Beyond The Shadows – The Metaphysics of the Platonic Tradition

Description

This volume presents an outline of the metaphysics of the Platonic tradition which the authors hold as having its roots in the mythic writings of Homer and Hesiod, having been developed through the Pythagorean and Orphic schools, scientifically unfolded by Plato, and receiving its finest written flowering in late antiquity in the works of Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus and many others.

The book is divided into two sections: in the first, introduced by Guy Wyndham-Jones, extracts from the works of ancient philosophers concerning The One and the Gods unfold the divine summit of Platonic metaphysics.  This section especially demands more than ordinary study: each piece acts as a starting point for the deepest meditation, and calls upon the readers’ deepest faculties. As the introduction of this section says, “The Platonic panorama describes, as far as is humanly possible, the universal order of all things, beginning with that which is most simple and beyond all definition, through the generations of all beings, and terminating in the indefiniteness of matter and space. “

The second section, by Tim Addey, aims to give the new student a framework from which to begin the serious study of the subject.  It shows how the orthodox understanding of Plato, based on the division of reality into abstract form and material manifestation is inadequate for the proper understanding of the tradition.  Instead a more subtle six-fold division of the universe is delineated as the way in which the divine sources of the universe unfold in progressive stages to the furthest extremity of things.  It explains how the universe is understood in this tradition to be a single entity, which not only proceeds outwards in an ordered way, but also returns to its source in a similar manner.

A Glossary of Platonic terms, and a short extract from Proclus’ Elements of Theology are added to complete the book.