place of encounter, learning, wonder, theurgy, and theophany for a broad range of figures. Some of the papers included here also focus on thinkers who have sought to deploy aspects of the Platonic tradition in a modern religious or philosophical context as an alternative to mechanistic worldviews or the reduction of divine presence to that of vestige.

One of the aims in promoting this avenue of research is to both explore and challenge the traditional characterisations and critiques of the Platonic tradition in relation to nature and ecology. There are numerous criticisms of the tradition, particularly those concerning its ostensible promotion of a problematic dualism that devalues creation, resulting in contemptus mundi, extreme forms of asceticism, or environmentally destructive forms of resource extraction.1 There is some truth to this characterisation, but there are many (indeed, far more) exceptions to it. The complex warp and woof of intellectual history warns against monocausal narratives and broad generalisations. Instead, the important case made through the articles that comprise this Special Issue is that Platonism can serve as a resource for addressing the environmental crisis in a present-day context. Collectively, they begin the task of demonstrating how a Platonically orientated metaphysics can provide an integrative and sustainable framework for conceptualising nature and the place of humans within it, particularly by offering an alternative to subject-centred epistemologies.2 This Special Issue contributes to this ongoing consideration.

2. What Do We Mean by Platonism?

The oft-quoted comment by Alfred North Whitehead that ‘the safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’ constantly proves its validity (Whitehead 1978, p. 39). Indeed, something similar might be said of Platonism’s effect on the three monotheistic world religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—on which it has also had a substantive influence. Rather than operating with a prescriptive and essentialist definition of the concept, this collection of articles broadly considers Platonism to be defined by a realist philosophical commitment. This realist commitment consists of an adherence to a transcendent metaphysics wherein the existence of a higher level of reality beyond the physical world is considered foundational. The precise character of this transcendence and its epistemic foundations have been the subject of ongoing debate within the context of Platonism since its very inception. This places Platonism in opposition to another major strand in Western thought, that of naturalism, wherein all of reality consists of the physical world and its inherent properties and causes.3 An alternative approach might have been to identify a particular set of doctrines derived from Plato’s thought, to restrict the papers in this collection to those that specifically address those doctrines, and to only cover thinkers whose work can be demonstrated to have been directly influenced by these specific texts. However, to do this would be to forget that concepts, schools, and philosophical orientations evolve as they respond to the ascendant issues of the historical period exigent at various times. As such, it is also helpful to conceive of Platonism as a narrative, whose story changes, but which has nevertheless been continuous throughout Western intellectual history, at times ascendent and at other times productively disruptive and yet always present and fecund. Indeed, this is what is demonstrated by the articles published in this Special Issue.

3. What Does Platonism Have to Do with the Environment?

This collection of articles makes the case that the Platonic tradition can constitute a valuable resource for addressing the long-running and increasingly acute environmental crisis that threatens the global ecosystem and all who inhabit it. This ecological crisis is more than a scientific, technological, or political challenge. Instead, it is best viewed as something much broader that requires a fundamental shift in the way humans understand nature and their place within it. This is where philosophy and religion have a substantive role to play. On one level, this might seem to be an abstract and academic assertion. Certainly, it is not the case that the majority of governments, institutions, or individuals explicitly think about the philosophical and religious frameworks that they hold. However, it is precisely because we are not looking at this larger picture concerning our inherited intellectual framework that we find ourselves trapped in a situation somewhat akin to travellers who have taken the wrong turn yet are attempting to find their way by continuing down the incorrect path.

Indeed, it is only by asking the most fundamental questions, questions about things such as meaning, value, and the very way in which we understand the natural world, that we will be able to identify some of the root causes of the present-day ecological crisis. It is necessary for us to collectively ask questions such as ‘What is the meaning of nature?’, ‘What is the value of nature?’, and ‘How can we know nature?’.4 The thinkers published here view nature through a radically different social imaginary than that which presently dominates. Whilst there is no claim made here of the existence of a long-standing and coherent Platonist ecology, each of the articles responds to these classical concerns of the philosophical enterprise in their own way. Taken chronologically, they represent Platonically shaped considerations of nature from late antique Neoplatonism right up to the present.

The first contribution to this Special Issue, ‘Theurgy, Paredroi, and Embodied Power in Neoplatonism and Late Antique Celestial Hierarchies’, considers the rituals of Greek magical papyri for the acquisition of a supernatural assistant. Katarina Pejovic places these in a broader conversation with late antique debates concerning the place of daimones within the celestial hierarchy. Broadly, the writings of Plotinus, Plutarch, Porphyry, and Iamblichus are first employed to offer context for questions concerning the appropriate and inappropriate display of ritual power, as facilitated by intermediate spirits whose function is to act as intercessors between the divine and human realms. Focusing upon the backdrop provided by Iamblichus’ theurgy, the article offers an analysis of the metaphysical structure that underpins the conjuring of these daimones in the Greek Magical Papyri and contextualises the aim of such rituals, which pursue a form of intimate mastery and transcendent communication with a fundamental numinous nature. In its conclusion, the article makes the argument that the theurgy of Iamblichus and the conjuring rituals of Greek Magical Papyri were ultimately aimed towards the same soteriological goals but through different ritual methodologies. Fundamentally, both seek to elevate the physical body of the performer of the ritual to a higher level of spiritual attainment through a direct confrontation with the powers that are inherent in nature itself.

