Mystical Knowledge in the Platonic Tradition

Abstract This paper concerns the translation of Plato’s Palinode and in particular, Phaedrus 247d8-e1, where the soul is said to see and feast upon the Forms of Justice, Temperance, and Knowledge. The paper looks forward to the passage’s reception as revealed in Plotinus’ expanded contemplation of it in Ennead V .8, On Intelligible Beauty , and then in Ficino’s subsequent translation of and Commentarium on the Phaedrus , the final versions of which were published after Ficino’s translations of the Enneads . Both of these Neoplatonist philosophers understood the Hyperouranian topos , site of the soul’s encounter with the Forms, as a contemplative landscape, wherein the mind, that is, the soul, as a knowing subject, comes to rest in its object, the Form, realizing its unity with this object by discovering the very ground of the soul, namely Nous, or Intellect. The soul, in Plotinus’ parlance, reverts to ( epistrephetai ) intellect ( nous ), thereby discovering its deeper or truer identity. The intellect, from the viewpoint of Plotinus, is a One-Many, a unity that contains within itself and as itself, the Forms, the real beings, which it eternally contemplates. For Plotinus and for Ficino after him, the erotic longing of the soul for beauty is also a path to self-knowledge, as the soul discovers true beauty within itself. In this paper, we advocate for a reading of Plato’s Phaedrus that can be said to navigate the reader toward such a search for intelligible beauty, namely, within him or herself. The paper builds on Suzanne Stern-Gillet’s work, especially her studies of Plotinus’ own treatment of Plato’s Phaedrus . In particular, her essay, one of the last studies she authored, “The double Hamartia of the Soul IV 8 [6] 5.14-37,” spurred our own meditations on Plotinus’ readings of Plato’s Palinode in the Phaedrus .