Platonic Perspectives

PLATO believed that the god Kronos is ultimately responsible for determining religious and secular laws and that the world is governed by a divine hierarchy of daimons. According to the religious scholar, Jonathan Z. Smith (1938–2017), this realm is structured in accordance with five important principles. As he explains in Map is Not Territory (1978):

“1. there is a cosmic order that permeates every level of reality;

2. this cosmic order is the divine society of the gods;

3. the structure and dynamics of this society can be discerned in the movements and patterned juxtapositions of the heavenly bodies;

4. human society should be a microcosm of the divine society; and

5. the chief responsibility of priests and kings is to attune human order to the divine world.”

Given that the modern world is so thoroughly steeped in materialism, without recourse to any kind of cosmic order, it is hardly surprising that there is such endless corruption among the monarchs, politicians and bureaucrats who claim to rule in our interests. As Smith also points out, however, even in Plato’s time the Golden Age seemed like a distant echo in comparison to the society that Athens had become:

“Hellenistic man suffers from what might be called cosmic paranoia. He experiences himself to be naked and helpless; he sees danger and threat everywhere. Looking up at the heavens, at the stars, and the motions of the heavenly bodies, he no longer sees guarantors of order; the guardians of a good cosmic and human destiny […] but rather a grim system of aggressors, an openly hostile army which seeks to chain him.”

It is not difficult to recognise parallels between the decline of Ancient Greece and our own predicament today, even if most people are incapable of looking beyond the puppets who presently rule in their name. Interestingly, Smith goes on to suggest that the average Greek no longer contemplated notions of human salvation within the context of divine order “but rather by the degree to which he can escape the patterns”. In fact he describes this attitude as “utopian,” which is rather appropriate when one considers that profane systems offer very little in the way of redemption, but if we look at this from another perspective it is worth retaining the phrase “escape the patterns” and applying it to the system itself.