The next contribution, ‘Christian Neoplatonism and Deep Incarnation: Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno as Inspirations for Contemporary Ecotheology’, moves on to late medieval thought and contemporary concerns. In this article, Matthew Eaton engages the thought of two Neoplatonic thinkers to respond to the problem of anthropocentrism and the issue of ecological catastrophe. In particular, their thought is engaged as a resource for reimagining the God–creation relationship beyond the notion of ontic separation, which is the problematic source of the present crisis. Eaton undertakes this project by drawing upon the idea of deep incarnation, which uses the notion of divine incarnation as a framework for reimagining and drawing together God and creation. The capacity for the thought of both Cusa and Bruno to inform this approach is explored in the paper, with the thought of Bruno proving the most useful of the two as it offers an expansive anthropology and a broad conceptualisation of divinity.

In ‘Shakespeare’s Bookish Rulers: Philosophy and Nature Poetry in the Henry VI Trilogy and The Tempest’, Aviva Farkas examines academically minded rulers who are deposed because their rivals perceive an opportunity in both their trustingness and lack of interest in political affairs. These deposed rulers share an interest in Platonic philosophies of the Renaissance period. In the case of Henry VI, his interests are devoted to Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy. Alternately, in the case of the protagonist of The Tempest, Prospero, his interests focus upon Neoplatonic magic, bequeathed to the Renaissance by Ficino. While the two stories are not often read together, the author claims that doing so yields a fascinating contrast between modes of existence as dictated by differing streams of Renaissance Platonic thought. Henry VI’s Boethian perspective leads him to express a preference for the contemplative life and ultimately to adopt an attitude of both passivity and surrender. Conversely, in the case of Prospero, his suspicion and powerful use of magic associate him with the active life. The ultimate expressions of both characters’ respective preference for the contemplative life and the active life both involve nature poetry. Henry expresses a yearning desire for the peaceful lifestyle of a shepherd in a pastoral lyric he delivers in 3 Henry VI, and Prospero celebrates human labour and achievement in a georgic masque.

From Shakespeare, we turn to the Cambridge Platonist Henry More whose thought, according to Jonathan Lyonhart, can inform one of the most difficult challenges that Christian environmental thought often faces in terms of conceptualising the relationship between God and creation. On the one hand, Christian theology and philosophy is often concerned with avoiding the problem of pantheism; this can render the divine distant from the creation and lead to theological positions that construe nature as simply a resource to be exploited or, indeed, a burden to be overcome. On the other hand, when God is brought into creation too much, the distinction between the divine and creation can become blurred. According to the author, what at first might appear to be a re-sacralisation of nature also brings with it the problem that all of creation, including human-made objects, is invested with divine presence. In both situations, problematic issues arise for the natural world and the human relationship with it. Into this space, the article makes the case that the thought of Henry More can make a constructive contribution that offers a place between the horns of this dilemma. In More’s thought, God is spatially present in nature without being reducible to it as the divine is within a pantheistic context. More’s thought accomplishes this through its conceptualisation of space. Space is intimately close to the objects within creation, while, at the same time, it remains distinct from them. Defending this position, the author counters a number of potential challenges to the notion of Morean space and, in doing, so advances a conceptualisation of the divine–creation relationship capable of supporting a substantive environmental ethic.

In ‘Goethe’s Platonic Natural Philosophy: How Goethean Science Provides an Alternative Conception of the Cosmos’, Seth Hart takes on one of the most important figures of the Romantic age and his vision for Platonically informed paradigm that unifies philosophy, theology, ethics, and science. Central to this is the development of one of the key features of Goethe’s metaphysics, that of the concept of ‘Urphänomen’, which underlies natural beings. Hart argues that this concept is derived from Platonic influences and commitments in Goethe’s thought. The article continues by tracing the ethical and spiritual implications of the vision of science that is developed out of Goethe’s Platonic commitments and concepts. Foremost among these is Goethe’s attempt to bridge a desire for scientific knowledge and spiritual formation. Upon this, the article concludes by making a case for the continued relevance of Goethe’s thought in the context of the important reconsideration of our conceptualisation of nature and our collective engagement with the ecological crisis.

One of the most important English Romantic Platonic thinkers, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is considered in a paper titled ‘Nature’s Divine Participation: Reverence for the One and the Many in the Scientific and Poetic Imagination’. In this paper, James Gordon Smoker considers how Platonic sources informed a reverential concept of nature that was central to Coleridge’s intellectual position. The article explores how Coleridge’s concern with the modern individual’s relationship with nature extended beyond the personal and subjective to a broader social concern in the context of an increasingly industrialised and mercantile Britain. For Coleridge, in this context, the platonic social imagination was essential in cultivating a wider social reverence for the created world. It was in this context that Coleridge sought out a unified view of platonic philosophy and science, as well as between poetics and science, as explored in the article’s consideration of Coleridge’s Essays on Method. These theoretical considerations are linked to some of Coleridge’s most important literary productions: the poems ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Christabel’. The article explores how both of these canonical contributions describe the mysterious quality of the natural order and the deleterious consequences of the loss of this sense of mystery, not only on the environment but on the human individual, as well. Reading both poems as case studies for the application of Coleridge’s thought, the importance of recognising nature’s order and the place of humans within it, within the broader context of a divine participatory ontology, is demonstrated as essential in the mutual flourishing of humans and nature.

Finally, in his consideration of the value hierarchies that are often associated with the Platonic tradition and the construction of nature, Ryan Darr offers a constructive consideration of Platonically informed environmental ethics. ‘The Great Web of Being: Environmental Ethics without Value Hierarchy’ considers the charges made against hierarchical structures in the context of the domination of both humans and non-human animals. The central thrust of the paper explores how a rejection of what are seen as problematic hierarchical structures need not also entail a rejection the Christian Platonic tradition at large. Instead, this constructive article advances the position that within Christian Platonism, there has always been a tension between the notion of a chain of being and a non-hierarchical conceptualisation of the value of creatures. The ethical implications of this alternative are explored in the context of environmental and animal ethics, as well as decolonial contexts.