O'Meara, Dominic J. Platonopolis. Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity

Review of Metaphysics, The, March, 2008 by Matthias Vorwerk

O'MEARA, Dominic J. Platonopolis. Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005. 264 pp. Paper, $45.00--With the publication of the paperback edition of this book, Oxford University Press has made readily available a monograph that covers a period of political philosophy many would have assumed did not exist, namely Neoplatonic political philosophy from Plotinus to the Arabic philosopher al-Farabi. All too familiar is Willy Theiler's famous dictum that Neoplatonism presents a "Plato dimidiatus," that is, a version of Platonic philosophy that has been deprived of its political and, to a lesser degree, of its ethical components. Dominic O'Meara, however, provides evidence that, far from being a-political, Neoplatonists did engage in developing philosophical theories of government and the good life in the footsteps of Plato.

O'Meara's approach is not chronological but thematic. This approach is partly due to the scarcity of Neoplatonic sources on political philosophy, which poses the major challenge for O'Meara's enterprise. He tries to reconstruct what has been lost by collecting remarks of a political character scattered throughout Neoplatonic literature and arranging them with the few complete texts that survived; interestingly, these are mostly of Christian provenance. In arguing that Neoplatonic philosophy was not primarily a philosophy of otherworldliness, he orders his material around the key Platonic concept of assimilation to god or divinization (homoiosis theSi), distinguishing two aspects: divinization of the soul (part I) and divinization of the state (part II). These two aspects correspond with the ascent and descent of the philosopher, which Plato describes in Republic VII. The final part of the book is dedicated to the reception of Neoplatonic political thought in Christianity and Islam (part III).

After presenting in the Introduction (pp. 1-26) his methodological approach and a useful survey of relevant Neoplatonic philosophers from Plotinus until the end of the Neoplatonic Schools in the 6th and 7th centuries AD, O'Meara proceeds to the first goal of Neoplatonic political philosophy, the divinization of the soul (part I; pp. 27-68). The starting-point for this concept is the famous passage in Plato's Theaetetus (176ab), where it is suggested that relief from the necessary evils of the human condition is possible only if the soul flees. This flight is, O'Meara argues rightly, not to be considered as 'Weltflucht' or otherworldliness, but as an attempt to render the soul divine through virtue. Beginning with Plotinus, Neoplatonists developed a scale of different levels of virtue, one of which is the level of "political virtues." Political virtues govern the relationship of reason on the one hand and the body with its desires on the other. While for Plotinus political virtues seem to be restricted to the relation of the individual soul towards the body it inhabits, in later Neoplatonism they are extended to the realm of political life as well, in so far as they govern the relations of citizens to each other and to political authority. Although political virtues rank lower than, for example, cathartic or theoretical virtues, they cannot be skipped; on the contrary, they are necessary as a preparatory step towards the higher virtues. O'Meara asks where political virtues could be acquired given the corruption of the political environment in late antiquity. It was in the philosophical schools, he argues, where with the help of a didactically structured canon of readings of Platonic dialogues the student would be guided towards an ascent of the soul. On the extent to which this philosophical education involved practical elements, the sources are silent.

The divinization of the state (part II; pp. 69-139) consists also in a form of assimilation to god. Even as god, the Good and source of all being, exercises providence in the universe, so must the philosopher, having perfected his soul, care providentially for his fellow citizens. This care consists in prudent legislation, following the principles of Plato's Laws (or an even less ambitious model) rather than the idealistic Republic. The aim of any philosophically-inspired reform is the divinization of all citizens in accordance with their capacities, in View of which religion plays an important role as both socially integrating and symbolically instructing, an aspect that was to gain importance as Christians and, later on, Muslims appropriated Neoplatonic political philosophy.

The final part of the book discusses selectively the reception of Neoplatonic political thought in Christianity and Islam (part III; 141-97). In a way, this part is the most exciting, because we can observe, as it were, Neoplatonic political ideas in action. Eusebius in the Praise of Constantine extols the emperor as a Christian version of a philosopherking: As the philosopher-king imitates the Idea of the Good, so Constantine imitates Christ. Augustine, however, at first attracted by Neoplatonism, rejects in the City of God any pretensions to divinize citizens by means of the state. It is Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita who integrates the concept of divinization into a complex system of celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies that mediate between God and men. The church assumes the function of the state, with the bishop as a philosopher-king. Finally, in al-Farabi's Best State we find a hierarchically structured Muslim society that aims at the divinization of all of its members through appropriate legislation. To this end the monarch has to be himself an intellect in act, and at least one such philosopher-king has existed: Muhaminad.