Epilogue

Plato had created a purely rational theology. He never presented it in abstract form, and he never characterized it as a logical construct. Instead, the leading characters in the dialogues, Socrates, Timaeus, the Athenian guest in the Laws, are at pains to stress their own belief in the gods and the necessity of such a belief in any form of human society. This lack of disambiguation between rational enterprise and social necessity was a deliberate ploy on Plato’s part that allowed him to resolve the difficulty that lay in a dual readership, an educated audience of upper-class Greeks without any special philosophical training, and a highly skilled group of logicians, mathematicians, astronomers, biologists, and legal experts in the Academy and related institutions. But this lack of disambiguation proved fatal. The philosophical schools of the Academy and the Lyceum propagated a derivative henotheistic doctrine; Aristotle in particular in Metaphysics L 7-10 presents an elaborate construct of a prime mover in an attempt to fulfill the demands of both logic and physics, failing on both counts. At the other end of the spectrum stood the pale reflection that was the Stoic kosmos with its divine, impersonal intelligence, a material god that had emanated out of the Platonic myth. Only the uncaring gods of Epicurus defy all the efforts of the Athenian guest in Laws 10. Plato’s god, however, found his most fruitful reception, via Neoplatonism, in Christian theology: the Greek Church Fathers, Augustine (see especially City of God, Book 8), Boethius (see not least his Consolation of Philosophy). And, to jump from the beginning to the end of the Middle Ages, at least three of Aquinas’ proofs of the existence of God, the cosmological, the causal, and the teleological, can trace their origins to the conception of god in Plato’s dialogues.

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

W. K.C. Guthrie’s History of Greek Philosophy (Guthrie 1962-81) has held its place as a readable, wide-ranging, conservative introductory account of Greek philosophy. For a very short introduction to ancient philosophy, one may turn to Sedley 2003; useful tables and timelines, a glossary, and extensive bibliographies are among the many positive features of this collection of essays; amongst these Most 2003 offers a cursory overview of the themes, problems, and proposed solutions in philosophical religion from the Presocratics to early Christianity. A good discussion of Presocratic theology is Broadie 1999. Still worth reading is the longer, more discursive account by Jaeger (1947), covering the same period. The material relevant to the study of the religion and theology of the Presocratics and Plato receives an excellent scholarly analysis in Burkert 1985:305-37, and 465-72. The philosopher’s task of making himself similar to god as much as is humanly possible is taken seriously and discussed in its implications in Sedley 1999; the response by Mahoney 2005 does not necessarily mark progress. The recent collection of translations of some of Plato’s most important myths by Partenie (2004) contains useful bibliographical references. Of the detailed treatments of Plato’s theology, Solmsen 1942 deserves special mention. Gerson 1990 contains chapters on ‘‘The Presocratic Origins of Natural Theology,’’ ‘‘Plato on God and the Forms,’’ “Aristotle’s God of Motion,’’ ‘‘Stoic Materialist Theology,’’ and ‘‘Plotinus on the God Beyond God’’; it is a good example of an account that interprets the history of philosophy from its end. On the nature of the myth of the demiurge in Plato, the incisive article by Hackforth (1936) stands out. For the demiurge in Plato and potential precursors in earlier Greek philosophy, Classen (1962) is fundamental. Specialist treatments of ‘‘god in Plato’s thought’’ are Menn 1995 and Carone 2005. On religious metaphor in Plato in general see Pender 2000. Herrmann 2003 examines metaphor in the ontology and ethics of the Timaeus, while Herrmann 2004 investigates Socrates’ veiled agnosticism and Plato’s distance from Orphico-Pythagorean beliefs, including the doctrine of recollection, from the Apology to the Phaedo. For an examination of the notion of cause in Plato see e. g. Strange 1999. The relevant chapters in Algra et al. (1999) offer a good starting point for theology in the hellenistic period. Chadwick 1966 and Stead 1994 are excellent introductions to the influence of the theology of Plato (and indeed other Greek and Roman philosophers) on early Christian thought. Mawson 2005 attempts a discussion of God in the three major modern monotheistic religions which does not make reference to Plato or indeed to Greek antiquity; but what is presented as a modern, quasi a priori account of belief in God could not even have been begun without the rational theology of Plato, as a glance at the book’s Table of Contents will show.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Ceri Davies, Swansea, and Daniel Ogden sincere thanks for friendly advice and helpful criticism in matters of style and content. I should like to repay long-standing debts of gratitude by dedicating this essay to Pralat Dr. Peter Prassel, Bonn, and Dr. med. Johannes Chevalier, Mainz.