A Platonic Philosophy of Religion: A Process Perspective
Daniel A. Dombrowski
Language: English
Pages: 160
ISBN: 0791462846
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A Platonic Philosophy of Religion challenges traditional views of Plato s religious thought, arguing that these overstate the case for the veneration of Being as opposed to Becoming. Daniel A. Dombrowski explores how process or neoclassical perspectives on Plato s view of God have been mostly neglected, impoverishing both our view of Plato and our view of what can be said in contemporary philosophy of religion on a Platonic basis. Looking at the largely ignored later dialogues, Dombrowski finds a dynamic theism in Plato and presents a new and very different Platonic philosophy of religion. The work s interpretive framework derives from the application of process philosophy and discusses the continuation of Plato s thought in the works of Hartshorne and Whitehead."
Only soul can do that because soul both animates what would otherwise be the dead body 26 A Platonic Philosophy of Religion of the world and has, through its mental functioning, communion with the forms. Perhaps the most insightful commentator on the “amphibious” nature of soul is J. N. Findlay.28 The World Soul has its feet in both the eidetic and the instantial camps, it is not merely a “link” between these regions; it is a living channel. The eidetic mind works only by way of the World
Platonic philosophy will continue to elude scholars, there is nonetheless sufficient unity of an informal type that one can talk of a philosopher as a Platonist. At least three different approaches to Plato can be 6 A Platonic Philosophy of Religion imagined: (1) The dialogues can be considered stages in the intellectual development of Plato, whereby if one looks at Plato’s later dialogues one finds the most significant account of his position.14 (2) The dialogues can be viewed as complex
and so on. This leads to what Hartshorne calls the “monopolar prejudice.” Monopolarity is common to both traditional Abrahamic theism and pantheism, with the major difference between the two being the fact that traditional theism admits the reality of plurality, potentiality, and becoming as a secondary form of existence “outside” God (on the right), whereas in pantheism God includes all reality within itself. Common to both traditional Abrahamic theism and pantheism is the belief that the
abruptly” it can disagree with other consciousnesses that are its peers, a pantheon of gods would be even more in need of a single superior to understand the world as a cosmos than a plurality of earthly animals. Hartshorne agrees with Burnet that Plato’s greatest discovery regarding God does not concern the forms but rather concerns soul or psychical process. This discovery allows us to understand that the primordial and everlasting ideal for the cosmos—the form of the good—exists in the supreme
totaliter aliter, as is the God of at least some Abrahamic believers. Strange as it sounds, Plato’s World Soul, who is as close as breathing, can more easily be seen as a personal God than the strictly transcendent deity in some traditional Abrahamic theists who have been (wittingly or unwittingly) unduly influenced by Aristotle.19 Although not a process philosopher, the great philologist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff helps to counteract the tendency of many scholars, including Luce, to