Platonic Meditation: Dialectic and Contemplation

"[Dialectic] is actually the capacity to say what each thing is, and in what way it differs from other things, and what it has in common with them... Then, it remains still ... no longer busying itself with many things, but having become one [with its objects], it just looks." Plotinus, Enneads 1.3.4

Dialectic
In the Platonic tradition, "meditation" can be broken into two main components: dialectic and contemplation.

Dialectic uses reason to bring the mind up to a point of knowing. Reason is the nobility of the soul and an important spiritual tool; reason is not antithetical to spirituality. Indeed, rationality, at the individual level, corresponds to the Philosopher King at the political level and to Jupiter among the Gods.

The dialectical method consists of considering a proposition from multiple angles with the aim of arriving at a precise definition. Crucially, the object of this definition, if it is accurate, has a real existence and can be accessed by the mind.

For example, you might think about the nature of the soul, or what justice really is, or what Beauty Itself is.

The God Mercury (Hermes) is our guide through the dialectic process.

Contemplation
Our modern conception of meditation derives primarily from Hinduism and Buddhism. What we now tend to think of as "meditation" is akin to what in the Platonic tradition is called contemplation. It is a state of beholding and receptivity. For this reason, it usually follows and, so to speak, crowns dialectic meditation, since the soul will have been elevated to a purer state of knowing by dialectic from which it can now receive the rewards of its effort.

It is important to practice dialectic and contemplation within the context of devotion to the gods. Before you start, always ask that the gods guide you and grant you success.

- CWT Admin

“You should not neglect your physical health,
But give it drink and food in due measure, and also the exercise of which it needs.
By due measure I mean what will not distress you.”

Golden Verses of Pythagoras

Happy Thanksgiving!

Platonic Meditation, Continued

What art, or method, or study, will lead us to that end to which we ought to proceed? That we ought, indeed, to arrive at The Good Itself, and the first principle of things, is granted, and is demonstrated through many arguments. ... [Dialectic] is the science which can speak about everything in a reasoned and orderly way ... It stops wandering about the world of sense and settles down in the world of intellect, and there it occupies itself, casting off falsehood and feeding the soul in what Plato calls "the plain of Truth," ... Then, keeping quiet (for it is quiet insofar as it is present There) it busies itself no more, but contemplates, having arrived at unity.
Plotinus, Ennead I.3

What follows is the long form of the dialectic method as elaborated by Proclus in his Commentary on the Parmenides, Book V. This is the scheme or template of dialectic which you can apply in your own meditations, replacing "it is so" and "it is not so" with the proposition you are considering. The dialectic exercise should be followed, as explained by Plotinus above, by contemplation.

1. If it is so, consider its nature and characteristics.
1. What is true of it?
2. What is not true of it?
3. What is true of it in some sense but not true in another sense?
2. If it is so, consider how it relates to other things.
1. What is true about it?
2. What is not true about it?
3. What is true about it in some sense but not true in another sense?
3. If it is so, consider the nature and characteristics of other things.
1. What is true about them?
2. What is not true about them?
3. What is true of them in some sense but not true in another sense?
4. If it is so, consider how other things relate to it.
1. What is true about it?
2. What is not true about it?
3. What is true about it in some sense but not true in another sense?
5. If it is not so, consider its nature and characteristics.
1. What is true of it?
2. What is not true of it?
3. What is true of it in some sense but not true in another sense?
6. If it is not so, consider how it relates to other things.
1. What is true about it?
2. What is not true about it?
3. What is true about it in some sense but not true in another sense?
7. If it is not so, consider the nature and characteristics of other things.
1. What is true about them?
2. What is not true about them?
3. What is true of them in some sense but not true in another sense?
8. If it is not so, consider how other things relate to it.
1. What is true about it?
2. What is not true about it?
3. What is true about it in some sense but not true in another sense?

An historical note that I didn't think about before: the Ancient Greek modes are NOT exactly equivalent to the Medieval and Renaissance modes, but they are similar and related. Confusingly, regarding the Phrygian and Dorian specifically, the names were swapped around by the Medieval musicians, so that what the Greeks called Phrygian became Dorian to the Medievals, and what the Greeks called Dorian became Phrygian to the Medievals.

If you want to get some sense of the sort of music Plato would have approved of, listen to Medieval and Renaissance music written in Dorian and Phrygian modes. It goes without saying that the texts of Medieval and Renaissance music were overwhelmingly Christian in nature. It also goes without saying that music theory had progressed since Plato's time (particularly in terms of Renaissance polyphony). Thus, while the style and text of some of the music would not have been especially like the music Plato imagined, it is likely that the "spirit" of it would have been.

Of course, you could also listen to actual ancient music, but there simply isn't that much of it and what we do have is all based on reconstruction. Mesomedes' Hymn to the Sun is written in Ancient Greek Dorian (the warrior's mode, according to Plato).

Thomas Tallis' masterpiece Spem in Alium is written in what the ancient Greeks would have called Phrygian (the prayerful mode, according to Plato):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cn7ZW8ts3Y

It might be worth adding that I do not claim expertise on any of this and could be completely wrong. Use my research as a helpful guide only.

A characteristic chord progression of (what I think would have been) Plato’s Phrygian mode would be D minor, A minor, G major.

Here is a modern translation and commentary on the Handbook of Epictetus that would be very useful for daily practice.

We know that the Handbook is one of the texts used by the ancients to prepare themselves morally.

Our purpose is to become God-like.

I cannot stress enough the importance of daily practice.

As Plotinus states (Enneads, I.2.6), we are not to focus on purging ourselves of vice, but rather our focus is to be on becoming like God. This distinction is subtle but important.

