Ainigma : Plato’s esotericism in context

Abstract

Based primarily on Aristotle’s testimony of the existence of ‘unwritten doctrines’ of Plato, alongside Plato’s comments on the issue in the Seventh Epistle and the critique of writing in the Phaedrus, the question of Plato’s esotericism, that is, whether he engaged in the conscious concealment of aspects of his philosophy, has been an enduring topic of Platonic exegesis. In modern times, the controversy has reached something of a stalemate between the esotericist versus anti-esotericist camps, being limited to, broadly, a widespread acceptance of Vlastos’ arguments against the existence of unwritten doctrines on the one hand, and the Tübingen-Milan school’s focus on oral, Pythagorean doctrines on the other. This thesis suggests a way out of this stalemate on several fronts. Firstly, by integrating the insights of the burgeoning field of Western Esotericism, so that Platonic exegesis may be brought up to speed with the latest developments in the field of esoteric studies. Secondly, by taking a contextual approach that seeks to identify esotericism in thinkers and traditions that had a clear influence on Plato on the one hand (such as the allegorical tradition of interpreting Greek mythic poetry, the ancient Greek Mystery traditions and the Presocratics), and esotericism in thinkers and traditions that were influenced by Plato on the other (such as the middle and late Platonists). Finally, with these tools in hand, I engage in a meta-textual analysis of the markers of esotericism in the Platonic dialogues in general and the Phaedrus in particular. In the process, I identify a particular kind of philosophical esotericism in the Platonic context that I term ‘dual esotericism’, the confluence of textual and extra-textual esotericism in a mutually supportive and recursive way.