The responsibility is yours. You will not be saved. Put in the work daily.

Proper music is a divine gift that mirrors the harmony of the cosmos and the divine realm and that aids our soul in its ascent. Music is a tool for the philosopher that, like everything else in our modern societies, has largely degenerated into a hedonistic pursuit. As Plato writes in Timaeus 47 b-d:

"God invented and gave us vision in order that we might observe the circuits of intelligence in the heaven and profit by them for the revolutions of our own thought, which are akin to them, though ours be troubled and they are unperturbed; and that, by learning to know them and acquiring the power to compute them rightly according to nature, we might
imitate the perfectly unerring revolutions of the god and reduce to settled order the wandering motions in ourselves.

Of sound and hearing once more the same account may be given: they are a gift from heaven for the same intent and purpose. […] That part of music that is serviceable with respect to the hearing of sound is given for the sake of harmony; and harmony, whose motions are akin to the revolutions of the soul within us, has been given by the Muses to him whose commerce with them is guided by intelligence, not for the sake of irrational pleasure (which is now thought to be its utility), but as an ally against the inward discord that has come into the revolution of the soul, to bring it into order and consonance with itself."

We can understand the will of nature from those things in which we do not differ from one another. For example, when our neighbor's slave has broken a cup, we are immediately ready to say, 'Well, such things happen.' Understand, then, that when your own cup gets broken you should react in just the same way as when someone else's cup gets broken. Apply the same principle to matters of greater importance. Has someone else's child or wife died? There is no one who would not say, 'Such is the way of things.' But when someone's own child dies they immediately cry, 'Woe is me! How wretched I am!' But we should remember how we feel when we hear of the same thing happening to other people.

Epictetus, The Handbook, 26

"Nevertheless I long - I pine, all my days -
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.
And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure.
Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now
In the waves and wars. Add this to the total -
Bring the trial on!"

Odyssey, 5.221-27

Concerning all the calamities that men suffer by divine fortune,
support your lot with patience - it is what it may be - and never complain about it.
Do what you can to remedy it, and say to yourself as follows:
Fate does not send the greatest portion of these misfortunes to good men.

The Golden Verses

Keep this one truth in mind, that a good man cannot be harmed either in life or in death, and that his affairs are not neglected by the gods.

Plato, Apology 41c-d

Remember, daily (or nightly) self-examination is an ancient practice that was used by the Pythagoreans, the Stoics, and the Neoplatonists. And we are told by the famous Delphic maxim, and by Socrates, to know ourselves.

"What have I done wrong? What have I accomplished? What duty have I neglected?"

Ask yourself these questions every day and answer them honestly. When you have done well, praise yourself. When you have not done well, reprimand yourself.

This is one of your tools for walking the path of the philosopher. Just being a metaphysics or history nerd isn't enough.

The divine music of the Medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen is probably a close image of what Pythagorean-Platonic music would have been like. This piece is even written in the "Timaeus scale" described in Plato's dialogue of that name. It will cleanse your soul, like true music should.

For the ancient philosophers, music was a tool to perfect the soul.

"Pythagoras conceived that the first attention that should be given to men should be addressed to the
senses, as when one perceives beautiful figures and forms, or hears beautiful rhythms and melodies.
Consequently he laid down that the first erudition was that which subsists through music’s melodies
and rhythms, and from these he obtained remedies of human manners and passions, and restored the
pristine harmony of the faculties of the soul. Moreover, he devised medicines calculated to repress
and cure the diseases of both bodies and souls. There is also, by heavens something which deserves to
be mentioned above all: namely, that for his disciples he arranged and adjusted what might be called
apparatus and massage, divinely contriving mingling of certain diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic
melodies through which he easily switched and circulated the passions of the soul in a contrary
direction, whenever they had accumulated recently, irrationally or clandestinely such as sorrow, rage,
pity, over-emulation, fear, manifold desires, angers, appetites, pride, collapses, or spasms. Each of
those he corrected by the use of virtue, attempering them through appropriate melodies, as if through
some salutary medicine." From Iamblichus.

King Zeus, whether we pray or not, give us what is good for us; what is bad for us, give us not, however hard we pray for it.

Socrates, Second Alcibiades, 143

The tetractys is a Pythagorean sacred symbol. It has many applications and can be understood in metaphysical terms. But it can also be interpreted musically.

You have 1 at the top, then 2, then 3, then 4. We can interpret these numbers as the following ratios: 2/1, 3/2, 4/3. These correspond to harmonic ratios that can be expressed respectively as the following musical intervals: the octave, the fifth, and the fourth.

Therefore, you can play the tetractys on a keyboard or a guitar or the like. The notes of the tetractys are E, E (octave lower), A, E (another octave lower).

You can then construct a "scale" from this. I will not go into the details of that here. But the important point is that you can play the tetractys, and the resulting "scale" is essentially what is now called the Phrygian mode. Remember, the ancients taught that music is (literally) medicine for the soul.

Below I will post a short improvised example. The "bells" are playing the tetractys.

How angry you would be if someone handed over your body to just any person who happened to meet you! Are you not ashamed, then, when you hand over your mind to just any person you happen to meet, such that when they abuse you, you are upset and troubled?

Epictetus, The Handbook, 28

“Vessels containing water, perirranteria, are set up at the entrances to the sanctuaries, like the fonts of holy water in Roman Catholic churches; everyone who enters dips his hand in the vessel and sprinkles himself with water. ... The purifying power of fire is joined to the power of water when a log is taken from the altar fire, dipped in water, and used to sprinkle the sanctuary, altar, and participants.” Walter Burkert, Greek Religion